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out the open window. The lead bicyclist responded with the raised middle finger of his gloved hand.
    "So, where do you live now?"
    "Oh, here and there." She wondered what he'd say if she told him the absolute truth, and decided he'd probably take her directly to the local lunatic asylum.
    "What do you do? Here and there. For a living," he added at her blank look.
    "I'm a midwife," she answered, relieved that the cycle had gone full circle and her former occupation was returning to vogue. Another falsehood safely averted.
    "I thought midwives went out with gaslights and horse and buggies."
    "They did lose popularity for a time," she agreed. "But now there are a great many women who prefer having their children at home, with their family present."
    "Sound like leftover hippies to me," Shade decided.
    She tapped down the flare of irritation created by his dismissive attitude. "Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But you're wrong," she was unable to resist tacking on.
    "If I'm wrong, why don't you tell me more about your work?" he suggested. "In order to help me better understand?"
    He wasn't at all interested in her work as a midwife, Rachel knew. He was digging for information about her. About her past. She wondered if telling him the unvarnished truth would wipe that superior expression off his rugged face.
    "Oh, look," she breathed, partly in an attempt to change the subject, partly in heartfelt appreciation of the sight, "aren't the cherry blossoms lovely!" The flowers reminded her of puffy pink clouds.
    "Gorgeous." He didn't bother looking at the world-famous trees, decked out in their best springtime finery, bordering the equally famous Tidal Basin. "Have we met?"
    Rachel sighed. She'd been waiting for this question. "Met?" she hedged, thinking back on that brief episode when Shade had been trapped under the ice. "No," she said with absolute, unwavering conviction, "we've never met."
    Shade had very good instincts about people. More than once his life had depended on such intuition. He sensed she was telling the truth. But he still couldn't quite shake the feeling their paths had crossed before.
    "Then why do I feel as if I've known you?"
    "Perhaps in some previous life?"
    "Sorry, sweetheart, but I don't believe in previous lives, second sight, Ouija boards or any other hocus-pocus kind of stuff." He didn't add that he'd never bought into Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, either.
    Rachel knew all too well that Shade possessed a relentlessly logical mind. It had been folly to even attempt to throw him off track.
    "Well," she murmured with a slight shrug of her shoulders, feigning intense interest in the towering marble and granite obelisk the cab was approaching, "they say everyone has a double."
    As they passed the Washington Monument, she thought back to the gallant young revolutionary soldier she'd seen through that freezing winter at Valley Forge. He'd survived the war, with her help, and had gone back to his Virginia farm where he'd married and fathered six children and lived happily ever after with his family for another thirty years.
    "That's what they say." But Shade didn't believe he was remembering Rachel Parrish's double any more than he believed they might have been acquaintances in a previous life.
    He and Rachel Parrish had known each other. Shade was positive of that.
    Now all he had to do was figure out when. And where.
    Which shouldn't be all that difficult, he assured himself as the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. Not with the entire intelligence community at his disposal.
    He glanced out the back window to ensure they hadn't been followed. As he exited the cab, Shade decided to get the guys started on the lady's background check right away. Although she seemed harmless enough, it was, he told himself as they entered the restaurant, the prudent, the only, thing to do.

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    Chapter Three

     
    THE RESTAURANT, nestled amid the restored Victorian town homes and lush gardens of