Nick pressed his makeshift napkin compress against Craig Toomy's headwound and looked up at her. 'Now, what were you saying when we were so rudely interrupted?' We've even got a spare if that one looks like not holding.' He sat on the edge of one of the tables and looked at Bob Jenkins. 'Trussed as neatly as Father John's Christmas turkey. Craig's elbows flapped and he uttered a strange weak scream. He wrapped the tablecloth rope twice around Craig's lower forearms and knotted it tightly. 'Easy now, my good old mate,' Nick said soothingly. 'It turned out all right, Dinah.' Then she looked out at the empty terminal and her own words mocked her. 'The man is unconscious, after all, and bleeding.' 'Do you really have to do that?' Laurel asked quietly. They made Laurel feel shivery, and there was nothing romantic in the feeling. There was no confusion in Nick Hopewell's eyes. All the same, she was here with him now, in this weird situation. And, of course, she doubted very much if men like Mr Hopewell even read the lonely-hearts magazines, let alone placed ads in their personals columns. She thought she would have written him a kind but rather impersonal note Thank you for your reply and your picture, Mr Hopewell, but I somehow don't think we would be right for each other - and gone on looking for a man like Darren. Would she have been on Flight 29 tonight if the photos had shown Nick Hopewell's dark-blue eyes instead of Darren's mild brown ones? She didn't think so.

But the eyes had also been rather unremarkable, hadn't they? And didn't Darren's eyes have something, perhaps even a great deal, to do with why she had made this trip in the first place? Hadn't she decided, after a great deal of close study, that they were the eyes of a man who would behave himself? A man who would back off if you told him to back off? Widely spaced, clear eyes in a goodlooking - if unremarkable - face. She could not help comparing Nick Hopewell's eyes with the eyes in the pictures which Darren Crosby had sent her. Nick gazed at her for a moment, and she dropped her eyes at once.

'I should have heard him sooner, but I was listening to the man who sounds like a teacher.' Bob looked at him, dazed and unbelieving.

Townsmen gang