LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 20: His Showdown

"May I ask you a question? Just one question?" she sternly requested in a hushed, restrained tone that neither qualified as a whisper or a fed-up–to-her-teeth-with-him yell, but some sort of hybrid of the two — a yellsper, Tony decided.

He thought about her request for a moment. It was a free country. The First Amendment was still valid and in effect. She was indeed entitled to ask. And just because she submitted a question didn't mean that he had to answer it, being a free country, and all. "Free speech" swung both ways in that respect. So, yes, he supposed the request was a reasonable one.

Without diverting his solidly glued eyes away from the Nazi in the other room, whom he'd been staring at for the past couple of nonstop minutes, he gave Michelle an affirmative chin nod.

"Is there anyone you get along with? Just... just anyone at all?" she begged to know, in utter annoyance.

Good. It was a rhetorical question. They didn't require answers. They didn't even require question marks.

He turned his head sideways to face Michelle, though without moving his locked-frozen eyes one iota off his target, which was none too easy a feat. It was painful, in fact. But a staring contest seemed to be the game that the Nazi wanted to play, so stare back he would, for just as long as the housekeeper wished to keep the competition going.

"Would you kindly stop that? It is so rude!" Michelle yellspered at him again.

"Tell it to the frau," he drawled in a voice so low, he didn't even have to cloak it with a whisper.

"And will you stop calling her names?" Michelle implored him, wishing for a rolled-up Newsweek magazine so badly she could taste it. "Turn your head back if you're gonna insist upon staring like that, for goodness sake. Your eyes look like they're about to snap right out of their sockets..."

Thank God, he thought, returning his head to its dead-forward position, his expression never deviating from the surly, sneering smirk that had embedded itself the moment the frau had locked eyes with him — or on him, as the case were.

Frau Frankenfat's icy expression hadn't changed a bit either, although it now occurred to him that she may well possess but only that one expression. She didn't exactly radiate personality; just a haughtiness and insufferable sense of imperiousness that made him want to beat her with her own umbrella; the same umbrella she had swung at him when she'd unexpectedly appeared in the kitchen doorway, catching him and Michelle engaged on the floor at a moment that could best be described as ill-timed.

The Nazi storm-trooped around the living room now, conducting her intensive search for the small photo frame she had immediately noticed missing before she had even looked at the bookshelf. It was as though she had smelled something out of order.

"I swear, I don't know what in the world gets into you sometimes. You're behaving perfectly ridiculously," Michelle reiterated, adding a hushed, thoroughly annoyed tsk to the end of her yellsper to accentuate her wholesale disapproval of his juvenile behavior.

Uh-huh. Whatever she said...

"You could simply apologize to her and be done with it. You did insult her, after all," Michelle snarled out a terse reminder.

So his German was a little rusty. Fine. Let's start World War III over it, shall we? It's not as though he had meant to call her a heifer, of which he was quite sure both Michelle and Frau Wiener Schnitzel were well aware. He had simply been caught off-guard and, hence, temporarily rattled by the woman's sudden, unanticipated arrival. If anyone owed anyone an apology, it was the housekeeper, for those crepe-soled, utilitarian clodhoppers that didn't make a sound when she walked; not even under the extreme stress the capacious colossus subjected them to.

"I don't apologize to war criminals, Michelle," he murmured quietly, his eyes never severing their connection with the burly woman, now currently engrossed in pretending to have found a dust particle clinging to a lampshade.

"Please put these on?" Michelle beg-spered this time, as quietly as her angry tone would allow, nearing the end of her rope with him as she foisted his freshly tumble-dried jeans against his crisscrossed arms.

"What would be the point," he sarcastically drawled beneath his breath.

"She didn't see anything. You're being silly," she insisted.

"She saw, Michelle," he quietly scowled. "Guys notice these things," he assured her, recalling how he had never seen a set of eyes shoot south so fast in his life.

Michelle winced as a mortifying vision of what she and Tony must've looked like, from her housekeeper's perspective, muscled its way into her brain. She promptly blushed to the shade of a beet, her hand moving upward to cover her burning cheeks.

In fairness, there was only so much complaining she felt entitled to do. It was entirely her fault, after all, that they'd even been caught in such an embarrassing situation; especially poor Tony, who's Marine training and sharply honed reactionary skills had rocketed him from an arched to a straight-upward kneeling position before he'd had time to realize that it wasn't exactly his best foot he was inadvertently putting forward. And as if it were even possible, matters had only been made worse when Mrs. Goebels had promptly taken a swing at him with her umbrella, convinced that he obviously had to be a rapist who'd broken into the apartment, the possibility never once crossing her mind that Michelle might actually have a date.

With a sigh of defeat, she refolded his jeans, still warm from the dryer, and placed them behind him on the stainless-steel surface of the kitchen station, which he was using as a backrest as he sat, motionlessly, on one of the station's matching stools in nothing but a pair of boxers and bulky athletic socks.

Michelle sighed again, thinking back to the moment she had ordered him out of his wet jeans, then decided to assist in the process, shamelessly seducing him with a steady salvo of provocative words and teasing gestures, wallowing in her power to excite him with such effortlessness and speed.

"Careful, woman," he had fairly warned her with a softness in his voice, but evil intentions clearly lurking behind his crooked, cocky smile. She'd intentionally ignored his warning, taking her sweet, alluring time to uncage him from the wringing-wet denum. "Keep that up and you're gonna bring out the beast in me... And ya know what's gonna happen then, don'tcha..."

"Remind me," she had taunted him, smiling up on her way down to her knees to strip him of his shoes, then jeans, all the while treating him to a bird's-eye view down the silky, loosely tied thigh-length kimono she had donned in place of her rain-dampened cardigan sweater and dress.

She was acquainted with the beast. They had met once before, the other night. The beast had emerged and made his introduction amid their various lovemaking sessions. The beast hadn't been interested in making love to her at that particular time; nor then, in the kitchen, she knew. All the beast wanted from her was sex.

"It's a guy thing," he had nutshelled it for her in a heavy, hungry pant, shoving aside the gentleman to make way for the raw jungle animal demanding its turn with her.

She had fallen hard for the beast that night, along with every other facet, molecule, and aspect of his being. She loved the way the beast had moved; the way he had treated himself to whatever he wished from her, feeding and imbibing with gluttony and abandon; handling her more like his wench than his woman; consuming her with a greedy selfishness and sense of male entitlement; focusing feverishly and exclusively on indulging his own carnal desires, with nothing occupying his mind but the crackling waves of exhilaration exploding everywhere within, around, and throughout him.

Though it hadn't taken long for his salacious side to work itself up to a feverish verge of release, his one-man wilding had made her sweat hard, burn hot, and swoon paradisiacally. She'd felt overwhelmed on so many levels, but mostly by the dizzying display of brute strength and raw power that his male physique, by natural design, lauded over hers.

With that first encounter hot on her mind, she had found herself lusting to once again surrender herself, unreservedly, to his freer, bluer, bawdier side.

"You know what it means. I can't be held responsible for my actions," he'd wolfishly warned with a sly, confident grin, his internal beast gnawing through the final bar, ready to spring from its cage and show her no mercy. Since she couldn't think of a better, more entertaining, or exciting way to wait out the rain and nightmarish traffic, she had cavalierly continued pursuing her diabolical mission of driving him to the brink of sexual distraction.

The beast had wasted no time in pinning the small of her back against the rim of the kitchen station, his fingertips handily slicing through the silky sash tied loosely at her waist. She recalled how his jaw had predictably dropped when his eyes laid siege to her shimmering thigh-high stockings, which she'd slid into earlier, remembering a comment he had made the other night about how ones with white, lacy tops tended to reduce him to the mental equivalent of a prisoner, held in captivity for years by a long-lost tribe of six-foot Amazonian fems.

In a flash, the beast was all over her, and within her. He hadn't even allowed for the extra half-second it would've taken to rid himself of his boxers, leaving them to twist and tangle somewhere around his thighs. He'd ignored the negligible crimp they'd placed on his mobility, intent upon fixating, with full focus, on her facial reactions to each firmly rendered thrust he'd ravaged her with.

"Geezus, woman," the beast had whimpered only a minute into feasting rapaciously on his prey, thick droplets of sweat already lined up to take the plunge from his brow to the near-nakedness he had quickly stripped her down to.

Without breaking the torrid tempo that brought forth shallow, metric gasps and groans from her throat, he'd lifted her head from the hard kitchen floor to the crook of his arm, not for her comfort so much as to provide himself better access to her mouth and ears, and to the premium, tender white meat tucked beneath her jaw line, begging to be swallowed whole.

The internal heat and slickness of her body had instantly elevated the beast's edacious hunger to five-alarm proportions. She was his slab of raw meat; his freshly downed wildebeest, body still warm and ripe for the gnawing. He'd let his teeth drag and scrape against the damp, salty skin of her neck, his mind engaged in heated battle with his inner Cro-Magnon, whose jaws ached to clamp down on the sweet flesh of his fresh prey.

Every greedy, primitive movement and motion had been all about him. His palms and fingers were everywhere: roaming, delving, defaming, invading, manipulating. Whatever the beast had desired of her, he'd simply taken from her; whichever position he'd wanted her in, he had put her in; whatever raw, unholy thought had entered his mind, his wet, sex-scented lips had snarled, in blunt, gruff, unabridged terms and tones, and with heavy puffs of heated breath blasting against her neck and ear.

He had felt her rapidly disintegrating beneath him. The final mega-force bursts of testosterone were torpedoing wildly around his system. He'd been seconds away from releasing a plaintiff wail, predestined to echo in distant galaxies for light years to come, when he'd suddenly found himself, instead, rocketing upright, onto his knees, in an involuntary response to a shadowy presence that the corner of his eye had detected in the doorway.

Before his mind had even been able to process the visual, a black, sopping-wet umbrella had come swinging toward him. The abrupt jerk of his body reflexively lurching forward to grab it had inadvertently sent Michelle hurtling from all-fours to an even less flattering face-down sprawl across the kitchen floor.

Though wholly mortified, he had also felt enormously relieved at the time, as well as eternally grateful to himself, that his boxers were only a yank away instead of somewhere across the room. Michelle had been nowhere near as fortunate with regard to her kimono, reduced to searching in a haze of panic and confusion — with the strangest-sounding squeals emitting from God-only-knew what part of her — while Tony did his best to shield her from Mrs. Goebel's paralyzed stare, with nothing more than his own body and a dishtowel, which was the closest thing he'd been able to lay his hands on at the time.

Michelle shuddered from the mental movie now winding down inside her head, wishing she could go into her own memory banks, as she did her computer's, and simply dump the humiliating file from her brain, for good.

"Well, you can't just sit there like that, in nothing but boxers, for Pete'ssake!" she returned to insisting.

Ah, but the woman was wrong, because indeed he was sitting there, just like that, and there he would remain for as long as Broomhilda wished to continue her pedantic test of his mettle and wits.

He watched, now, as the frau strove to covertly strain her eyes in his direction, clenching a spray can of furniture polish in her fist as though it were a ray gun, prepared to vaporize invading aliens insane enough to enter Earth's atmosphere with dirt on their shoes. She was looking to see if his own eyes were still engaged, he knew, becoming noticeably disgruntled upon discovering that he still hadn't blinked since the last time she'd checked. Feigning disinterest in his impressive show of self-discipline and staying power, the frau returned his taunting glare before resuming her hunt for airborne microbes and the missing picture frame.

As Michelle reached for his jacket on the kitchen floor, intending to ask Mrs. Goebels to toss it into the dryer, she heard a muffled ring of his cell phone emanate from one of the pockets.

"Ich bin sehr traurig, Fräulein, but I veel not be able to feed herr Fluff-Fluff, leider," Mrs. Goebels called out from the living room as Michelle fished through the pockets, inadvertently solving the mystery of the missing picture frame and frowning sternly at the culprit. "Mein boy was caught fighting again, und sein lehrer will mich sehen first thing in das morning…" Mrs. Goebels explained with regret.

"Oh, dear… umm… Well, I guess I'll just take Fluff-Fluff along, in that case," Michelle called back to her, taking great strides to ensure that the thief noticed her tucking the small picture frame beneath his folded jeans on the counter.

"The kid's training to join a militia," Tony mumbled a mark-my-words prediction under his breath to Michelle as he took the phone from her, scowling at the thought of the pumpkin chop shedding his gay fur from one end of his apartment to the next. But he felt indebted to her for having spared him the inevitable hell he would've caught if Colonel Klinkette had discovered the picture frame while drying his jacket.

His usual thoughts of Chappelle on the other end of the line made his stomach briefly leap, but as he flipped the phone open, he made an on-the-spot decision that if the incoming number was indeed Chappelle's, he wasn't even going to answer. Screw it. If breaching the rules governing a Director's off-hours resulted in disciplinary action, so be it. He was taking his woman home — to her real home, where she belonged — and teaching her the true definition of "exquisite," and nothing short of a terrorist attack in the middle of his bedroom was going to alter that plan.

His scowl instantly evaporated, however, as he zeroed in on the incoming number.

"Hey, Dad," he said, always happy to hear the sound of his father's voice. "Whatcha up to..."

"Ohhh, about two-ten," Jim Almeida smoothly deadpanned in reference to his weight, leaning against the warm fender of his car, which he'd parked only moments earlier in front of an old beat-up coffee shop straight out of the Twilight Zone. Giving his slightly thickened middle a firm pat, he fondly recalled a time, not too terribly long ago, when nothing but solid muscle could be found in its place.

"How's Mom," Tony chuckled, as he always did, in response to his Dad's standard joke, despite having heard it a thousand times over the course of his lifetime. "Has she stopped crying yet?"

"She's miraculously managed to hold herself together so far," Jim Almeida was happy to report. "She's inside some old coffee shop we came across... teaching the kid behind the counter how to make latte, or some such thing," he said, peering across the dirt-paved parking lot and through the shop's filthy plate glass window at his wife, who'd promptly seized control of the place upon entering and was now banging around an assortment of pots and utensils.

"How did she react to the cows?" Tony grinned as Michelle reentered the kitchen and tucked herself between his legs, settling her head against his shoulder for a quick power nap while waiting for his jacket to dry.

"We haven't made it that far, but I know of a field about twenty minutes up ahead that's packed with them," Jim Almeida replied, willing to down a cup of mud at this point. "But I did get the chance, on the way up, to explain to her where milk came from… I don't think she believed me, though."

Tony chuckled again, visualizing his Dad patiently leaning against his prized 6.0-liter, V-12, two-door Enzo Ferrari hardtop, where the man would stand for hours, he knew, if that's how long his Mom required to fulfill her missionary work of equipping the teenaged kid behind the counter with the culinary skills he would need to survive in life.

"Listen, chief, the reason I'm calling," Jim casually ferried, loosening his tie as long as his wife was inside. He paused to drink in the sight of her lovely features and form, smiling as he watched her terrorize the poor gawky kid behind the counter, taking him through the recipe as though she were making a guest appearance on the Martha Stewart Show. "I was on the phone with your sister a few minutes ago," he continued, "and she mentioned something, just in passing… Nothing much, but I know you want to hear about this kind of thing..."

"Everything okay?" Tony asked, consciously disguising his concern so as not to activate Michelle's internal snoop mechanism.

"She's fine," his Dad assured him. "It's just that she had mentioned that she thought some guy had been following her, when she and that idiot boyfriend of hers, whatzhizname... Harold?"

"Gerald," Tony said, listening intently. "When was this, Dad? Just now?"

"Nah, yesterday, she said, when the two of them were leaving that restaurant you guys had lunch at... Probably just some creep. You know how men are, around your sister. But I thought I should let you know," Jim said, complying with the request his son had made long ago, when not only Tony's name, but that of his girlfriend, had been found on a list recovered from the freshly gunned-down corpse of a perp, whom CTU had been surveilling at the time. The list had also contained the names of two other federal agents working the sting operation, along with the identities, addresses, and even some photos of various family members.

Although it couldn't be proven conclusively, the implications had been obvious to all: it was a classic hit list, drawn up by a party whom evidently didn't subscribe to the unwritten cops-and-robbers code of leaving innocent family members out of the fight. From that point forward, Tony had insisted, of family and girlfriends alike, that he be informed of any unusual encounters or experiences, no matter how harmless the outward appearances may seem.

"Did she give you a picture?" Tony asked, switching over to a coded language that he knew his Dad would understand, in a further attempt to avoid arousing Michelle's chronic curiosity.

"Nah, no description. You know your sister's observation skills," his Dad responded. "She couldn't even say if the guy was nineteen or pushing ninety... And forget the idiot boyfriend. He's lucky if he remembers to dress himself in the morning," Jim Almeida threw in as a factual aside. "Nah, all she recalled was that the two of them were about halfway down the block from the restaurant when she felt like…"

"On foot?" Tony briefly interrupted with a deep squint, trying to visualize the scene.

"Yeah, but the guy was in a vehicle. No make or model, of course, but it was one of those SUV-types. Silver, she said."

Tony felt his heart leap into his throat, but made a concerted effort to maintain an even-keeled demeanor and tone. He hadn't planned to share the activities of the 2004 Mitsubishi with Michelle just yet; not unless, and until, the guy had made some kind of move that suggested their safety might be at issue. Until then, he had planned to keep his eyes open and on the lookout. What he hadn't anticipated, however, was Olivia becoming part of the picture. He felt nowhere near as cavalier about her safety as he did his own and Michelle's: two well-trained, well-armed feds, equipped to react act aggressively and effectively, should this guy prove himself to be a legitimate problem down the road.

"You guys on your way home, now, Pop?" Tony asked, surreptitiously signaling his Dad with the moniker he would never otherwise use to address him.

"I guess we are now," Jim Almeida responded, fain to indulge his son's wishes without question or hesitation.

Every dormant Beach Jumper antennae within him seemed to instantly reengage, as though sirens had sounded throughout an underground military installation, calling all operatives back into active duty. Casually launching himself from the fender of his car, he proceeded to saunter slowly toward the coffee shop, conducting an indiscernible, though wholly thorough, 360º scan of his surroundings. There was nary another soul to be found, he concluded; just the kid behind the counter; a man and a woman in the apartment above, arguing politics over the sound of a cable news program; two crows atop some chicken-wire fencing at ten o'clock; minimal traffic on the 90º W-NW lateral horizon; and a single-engine prop — likely a late-70's Cessna 172 — cruising at an air speed just slightly below 100 knots, as far as Jim Almeida's former Ops ears could calculate from the gentle hum reverberating through the breeze.

"Give me an idea of what ya feel you're dealing with, here, chief," Jim requested in his signature low, unflappable tone as he made his approach to coffee shop's window.

"Not much, really. One, maybe two," Tony conveyed, on a scale of one to ten, assessing minimal cause for concern at this particular juncture. "So, what's Olivia up to today?" he nonchalantly added, lazily sketching a soothing, triangular trail against the small of Michelle's back.

"Will do," Jim Almeida replied, agreeing with his son's request to call Olivia home, just as a precautionary measure.

"Any news from Pete about Sarina?" Tony thought he might as well add.

"I'll give him a call and bring him up to speed," his Dad assented, though a little surprised to see his son casting the net out so wide as to include Sarina, given the low-level threat he had just assessed. "Say, uhh… chief… I know you're not free to go into it now, but are ya sure you don't wanna tighten security a bit more? No problem bringing in The Suits," Jim assured him, referring to his black-suited corporate security detail, with whom he, and most other captains of industry, were known to travel, given the political volatility prevalent in so many of the countries they routinely conducted business within; not to mention the ripe target that wealthy CEO's themselves represented to would-be kidnappers and other assorted criminal entrepreneurs, whose numbers were currently enjoying their usual, steady uptick.

"Nah, you and Pete are plenty," Tony was confident. The SUV's driver had yet to make a single move that could even remotely qualify as threatening. Millions of freeway drivers flipping each other the bird every day exhibited more aggression, in fact, than this guy had shown to date. He hadn't even tried to communicate with Olivia; nor had he ever come closer than within three car lengths of his own vehicle. Inclined as he felt to go out and hunt the guy down on the spot, smash him against a wall, and demand to know the reason behind his sudden interest in Almeidas, his position as a federal law enforcement officer precluded him from doing so. Unfortunately, by today's kind-and-gentle Kumbaya societal standards, even so much as ordering up a sat-track of the SUV's recent movements and whereabouts would be viewed as a gross violations of the driver's rights.

"We were just getting ready to leave Michelle's, so I'll give ya a call a little later, Dad," Tony wound up their conversation as Michelle began showing signs of slowly returning to life.

"Good enough, chief," Jim signed off, pocketing his cell phone and lightly tapping his wedding band against the plate glass window, promptly capturing Amanda's attention.

Her hands immediately launched into a flurry of socialite sign language, explaining that she was just about to instruct her young charge in the fine art of properly scorching milk with only a microwave oven at hand, but her husband's telegraphic eyebrow quickly brought her appeal to a halt. Hurriedly gathering her things together, she joined him on the other side of the door, her young Grasshopper scurrying behind her, carefully balancing a large, unlidded styrene cup of steaming mock-latte in each hand while clamping down hard on the fifty-dollar bill wedged between his teeth.

Tony clapped the cell phone shut on his end and circled his arm around Michelle in a full embrace.

"You awake, pumpkin chops?" he softly cooed alongside her ear, prompting a soft giggle and a sweet kiss against his cheek. The silkiness of her supple lips instantly reignited his burning desire and determination to get home and complete the task that the Nazi's appearance had so rudely interrupted.

He accepted the jeans this time, when Michelle held out to him, earning himself a slow, quiet kiss, which ended a lot sooner than planned when Frau Fattenstein barged into the kitchen, holding his tumble-dried jacket between two pinched fingers as though forced to handle a weapons-grade biologic without benefit of hazmat protection.

Twenty minutes later, as the torrential downpour began dissipating into a misty trickle, Tony glanced into his rearview mirror at the gay blade's cat carrier on the back seat: proof that he was indeed love. It had to be love. Not only had he allowed Michelle to extort him into housing the fur ball for the night, she had also somehow managed to finagle him into dropping the Nazi off, since her home was right along the way — if you considered six miles out of your way "right along the way."

"We can't very well expect her to stand at the bus stop in the pouring rain," Michelle had insisted, reminding him that, after all, he had been the party responsible for crunching the spokes of the woman's umbrella.

There wasn't a raindrop alive with the guts or audacity to land on the Nazi, but Tony nevertheless complied with Michelle's wishes, even though the moment had been primo to whip out his Upper Hand and put his foot down. But enough things had been whipped out for one day, he figured, resigning himself to stuffing Frau Frankenfat in the back seat with the pumpkin chop. Anything — anything at all — to get the show back on the road. His body still ached from the pent-up fluids that had only been seconds away from jettisoning when the Nazi had made her unscheduled appearance, leaving him with a mission in dire need of completion.

Crawling to yet another stop at an interminably long red light, Tony attempted to angle his rearview mirror, fully intending to resume his stare-off with the frau. But his plans were quickly dashed when Michelle gave his hand a sharp slap for daring to even think about initiating another showdown.

"Ow," he complained under his breath, with a deep frown, followed by an even deeper scowl upon hearing what he swore had been a low, yet distinctly audible, snicker emanating from the back seat. He didn't say a word, however, conjuring every shred of remaining patience to silently sit and simmer, instead, wondering if the frau had any idea of whom and what she was tangling with. Michelle had earlier forbidden him to use her computer to run an Interpol check on the Nazi, but just as soon as he got home to his own computer, he would see who snickered last and best.

It was six of the longest, most deadly silent miles of his life — topping even the long hauls his Marine unit used to make en route to whatever the given mission or battlefield — but they'd finally arrived at the Nazi's abode: a quaint little one-story Spanish-style structure sitting atop, no doubt, an underground, bunker-style meeting place for local skinheads and other assorted Arian sympathizers. Regardless, he'd gone on to perform like a perfect gentleman, hauling himself out of the car and getting the woman's door for her, which had made Michelle proud of him — as if she didn't already have enough to be proud of, following her housekeeper's earlier surprise inspection of his wares, which he'd apparently passed with flying colors, given the circumferential increase in the frau's eye size.

Finally back on the road again, he quickly found himself at yet another complete standstill in the insufferably thick traffic, with drivers crawling along the freeway like 80-something geriatrics out for a Sunday cruise, just as he had earlier predicted. His mood rapidly deteriorated, as if it were even possible to become any more annoyed with the world than he already was.

He reached over and switched on the ballgame, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by a violent assault of hunger pangs as Michelle leaned into the backseat and began feeding pieces of a chopped, ziplocked organic carrot through the cage door of the cat carrier.

"I'm starving, Michelle!" he grouchily announced, his tone sounding more like a warning than an informative statement of fact.

Just like a woman, she waited for the clunking sound of bat against ball before rendering her response directly over the sportscaster's wildly excited description of what sounded to be a long-overdue homerun for the Cubs.

"Why don't we get off at the next exit and find a restaurant," she chattily suggested. "A nice cheeseburger place, maybe… Hmm? And then, by the time we're on the road again, traffic will be back to normal, and..."

Judging from his state of high panic, and the boisterous demands he made of the radio for an instant replay of the run he had missed, Michelle decided it would probably be best to just quietly sit back for the duration of what promised to be a very long drive. In disbelief of how riled up a man could get over a silly ballgame, she listened as he proceeded to rail and berate seemingly everyone and everything associated with it, including the radio's inferior stereophonics; the jackass sportscaster; the jackasses who'd hired the sportscaster; the network and its local affiliates; the talentless author of the Gatorade commercial; and last, but not least, hers truly, who had made him miss the homerun due to her "incessant talking during the game," as all ironies and stifling hypocrisies would have it.

After reading her the riot act and reiterating the baseball-spectator rules — all of which she largely ignored, finding it more interesting and productive to clean out her purse while simply yes-dearing him to death — he conceded that her restaurant idea sounded like a plan, though hated the thought of losing yet another chunk of valuable drive time. Ultimately, however, he was forced to give in to his stomach, which tormented him ten times worse after Michelle had mentioned that "nice cheeseburger."

Muscling into the right-hand lane, he suddenly reeled back in his seat at the sight the silver SUV a few vehicles up ahead, its driver jockeying to exit from the same ramp he was just about to take.

"The SUV again?" Michelle asked, momentarily glimpsing up from her purse-cleaning project to double-check the make, model and year.

Tony's eyes shot over to her. He should've known.

"Yeah," he mumbled, hard-pressed to miss the annoyance in her voice and on her face. She was obviously none too pleased that he had found fit to discuss the silver SUV with his Dad, while deciding to leave her — his newly appointed Chief of Staff and supposed right-hand man — out of the loop all together.

"I didn't want to concern you," he sheepishly efforted to defend himself. "I wasn't sure if the guy was actually tailing me."

"You were sure," she quietly busted him, "from the first time you'd spotted him outside the garage."

Michelle Dessler missed nothing. She'd been privy to the SUV's presence for at least as long as he had, he realized, taking a moment to create a mental reminder for the future, should he ever desire to do something devious with the hopes of getting away with it.

"So, umm… so what do ya think?" he contritely inquired, always genuinely interested in hearing her sharp, analytical take on things.

"Well… for one thing, it's clear that you don't particularly trust me," she replied in sullen disappointment, her feelings still smarting a bit.

"The SUV, Michelle," he clarified. "What do you make of this guy running surveillance on me?"

"Oh, uh… Well, he's, umm… he's got rental tags, so he's either from out-of-town, or a local who'd rather not be identified through his own plates," she quickly recovered, referring to the common perp practice of renting a car under an assumed name so as not to leave a paper trail. It was a practice akin to stealing a car and ditching it later, only a little classier and lot easier, and less risky than hot-wiring an ignition.

His hunger pains vanished as quickly as they had materialized. Another form of hunger had taken its place. For a refreshing change, he would follow the SUV, instead of the other way around. An uneasiness promptly consumed him, however, when he realized that the ramp the SUV had taken was one of the two exits that led to Bel-Air. His concern only intensified with every familiar left and right the driver would go on to make, his route consisting of the same series of boulevards, avenues, shortcut streets, and little-known back roads that Tony had driven hundreds of times, en route to his parents' house.

After a few more turns had left no question as to the driver's ultimate destination, Michelle read his mind and dug his cell out of his pocket, quickly scanning and memorizing the women's names she came across as she scrolled through the programmed list for "Dad."

"Don't remove 'Heather' or 'Christie,'" he murmured. "One's my cousin and the other's my broker."

"I'm not removing anything," Michelle defensively responded, cursing herself for having jumped the gun and removed "Christie" from the list already.

"Or 'Chloe,'" he added. "She's that new recruit Division's sending over next week..."

"I have no interest in your phone list, dear, I assure you," Michelle indignantly lied through her teeth, shaking her head in utter dismay for added effect.

Keeping his target at a safe, but considerable, distance ahead, he took the ringing phone from Michelle's hand.

"Yeah, Dad, hey…" he said, transitioning into the staid, professional tone and demeanor that Michelle knew so well, but which oddly seemed almost foreign to her now. It felt like another lifetime ago when she had last seen and interacted with him as colleagues in the workplace. "You and Mom make it home yet?"

"Nah, we're still a couple of minutes out... Why?" Jim Almeida inquired, sensing trouble afoot.

"That silver SUV again… I've got him in front of me," Tony replied. "He's doing a sightseeing tour of the homes of the rich and famous… I don't like it…"

Jim Almeida was silent for a beat, not particularly thrilled with the thought of the SUV entering the grounds Olivia had just been summoned home to.

"Pete's there, setting up housekeeping," he reminded himself aloud. "I'll give him a call and have him keep your sister and Sarina together in the cottage until we can figure out what's going on here... How far from the house are you?"

"About two minutes in front of you, if that's your car that just turned onto St. Cloud," Tony said, glancing into his rearview mirror at the Ferrari kicking up mud down at the foot of the hill. "This guy seems to know the back roads pretty well," he added uneasily, referring to the turn that the SUV was now in the process of making, onto a narrow, nameless dirt road that, decades ago, had been blazed into the hills behind the palatial estates to serve as a horse-riding trail, back when the wealthy neighborhood had originally been established.

"Did you call in the tags?"

"Nah, no use. It's a rental," Tony replied, decelerating to keep himself out of the SUV's sights as it snaked its way around the tight twists and bends in the road. "I think I'd better invite this guy off to the side for a chat, before he gets to the gate..."

"Give me a second and I'll get your back," Jim said, pressing the pedal a little closer to the metal.

"What about Mom?" Tony asked, glancing into the rearview mirror again at the sleek, elegant form of Ferrari's world-renowned flagship vehicle, capable of 217 mph, with handling as smooth as silk around even the most skintight turns.

"Your mother will be fine. She loves an adventure," Jim Almeida assured him, glancing over at his wife, whose eyes widened and illuminated at the mention of the word.

Whoever this guy in the SUV was, he had made an appearance around one too many Almeidas to qualify as coincidence, as far as Jim was concerned. It was time to get to the bottom of things.