Free In This Life by Terri Herman-Poncé

have any words to explain this.”
    “Humor me.”
    I turned and looked up at him. “Fine,” I said, reciting David’s words from memory, which was easy enough to do because I’d heard them so often I’d lost count. “If your enemy is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
    “Ah,” Nat said. “Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
. I love that book.”
    “That and the
Kama Sutra
,” Lori said.
    David shook his head and smiled but I could see the edginess behind it. “And the point of all that is?”
    “To prepare.”
    “And to be clever.” He tapped a finger to my forehead. “And to remember that once a plan is set in motion, you have to expect to change it once you engage.”
    I eased out of David’s embrace and watched Lori set dinner on the coffee table. “You make it sound simple, David.”
    “In some ways it
is
simple. Preparation and practicality are two things that make a difference, Lottie.”
    “That,” Nat said, holding up a forkful of lasagna to make his point, “and knowing when to fight.”
    Lori settled down on the floor next to her husband. “But this isn’t war.”
    “Isn’t it?” Nat asked.
    “Not even close!” Lori stared at Nat like he’d lost all sense of reality. “Does it look like Lottie’s in a battlefield and dressed in camouflage? Is she aiming a gun or throwing a grenade?”
    “Wars and battles come in all shapes and sizes.”
    “If there’s an opponent of any kind,” David said, “then it’s a war.”
    Not to me it wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to argue the point because this was the one big difference between David and me. He saw life as a series of battles to be fought in order to grow stronger intellectually and physically. I saw life as a learning experience so that you grew stronger emotionally and spiritually.
    Lori scooped out three helpings of dinner for herself, David, and me. Nat dug in for seconds. I sank into the sofa, cross-legged, and toyed with my food.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” Lori asked.
    “I guess.” But eating wasn’t really on my mind anymore. My stomach was in knots and seeing David so preoccupied bothered me. He commanded ops in far more threatening situations than this, but this was new territory even for him.
    “Something just occurred to me,” he said. “I don’t think the guy who called yesterday morning knew about your dream. No one can read minds, much as many people like to think they can. Now that I know our phone’s been tapped, I’m thinking that this guy heard our conversation and twisted it in his favor to make it seem like he did.”
    “Meaning what?” I asked. “Someone’s eavesdropping?”
    “One step ahead of you, D-Man, and that’s gonna be a big fat no.” Nat downed another forkful of lasagna. “When I found out about the phone tap, I got two men from PROs to sweep the house and your cars this morning. Seemed to make sense to do it, given what we knew. Anyway, we didn’t do a complete job but we were pretty thorough, and what we searched came up a big nada.”
    “You think our house was bugged?”
    “Yep. But far as I can tell, it wasn’t.”
    And we were back to square one. “Then how did the caller know what I’d been dreaming about? It doesn’t make any sense.”
    David went back to studying the yard, and I wondered if he was searching the trees and bushes for a stalker like I’d been. “Good question,” he said.
    I pushed my plate away. “I’m with you on this one, David. People can’t read minds. We
must
be missing something.”
    Lori picked up my plate and handed it back, daring me to deny myself a good meal. I took a bite but, like the beautiful day outdoors, just couldn’t enjoy it.
    “I saw a man on one of those morning shows that could do it,” Lori said, serving Nat his third plateful. “Read minds, that is. This is going back a few months and I don’t remember details, but I