Someone plopped onto the seat next to him, but Morgan forced himself to not move or open his eyes.

“You really think,” Prentiss said, “pretending to be asleep is going to fool a profiler.”

Smiling, Morgan said, “Maybe you’re not that good.”

She ignored that. “Hotchner asked me to brief you about what we’re doing when we hit the ground.”

“Don’t say, ‘hit the ground’ in midair. It’s bad luck.”

“After we land,” she corrected herself. “I never would have pegged you as the fear-of-flying type.”

“More fear of dying.”

“That, either, frankly. You might as well open your eyes. We’re having a conversation, you know.”

His eyes came reluctantly open. “Is that what this is?”

“Seems to be. When we land, Hotch says he wants the two of us to take the Chinatown crime scene. He thinks you’re the only one who knows the city well enough to find it without help.”

“Not a problem,” Morgan said with a yawn, then rubbed his face with one hand and sat up a little straighter. “How long?”

“Till we hit the ground?”

He grinned at her. “You’re evil.”

“I like to think of it as ‘wicked.’ We land in about half an hour.”

Morgan glanced around the plane. “What are everybody else’s assignments?”

“Rossi and Reid will go to the first scene—Chicago Heights—using Tovar as a guide, though Rossi’s a Chicago boy himself. Meanwhile, Lorenzon will accompany Hotchner and JJ to talk to the Wauconda PD, and then they will visit thatcrime scene.”

He grunted. “Something, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

"A killer hiding inside the MOs of other killers."

“It’s a variation on an old theme, Morgan.”

Morgan nodded. “Hiding in plain sight.”

Nearly an hour later, the team was loading up three black Chevy Tahoes provided by the Chicago FBI field office. The heat was even more oppressive than usual, the humidity so high it couldn’t have been much harder to breathe if they’d been under Lake Michigan.

Having walked out with two carry-ons and loaded them into the Tahoe, Morgan found himself dripping sweat. Once their gear was stored and their weapons ready, the vehicles took off in three different directions, Hotchner and Jareau, accompanied by Lorenzon, to the north, Rossi and Reid, along with Tovar, to the south, while Morgan with Prentiss in the rider’s seat drove east.

He followed I-90, then turned south after it merged with I-94. Outside, the afternoon sun blazed down, reflecting off their vehicle’s hood; but inside the air-conditioning hummed quietly. Morgan left the car radio off—he was in work mode.

They had been on the road the better part of ninety minutes when Prentiss asked, “How much longer?”

He gave her a sideways, arched-eyebrow look. “Didn’t you work in Chicago before you joined the BAU?”

Prentiss smiled but didn’t look at him. “Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“A while.”

“Then you knowhow much longer, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Just making conversation.”

“You don’t have to go out of your way to be friendly with me, Emily. I like you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“By which I mean, I respect you. You’ve done well.” He returned his eyes to the swarming traffic. “But you figure Hotch is still testing you.”

“Why would he be testing me?” Her voice sounded a little defensive. “It’s been over a year, and I wasn’t exactly a novice when I joined the BAU.”

Morgan grinned. “Hell, Emily, he’s still testing me. I’d say he’s still testing himself. He’s the team leader. That’s part of his job. And just maybe you’ve noticed he’s wrapped tighter than a new spool of thread.”

“He lacks confidence in me.”

“Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “Hotch knows I know Chicago. But he had youdrive.”

“Maybe he thinks it’s a man’s job.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yes.” Morgan laughed. “Is there a possibility you’re overthinking this?”

She smiled again and looked away as they crossed the Chicago River. He had to pass the street they wanted and exit the expressway at Thirty-first Street, then work his way back to Twenty-fifth. He went west on Thirty-first for a block, turned north on Wentworth and followed that through the light at Twenty-sixth, taking a left onto Twenty-fifth, only to find that the street was blocked by fireplug-sized columns of cement after about a car-length, turning the street into a cul-de-sac, leaving Morgan on the wrong side. Still, an alley ran back south and that would keep him from having to make a U-turn to get out.

“Of course,” Prentiss said, “ Iwould have known not to do that.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yes,” she said.

The first building on the south side of the street faced Wentworth, the alley running behind it. Across the alley to the west, the first thing Morgan saw was a set of four concrete stairs with wrought-iron railings, the stairs leading to thin air, the building they rose to long since demolished, going nowhere except to overlook a stretch of grass and weeds, surrounded by a four-foot cyclone fence.

Prentiss gave him a look. “Stairway to heaven?”

“If it is,” Morgan said, “next door you’ll find the stairway to hell.” He looked down the block at the next residence from the building-less stairs.

The house with 213 stenciled on the mailbox next to the front door was a dirty beige two-story. From his angle parked at the northeast corner, Morgan could see that something drastic, probably a fire, had happened to the huge structure once upon time.

The front half of the building was the dirty beige siding; the back half was old, bronze-colored brick. A door on the east side split the border of the two halves, which would be the entrance to the middle apartment, and where the alley curved around behind the building would be the entrance to the rear apartment. The length of two normal houses, the ungainly structure might have been constructed half from LEGOs and half from Lincoln Logs.

“Weird damn building,” Morgan muttered.

He drove down the alley, then turned west on Twenty-sixth and then right again on Wells, taking one last right, coming around on Twenty-fifth, then pulling up to the building in question.

He parked in front.

They were in the heart of Chinatown, the part tourists never ventured into. Chinese-American pedestrians strolled up and down the street and through the alley; several others sat on back porches of the three-story building that faced Wentworth, many smoking as they watched the strangers in the fancy SUV climb out into the late afternoon swelter.

More sat on stoops along Twenty-fifth, all with their eyes on Morgan and Prentiss. The old cliché about Asians being inscrutable was contradicted by the faces whose eyes were trained on the two FBI agents—reading the distrust and suspicion there didn’t take much in the way of profiling skills.

Prentiss, trying out a smile on several of the neighbors, asked, “How did a killer get that barrel into the apartment with this many witnesses?”

“My guess is it’s a little different at night,” Morgan said. “Chinatown’s always been a closed community to the Bureau. What happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown.”

“You mean, ‘Forget it, Emily. It’s Chinatown?’ ”

“Something like that.”

“Well, according to the report, the police thoroughly canvassed the neighborhood.”

Morgan glanced at her. “What did they find?”

“They got exactly as much information as you would expect.”

“Meaning nothing.”

“Meaning nothing.”

Using a pocketknife, Morgan cut the crime scene tape. Then from the pocket of his slacks, he withdrew a key Lorenzon had given him and unlocked the door.

“After you,” he said.

Prentiss smirked; she was a good-looking woman and even her smirk wasn’t hard to look at. “I don’t care what anybody says, Derek Morgan—you’re a gentleman.”

They entered the dark building, each using Mini Maglites to help find their way through the shadows. Even though the windows lacked curtains, the glass was so grimy that little light made it through.