paging through an issue of the airline’s magazine, and she prayed that
he would not look up until she was past him. Though she had to step
aside for flight attendant escorting a small boy who was flying alone,
her prayer was answered. Ironheart’s head remained bowed over the
publication until she was past him. She reached 23-H and sat down,
sighing with relief Even he went to the restroom, or just got up to
stretch his legs, he would probably never have any reason to come around
to the starbord side Perfect.
She glanced at the man in the window seat beside her. He was in his
early thirties, tanned, fit, and intense. He was wearing a dark-blue
business suit, white shirt, and tie even on a Sunday flight. His brow
was as furrowed as his suit was well-pressed, and he was working on a
laptop computer.
He was wearing headphones, listening to music or pretending to, in order
discourage conversation, and he gave her a cool smile calculated to do
the same.
That was fine with her. Like a lot of reporters, she was not garrulous
nature. Her job required her to be a good listener, not necessarily a
good talker. She was content to pass the trip with the airline’s
magazine and be own Byzantine thoughts.
Two hours into the flight, Jim still had no idea where he was expected
to go when he got off the plane at O’Hare. He was not concerned about
whoever, because he had learned to be patient.
The revelation always came, sooner or later.
Nothing in the airline’s magazine was of interest to him, and the
inflight movie sounded as if it were about as much fun as a vacation in
a Soviet prison. The two seats to the right of him were empty, so he
was not required to make nice with a stranger. He tilted his seat
slightly, folded his hands on his stomach, closed his eyes, and passed
the time-between the flight attendants’ inquiries about his appetite and
comfort-by brooding about the windmill dream, puzzling out what
significance it had, if any.
That was what he tried to brood about, anyway. But for some curious
reason, his mind wandered to Holly Thorne, the reporter.
Hell, now he was being disingenuous, because he knew perfectly well why
she had been drifting in and out of his thoughts ever since he had met
her. She was a treat for the eyes. She was intelligent, too; one look
at her, and you knew about a million gears were spinning in her head,
all meshing perfectly, well-oiled, quiet and productive.
And she had a sense of humor. He would give anything to share his days
and his long, dream-troubled nights with a woman like that.
Laughter was usually a function of sharing-an observation, a joke, a
moment. You didn’t laugh a lot when you were always alone; and if you
did, that probably meant you should make arrangements for a long stay in
a resort with padded walls.
He had never been smooth with women, so he had often been without them.
And he had to admit, even before this recent strangeness had begun, he
was sometimes difficult to live with. Not depressive exactly but too
aware that death was life’s companion. Too inclined to brood about the
coming darkness. Too slow to seize the moment and succumb to pleasure.
If He opened his eyes and sat up straighter in his seat, because
suddenly he received the revelation that he had been expecting. Or part
of it, at least.
He still did not know what was going to happen in Chicago, but he knew
the names of the people whose lives he was expected to save: Christine
and Casey Dubrovek.
To his surprise, he realized they were on this plane with him-which led
him to suspect that the trouble might come in the terminal at O’Hare, or
at least soon after touchdown. Otherwise he would not have crossed
their path so early. Usually, he encountered the people he saved only
minutes before their lives were thrown into jeopardy.
Compelled by those forces that had been guiding him periodically since
last May, he got up, headed to the front of the plane, crossed over to