It had been bothering her for the last hundred miles or so... a
blue van that kept showing up in her rearview, occasionally slipping back
out of sight, only to reappear minutes later.

Personally, I feel somewhat free to leave a character as a pronoun at
the beginning of a chapter only when using the first person and only
when it's really important to the plot.

Here, you are dividing your readership into two groups:

    A> Those who've been following the story carefully enough so far to
instantly note that this is the fugitive, looking for the one armed
robot that killed her husband.

    and

    B> Those who haven't and are now just a little more less likely to
pick up those previous chapters.

thanked her former employers for the extensive training

Not going to tell us, cha?

but it wasn't something she hadn't done before.

Is this trip (double-negation) really necessary?

Leaping into a somersault, she angled her landing to end up back
in her seat,

A convertible?  Was it before she bought it?

her thoughts locked in a vicious cycle of
wondering why Eiko hated her so much.

Take us for at least one trip around the circle or don't mention it, OK?

It screamed through the air and connected dead center of
the van's grille, stopping the vehicle dead in it's tracks.

The physics of the situation is lousy, a small rock gets kinetic energy
much faster than momentum, but this is Project A-ko, so she's probally
using TK or something...

"Dad?!?"

Odd, even the fate of the world didn't get him to lift one pinky in A-ko
IV, why now?

	Henry J. Cobb	hcobb@slip.net          http://www.io.com/~hcobb