Brom was stepping out of the shower, and was reflecting on Chelsea’s latest ultimatum when his Vertu phone, which was his personal-use phone, rang.  It was the ringtone he’d assigned to Bette and Tina.  He picked it up with a worried look, all thoughts about Chelsea’s harping about his late working hours and other issues she’d been complaining about lately flew out of his mind.

“Hello, Brom?”

“Bette?  What happened?  Everyone alright?  It’s 4 in the morning..,” he asked in rapid succession.

“’Morning Brom, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour,” Bette replied, “I hope you weren’t…”

He interrupted her, “No, don’t worry.  I was just finishing with a shower actually.”

“Alright,” she continued smoothly, “I think your team may have missed something that you and I need to evaluate — stuff Tina’s come across.  As soon as possible.  I also need your advice about me flying to LA.”  

She was calm, measured, unhurried. Apart from the odd hour of the call, this elevated his worry. Normally, from anyone else he’d have expected a call at 4 in the morning would be panicked.   Instead, Bette sounded far from panicked – she sounded like someone had crossed into her battle space, and she was calmly putting a plan in place to take him out.

“What did she find?”

“A couple of film treatments with a lot of similarities — but in both there are some aspects that make me think someone may be putting two and two together.  And may be trying to draw me out, using Tina.”

Then she added, after a pause, “And some jackass made Tina cry.”

“Which he’s going to pay for, of course.”  Ice cool.

This sounded like the Bette George and Logan had told him about – the unemotional strategist with a killer instinct.

“I can be in your place in 20 minutes to half an hour.  But there’s no way that you are going to LA,” he responded crisply, as he dressed quickly.  He texted the man who managed the security arrangements overall for Bette and her family, and asked him to send to a locked folder in the company cloud all the
latest reports about her and the family.

She probed him, “What are the circumstances under which I could go?”

“Little to none,” he responded quickly, anxious to shut that avenue down, as he strapped on his motorcycle helmet.   There was no way he’d be able to find street parking in her area at this hour.  At least he could roll his Ducati to the back of the building, where she’d had a locked covered storage area built for their bikes, roller blades, skis and other sports equipment.  He could just rest his motorbike next to the storage area if there wasn’t any room for it inside.