“Including that brute who pulled a knife on you early this week?” Jules asked, cutting in.

“I think so,” Bette answered, her voice trailing out.

“But?” Tom prompted her.

“But there’ve been weird things happening around me lately that’s kept my sixth sense tingling,” Bette said slowly.

“What do Brom’s people say?” Tom asked.

“They haven’t seen anything untoward, but they share my unease,” she answered, looking at Tom. He had wiped his face again.  She almost asked him how he was feeling when Tom followed up his earlier question, “I’m guessing those nasties who were moving in on you were pros?”

“Yes. I’ve learned that almost all of them were either former or active agents who’d been compromised by this really nasty former head of an intelligence agency, and who had taken it upon himself to go after what we’re hopefully about to uncover,” Bette answered.

Tom nodded thoughtfully. “I would trust your instincts, if I were you, Bette.  I can sense, from the little that Mike shared with me soon after we’d met, about how you and he had worked together when you were being threatened by that group late this past winter, so you know how it feels like to be between the crosshairs of someone.”

Jules felt her insides knot, feeling anger build towards all those who’d been hunting Bette. If Bette would just let me, I’d contribute something to this effort to at least ease her continuing anxiety about possibly being harmed by whomever remained out there. Jules blew out a calming breath, recalling the tenets of the meditation classes she’d started, at Diane’s insistence.

Bette answered Tom with a bit of self-deprecation, “I wish I could say that I was no longer so interesting…”

But Tom remained serious, and cut in, “My point is the following: the military model entails having one spotter in the field and one shooter. Or they could be moving together, with the spotter sitting next to the shooter. Most pros are trained with that model.  So we should all watch for a two-person team, if Bette’s instincts are right that there’s someone still hunting her .”

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Earlier that morning, Middleburg, Virginia

Jerrod sipped on the yuppy swill all the other twenty-and-thirty somethings crowded around the end of the bar were waiting for, or were sucking down. Ordering this hot beverage would allow him to secure the spot he’d selected to park himself to keep an eye out for their target.  But he hated this latte-cappucino stuff with a passion that was murderous.  Worse for him, the spot that sat in a strategic corner of the picturesque small town that was at the nerve center of Virginia’s equestrian-and-wine-country, served only organic stuff, at prices that could make you choke on this swill they actually called “coffee.”