BooksBarbecue
Back Whistle
Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Part IAnnie
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Part IIHarry
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Part IIIAnnie
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Part IVHarry
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. Thirty-Five
  43. Thirty-Six
  44. Thirty-Seven
  45. Thirty-Eight
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Part VAnnie
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. Fifty-Two
  61. Fifty-Three
  62. Fifty-Four
  63. Fifty-Five
  64. Fifty-Six
  65. Fifty-Seven
  66. Fifty-Eight
  67. Fifty-Nine
  68. Sixty
  69. Sixty-One
  70. Acknowledgments
  71. About the Author
  72. Also by Linwood Barclay
  73. About the Publisher

His body was not found in the back of Choo-Choo’s Trains. It was surmised that Chief Cook must have been one of the first to rush to the scene, as his body, later identified by a badge that had survived the fire, was found in the wreckage of the tanker cars. His remains were so severely burned that the doctor performing the autopsy did not find, nor think to look for, a number of stab wounds.

Having perished when he did, he was spared the knowledge of what had happened to those who meant the most to him.

Because Janice was dead. She died on the street with their son, Dylan, holding him in her arms as he struggled to breathe and the chlorine cloud enveloped them.

Stick and Nancy, from police headquarters, died on the way to the scene, the gas filling the car through the air vents.

Jenny, sitting at home with her feet up, watching Jeopardy! after a long day at the diner, had drifted off to sleep and woke up, briefly, with a horrific burning in her lungs.

Those still mourning recently lost loved ones—Auden Pidgeon and his mom; the Tanner and Hillman families, Delbert Dorfman’s mother—mourned no more.

Wendell Comstock caught a break. He had already moved away.

The only one in the town at the time of the disaster who did not die was the owner and manager of Choo-Choo’s Trains.

Before choosing to lie low for a while, Nabler took a stroll about the town before hundreds of emergency responders descended, and marveled at what had happened. Bodies everywhere he went. Unparalleled devastation.

Those who operated within the sliver, the ones who’d brought down jets and caused dams to burst and set entire apartment buildings on fire, well, Edwin Nabler felt he could hold his head up with the best of them now.

He would have to think about how to move forward. For anyone else in the sliver, this would be a crowning achievement, no doubt about it.

But Nabler was not done yet.

Part V
Annie

Forty-Nine

At first, Annie thought it would be impossible.

Once she was on the road, having thrown some of Charlie’s things into a bag and tossed it into the back of the car, she asked Sherpa for help finding the fastest route from where she and Charlie had been staying the last couple of weeks to Lucknow, Vermont. What came up was a route that would take her north to Syracuse, where she would catch I-90 east, which would eventually take her through Albany before reaching the New York–Vermont border. Once she was into Vermont, Lucknow wasn’t that far, but in total, her navigation system was telling her it was more than a four-hour drive.