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Back Marked for Revenge Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Back Cover Text
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
  5. Prologue
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. Chapter Twenty-Two
  28. Chapter Twenty-Three
  29. Chapter Twenty-Four
  30. Chapter Twenty-Five
  31. Chapter Twenty-Six
  32. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  33. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  34. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  35. Chapter Thirty
  36. Chapter Thirty-One
  37. Chapter Thirty-Two
  38. Chapter Thirty-Three
  39. Chapter Thirty-Four
  40. Chapter Thirty-Five
  41. Chapter Thirty-Six
  42. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  43. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  44. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  45. Acknowledgments

For a moment, she considered just leaving them there, but she regretted the hesitation and put them into the boxes, too.

After two hours, both the hidden room and one more glass of wine were empty.

With her finger on the switch, she looked around the room and realized that, without all of the materials of her investigation, the room looked remarkably naked.

She had cleaned up everything that revealed her background. It was meaningless to keep it. She should let it remain a secret, live her life as buttoned-up as the oxford shirts she wore in court.

She closed her eyes.

And turned off the light.

She stood still, listening to the sound of her heart pounding.

Her life would take another direction from now on, no longer driven by shadows from the past.

She felt a shiver go down her spine and wondered if it was relief she felt.

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

TRAIN ATTENDANT MATS JOHANSSON kept his eyes looking out the window. The late night’s intense calm had settled in on the X2000 between Copenhagen and Stockholm. It was the sort of quiet that made him relax.

He always longed for peace and quiet, which is why he and his wife spent every summer in a little red cottage in the middle of a forest in Småland. The cottage had a white veranda, and they sat there every warm summer evening and looked out at the majestic trees and the emerald green lawn. They puttered around in the garden each day, planted carrots and tomatoes. But this time of year there was nothing to do there, Mats thought. Not in cold, harsh Sweden.

He saw the clock turn 10:12 p.m., knew that there were ten minutes left before they would arrive in Norrköping and went with calm, steady steps down the aisle, keeping his balance as the train swayed.

When he opened the door to the fifth car, he saw a young woman standing outside the bathroom. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length and glossy.

She was pounding on the locked door and yelling, turning toward the people sitting closest to her, but no one would meet her panicked eyes.

The train slowed down with wavelike motions, and the brakes squeaked lightly on the rails.

The young, desperate woman yelled again.

Mats went to her quickly, and when she saw him coming closer, she rushed forward and grabbed his arm. Speaking in a language he didn’t understand, she dragged him to the locked bathroom door and gesticulated wildly.

He understood that something serious was going on.

The clock read 10:22 p.m. when he finally was able to force the door open.