The airlines wouldn’t let Carling use her cell phone on the flight. Seething like a volcano, she used the credit-card driven model the tight-lipped flight attendant indicated. The strain was starting to show a little; her hair looked a little ruffled, her suit a little wrinkled. Martin was almost sure he saw a glint of weariness in her eyes.

“Mrs. Womack?” Carling said into the phone, and breathed a long sigh. “I’m not on a secure line, so we’ll have to make this brief, not to mention that it’s going on my VISA. What did you get?”

Martin had the window seat, which coincidentally was the emergency exit seat. He’d been reluctant to take it, because he’d once seen a special about getting out of airplanes in emergencies. He’d had nightmares after that show of being in this very seat, people screaming, flames all around, and the instructions kept getting smaller and smaller and longer and longer. He decided to read the special card in the seat pocket again, just in case.

“Not much,” Carling was saying. He looked over at her and raised his eyebrows in a silent what? “Okay, that’s something, anyway. You take the next flight into Dallas—yes, that’s right. Perfect.”

She cut the connection and gave him a small quiet smile. He hadn’t seen that one before, and he liked the way her lip curled.

“AARP to the rescue?” he guessed.

“Mrs. Womack has some very interesting chemical analysis of the preacher’s clothes. I think you’ll be satisfied.” She reclaimed her VISA card from the slot and studied it suspiciously before putting it in her purse.

“We’ll get there just about midnight. Any thoughts about procedure?”

“Would I be out of line, if I asked about a hotel?”

She gave him a long serious look, smile fading.

“You’re right. We need the sleep. Womack and Mendoza will arrive about three o’clock, we might as well wait for them to arrive before we do any serious thinking.” She looked around for the flight attendant and lowered her voice. “Don’t eat the food here.”

“Words to live by.”

The plane hit turbulence, bounced, dropped. He felt his stomach hit the ground hard.

“I’m not just talking about the normal hazards of mystery meat. I think we may have picked up a couple of traveling companions who aren’t exactly tourists.”

“What?” He craned his neck in an attempt to see over the blue headrest. “Who?”

“Quiet!” She squeezed his knee for emphasis and let it stay, a light distracting pressure. “They’re behind us. Two men, traveling light. The flight attendant had a long conversation with them, and I didn’t like the look of it, so don’t eat anything, don’t drink anything, don’t even get up to go to the john, if you can help it.”