But there was.

More than that, she knew, from the pictures she’d seen of him, the man she’d spoken to earlier that week was with them.  The three didn’t even bother to hide from her as they waited patiently for her, sitting in plain view, waiting by her car.

“Good morning, Sylvia.  Doing errands early today?” he asked as she approached.

“What do you want?”

“What were you doing in the post office so early?”

“How is that your business?”

“Everything you do now is my business.”

“You’re not in the UK, you can’t harass me like this here.”

“Who says we’re harassing you?”

“You keep away, then.  If you don’t I’ll forget to make the call I need to make in a few hours to hold back the information you don’t want released into the world about you.”

“Sylvia, Sylvia.  Why don’t you listen?  I tried to warn you that you’re in no position to threaten me.  Not anymore.  I’ve already seen to the proper arrangements to take care of what you have on me.  As always, our American cousins were only too willing to help me with this, in case something does make it out in the press or social media.  In exchange for some pretty important information I have on their new enemies.”

She fell silent.

“So let me ask again.  What were you doing in the post office?”

“Sending mail out.”

“Are we really going to play 20 questions on this?”

She glared at him.

“They were gifts.  I won’t be able to go to a few birthday parties early next week so I sent the gifts to them.”

The man nodded at one of the others, who walked towards the post office.

He smiled thinly at Sylvia.  “While he goes and checks on whether that’s true, why don’t we sit in one of the park benches over there and have a nice little chat?”

She saw she didn’t have a choice, and walked ahead of him, to the row of park benches.  She selected one near several women who looked like they were enjoying their morning coffee before continuing with their day.

“I hate to spoil a surprise,” the man started as he took a seat a couple of feet from her, drawing his arm up, and resting it casually on the top of the back rest of the park bench.  “But your own birthday is coming up in a few days, isn’t it?”