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That wasn’t a lack of respect for her father. He would have been the first to agree that riding over the isolated landscape they both loved was a better idea than standing over his grave. Charlie Beaufort had loved the high desert and the mountains with a deep and abiding passion. Just as he had loved the ranch that sat in a small, sheltered valley in the middle of the tract of rugged land he’d bought more than forty years ago. He had built the main house and most of the outbuildings with his own hands.
During the past ten or fifteen years, however, when Av-Tech had really taken off, he hadn’t had time—hadn’t taken time, Val amended—to get away and visit it. When she was a little girl, they had gone out to the ranch almost every weekend. Piled in an old station wagon, her mother, father and Val would spend Friday evening driving out there, arriving long after midnight.
Some of her best memories of her father were associated with the ranch. Those were the memories she wanted to get in touch with. And those were the years she wanted to remember.
“Val, honey, if you’ve got a minute…” Harper Springfield whispered in her ear. “While they’re finishing up here…” Hand firmly on her elbow, Harp, another of Av-Tech’s founders, applied pressure to direct her away from the grave, where people were still waiting in line to speak to her and her stepmother.
Constance Beaufort’s perfectly coifed blond hair and beautiful features were covered by a sheer black veil, her slender figure clothed in a black designer suit, black hose and black kid pumps. There wasn’t a spot of color or a piece of jewelry, except for her gold wedding ring, of course, to spoil the image Connie was aiming for.
The grieving widow, Val thought as she turned away. Who had been grieving in earnest when she’d learned the terms of her late husband’s will. Charlie Beaufort might have been foolish enough, Val thought regretfully, to marry a woman younger than his daughter. But thankfully, his lawyers had been smart enough to make him have her sign a prenuptial agreement.
There would be a generous settlement for Connie, plenty of money to live on, but she would get no shares of Av-Tech. And there, of course, was where Charlie Beaufort’s real wealth lay.
Only when Val managed to pull her eyes away from her stepmother’s artful performance did she realized where Harp was leading her. On a slight rise looking down on the grave site, the co-owners of her father’s company were standing in a semicircle, waiting for Harp to bring her to them.
She had thought the firmness of Springfield’s grip on her arm was an unnecessary and unwanted concern for her bad leg, but now it began to feel like some kind of strong-arm tactic. Although she would much prefer to believe the latter than the former, she couldn’t imagine why her father’s partners would think she needed to be coerced into meeting with them. Most of them had bounced her on their knees when she was a baby.
They were looking decidedly nervous, however, as she and Harp approached. Because she was now the majority owner of the company that had been their bread and butter for so many years? After all, they were of a different generation. They might have concerns about a woman directing an international company, especially one that specialized in cutting-edge missile delivery systems and the latest satellite technology.
The first thing she needed to do, Val decided, was let them know she had no intention of trying to run things. She didn’t have the expertise, even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t want to, of course. She had walked away from her father’s money more than ten years ago. She wasn’t going back to that life now. No matter what his will had said.
“We all thought we needed to talk about what happens next,” Billy Clemens said as she and Harp walked up to the group.
Trust Billy to cut to the chase, Val thought. The most outspoken of the four men who had been her father’s partners for more than forty years, Clemens was also Val’s least favorite, although she could never quite pinpoint the reason. Billy was fond of saying that with him, what you saw was what you got. He was right. Val just didn’t particularly like either.
Maybe her father hadn’t, as well, Val thought, although he had never openly expressed any disparagement of Clemens. However, if her dad had arranged for his shares to be divided among his partners at his death instead of saddling her with them, Billy would now be the majority owner, and all the responsibility that went with the position would be his instead of hers.
“What happens next?” she repeated, although she certainly knew where this was heading.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on with the company right now. A lot of contracts that have to be met, with some pretty substantial penalties involved if we don’t meet them. I’m just wondering what you’re planning to do about those.”
“I’m planning to see those contracts are fulfilled,” Val said. “And that the company doesn’t have to pay any penalties.”
“You’re going to step into your father’s shoes?” Harp Springfield asked bluntly.
“You all know as well as I do that no one can do that. Av-Tech was my father’s life. If I try to step in, I’ll botch it.”
“You’re the majority shareholder, Val,” Porter Johnson reminded her. “Somebody’s got to command the ship.”
“Are you volunteering, Porter?” she asked softly.
There was little doubt what his answer would be. Johnson was suffering from prostate cancer. He wouldn’t want the responsibility of the company. Of course, neither did she. As a matter of fact, Val doubted that any one of them, with the exception of Billy Clemens, would even consider taking over.
“You know better than that, Val,” Porter said. “Your dad was the heart and the soul of this company. The last couple of years…Well, even Charlie wasn’t able to see to everything.”
She was grateful Porter hadn’t made that sound any worse than he had. Her father’s health had been failing for a long time, and she hated to admit she hadn’t even been aware of how much. At least, not until his first stroke two years ago.
“That’s why we’re going to get someone in there who can tell us what we need to do with the company,” she said reassuringly.
“You aren’t talking about selling?” Clemens asked. “You can’t do that.”
“Right now, all I’m talking about is hiring a management consultant,” Val said. “Someone to look us over, examine the books, look at those contracts and make some suggestions. I think that’s what my father should have done when he got sick. If he had been himself, he would have.” There was a small pause, but no one challenged what she’d said, so she continued, thankful they were at least giving her the opportunity to tell them what she’d been thinking. “I’ve already asked our attorneys to locate someone with management expertise specific to our patents.”
She was a little surprised at how easily those phrases came. Our attorneys. Management expertise specific to our patents. For someone who had spent years professing to have no interest in any of this, she talked a good game. Maybe she was more her father’s daughter than she had realized.
“Your daddy didn’t believe in consultants,” Porter said.
“My 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. 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
