The Naked Edge (3 page)

“Yes. Thanks for asking.”

William nodded, as if not accustomed to displaying soft human emotions or being complimented for it.

“Angelo,” Cavanaugh said to the chopper's pilot. “It's been too long.”

“Since Puerto Vallarta,” the husky man replied, “and that stock market analyst we protected. Remember how he was afraid angry investors were waiting for him behind every corner.”

“Hell, one of them
was
.” Cavanaugh shook his hand warmly. “How are the llamas you were raising?”

“They were sissies. They never bred.”

“You're sure you had male and female?”

“You think I can't tell the difference? They spent more time spitting than trying to fornicate. Right in my eye. One of them spat right here.” Angelo used a middle finger to point at his eye.

Cavanaugh couldn't help laughing.

“Then they jumped the fence. By the time I found them, they'd been run over by a cement truck. If I'd been smart, I'd have eaten them instead of trying to breed them.”

“They taste good?”

“I have no idea, but now I raise ostriches.
Those
you can eat. Plus, they lay eggs the size of basketballs.”

“True?”

“I exaggerate only slightly.”

Cavanaugh laughed again. “
Hombre
, I missed you.”

He led them toward the lodge. In the kitchen, he scanned the monitors again, saw that everything was normal, and introduced Mrs. Patterson as she spooned pumpkin mix into the pie crust.

“Want something to eat or drink?” he asked his guests.

“Thank you, no,” William answered. “We have business to discuss. Then I need to get to Denver.”

“What's in Denver?”

“A Vietnamese businessman with a problem.”

“Ah.” Knowing William's reluctance to confide, Cavanaugh knew that the Vietnamese businessman might actually be a Japanese baseball player. “I hoped you'd stay for a while. Both of you are welcome. You'll never forget the color of the sunset behind the Tetons.”

“Another time.”

10

The office looked the same as when the property had been a dude ranch. Next to an old desk, a wall of photographs showed children fishing, swimming, riding horses, and pitching their tents in the meadow next to the lodge. Another wall had shelves with slots for mail and messages. Everything retained the vague smell of pipe smoke from long ago. On occasion, Cavanaugh was tempted to clear everything out, but then he remembered the two men in their thirties who'd arrived a couple of years earlier. They drove Winnebagos. They had beer paunches, their wives looked bored, and their kids kept shoving each other. The men asked Cavanaugh if it was all right for them to show their families what the children's camp had been like. They'd spent the happiest summers of their lives here, they said. They couldn't get over that everything was the same.

Their happiest summers. Cavanaugh had found it sad that they knew their lives hadn't gotten any better.

Now William sat in a dark leather chair and opened his briefcase while Cavanaugh and Jamie watched from wooden chairs across from him.

“I came all this way because—”

“You might as well know right away that I don't want a job.”

“A job? You think I came here to offer you a
job
?”

“Didn't you?”

“The word ‘job’ doesn't quite describe it.” William looked amused. “I'm offering you
everything
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“‘Lock, stock, and barrel,’ as I believe they say out here.”

“You're not making sense.”

“You've got it all, my friend.”

“All of
what
?”

“Global Protective Services.”

Cavanaugh was certain he hadn't heard correctly. Then his heart lurched, and he took a long breath.

“Duncan gave it to you in his will,” William said.

Again, Cavanaugh was overwhelmed by memories. Tall and wiry, with a mustache, Duncan had been Cavanaugh's Delta Force instructor. After leaving the military, Duncan had founded an international security agency that flourished, thanks to the quality of the personnel Duncan hired, all of them from special-operations units around the world, many of them having been Duncan's students. When Duncan had been killed on an assignment, there were Global Protective Services branches in New York, London, Rome, and Hong Kong, with another planned for Tokyo.

“His will?” Cavanaugh subdued the anger he suddenly felt. “You're telling me about this five months after he died?”

“There were reasons.”

“What reasons? Jesus, we could have talked about this at Duncan's funeral. We could have—”

“No,” William said, “we couldn't have.”

Cavanaugh noticed Jamie looking at him with concern.

“I'm sorry,” he told William. “I didn't mean to sound like I was criticizing you.”

“Of course not. Anyway, you're in mourning. You're allowed. One of the reasons you didn't hear about this until now is that it was difficult to verify Duncan's death so that the probate process could begin.”

“Verify his . . .” Then Cavanaugh understood. The bullets had mutilated Duncan's face so completely that his teeth couldn't be used to establish his identity. What the bullets hadn't accomplished, a fire had. “God help him.”

“There were indications of healed broken ribs and a similarly healed broken collarbone.”

“Occupational injuries.” Cavanaugh felt sympathetic twinges in his own healed bones.

“Unfortunately, there weren't any recent x-rays of those areas of his body, so I still couldn't prove the remains were his. Finally, I went to the Pentagon and asked to see Duncan's medical file. The Army was as protective of him in death as if he'd continued to be a Delta Force instructor. It took a phone call from a former client, a ranking member of the current administration, before the file was released to me. My concern was that the injuries occurred
after
Duncan left the military, in which case the x-ray films would have been valueless. But in fact, the broken ribs and collarbone were visible. I was able to make my case.”

“You said ‘
one
of the reasons’ I didn't hear about this until now.”

“Another is that Duncan was a better protector than he was a corporate executive. Without consulting me, he made a number of business decisions that brought the continuing existence of Global Protective Services into doubt. There almost weren't any assets for anyone to inherit. Fortunately, I've been able to disentangle those problems. But still another reason that I didn't pay you this visit until now is . . .” William held up a sheet of paper. “Duncan willed Global Protective Services to a man named Aaron Stoddard.”

As Jamie gave Cavanaugh another look of concern, he sat straighter, his back hardening.

“The problem is, nobody at GPS ever heard of a man with that name. Duncan didn't have any surviving family, so it wasn't possible to seek that avenue of help.”

“You could have asked
me
,” Cavanaugh said.

“You made clear you didn't want to be contacted. But what would you have answered if I
had
come to you and asked if you knew Aaron Stoddard? Would you have told me, or would you have remained determined to separate yourself from your former life?”

Cavanaugh didn't reply.

“In the end, the Pentagon complied with another of my requests. Aaron Stoddard, it turns out, once belonged to Delta Force also. In fact, he was one of Duncan's students. Then Duncan hired him for Global Protective Services, but by then, for security reasons, Aaron Stoddard was using another name.
Your
name.”

Conscious of his heartbeat, Cavanaugh leaned back. He needed a few moments before he could respond.

“Back then, my mother was still alive. My stepfather. My half-sister. My friends. When I joined GPS, I realized that one of the weaknesses in the system was that predators might target a protective agent as much as a client. They could grab a protector's family and friends and try to use them as leverage to get the protector to betray the client. I decided that I couldn't put my family and friends at risk. I needed to look out for their safety just as I did a client's, and the easiest way to do that was to assume a false name and identity that would keep predators from discovering my background.”

“Well, you certainly succeeded. I believed ‘Cavanaugh’ was your true name. I've never heard you supply a first one, so I was surprised that in GPS's personnel files, you list a first name of ‘James.’”

“Which I never use when I'm working.”

“Establishing a mystique as a protective agent with only one name. Do you agree?”

“That I'm Aaron Stoddard? Yes.” He looked over at Jamie, to whom he'd long ago confided the truth about his identity. “Now that I'm no longer a protector, it doesn't matter if anybody knows who I really am. My mother's dead now. My stepfather has a heart condition. He'll probably be gone soon, also. My half-sister is the only relative I need to worry about. And
you
, of course,” he told Jamie. “I'll never stop protecting
you
.”

“What I meant was,” William said, “do you agree to abide by Duncan's wishes and accept ownership of Global Protective Services?”

“William, did anybody ever tell you you've got a pushy manner?”

“My second and third wives. But I tried not to take it personally.”

“Really, I'm sorry you came all this way.”

“You won't accept?”

“I made a promise, and I'm keeping it. From now on, Jamie's all I care about.”

“Duncan didn't indicate a second choice. GPS isn't a publicly traded company. There's no board of directors. No one except Duncan's heir can make decisions. If your refusal is absolute, ultimately the company will need to be dissolved.”

“I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that,” Cavanaugh said.

“Perhaps you should take a couple of days to consider the implications.”

“No,” Cavanaugh insisted.

“Can we speak privately?” Jamie interrupted.

Cavanaugh looked at her.

“Outside,” she told him.

11

Behind boulders on the ridge, the spotter studied the lodge through binoculars that were shielded to keep the sun from reflecting off their lenses.

“They could be inside for hours,” the sniper said.

“The backup team's in position now. The moment you're sure you've got the target in your sights, I'll tell them to cut the telephone line. The timing has to be right. If we do it sooner than we need to, he might try to use the phone, wonder why it doesn't work, and realize he's being set up.”

“In that case, tell them to get ready.” The sniper peered through his scope. “The target's on the back porch.”

12

Jamie closed the screen door after she and Cavanaugh stepped outside. “I want you to own Global Protective Services.”

“But I promised you I was out of the business.”

“I'm freeing you from that promise.”

13

“Beta, get ready to cut the phone line,” the spotter said into the radio.

“On your signal,” a voice replied.

“Stand by.” The spotter turned toward his partner. “Can you get the shot?

The man lay on his stomach, his left hand gripping the rifle's stock, his left forearm resting on his knapsack. His right hand clutched the rifle's grip, his finger at the trigger. The bolt-action Remington 700 was one of the most accurate sniper rifles. A favorite of the U.S. military as well as law-enforcement SWAT teams, it accurately delivered a .308 bullet up to 900 yards. The sights had one-minute-of-angle accuracy. The trigger was adjusted to a gentle two-pound pull. The powerful scope had a holographic sight with a red dot that indicated exactly where the bullet would strike the target. The state-of-the-art sound suppressor prevented the sniper from disclosing his position and drawing return fire.

But precise equipment was only one element of accurate long-distance shooting. Training, experience, steadiness, the ability to craft handmade ammunition and adjust sights based on conclusions about distance, temperature, altitude, and wind, the Zen control of breathing, temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate, the focus of a lifetime into one steady confident pull on the trigger—the accumulation of all these and more were what made a great shooter.

“I said, Can you make the shot?” Receiving no answer, the spotter peered through his binoculars and inhaled with annoyance when he saw the problem. “Damn it, the woman's in the way.”

14

“Sometimes, you don't listen to yourself,” Jamie said.

“That's because I don't enjoy one-sided conversations.”

“Angelo was talking about his llamas and his ostriches, and he made you laugh so hard, you said you missed him.”

“Just a figure of speech. Hey, we aren't going to start shopping for furniture or anything.”

“You
do
miss him. You miss
all
the agents you used to work with. You miss Global Protective Services and—”

“How can you be sure? I've never said
anything
about that.”

“Sometimes, I see a far-away look in your eyes, as if your mind's somewhere else, doing things in places a lot more exciting than here.”

“No.”

“You
do
have that look.” Jamie's hands were on her hips, her back to the sun-bright pasture and the aspen-covered eastern slope of the canyon. “It reminds me of tigers and lions in cages in zoos. The look in their eyes. The controlled frustration. It's like they know there has to be a better way, but they also know there's nothing they can do about it. Well, this is your chance to do something about it.”

“There's no place else I'd rather be, and no other person I'd rather be with.”

“You gave up a huge portion of your life for me,” Jamie said.

“But look at what I got in return.” Cavanaugh gestured toward the stream flowing through the pasture, sunlight glinting off it, the horses leaning down to drink.

“You still wear a gun and a knife.”

“The world's a dangerous neighborhood.”

“You still drive an armored Taurus.”