Dante checks on Anna, as she’s bleeding from where Herb held the knife against her throat. Dante helps her wipe away the blood off her neck and asks her if she thinks Herb would’ve killed her. Anna isn’t sure, as Herb was extremely desperate to get off the train. Dante wonders if Herb is the killer and is just trying to cover his tracks. Dante asks Anna if she’s afraid and says that she should be.

Dante says that the two dead people are his fault, and it’s his fault that everyone is aboard the Phoenix. Anna is confused until Dante confesses that he was the one who sent Anna the evidence. Anna asks him why, and Dante says that his father never cared about him and treated him coldly. Dante tried unsuccessfully to earn his father’s love. Dante tried to show his worth by working diligently for his father’s company, but when that didn’t work, he began rebelling. Dante doubted Arthur’s guilt, and when he went digging through his father’s files, he found evidence of the plot, which he sent anonymously to Aunt Retta.

Anna questions Kenneth’s motive, especially after Dante reveals that Kenneth is also a tax cheat and a philanderer with a failing company, as train travel grows obsolete. Dante explains that Kenneth hated Arthur because of Anna’s mother, Margaret. Margaret and Kenneth were briefly engaged before Margaret left him for Arthur. Margaret and Arthur quickly married and had Tommy, which enraged Kenneth. Anna realizes that Kenneth’s plot is not about revenge.

Anna is shocked by Dante’s revelation about her mother. She runs away from him as he calls after her and approaches Sal’s cabin. Anna asks Sal if she knows about Anna’s mother and Kenneth, and Sal confirms that she heard rumors. Anna finally asks Sal why she went along with Kenneth’s plot, especially since Sal was practically part of the Matheson family. Anna accuses Sal of being in love with Arthur or Kenneth, but Sal says she did it because of shame, fear, and a woman.

One night ruined Sal’s life. She went on a bad blind date with a man, then ended up alone in a bar. A beautiful woman who looked like Rita Hayworth sat beside Sal and flirted with her. The woman wanted to go home with Sal, but Sal was too cautious to bring someone to the home she shared with her mother and sisters, even though they were out of town. Sal and the woman went to the woman’s hotel room and were intimate. The woman called Sal two days later to ask her to dinner, and Sal accepted. When Sal met the woman at the restaurant, the woman was accompanied by Kenneth. Kenneth paid the woman, and she left. Kenneth showed Sal the photos, taken from the closet of the hotel room, of Sal and the woman being intimate. Kenneth threatened to send the photos to everyone that Sal knew if Sal didn’t falsify memos and documents to incriminate Arthur.

Anna criticizes Sal for going along with the plan that destroyed her family, but Sal tells her that Kenneth was determined, and he would’ve enacted the plot with or without Sal’s help. Sal accuses Anna of murdering Judd and Edith, and Anna denies it. Sal casts doubt on Seamus’s intentions, noting that Reggie stopped searching Seamus after he took out his gun. Seamus could have poison stashed on him, and he has the motive to want the group dead. Sal tells Anna to check that Seamus hasn’t “gone rogue” (299).

Anna finds Seamus outside Herb’s door. She tells him about Sal’s accusation and asks him if he killed Judd and Edith. Seamus is hurt by her accusation and denies it. He still thinks Dante is the killer, but Anna assures him that Dante is on their side, even telling him about Dante’s role in sending Aunt Retta the evidence. Seamus is still dubious. He and Anna consider what their lives will be like when they reach Chicago. Neither has truly considered what comes after their revenge plot is finished. Anna has used all of Retta’s inheritance to execute the plot, so she’ll have to work, but she has no real skills. Seamus points out a rivulet of blood on the floor, flowing from beneath Herb’s cabin door. Seamus gets Reggie, and they work together to break down the door. Inside the cabin, they find Herb sitting in a chair with his throat slashed. Anna screams.

Anna is paralyzed by the view of Herb’s corpse until Reggie drapes a sheet over it. She’s afraid that Herb was right, that someone is working their way through the train on a killing rampage. Anna accuses Jack of being the killer again, and Jack turns the accusation back on her. Reggie, Seamus, and Sal all give Anna an alibi for the time she spent with each of them. Anna cannot solve how the killer got into the cabin to murder Herb, given the door was locked. Anna notices that despite the blood splattered around the room, the window is clean. She realizes that the killer must have entered through the window and killed Herb while the window was open before using the roof of the train to return to their own room. Sally leans out the window to see if someone could climb out even in the blizzard, and she realizes that the decorative orange stripe across the cabin could be used by the killer to balance as they climbed from the roof of the train to the cabin’s window.

Anna pulls herself back through the window and tells the group that was how the killer broke into Herb’s cabin. Seamus shows Anna her father’s silver train pin, which Anna was previously wearing. It was on the floor of Herb’s cabin. Anna remembers having her pin a few hours ago; she’s unsure when it came off. The group becomes suspicious of Anna because of the pin and her theory about the window. Anna offers to show the group her cabin. They all venture to her cabin and find the window open and the blind cord missing, the same cord that was posed on Edith’s corpse.

Reggie and Seamus send the rest of the group away, and Anna tells Reggie and Seamus that she thinks someone is framing her like they framed her father. She thinks Jack is behind it, but Reggie raises the point that someone of Jack’s age and size wouldn’t be able to climb through the window to murder Herb. Anna can tell Reggie thinks that she’s guilty when he suggests that she stay in her cabin until they reach Chicago. He cautions her that they may have a mutiny if the other passengers think she’s guilty but is allowed to move freely throughout the train.

The trio questions why Judd was killed first. Anna thinks back to immediately before Judd’s death, trying to understand how someone would have had the opportunity to slip poison into his drink. She startles as she realizes that she never saw Judd take a sip of his drink. Anna suggests that Judd could have faked his death and insists that Reggie and Seamus escort her back to Judd’s cabin. When they open the cabin door, he’s gone.

Judd sits alone in the darkness, happy to be done playing dead. He was worried someone would catch him breathing when they moved his “corpse” into his cabin. Seamus missed his pulse by feeling in the wrong place. Judd realized that Anna was behind the train journey as soon as he saw that the train was empty. He found the rat poison in the galley and put some inside his watch, slipping some into his drink to pretend he was poisoned. Judd knows that he became a murderer 12 years ago, and he’s willing to murder again to avoid going to jail.

The group gathers in the first-class lounge as Anna tells them that Judd is alive and likely the murderer. Anna can’t figure out Judd’s motivation or his plan, as he can’t jump off the train, and the FBI will be swarming when they reach Chicago. Dante and Seamus bicker about whose fault it is that they couldn’t tell Judd was alive, as they both carried his supposed corpse to her cabin. The group decides they cannot stay in the lounge for another four hours and wait for Judd to strike. They split into groups to patrol different parts of the train, which Reggie and Seamus separated so the two guns aren’t in the same place. Anna goes with Reggie, Seamus goes with Dante, and Jack goes with Sal.

Seamus and Dante begin at the back of the train, so Reggie and Anna begin at the front. Reggie gives Anna his jacket to wear. They search through the train, checking all the closets, lavatories, and other hiding spots. They don’t find him, but Reggie tells Anna she’d make a good FBI agent. Reggie goes into the next car while Anna tries to gauge if the train is still moving at full speed. She enters the next car and finds a body crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood. It’s Reggie, and Judd has stabbed him, but not fatally.

Anna finds a first aid kit on the wall. She takes out gauze and assesses Reggie’s stab wound. It needs stitches, but Anna can’t find anything to sew him up. Reggie gives Anna his gun, and Anna helps Reggie walk into the dining car, where they find Sal and Jack. Sal fetches a sewing kit, and Anna tells Jack and Sal to lock themselves in their cabins and to stay away from the windows. She helps Reggie back to his cabin and sews up his wound with his guidance. As Anna stitches, Reggie tries to get to know her, asking her about her hobbies. Anna sometimes goes to the movies, and Reggie tells her that he prefers live musicals. He offers to take Anna someday, as friends. Anna doesn’t have any friends besides Seamus because her life has been consumed by revenge. Reggie knows something about obsession. His family was destroyed after his father’s death; his father was murdered, and the killer never caught, so he joined the FBI to ensure that no other family suffers like his did. Reggie falls asleep. Anna goes to the bathroom to wash his blood off her hands. She leaves the cabin feeling exhausted, then sees a man. It’s Tommy, and his body is decomposing. She screams.

Anna wakes to Dante crouching over her. She fainted, and she’s upset that the man she sees is Dante instead of Tommy. She misses Tommy and her family and her old life. She’s missed out on love, friendships, and fun. She tears up, and Dante holds her close before almost kissing her. Seamus interrupts them and asks what happened. Anna says that she fainted after stitching up Reggie, who was stabbed by Judd. Seamus tells her that’s unlikely before leading Anna and Dante to Edith’s cabin. Judd’s corpse is in the bathroom.