Cathy was surprised and a little frightened at the ability of his knife to slice through the chain holding her dog tags like that,. Nevertheless, she ...at quietly on her heels, determined not to speak until he did. She studied the man who held her. He appeared Arab to her rather than Afghan or Pakistani. taller than the local men she had seen. His countenance was dark; everything about him was , in fact, dark- his hair, his short beard, his eyes, his skin tone, and the clothing he wore. Seen in. He told me that they were offering three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was sure he could get it up to at least a million, possibly more.I told him to settle at half a million. I said I would call from time to time, to see how it was going, as I could not tell him where I would be at any given time as I would be moving around. I also canceled my newspaper, and had the post office hold my mail until further notice, starting the first of the month.All this still gave me a little time to. The phone call from the Judge still hadn't come and I was beginning to think I should call him to see if he wanted me to look into Lydia after all. Lydia was upstairs in Vlad's apartment or maybe out shopping with Anya.The smart phone rang just minutes before Jerrod was due. The screen told me that it was Anya. "Hello, are you okay?" I asked."Yes," she answered with a much milder accent than Vlad's. "You said to call if I saw anything suspicious. We have someone following us. So far it seems. I'd lost a few pounds over the summer, and she commented on how great I was looking! Now, admittedly, i'd seen Layla in nothing less than winter clothes for the most part, but as it was summer, she appeared in a really sexy summer dress. We took the stuff back to her place, and I assembled it for her, and by the end of the day, her little apartment looked like a home. I admit, I probably stared at Layla a little more, especially when the straps of her dress would slide off, and she wasn't.