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Josh Redstone’s gaze never wavered. “Yes. But it’s a crazy world, my friend.”
Nobody knew that better than Josh, Ian realized. But the idea that someone might come after him seemed too absurd to Ian to contemplate.
“What good would I do them?” he protested. “It’s not as if I’d ever work for them.”
“Voluntarily.” Josh’s voice was grim. “I want you to have protection, Ian, until this project is concluded one way or another.”
Ian couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. “Protection? You mean like a bodyguard? You’re not serious!”
“I am, Ian. I don’t compromise when it comes to the safety of my people.”
Ian had never seen quite that glint before in the steady gray eyes of the man who was Redstone. But he couldn’t give in to this. He liked his life as it was. He knew his own mental processes well enough to know that the kind of disruption Josh was talking about would rattle his thinking, and he’d likely never achieve a breakthrough on this project. He didn’t like change, anyway, he needed things in his personal life stable so he could free his mind to think about his work.
“I appreciate your concern, but it’s out of the question.”
“Ian—”
“No,” he repeated.
It was not, he supposed, wise to interrupt and argue with your boss, but if Josh had been the kind of man who took offense at such things, Ian knew he would have been fired long ago.
“I mean it, Josh. Somebody around all the time, at my home and wherever I go? I can’t work or think that way.”
Josh studied him for a moment. “And if I made it an order?”
Ian let out a compressed breath. “Then, with great difficulty because of my tremendous respect and liking for you, I would disobey.”
Josh’s mouth quirked upward. “I was afraid of that.”
“Josh, I’m sorry, but—”
Josh waved a hand at him. “Never mind. I had to ask.”
“And I had to refuse.”
“I understand.”
Relieved, Ian stood up. Then he asked, “Was there anything else?”
Josh shook his head. “Just tell your assistant to lighten up.”
Ian chuckled. “I have. She’s a little hyper, so it hasn’t gotten through yet.”
Josh looked concerned. “Is she turning out to be a problem?”
Josh himself had talked Ian into taking the girl on, saying she was bright enough to learn from the best. Ian had a sneaking suspicion Josh also thought having the young woman around might loosen him up a bit. In any case, he didn’t want Josh to think he’d made a bad decision when in fact it was mostly Ian’s own problem.
“No, not at all. I’m just not used to her yet, and she’s anxious to do it all now.”
“Keep trying with her,” Josh said.
Keep Trying. One of the Redstone mantras, Ian thought as he headed back to the lab. Along with Hire the Best and Let Them Do Their Best, and Redstone Likes Happy People. To the outside world, he was sure they all sounded like idealistic dreamers, but everybody on the inside knew it was for real. Because of one man, Ian thought as he keyed in his pass code for entry to the lab. One man with a vision, and the determination to make it happen. Josh had—
Ian stopped dead in the doorway to his office. Rebecca was in his chair, at his computer.
“Looking for something?” he asked.
“Oh!” She jumped, spun in the chair, her hand pressed dramatically over her heart. “You scared me.”
Normally it would have been time for an apology, a statement saying he hadn’t meant to scare her. But Josh’s warnings were still echoing in his mind, and he stayed silent, simply watching her. He’d learned it was a rare person who could allow such silence, and Rebecca definitely wasn’t one of them.
“I was just leaving you a note.”
Her voice still sounded tight. Again he waited, and something odd flickered in her eyes.
“I need to leave early,” she said hastily. “I have a doc—er, a dentist’s appointment.”
If she’d only been leaving him a note about that, why was she so flustered? Had she been doing something else? Trying to access his files on the computer? The screen was as he’d left it, blacked out, but if she’d been here long enough…
As Rebecca scuttled out of the room, Ian told himself he was being paranoid. Yet he had enough respect for Josh to take his worries seriously. The man was no fool, and those who had mistaken him for such, perhaps judging him by that lazy drawl or the way he had of strolling along with his hands in his pockets, were the sadder for it.
He turned to his computer and did a quick check. He could find no trace that anyone had accessed any of his files in the past half hour. That decided him. In this case Josh was being overly protective. Wasn’t that part of the Redstone legend, taking care of his people? Wasn’t that why they were consistently at the top of the national list of the best places to work?
I want you to have protection, Ian….
No. No way. He couldn’t tolerate it. He hadn’t even been able to tolerate his wife around all the time. His need for space, while Colleen had needed people and socializing, had driven her away after a mere ten months of trying to put up with him.
No, he was a loner, a borderline recluse, as Josh’s personal pilot, Tess Machado, had called him more than once. And he would stay that way, happily. He didn’t need a wife, or any woman to complete him. He had his work. That was enough.
“Thanks for getting here so quickly, Sam.”
“No problem,” Samantha Beckett told her boss.
Actually it had been a problem—when he’d called she had just stepped out of the shower, her hair dripping wet. But she’d have dealt with a lot more than wet hair to come running at his call, and she hoped he knew it. Joshua Redstone had done more for her and Billy than anyone ever had, and she owed him more than she could ever repay.
“How’s Billy?” Josh asked, as if he’d read her thought.
“He’s doing great. That new residential skills center is working well for him. He likes the people and he’s really happy.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Sam knew he wouldn’t take it in words, so she tried her best to put her thanks into her smile. If not for Josh, Billy would probably be locked in an institution somewhere, taken away by some bureaucrat who thought they knew better than she did how to take care of her little brother. Instead they’d stayed together, and she was able to afford to have him well looked after when she had to leave on assignment.
Speaking of assignments, she thought, why was the usually direct Josh taking so long to get around to the point?
She studied him, thinking as she often had that you’d never guess by looking at him that this former pilot had built a small airplane design company into an international corporation the scope of which she could hardly comprehend. But she also knew that was one of his strengths. Josh didn’t come across as a shark, not with that tall, lanky frame, sometimes tousled hair and that lazy smile. He was very unassuming and laid-back, but people who assumed he was as slow as his drawl didn’t discover the sharpness of his teeth until it was too late.
“This is an unusual one,” Josh finally said, sounding a bit uncomfortable. That in itself was odd enough for Sam to sit up and pay close attention.
“In-house, I gather, since you wanted to meet here?” she asked, gesturing at the restaurant they were sitting in.
He nodded, confirming her guess that the “unusual” case involved something 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.”
