When You Were Young

The little plane rattled and bucked, Samantha's stomach doing the same. "Sorry," the pilot shouted from the seat next to her. "A little turbulence."

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Vermont, I think. Might be Canada."

"You think?"

"The navigation stuff is messed up, but I'll find it."

"Right." Or we'll run out of gas and crash, Samantha thought. She should have found a more experienced pilot instead of this boy half her age who didn't even need to shave yet, but she didn't have a lot of choices at the airport. Her only other choice had been to fly the plane herself, guaranteeing a crash.

After stealing a car to escape from Chicago, Samantha knew her comrades in the Bureau would have all the major airports, bus stations, and train stations for a hundred miles covered. They hadn't thought to cover a remote airport in Indiana-no more than a single hangar and a strip of asphalt-where she bribed the young man behind the controls with a combination of money, cleavage, and a kiss on the cheek.

"Have you ever been here before?" she asked.

"Oh sure. My dad used to fly us to Cape Cod for Fourth of July," the pilot said. "Sometimes he let me co-pilot."

"When was the last time you were here?"

"About ten years ago, before the accident."

"The accident?"

"His plane went down in a field in Ohio. Not his fault. The engine went out on him. Some defective part or something. We got a big settlement from the manufacturer. That's how I'm able to keep this baby."

"That's great," she said. She watched the engine out the window, waiting for it to spew smoke or sputter and die. I'm not going to make it, she thought.

If the killer had taken a commercial flight, then she was probably already in New Hampshire. The victim would already be dead when Samantha arrived, another murder the FBI would accuse her of committing. The only way to clear her name now was to find the woman from the lobby.

Clear her name. She didn't even know her name anymore. Mr. Herschowitz and Andre had called her Jackie at the prom. Jackie what? She couldn't remember. Was that her real name or did she have a third name or even more than that? Maybe she'd been a con artist with a whole slate of identities, the latest being Special Agent Samantha Young of Dallas, Texas.

"Are you all right? Do you need to puke?" the pilot asked.

"I'll be fine," she said. She reached into her jacket for the brochure taken from Herschowitz's room. The St. John's Senior Community had been a former prep school purchased and refurbished five years ago with state of the art facilities for today's active senior, according to the brochure. She flipped through pictures of smiling oldsters playing tennis and horseshoes and walking along the vast green lawn. She superimposed her face and Andre's over every couple, imagining them one day retiring to such a place after all the children grew up and left home.