Your private car was supposed to collect you at O’Hare—” “The flight was delayed, Arthur, so I took a taxi,” Clara said, smoothly.

“I’m standing in the main lobby now.” “I am coming down immediately!” Arthur gasped, raw panic surging through his voice.

“Thirty seconds!” And the line went dead.

And the two men who had spent the last quarter hour deciding that the tired woman in the faded jacket was not worth their courtesy stood in a silence so complete that the click of the dead phone line seemed to echo, as they began, at last, to understand what they had done.

Chapter 14 — As in Vance Hospitality Group