”“Why didn’t you lead off with that?”“Well, you said once that you have to finish the heats first. Gotta get to nationals before Pan-Pacific....”“Fair enough.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. He looked at me for a long time, as if trying to make his mind up about something. He sat straighter in his chair, put his hands on the desk and spoke. “Look, I’ll level with you. You have potential. I’ve seen it, the other coaching staff have seen it too, but you’re inconsistent.. Photograph and inspect yes ; test no, most testing of that type involved some destruction. It was already hung on the wall in my office with the others as a reminder of just how close I had come to dying; not that I needed a reminder.The down side was I needed make more trips abroad so the planning began. This time the girls laid down the law; I was going to one country and then returning home so no one would be able to figure out where I was going next. The trips were not going to start until. “They have tried to trap us once already,” Claude remembered.“I’ll check the history...” Paul opened the history window.“Three?” Mia saw immediately.“I knew she was planning something,” muttered Claude. The history showed the two trackers transmitting, and a third that had been in a different place until it stopped transmitting, the day before.“What did she do?” asked Paul.“Hid it,” said Mia.“It wasn’t a spare,” Claude explained, “she let them find the second one, or she knew they would.”Paul. Now, as Jennifer departed, my wife slipped off her wrap and stretched out on the blanket. I noticed right away that she had worn her gossamer top over the suit top, and she was looking up at me like a kitten ready for a romp with her ball of yarn, or whatever…an alternate interpretation of the image might be the virginal young maiden laid out upon the sacrificial altar to appease the fertility gods… or, more likely, to incite them to riotous living! She was nothing short of spectacular, and it.