or someone inside Redstone, and that he didn’t want to risk anyone seeing them meet. This despite the fact that the Redstone security team was low profile by intention. They reported directly to Josh, had their own office off-site, and other than those in the upper echelon, like Noah Rider last month, the majority of Redstone employees wouldn’t know any of them by sight.
“Undercover, then?” Sam asked, already running through logistics in her mind.
“Sort of,” Josh said.
Sam looked at the man across the table from her. It wasn’t like him to equivocate. For the most part, Joshua Redstone preferred plain speaking. Which made this hesitancy even more interesting to her.
“Would you like to just cut to the chase, sir?”
“I need you to bodyguard somebody who doesn’t want one.”
Well, that was blunt enough, Sam thought. “All right,” she said. “How far under?”
“What?”
“You want me to sleep with him?”
Surprise flared in Josh’s eyes, as she had intended. “You know better than that!”
“Yes, I do.” She grinned at him. “You just seemed a little vague about the specifics here.”
Josh let out a wry chuckle. “Now I know how the guys who go up against you and lose feel.”
“Is there any other kind?” Samantha said, her grin widening.
“Not many, I’d guess,” Josh conceded, returning her grin finally. “I have to say I knew what I was doing when I hired you for this job.”
“And the people at the Sitka Resort are eternally grateful you pulled me out of there, I’m sure.”
And no more so than I, she added silently, knowing she would have gone slowly insane working in such a routine-laden world, even if it was for Redstone.
“You weren’t happy,” he said candidly, and for a moment Sam marveled at the simplicity of it; one of his lowliest, most distant employees wasn’t happy, so he took steps to fix that. Amazing. “I’ll have Rand relieve you periodically, because I don’t know how long this assignment will be.”
Samantha nodded. She and Rand Singleton had worked together frequently, often taking advantage of the striking resemblance between them. With matching nearly platinum-blond hair and blue eyes, they were easily able to pass as brother and sister. She thought of him that way, too, as a sometimes bossy big brother.
“So who’s this guy who doesn’t want to be guarded?”
“Ian Gamble. He’s in R and D.”
Sam frowned. The name sounded vaguely familiar. “What’s he need guarding from?”
“He’s working on a very important, very secret project for Redstone Technologies. He’s close to success, and there are a lot of other people who would like to get there first. JetCal has already tried twice to get a mole in. Plus, there’s a possibility we have a leak.”
There was an undertone in his voice that was razor sharp, and if there was a leak, Sam didn’t envy her or him when Josh found out who it was. Which he would, she knew. She thought about asking what the project was, then decided if it made any difference in her task, Josh would have told her. Besides, her mind had already leaped ahead.
“People who might want to interfere with him or his work in one way or another?”
Josh nodded. “Or stop him from working at all. On the financial front, the Safe Transit Project could be worth billions to whoever gets there first.”
“That’s a lot of motive,” Sam said. “Why the resistance?”
“In part because he doesn’t believe he’s really in danger.”
“Naive?”
“Not exactly. Ian is…different. Brilliant, but a bit eccentric.”
Eccentric, in her experience, was a kinder euphemism for crazy. A vision formed in her head, a sort of Einstein-needing-Prozac image that had her smiling inwardly even as she calculated just how difficult this task might be.
“He has a very particular way of working,” Josh explained, “and he refuses to let anything or anyone intrude on that.”
“Even for his own safety?”
“Especially that. He agrees his work needs protecting but won’t have anything to do with a bodyguard. And I can’t say that I don’t understand. He needs space and time to let that incredible mind of his run.”
“He’s that smart?”
“Not in the traditional sense. He thinks outside the box, as they say. That’s why he’s so good at what he does.”
“Which is?”
“They call him ‘the professor,’ but he’s an inventor.”
Einstein suddenly shifted to Edison in her head. “We still have those?”
“A few,” Josh said with a grin. “Most inventing is done by committee nowadays, but Ian is a throwback. Lucky for us.”
“And where did you find this one?”
It had become legend, Josh Redstone’s knack for finding gold in the most unlikely places. It seemed every employee had a story of how Josh found them in a place they didn’t want to be and gave them the chance to find the place they belonged.
“He was trying to market a new deicing chemical for planes that he’d come up with, and after he got turned down by all the big and small airlines, he came to Redstone Aviation. He’d already invented a new computer cable that reduced signal noise, and a fireproofing treatment for already existing roofs, but hadn’t been able to sell those, either.”
And on the strength of what would likely be seen in the business world as three failures, Josh had hired him anyway, Sam thought. Typical.
“They didn’t work?” she asked.
“They worked,” Josh said. “But Ian is in no way a salesman.”
Sam smiled inwardly. Not necessarily a bad thing in my book. “So Redstone took that off his hands?”
“And let him do what he does best.”
“Invent.”
Josh nodded. “And nobody else can quite follow the way his mind works, so he works alone. And lives alone.”
That could make things either easier or harder, Sam thought. “Not married?”
“Not for several years.”
Burned, or impossible to live with? Sam wondered. “How alone is he? A recluse?”
“No. He doesn’t socialize much, outside of Redstone,
