To locate, it slowly dawned on me, me.

The photographs, the surveillance, the careful documentation of my life, were not the work of an enemy.

They were the work of a law firm trying to confirm that the waitress named Evelyn Vance, living in a small apartment with her sister, was in fact the Evelyn Vance they had spent half a year searching for.

The couple in the booth, I understood now, had not walked out on their check out of malice or theft.

They were field operatives, investigators, and they had been sitting in my section not to rob me but to observe me, to confirm my identity and my routine, the final verification before they served me the legal papers that would change my life.