Lindzi put her arms around him as the tears welled up in his eyes. He tried to hold it all back but it was no use. His whole body shook with each sob.... ‘I am so sorry, I have been such a fool.’ For some inexplicable reason Henry felt as if he had somehow failed Lindzi. ‘It can happen to anyone. I lost more when it happened to me.’ This news brought up Henry short. Lindzi was so confident, so self-assured, so much in control, how could someone have fooled her? It turned out that the mark had. “Hey mom, I’m not going to be home tonight so you’re on your own for dinner.”“Where are you going?” her mother asked suspiciously looking down at Lori’s bag.“Harriet and I are going on a road trip.” She heard the horn honk, grabbed her bag and headed for the door.“No. You can’t go. I won’t allow it. Lori, you can’t go off with Harriet, it’s not safe. No. You’re not going.”Lori opened the front door and stepped out and then turned to look back at her mother. “Mom, no offense, but I’m an adult. When you know him, you have an idea of how he will react to events, and thus how you can counteract his activity. As a breakaway group, these pirates would not go back for help if attacked by another force. That would be too much like running back to mother, saying you were hit by another boy and ran away!That conclusion means that their total loss is not going to be registered by the remaining army, of whatever size. They will simply be assumed to have gone off somewhere, far away.”“But you. The monthly Board meeting.There’d been no way I could change the date; the calendar was set in stone, given all the other commitments of our illustrious and hard-working Board Members.Also set in stone was the pre-meeting conference between my boss, the Chief Administrator / CEO, me as his Assistant, the CFO, and the Department Heads, as we ran through the Board papers to check everyone was up to date.To be brutally honest, my first couple of times at these pre-meeting meetings, I’d thought it.