Midnight Train to Paris (10 page)

“But that isn’t possible, Jillian. Get it together!” Samuel stands to meet my gaze, stopping my pacing with a firm hand on my shoulder.

“Maybe this is our chance to find out what happened to Rosie Delaney and the other two girls the
first
time around. And hopefully, somehow, that will lead us back to Isla.”

“Jill, are you hearing yourself? How on earth would
time traveling
back to the train where Rosie Delaney was abducted in 1937 take you to Isla in 2012? I mean, it’s clear that we’re dealing with a copycat crime, and we know that the Morels and Senator Williams are in some way involved in Isla’s abduction. We’ve established that much. But time travel? So we can solve a mystery that happened
seventy-five
years ago
? You’re losing your mind here.”

“Clearly I don’t have all the answers,” I snap, shrugging his hands off of me. “But Madeleine told me that when Rosie boarded the train that night, just like Isla she was pregnant and heading to Paris to meet the man she’d fallen in love with, the father of her twins. And the piece of this whole crazy story you
don’t
know is that the man Rosie was going to meet in Paris was my grandfather, Jacques Chambord.”

“What?” Samuel says.

“You heard me. Rosie was in love with my grandfather. I never met him because he died shortly after my mother was born, but his connection to Rosie has to mean something. There has to be a reason for all of this.”

“Listen, the Morel family is not to be trusted right now,” Samuel says. “That means Madeleine too. You don’t have any proof that the details she told you are true, and we’re certainly not going to find proof on this train. We need to get off at the next stop, and—”

“The letters,” I interject. “Inside the box Madeleine gave me, there were stacks of old love letters. The one I read was dated December 1, 1937, and it was from my grandfather to Rosie. He said he would be waiting for her on Christmas morning at the train station in Paris. But as you and I both know, Rosie never showed up that morning. And while Rosie was never found, whoever took her obviously let her live long enough to give birth to her twins, one of whom—Madeleine—was raised by the Morels. The Morel family never told Madeleine about her real mother, Rosie. And earlier today, when you asked Hélène and Frédéric Morel if they’d ever heard of a woman named Rosie Delaney, they said no.”

“Of course it’s possible that they were lying…just like they’ve been lying about everything else,” Samuel admits. “My team did some more digging into the Rosie Delaney mystery and found out that she
was
connected to the Morel family. The night she boarded the Orient Express, she was leaving her fiancé, Alexandre Morel.”

Chills slither up the backs of my arms. “Just like Isla. Pregnant, leaving her crazy Morel fiancé to be with the man she truly loved. Don’t you see, Samuel? It’s the exact same story, repeating itself seventy-five years later. And we’ve come back to find out what happened to Rosie and the other two girls the first time around. Speaking of which, do you know their names? The two girls who were murdered?”

“One of them was a young British woman named Frances
Chapman, and the other woman was never identified.”

“Never identified? How is that possible?”

“The third woman didn’t have a passport or any other identification on her, and apparently didn’t leave any ID on the train either. They were never able to find out who she was or where she was from.”

“Even her family didn’t step forward to say she was missing, to claim her?”

Samuel shakes his head, impatience lining his tone. “No, but that doesn’t matter right now. We need to get off this train so I can get back to the investigation and find your sister.”

“But what if saving Rosie, Frances, and the third woman, whoever she was, could change everything? What if saving them will help us save Isla?”

Samuel shakes his head and grasps my hands. “This is ludicrous, Jill. Come with me, and I’ll prove to you that we haven’t time traveled, that we’re still in the year 2012, looking for Isla, and that we never should’ve climbed aboard this godforsaken train at the direction of some crazy old Morel woman.”

Samuel leads me out of our compartment, rushing down the corridor ahead of me until we burst into the dining car.

At least ten passengers are dining and drinking, their laughter, cigarette smoke, and late-night banter swirling through the fancy dining car that looks more like an elegant five-star restaurant than the inside of a moving train.

I pinch Samuel’s arm as the woman sitting closest to us takes notice of our bewildered faces and our inappropriate evening attire.

A stunning black evening gown hugs the woman’s slim figure, while a sheer layer of black lace covers her collarbone and shoulders, and a long string of shiny pears dangles from her neck. A pair of black satin gloves graces her hands—one of which holds a skinny cigarette, while the other is wrapped around the sparkling stem of her wine glass. Her chin-length black hair glistens in the low lamplight, her perfect waves pinned back by a diamond barrette.

The woman’s blood red lips puff on her cigarette as she eyes us curiously, then nudges the man who is sitting opposite her. His dark brown hair is combed and gelled perfectly to the side, his black top hat and spiffy tuxedo jacket hanging on the hook at his back.

I catch Samuel staring back at the glamorous 1930s couple, an incredulous look flashing through his eyes.

“I’ll bet you a million bucks they’re
not
from the twenty-first century,” I whisper in his ear.

Samuel places a hesitant hand on the edge of their table. “
Pardon
,” Samuel begins, but I can see that he’s faltering. He’s faltering because he already knows the answer to the question he’s about to ask.

“Can you tell me today’s date?” Samuel finally spits out his question in French, his accent thickened by his nerves.

“Why, it’s Christmas Eve of course,” the man responds before straightening his black bow tie and pinching his eyebrows together.

“Yes, of course,” Samuel says. “But would you be so kind as to tell me the year?”

The man hesitates as his eyes dart back and forth between the frantic looks splashed across our faces. Finally, he says the words I’m waiting to hear. The words that prove I am not imagining the dated clothing and the formal speech flittering past my ears.

The words that prove I haven’t actually lost my mind.

“
C’est le 24 décembre, 1937, Monsieur.
”

Samuel grasps my hand and takes a purposeful step back from their table before shooting a panicked glance at all of the other dinner patrons who are also dressed in equally elegant, classic clothing, and who are now whispering and staring at us as if we’re from a different planet.

That’s about how I feel as we jet out of that dining car and lock ourselves back in sleeping compartment number seven.

Samuel runs his hands through his light brown hair and picks up where I left off with the pacing. “Holy shit,” he mumbles under his breath. “How in the hell did this happen?”

The train picks up speed once again, and although I feel just as bewildered as Samuel, I also know that we don’t have much time to figure it all out. To save Rosie. And to find out how to get back to Isla.

I clutch onto Samuel’s strong shoulders and force him to stop pacing, to look me in the eye and acknowledge that no matter how insane this situation is,
it’s real
.

“Sometime in the next hour, Rosie Delaney and two other innocent women are going to be taken from this train,” I say, refusing to allow my voice to waver, refusing to reveal the fear that is pumping through me faster than this train is barreling down the snow-covered tracks.

“And we have to stop it from happening,” I say.

“Jill—”

“You can either help me save them, or you can sit on this moving train and deny what you
know
is happening to us right now. This is our chance, Samuel. And I’m not going to waste it.”

Vintage dresses, hats, and undergarments fly through the air as Samuel and I ransack the two suitcases that the conductor deposited in our sleeping compartment, despite my fervent protests that those antique
valises
did not belong to us.

One of the dated suitcases has clearly been packed for a woman of my size, and the other for a man of Samuel’s size, which plants the bizarre notion that
someone
knew we would be riding on this 1937 Orient Express train tonight and that both Samuel and I would need period clothing so as not to draw more unnecessary attention to ourselves than we already had.

As I remove one long, flowing evening gown after the next, I remember Madeleine’s words just before she left me alone on the snowy platform.

The train will lead you to Isla. And the contents of this box will tell you everything else you need to know.

From what I could see in the dark train station, the box Madeleine gave me only held stacks of love letters from Jacques to Rosie and a few black-and-white photographs. Apparently, it also held the dazzling emerald ring that fits perfectly on my left ring finger.

Did Madeleine know that this would happen to us? That somehow this train, this ring, these letters would transport Samuel and me back in time to Rosie?

“You’re not going to have time to try them all on, Jill.” Samuel eyes me as he smoothes the wrinkles out of a black 1930s suit jacket. “Any of those dresses will look stunning on you.”

A flush creeps up my neck as Samuel strips off his black suit jacket, then unbuttons his white shirt. I tear my gaze away from the muscles rippling down his torso and try to focus on choosing one of these slim, lacy gowns. But when Samuel turns his back to me and slips off his pants, I can’t help but take a peek at the man I gave up over six years ago.

The man I’ve never stopped thinking about since.

The sight of his broad shoulders and ripped back muscles sends a swirl of excitement to my abdomen, and that swirl continues dipping lower…and still lower as Samuel swivels to the side and reveals the tattoo covering his left bicep.

He cocks a brow at me before I can make out the design, and I immediately divert my gaze and pretend to fiddle with the buttons on the dress I’m holding. As soon as he goes back to getting dressed, I can’t stop myself—my eyes are combing every square inch of his body.

Three thick scars line the muscles on his lower back, and another jagged scar slices across the left side of his chest. Following the veins that shoot down his forearms and wrap around his strong hands, I spot another tattoo lining the inside of his right wrist. As I squint in the dim cabin light, I make out seven sets of initials.

I want to ask him whose initials are tattooed on his arm, who gave him the scars on his back and chest, and how in the span of six years he has changed from the young man I once loved to this hot-blooded investigator who hunts the earth for missing women.

I want to know the story behind his scars, behind his pain. I want to know the story of the past six years—the experiences he has lived through that have made his stance so much stronger, so much more determined and confident than I remember, and the training that has added a layer of muscle to his entire body, that has made his movements quicker, more calculated.

I know of course that in the years since our all-consuming love, Samuel has lived through the abduction and ghastly murder of the woman he married after I left him. There is no doubt that the horror of it all molded him into a new man, a rougher, wounded, more strong-minded man. A man who even after all the lies I’ve told him, would still choose to help me find my sister.

Attempting to focus back on the task at hand—
get dressed, find Rosie Delaney
—I only hope that one day I’ll be able to erase the image of Samuel’s tattooed arms and his rough-around-the-edges, sexy body from my mind.

There was a reason I never wanted to see him again…a reason I
did not
want to be alone with him.

I shrug off the large black overcoat that Georges, the chauffeur, so generously gave me, then slip off my gray suit jacket. Just as I begin to unbutton my thin white blouse, Samuel’s hand wraps around my waist.

I can’t ignore the heat that blazes through my core and down in between my thighs as Samuel spins me around to face him, then lifts his hand to my chin, tipping it up toward his face.

He still hasn’t put a shirt on, and the scent of his bare skin is beyond intoxicating. I can barely suck in a breath as I look into his eyes.

But Samuel isn’t meeting my gaze. Instead he is inspecting the side of my neck and the shoulder of my blouse.

“Why are you covered in blood?” he asks. “What happened before you met me at the train station?”

As I recount the terrifying car chase that ended with the murder of Samuel’s colleague and me shooting the perpetrator in the knee before escaping to the train station, Samuel’s firm grip on my waist doesn’t falter. Neither does his intense gaze.

I want to tell him to back away from me, that I can hardly concentrate or speak when he is this close to me, when I can feel the heat of his breath fanning across my cheek, down my neck, and over my collarbone.

But I stick to telling him the facts of what happened outside the Lausanne train station no more than an hour ago—which in actuality, is really seventy-five years in the future. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the seventy-five-year time gap we have mysteriously erased by hopping on this train. But even more than that, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that it is
Samuel
—the only man I have ever truly loved, the only one I have ever had any desire to open up to—who has made this impossible voyage with me.

And whether it’s 2012 or 1937, he
still
has the same effect on me.

I don’t tell him this though.

Instead I tell him about the pistol, the shots, the snowstorm, the murder.

“Do you still have the gun?” Samuel asks after I finish the gruesome story.

I point at the black coat I’ve just tossed onto the suitcase. “It should still be in there. That is, if it made the trip with us.”

Samuel’s hand finally slips from my waist, and I am relieved to feel a release of breath exhaling from my lungs. He searches the large coat and quickly retrieves the black pistol from the inside pocket. Checking to see if there is still ammunition, he narrows his eyes at me. “Only someone who knows how to use a gun would be able to hit and escape a trained assassin. When have you used a gun before, Jill?”

I turn away from Samuel’s penetrating gaze and continue unbuttoning my shirt. “We don’t have time for all of that right now. That snowdrift could be stopping this train any minute. We need to get dressed and get our asses back to the dining car to find Rosie Delaney.”

I strip down to my black lacy bra and matching underwear, silently thanking the heavens that I’d found my last clean pair before jetting out of my messy Rosslyn apartment yesterday morning. Samuel rustles around behind me, and just before I slip on the long violet evening gown I’ve chosen from my new assortment of 1930s clothing, I feel a warm washcloth dabbing at my neck.

“The blood has to go. But the gun will definitely be coming with us tonight,” Samuel says.

I turn to the side as he slides the damp towel over my bare skin. I catch his eyes focusing on the tops of my breasts, then running down the length of my body.

“Are you finished yet?” I ask him. I can’t take this half-naked proximity with my outrageously sexy ex-boyfriend any longer.

He nods as he runs the towel farther down my chest, where I am certain there aren’t any bloodstains. He leans into my ear, the feel of his other hand slipping around my waist startling me, making me lose my resolve to stay strong, to resist the overwhelming urge I have to wrap my arms around his neck and let him take me, let him possess me the way he used to.

Samuel’s deep voice resonates in my ear. “I’m finished…for now. But one of these days in the not-so-distant future, you’re going to owe me.”

Desire ripples through my stomach as I try to calm the rapid breath that has seized my chest. “Owe you what?” I ask.

“The truth about who you really are.”