I lowered myself into the water next to the steps. “Oh, come on, move over here,” she said. I slid around next to her. She lifted her arms out of ...the water and circled them around our shoulders, Mike on her left and I on her right. “That’s more like it,” she said. “My two favorite guys in the world.” I turned to look at her and Mike. They were both smiling at me, she seductively, he with amusement dancing at the corners of his mouth. I must have looked a little bewildered, or tense, or both.. "He would surely have killed me, killed us both." I think so," I said."So I thank you," she said, putting her small hand atop my big mitt. Rings glittered on two slender fingers."You were very brave, put up a good fight," I said, smiling at her.She smiled her thanks, and I poured her some more wine."It was a terrible feeling," she said in almost a whisper. "Knowing what those men were going to do to me. They looked like animals, wolves, ripped my dress to shreds, pawed me." She put a hand to. I kept up — sporadically — with Eric Roberts and Grace Macklin through Carmen Ortega and Sandra Fleming.Carmen updated me on what the rest of the Gloria Allen team was doing. Sandra gave me the FBI skinny that trickled down from DC and back from California.Their mutual lack of progress made me regret my bench-time even more. Yet, what should I be doing? If I knew, I’d be out there kicking butt. But, like Daddy told me, “Sometimes you just have to let other people run with the ball.”“And then. If Peter was going to tell me to dress it, he was going to watch how other men responded if I did. He could have played that several ways. He could have left, or just smiled and waited it out, knowing we’d get together at some point. He might have texted me to point out that he was, in fact, here. What he did instead surprised me. He walked straight in, getting between me and the guy who was asking me what I was having. ‘Back off, lad, if you don’t want to get hurt,’ said my new friend.Peter.