As she pushed further in, her thoughts turned to the strange visual encounter she’d had with that man who had been staring at her as she walked up the sidewalk. When their eyes collided, she recognized a coldness in his eyes, which resembled the glassy look of dead fish —  just the way he stared at her made the tiny hairs in the back of her neck bristle.

Something about his whole demeanor, poised like an animal about to jump on his prey, instead of sitting back like everyone else in the café, who were all either relaxed or “palling around” with each other. His get-up didn’t seem to fit together, either.  In a split second she formed a sense that he’d been sitting there on the look-out for something, someone.  Judging by his cold stare at her, combined with an undisguised look of surprise, she thought that someone was probably her. There were a number of other telltale signs.  In her mind’s eye she’d picked up that he’d yanked his sunglasses out even as he’d been staring her way, while he’d hurriedly dialed someone.  And then, when their eyes had met, instead of answering the man he’d dialed, who’d sounded almost frantic while calling out his name, “Jerrod!  Jerrod!”, the strange man continued to stare at her.

Lastly, she saw from the reflection of the grocery store glass doors she decided to duck into that he was still tracking her, tossing his coffee cup at the trash can, missing it because he’d been staring in her direction. The coffee, lots of it, had spilt out, so he obviously wasn’t a coffee drinker, and had only bought one to sit at that table.  Maybe to wait for her to make an appearance.

After a few false turns while navigating her way through the tunnels, periodically consulting the map she and Jancis had drawn together, Bette saw that she had about seventeen to twenty feet left in the rope she carried. Her slow progress through the dark, feeling her way around the maze of tunnels, breathing the stale air, left her sweaty and tired, but she felt encouraged that she was nearly there, judging by the amount of rope left.

She had just made a turn into a tunnel that could lead to the door behind which about a ton of gold lay waiting for her when the sudden shift in the slight occasional breeze that had blown through this particular tunnel segment brought the stench of nylon soaked in human sweat to her nostrils. In a heartbeat she connected the stench to a man’s oily, dirty skin. From behind her!