Samantha couldn't fall asleep on the flight to Chicago. This time she wasn't concerned as much about waking up in a crib as she was haunted by the memory of him. Try as she might, she couldn't put a name with the face. Who was he? Where was he?
She knew she had loved him twenty years ago. She stared at the bare fingers on her left hand, free of any tan lines that might indicate a ring's former placement, and wondered what had happened between them in all that time. Had he found someone else? Had she? Did they get married? She tried to think of answers, but only came back with questions.
A horrible thought occurred to her over Lake Michigan. She took the flier out of her jacket pocket and wondered if he could be responsible for this. Perhaps there had been a falling-out and this was his revenge.
No, not him, she thought. He didn't have the eyes of a killer. Those turquoise eyes like a pair of bright stones couldn't mask that kind of evil. Those eyes that looked deep into her soul-
"Stop it," she said aloud. The passenger next to her edged away in his seat. "Sorry," she told him.
This was no time to act like a schoolgirl with a crush. She couldn't rule someone out as a suspect because he had pretty eyes. Her love life could wait. Right now she had to focus on stopping the killer before he struck again.
Dr. William Herschowitz. The name seemed familiar to her. She couldn't think of where or when she'd heard it before, but perhaps when she got to the Radisson she would remember something. First she had to get him to a safe place, wherever that might be. She would have to think of how to explain all this to him later.
The plane touched down at noon. She noticed the two agents as she came down the boarding ramp. One in a rumpled business suit sat at the table of a coffee shop, glancing at her over his cup. The other, in a grimy T-shirt and baggy shorts, browsed a travel guide for Austria. To anyone else they might pass as normal travelers, but her instincts told her they were comrades from the Bureau.
She stopped at a drinking fountain down the terminal, pretending to shake hair away from her face to get a look. They had joined the bustling crowds of O'Hare to follow her. She left the drinking fountain and kept walking right out of the terminal. A line of taxis waited for fares at the curb. Samantha got into the nearest one and said, "Radisson Hotel."