“Samantha Toppers was terrified,” Showers said. “I kept telling her that she was fine. We had the entire train station flooded with agents-nearly a hundred-coming and going. We used interns and retired agents so the kidnappers wouldn’t have a clue who was a civilian and who wasn’t.”

“And no one showed up to grab the case?”

“No one showed any interest in it even after she walked away from that table.”

“I’m surprised. Not because of the kidnappers. But that you could leave a briefcase in Union Station without someone stealing it.”

Continuing her briefing, Showers said, “We found a partial print on the corner of that first note. There weren’t any prints on the second one. It arrived the next day.”

Like the first, the second ransom note was handwritten, but not in block letters. There was no mention of a ransom-only a cryptic threat.

“Your son dies if you continue toying with us.”

Storm said, “Obviously, these were written by different people. Not only is the handwriting different, so is the paper they used. The first note had a partial print on it. The second didn’t. There’s also an error in the second message. In the first, Dull is correctly described as Windslow’s stepson. In the second, he’s called his son.”

“Yes, I noticed those contradictions, too,” Showers replied. “But we know that at least four kidnappers were involved. One of them could have written the first note, and another the second, simply to throw us off. The same could be true about the discrepancies. They might have been intentional.”

Storm wasn’t so sure, but he decided to move on. “Tell me about Senator Windslow. Does he have many enemies?”