The Professional Read Free Page A

fastening Christmas decorations onto the street poles and grunted in disgust. It was barely a week into November. Couldn’t they enjoy Thanksgiving before giving way to the sadly over-commercialized Christmas season? Geez, he was beginning to sound just like his wife. He’d certainly never given a damn about one holiday or the other before he’d married Emma and started a family. He resisted the urge to do a ball-check, just to make sure he still had them, and then laughed.
    Jamie and Guy had strolled into his office and both wore a questioning expression. “What’s so funny?” Jamie asked.
    “Nothing,” Payne lied. Judging from his happy expression, Jamie must have won the most recent game of pool in the boardroom.
    “Any trouble?” Guy said.
    “Not trouble, really,” Payne remarked, passing a hand over his face. “Just precious little to go on. I don’t think this is going to be as simple as we’d originally thought.”
    “That seems to be a running theme of late,” Jamie remarked with a grimace. He dropped into a chair and crossed an ankle over his leg.
    “Not much we can do about that,” Guy said. “How do you think he’s going to do?”
    Payne knew the question Guy was asking had nothing to do with Jeb’s abilities—those were top-notch and without doubt. He was a Ranger, after all, and there wasn’t a soldier alive who reached that level of expertise without possessing a keen mind, top physical form and a will of iron. It took more than being smart and in prime physical condition. It took mental endurance as well, which was often what broke before anything else did.
    “I think that he’ll make the transition simply because he knows that’s what expected of him,” Payne said. And with any luck, like him, he’d come to like it.
    “He reminds me of you,” Guy remarked thoughtfully.
    Payne didn’t betray a blink of surprise, but felt it all the same. That’s exactly what Emma had said when she’d met Jeb Anderson earlier in the week. She said he was “intense” and “brooding” and she’d be willing to bet “autocratic,” as well. She redeemed herself by adding the “but not quite so handsome as my husband” bit, but it was interesting all the same.
    Because he’d noticed it as well.
    Jeb Anderson had asked the same questions Payne would have asked had he been tasked with this particular case. And his reasons for coming out of the military were so very much like his own, only instead of losing one man on a mission he’d coordinated, Jeb had lost three.
    After speaking with Colonel Carl Garrett, who’d been more disappointed to see him go than any other recruit he’d sent their way thus far, Payne had known that they were getting a Class A agent. Not to say that they all weren’t, because they were. But even Payne had recognized the difference in Jeb, a do-it-or-die-trying mentality that marked him as a natural born leader with a determined, unshakable sort of resolve. It commanded respect, trust and loyalty.
    Payne also knew the Colonel was sad to see Jeb leave because he fully anticipated losing his twin brother, Judd, as well, who was also purported to be an excellent soldier. He inwardly grinned.
    No doubt Uncle Sam’s loss would be Ranger Security’s gain.
    And as assets went, it was damned hard to beat the Anderson twins.

2
    “O H , S OPHIE ,” Clayton Plank groaned loudly as she kneaded his bony shoulders. “Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. You have no idea how good that feels.”
    Sophie O’Brien’s lips twisted with humor. Oh, she believed she had some idea. Clayton certainly wasn’t her most grateful client, but he was definitely the loudest. And to anyone who wasn’t familiar with his noisy moans, groans, sighs and exaltations, those people would have undoubtedly imagined that Sophie was giving the eighty-seven-year-old man more than the traditional, strictly platonic massage.
    Clayton, however, liked to put on quite a show and, because he had a standing appointment,