The naked edge

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.