"Al what is it?" she said, her book dropping from her fingers as she reached over and took hold of his shoulder. "Al, honey, Al, are you sick?"

He nodded, too short of breath to answer.

Terrified now, oblivious to the murmurs that had arisen throughout the car over the lights going on, Mary frantically looked around for an attendant.

"We need a doctor over here!" she cried. "Please, someone help us!"

But no one responded. A sudden, violent jolting of the train, followed by the loud blare of the emergency horn, had thrown the other occupants of the car into their own constricted spheres of panic. Mary heard cries of alarm all around her. Heard metal wheels grind over the tracks as the train's jarring, bumping, swaying movement worsened, threatening to fling her off of her seat.

Beside her, Al was gagging, his hands still clutching his chest directly over the spot where the pacemaker was implanted. Acting on impulse, not knowing what else to do, she threw herself protectively over him, put her arms around him, and held him to her.

It was in this position that their bloody, broken bodies were found the next day when the search teams recovered them from the wreckage.

In the second car of the train, Enzio Favas was proudly showing off his UpLink Telecommunications pager/ wristwatch to Alyssa, one of the Australian runway models he'd hired to showcase his upcoming beachwear line at the fashion designers' convention in Rio the following week.

"It send and receive E-mail, do you know? E-mail!" He pointed to the bottom of the readout display. "You touch screen and words appear right here!"

Alyssa glanced over at him. She'd been studying an unsightly calcium deposit under her fingernail and wishing there were a manicurist aboard.

"Uh-huh," she said.

"And it adjust to different time zone! Automateeek!" he enthused in thickly accented English. "Fly from New York City to Los Angeles, Paris to Tokyo, time never off by a minute! It all done by satellite, do you know?"

"Uh-huh." A little girl giggled several rows back and Alyssa frowned. "You think those brats behind us are ever going to shut up and go to sleep?"

Enzio shrugged. The "brats" were actually three very adorable sisters who were being shepherded cross-country by their nanny. Enzio had chatted briefly with the woman earlier in the ride and gotten the entire story: Parents divorced, mother living in Sao Paulo, father in Rio, joint custody arrangement, the poor babies constantly bouncing between them like Ping-Pong balls. Enzio, himself the product of a broken home, sympathized. How could Alyssa be so icy? So vain and self-absorbed? And besides that, how could she not have any interest in his watch?