“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