In September 2001, every plane in the country was grounded. You could still cross America by train—and nobody asked for your ID.

Hannah’s only way home to Seattle is a westbound Amtrak out of San Antonio. Somewhere between the ticket counter and the platform, an envelope turns up in her bag. It wasn’t meant for her. Or maybe it was.

Inside: a burner phone, a notepad, a lockbox, and a letter from a Miami police lieutenant she has never met. Four bodies in a hotel room on Collins Avenue. Millions in cash gone. And the three men who took it are riding her train.

Hannah isn’t a cop. She’s an engineer, which turns out to be the point. With thirty hours to L.A. and a crew of strangers she recruits car by car, she starts narrowing three hundred passengers down to three, before they work out that someone is watching.

But Hannah isn’t the only one hunting them. In Miami, the lieutenant who sent the envelope is running an investigation nobody authorized. And the cartel that lost the money has sent the Knife to get it back.

The Elimination Party is a crime thriller that unfolds over two days and a night, from a westbound train to the streets of Miami, in a week when the normal rules don’t apply.