The Closer

Across the street, Mrs. Johnson pretended to water her flowers while shooting covert looks across the way. Next door, Mr. Thigpen lingered by his mailbox, appearing to read a circular as he, too, shot furtive looks toward their house.

In and out his father went, over and over again, and with each slam of the screen door, Griff’s anger intensified into a white-hot ball of fury, one that made his insides throb, his hands shake and, to his resentful shame, a lump swell in his throat.

After a cursory glance inside the car and trunk, his father closed the lid. He stood there for a moment, his gaze lingering at a spot on the back tire, then he sighed and made his way back to the porch. He didn’t go into the house, but rather stopped before Griff.

“I know you don’t understand this now, but it’s for the best.”

Griff looked up and merely smirked at him. “Oh, I think I understand better than you think I do. Your girlfriend is pregnant. You’ve started a new family and are chucking the old one.” He grimaced, continued to toss his ball. “Nothing too difficult to understand about that.”

His father’s hands fisted at his sides. “It’s not that simple. These are adult matters, things you couldn’t possibly understand.”

The hell he couldn’t—Griff knew selfishness when he saw it—but he wouldn’t argue. It was pointless and somehow Griff knew his silence was more painful for his father than if he spoke.

“I’ll be in touch,” his dad said. “I promise. We’ll do something for your birthday next week. Go to the batting cages, work on your swing.”

A spark of hope flared, but he quickly snuffed it out. They were only words. Maybe even good intentions, but Griff knew better than to believe them, promise or not. He didn’t expect his father to show up for his thirteenth birthday any more than he imagined he’d be around for his thirtieth. He might have just now worked his way around to leaving them, but he’d checked out more than a year ago when he’d met her. Priscilla. How odd that he could hate someone he’d never met, but he did.

His father took another deep breath, one that seemed to swell enough to sever all ties, heralding the end. “You’re the man of the house now, Griff. Look out for your mother and sister.” He turned abruptly and made his way to the car, then backed out of the driveway and drove away.

He never looked back.

He didn’t send so much as a card for Griff’s thirteenth birthday, or any birthday thereafter.

So much for promises.

1

FORMER MAJOR GRIFFIN Wicklow had heard countless tales about Ranger Security and their often bizarre assignments—ensuring the safe passage of fertility statues, finding lost Confederate treasure, recovering Truffles, the dognapped millionaire—but this...

This had to take the top spot for the Strangest Assignment Ever.

He stared at each of the founding members of Ranger Security in turn. Brian Payne, the Specialist, whose cool demeanor and keen attention to detail was legendary. Jamie Flanagan, a proper genius who’d been a notorious player until he met and married Colonel Carl Garrett’s granddaughter, and Guy McCann, the Maverick, whose ability to skate the thin edge between recklessness and brilliance was still locker-room lore.

When their expressions didn’t change and he was sure that this wasn’t some sort of joke, he looked at the photograph once more and struggled to find the appropriate response. One that wouldn’t make him appear ungrateful for the job, because nothing could be further from the truth.

He cleared his throat. “I’m escorting a bra from West Virginia to New York and back again?”

“Not just any bra,” Payne corrected levelly. He hooked a leg over his knee and leaned farther back into the comfortable leather chair he currently occupied. Downtown Atlanta was framed in the window behind him, glittering with glass and steel. “That’s a Rossi creation, designed exclusively for the Clandestine Lingerie Company.”

Though Griff had never had any reason to purchase anything from the iconic lingerie company, he could certainly remember thumbing through the catalogs in his teens. His lips twitched. They’d been a source of inspiration, for lack of a better term, and were more easily procured than the traditional skin magazines.

“And that bra, in particular, is worth two and a half million dollars,” Jamie Flanagan added. “Naturally, Montwheeler is keen to protect its investment.”

A tremor of shock rippled through him. Griff felt his eyes widen and he whistled low. “Two and a half million? For a bra?”

Guy shrugged. “It’s good advertising for the Montwheeler Diamond Company, for Clandestine Lingerie and the jeweler—in this case, Frank Rossi—who was tapped to create the design. Ultimately, Montwheeler gets the jewels back. They’ll put the bra up at auction. If it doesn’t sell, they haven’t lost anything—they still have the stones, after all, and it’s Clandestine who covers the cost of the designer. As far as PR goes, it’s brilliant.”

He supposed. Still...It was hard to believe that people actually spent this much time and money on something so...unimportant, frivolous even. Given what he’d seen over the past several years in service to Uncle Sam—the death and destruction, the horror, the poverty—it was hard to reconcile this new assignment to those he’d had in the past. He swallowed.

But that’s exactly what they were—in the past.

Thanks to some misguided sense of duty and honor—to the very person who’d inadvertently wrecked his family and prematurely propelled him into adulthood, no less—he’d decided a career change was in order. Could he have continued in the military with one kidney? Probably. But given the prep, surgery and post-op care, not to mention his mother’s and sister’s continued come-home pleas, he’d ultimately decided that Providence was trying to tell him something. Once he was certain of the job at Ranger Security, he’d initiated the necessary paperwork.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

Whether or not this new life was going to be an improvement over the old one remained to be seen. He certainly couldn’t find fault with the benefits package, that was for sure. In addition to a very healthy salary and a fully stocked, furnished apartment, a company car had been waiting on him when he’d arrived this morning. He’d been given a laptop, a cell phone, a new Glock with permission to carry concealed and a sincere slap on the back that had welcomed him into the fold.

For whatever reason, that slap had been more appreciated than anything else. He’d instantly liked all three men, felt an immediate kinship. As former rangers themselves, they got him. Honor, duty, service. They were more than words; they’d been a way of life. His new employers knew the decision to leave hadn’t been made lightly, knew that coming to terms with this career change was a struggle. Because it wasn’t just the career—it was a different world, one he knew his place in.

And here? Well, that still remained to be seen.

“We’ve been hired by Montwheeler to ensure the safety of the bra,” Payne continued. “You’re to pick it up at Rossi’s in Shadow’s Gap, West Virginia, at three tomorrow afternoon—a representative of Rossi’s will accompany you—and take it to New York, safeguard it throughout the show, then return it to Rossi. Rossi will make any necessary repairs before Montwheeler takes possession once again.”

All things considered, it shouldn’t be too difficult. He nodded. “All right.”

Guy’s lips twitched with humor. “There are worse things in life than going to a lingerie show,” he added. “Leggy, half-naked models parading about and all. Consider it a perk.”

Griff grinned. There was that. He hadn’t been with a woman, naked or otherwise, in months. No time. Between deployment, surgery and recovery, he’d had very little opportunity to find comfort in the softer sex. While he’d been recuperating at his mother’s, one of Glory’s friends had visited frequently and had less than subtly let him know that she was available, but Griff knew the minute he showed the least little bit of interest, his mother and sister would have him married off before he could say “I don’t.”

In fact, the settle-down-and-find-a-nice-girl refrain had been coming off his mother’s lips a little too frequently for comfort, particularly considering he had no plans—immediate or otherwise—to marry. He carried the Wicklow gene, Griff thought darkly, and, based on family history, Wicklows were incapable of being faithful.

It wasn’t a theory he was willing to test.

Thankfully, he’d never met a girl who’d made him want to risk it.

Besides, he already had a family to take care of, the one he’d had since he was almost thirteen years old—his mother and sister.

“Do you have any questions?” Payne asked.

Griff shook his head, tuned back in to the present conversation. “None that I can think of at the moment.”

“All right, then.” Payne stood, signaling the end of the briefing. “I think that about covers it. You know where to find us if you need anything.”

Griff and the others found their feet, as well. He shook Payne’s outstretched hand. “I don’t anticipate any problems.”

Payne merely smiled, but didn’t comment.

Griff had almost reached the door when a thought struck. He stopped short and turned around. “The Rossi representative? They’re aware that I’m in charge, right?” Considering their company had designed the bra, he could see where they might feel a certain ownership. He didn’t want to waste precious time and energy on a power struggle.

Something flitted across Payne’s face—humor, maybe?—so fast Griff was inclined to believe he’d imagined it. Jamie suddenly developed a keen fascination with the toe of his shoe and McCann turned a small chuckle into a pitiful replica of a cough.

A finger of unease nudged Griff’s spine.

“The Rossis are aware that you were hired by Montwheeler and that, as such, you’re the ultimate authority on how to protect the piece.”

Good, Griff thought, still puzzled over their odd behavior. He was accustomed to giving orders and having them followed without question. That this Rossi person had been made aware of the status quo should make his job easier. He could always pull rank, of course, but it was better if he didn’t have to.

Determined to get started, he nodded and made his exit. He’d just walked into reception when Juan Carlos, their office manager, halted him with an urgent psst.