“Just take me out of the equation,” she cut in quickly, eyeing both Mike and Brom.  Ice cool.  “These moves advance our plan, if I understand that part of the plan correctly?”

They nodded reluctantly, knowing this part was going to be a difficult part of the plan to carry out, emotionally, for her and Tina.

“What about the Mila angle?,” she asked, moving on.

 “As I said, I’ve already sent out some guys to put a file on her together for me,” Brom said.  “You and I have seen nothing popped up in our surveillance reports.  And Mike hasn’t seen or heard anything either.”

“I’m going to LA myself to see if I can find out more about whether those or possibly other treatments we haven’t even heard about could have been made to flush Bette out.  I’ll talk to the management consultants we had put in place in the gallery before, to find out if there’ve been any inquiries that were remotely about you.  I’ll talk to the guys in the business jet service also,” Mike added.  As Bette opened her mouth to talk, he shook his head, “No we talked about this already.  I’ve got a lot of leave I haven’t used, and, since I may lose them anyway, I might as well take some days off and do some digging in LA.”

“I’ll keep in touch with you, Brom,” he told Brom, who nodded.  “And if there’s something going on, I’ll put a case together, and go to the assistant director to see if we can open a case, and find out whether someone’s penetrated our whole case.”

“I’m sorry, Bette,” Mike said sadly.  “If the goof-up was on our end, I promise you we’ll hunt things down, and reseal this thing nice and tight.  I promised you I would keep you and Tina safe … and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Bette gave him a half-smile.

As Brom filled a fork with salmon and eggs, Bette took a sip of her cappuccino contemplating on how to maneuver her next idea through Brom and Mike.

Mike was laughing lightly, “What are you stuffing your face with over there, Brom?”

Since his mouth was full, Bette smiled and answered for him, “Salmon and eggs benedict.”