daddy’s dead, Porter. And up until the last couple of years he knew exactly what he was doing as far as Av-Tech was concerned. I don’t. However, as the majority owner, I have a responsibility to the other shareholders—that’s all of you, by the way—as well as a responsibility to the people who work for us. I’m going to get some help figuring out what’s best for the company. I may not have taken an interest in all this before, but it’s my responsibility now. I am Charlie Beaufort’s daughter,” she reminded them.
“And I’m not going to let the company he loved go down the tubes,” she continued. “I want to get someone who knows what they are doing in place there as soon as possible. I hope you’ll all be willing to cooperate with him.” As her gaze circled their faces, she didn’t see anyone who looked upset by that plan. Not even Billy Clemens.
“I think your dad would have been proud, honey,” Emory said. “That makes a lot of sense to me. And frankly, it’ll be a relief to know that what we started will be in good hands.”
Now that Hunter had broken the ice, there was a polite murmur of what sounded like agreement. At least no one objected openly. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had, of course. She had the shares to do whatever she wanted. Still, it was nice not to have a mutiny on her hands over her first decision.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a long way to travel to get back home. I’d like to make it before nightfall,” she said.
She didn’t give them time to protest. She turned and retraced her steps down the rise. Her knee had begun to ache, and she was overly conscious of her limp. Of course, she always was when she knew someone was watching her.
As she passed by the tent, her stepmother was still holding court. Two of the men from the mortuary were beginning to take the flowers off the casket in preparation for lowering it into the ground. Ashes to ashes, she thought, turning her blurring eyes quickly away and examining the smoothly rolling green lawn with its dotting of trees and crosses instead.
And dust to dust. Goodbye, Daddy, her heart whispered.
Deliberately she wiped the scene from her mind, picturing him instead behind the wheel of that battered old station wagon, driving them out to the ranch for the weekend. Still young and happy, with all of life ahead of him, and her mother at his side. That was the way she wanted to remember him.
Behind her, she could hear the screech of the crank as it turned, lowering his casket into the ground, and her stepmother’s voice, exclaiming to someone about the depths of her grief.
Four days later
“BODYGUARD?” Grey Sellers asked, his deep voice rich with disbelief. “What the hell makes them think somebody would need a bodyguard in this place?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Joe Wallace said, easing his bulk down into the chair across the desk. “Piece of cake. I’m gonna hire somebody to make these folks happy, so why shouldn’t it be you? Take their money, pay some bills, enjoy the scenery.”
The pay-some-bills part struck the right note, Grey acknowledged, and he wondered if Wallace could know that. There were more than a few unpaid bills piled on his desk right now. What wasn’t piled there were cases.
Not that he was complaining about that, he admitted. At least, he hadn’t been until the notices of nonpayment had started arriving. The ones that began with “Dear Valued Customer” and ended by threatening legal action.
“I’m not a bodyguard,” Grey said, resisting temptation.
The flat statement wasn’t exactly a lie. He had the skills, and he’d had the training, all of it acquired at government expense. Grey had done a lot of things during the fifteen years he’d spent with the CIA. Not anything he could classify as pure bodyguarding, however. The closest he had come to that…
He blocked that memory, just as he always did. It was the thing that had driven him away from the agency and the team. Away from the only friends he had. Of course, after what he’d done, he doubted he could still consider many of them friends.
“So?” Joe asked, shrugging. “You don’t have to know what you’re doing ’cause she doesn’t really need a bodyguard. This is a paperwork deal. Somebody snatches Valerie Beaufort, and this insurer might get hit for a loss, so they got to cover their butts. Only, you and I both know nothing’s gonna happen. We’ve never had a CEO kidnapping out this way. Not that we got all that many CEOs to begin with,” Wallace added with a grin. “They must have got us mixed up with California. I’m telling you, this is a piece of cake. And somebody’s gonna get the job. Might as well be you. Easiest money you’ll ever make.”
“You know what they say about easy money,” Grey said.
He was surprised to find he was thinking about it, however. He had to admit it was tempting. Hell, anybody looking for this Beaufort woman would probably get lost before they found that ranch. From what Joe had told him, it was at the back of beyond.
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.
