I push the point further. "Dare I ask what brings you to sleepy little Algonquin?"
Both her expression and her voice are pure deadpan. "I'm on vacation."
"You're on vacation in Algonquin, Illinois? Let me guess: Newark was closed for repairs, and you couldn’t get a room in Toledo."
She shrugs, drains her glass and motions to the bartender for another. Unspoken warnings buzz in my brain even as silence lays over this, our third encounter.
The first occurred seventeen years ago, when I was a young man of eighteen desperate to make sense of the ungodly times. Linda was fresh out of the FBI academy with her Ph.D. in criminal psychology, assigned to a team from their Behavioral Science unit at Quantico, where she now runs a team of her own. The second time was in California—the pursuit of Stegman.
And now? That's simple enough. She's here to stop me from killing Mitchell Norton.