The young English woman came with her female dog and stood directly in front of Rich. Despite facing him, she stared over his left shoulder - obviously hoping to elicit a reaction, clearly daring him to say anything to her, anything at all.
They exchanged short hard looks. Then, apparently satisfied, the woman moved back a few yards and turned away. Rich merely resumed his thoughts, soaking in the rural summer morning and savouring nature's sweet bouquet.
Now recognizing the dog, Rich recalled how a few years earlier he'd made some warm remark to the woman about it being cute, not least as it had looked at him, wanting to be petted. She'd reacted by yanking the poor beast away, quite violently and unexpectedly.
Then, as now, she'd glared at him as though he were an abomination, some shameful pariah, some criminal worthy of hanging, a miscreant deserving a birching, a plague-carrier to be driven out by peasants brandishing pitchforks and blazing torches.
So it was just as well he wasn't inclined to retaliate that morning, to destroy her mentally and emotionally, both of which he was capable, simply because she'd tried to pull some sort of mind game on him.
What did he care if she'd cast him as leading suspect or perpetrator in her fantasies, so long as the nonsense remained inside her head and didn't manifest in tangible form? Rich had absolutely no idea who this woman was, nor whom she believed him to be, nor what she thought he'd done to her.
Daddy issues, perhaps? He really didn't know. But any repeat of this behaviour in future and she would disappear under the rosebushes, beside the ones from before, those others who'd treated him just like she'd done.
At last the electric doors hummed and the building opened. Rich would go on to enjoy a highly productive day.
2 Kings 9:30-37 - KJV