Her Private Bodyguard

He took his booted feet off his desk and put the front legs of his chair down on the floor. Then he stood up and stretched the kinks out of his back and shoulders. Too many hours spent hunched over his desk this morning, trying to figure out how to keep his investigative agency afloat.

Investigative agency, he thought wryly. He supposed that did sound better than hole-in-the-wall-surveillance-of-straying-spouses-and-insurance-fraud-con-men service.

“Not really,” Joe said. “Don’t think I ever heard that one. So whatta they say about easy money?”

Grey walked over to where the air conditioner was sluggishly churning out air that didn’t feel any cooler than that outside. He played with the controls a few seconds, and then turned around, letting the lukewarm current blow on his back. It would evaporate the moisture that was molding the soggy material of his shirt to his skin, and the chill that provided would at least give an impression of coolness.

“That it usually isn’t easy.”

“You need a new unit,” Joe advised, ignoring the less than original observation about money.

“I need a lot of things,” Grey said. Starting with a stiff drink, he thought. A little hair of the dog.

Since it was only ten o’clock on a typically noneventful weekday morning, however, he didn’t announce that particular need to his prospective client. He didn’t think it would be conducive to impressing Wallace with his dependability to say that he was hung over and just a little bit shaky as a result.

When he had opened his agency here over a year ago Grey had known things would be slow. At least for a while. He just hadn’t known how slow. And since Joe Wallace was one of his few repeat customers, he didn’t want to blow the guy’s confidence. For some reason, Wallace seemed to think Grey knew what he was doing, and he couldn’t afford to lose his business.

Wallace represented several major out-of-state insurers. And he had thrown Grey most of the surveillance cases he’d had during the past few months. The jobs Joe provided, investigating fraudulent insurance claims, along with a few calls from the locals asking Grey to spy on a straying husband or wife, had pretty much made up his caseload since he’d started.

It was boring stuff, no challenge involved, but he did it all with a dogged persistence, even on days like this. Even when he was hung over and aching for another drink. He did those jobs as well as he could because that was the way Griff Cabot had trained him. Nothing left to chance. Nothing ignored, no matter how insignificant it appeared.

He also did them because they provided him with food, a roof over his head and the occasional bottle of bourbon. Lately, it had been more than the occasional bottle, he admitted. Lying to himself wasn’t something Grey Sellers did. He never had.

And at some time during the past year, Grey had decided he liked boring. If he didn’t, he would learn to. After all, he had already had all the excitement he ever wanted. Enough to last him a couple of lifetimes, he thought bitterly, remembering again, without wanting to, the last mission he had undertaken for Griff Cabot and the CIA’s very elite, very clandestine External Security Team.

“Take this job and get some of those things you need,” Wallace suggested.

Grey’s lips tightened as he tried to think why he shouldn’t. Other than the fact that he didn’t ever intend to be in that position again. The ghost that drove him to crave a drink way too early in the morning was too closely connected to protection. Or rather with a failure to provide it. A failure on his part.

“Easy money and somebody’s gonna get it,” Joe said, watching his face, maybe reading that need. “Might as well be you.”

“What do I have to do?” Grey asked, knowing in his gut this was a mistake. And every time he hadn’t listened to his gut—

“Look around. Make some security-type recommendations on the place. Do surveillance on the insured until they get something else set up. Do the paperwork.” Joe nodded toward the packet of documents he had dropped on the cluttered desk.

Grey hadn’t even looked at them. Paperwork was something he was familiar with. This couldn’t be much different from the government red-tape-type crap he’d dealt with for years. Griff had taken care of most of that, but everyone on the team had occasionally had to do their debriefing on paper.

He again pushed those memories back where they belonged, and despite the pounding in his head, tried to wrap his concentration around the particulars of this case.

“And the policy isn’t even on the Beaufort woman?” he asked, trying to remember the details Joe had mentioned before he had thrown in that pay-some-bills part and gotten his attention.

“The policy, as it’s written,” Joe said patiently, “covers the CEO of Av-Tech Aeronautics, which by virtue of her father’s death last week, Valerie Beaufort now is. So someone at Beneficial Life finally figured out that the policy covers her. It’s pretty standard. All the big companies have these things for their executive officers. The insurers agree to pay the ransom if a CEO is kidnapped. That kind of stuff.”

“And there isn’t any reason to believe she might really need protection.”

Joe laughed. “The insurers are covering their butts. Just like I am. They’ll make her set up some kind of state-of-the-art security system on that ranch. Until she does, they want somebody to guard this broad on a temporary basis,” Joe said, shrugging. “That’s the deal. Like I told you—piece of cake.”

“Okay,” Grey said, still reluctant, even as he heard the agreement come out of his mouth. And he was not completely sure why he was so resistant. More messages from his gut, he guessed.

“I got to provide them with a résumé. Your credentials. You got a sheet with the stuff on it, I can just fax it to them.”

Leaving the air conditioner, Grey walked over to the battered black metal filing cabinet that stood in a corner of the tiny office. Pulling out the top drawer, the only one that had anything in it, he thumbed through the mostly empty folders until he found the one that contained the information he had put into the ads he’d placed when he had first set up the agency.

He handed one of the sheets to Joe and then sat back down behind his desk as Wallace read it. Joe looked at it a few seconds before his eyes came back up. The insurance agent took his pen out of his shirt pocket and put the paper down on Grey’s desk, poised to write. “References?” he asked.

How about a supposedly dead ex-deputy director of the CIA, Grey thought, a little amused by the idea of putting Griff’s name down. Cabot would vouch for him, all right, providing a postdated letter of reference if Grey wanted it, but he didn’t intend to ask Griff or anybody else for any favors. Not to get a job he had reservations about taking in the first place. If these folks didn’t like his credentials, they could get someone else.

“Ex-military,” Grey said. “That’s all on there.”

“I mean somebody who could verify your qualifications.”

“What you see is what you get,” Grey said softly. “If they don’t like it, they can get themselves another bodyguard to watch over their little heiress. You know, the one who doesn’t really need a bodyguard at all.”

Joe’s gaze rose again, and he studied Grey’s face a moment. He looked as if he wanted to ask other questions, but after a few seconds, maybe because of what was in Grey’s eyes, Wallace put the pen back into his pocket and stood up. He folded the sheet Grey had given him and stuck it in the same pocket.

“There ain’t nobody else,” he said, smiling, his good humor restored. “Not out here. I know that, and you know it. Besides, they aren’t gonna quibble over a résumé. This job won’t last but a few days at the most. You give ’em somebody’s name, and they probably wouldn’t even take the time to check ’em out. So why bother, right? I’ll vouch for you.”

Grey nodded, again wondering why he was doing this. His instincts were still telling him it was a bad idea.

When Joe reached the door, he hesitated before he opened it, looking back over his shoulder. “Might be good if you stay out there twenty-four seven. You know, so if anything goes wrong, they can’t come back on us and say, ‘Well, that wouldn’t have happened if…’ You know,” he said again, seeming to run down.

“You want me to stay out at the Beaufort place?”

“Might be best,” Joe said. “Until they get the security system in. Just as a precaution.”

“I got a business to run,” Grey said, knowing how ridiculous that excuse was, even if Joe didn’t.

“Yeah, well…Just a precaution, you know. And you got an answering machine and all.”

“I thought you said—” Grey’s protest was cut off by Joe’s voice.

“Almost forgot. Here’s the first payment,” he said, walking back to lay a check on the desk. “Retainer and the first week.”

Grey looked down at the nice round sum on the check. Fifteen hundred dollars would take care of most of those bills, at least the ones that had “third notice” attached.

“A thousand bucks a week plus expenses,” Joe said. “They’ll want receipts for those. Bean counters,” he said dismissingly.

Grey heard the door close before he looked up. Wallace was gone, and he was alone with a check on his desk and a job he didn’t want but had, for some reason, apparently agreed to take.

“Son of a bitch,” Grey said. “Stupid son of a bitch.”

Angry with himself, he pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and poured a shot of whiskey into the small tumbler he kept there. He tilted his head and knocked it back, closing his eyes as the liquor burned all the way down to his empty stomach, producing a small, satisfying glow. He put the glass back into the drawer and recapped the bottle with fingers that trembled.

That telltale vibration bothered him. He had had the reputation of having the coolest head and the steadiest hands of anyone on the team. Steadiest hands of anyone except Hawk, of course, he acknowledged with a small, twisted smile.

At least he hadn’t begun drinking it straight out of the bottle, he comforted himself caustically. That would probably come next. Probably right after his first encounter with Miss Valerie Beaufort and her millions.

Chapter One