Chapter 1

Master Sergeant (Retired) Robert Shepard strolled aimlessly through the market, looking for something to eat. He kept hoping he’d see an unusual, exotic food, such as he’d been forced to consume in some far off land. After twenty-five years in the Army, much of it spent as a Special Forces operator and then Delta Force, he’d finally been injured badly enough that they had kicked him to the curb with a medical retirement. He’d been retired for four months now, and was healed up well enough that retirement was already beginning to grate on his nerves.

The only people who would offer him work matching his skills were the private security contractors he’d hated working with as an operator. And, to be honest, he was tired of sand and dirt and not being able to trust anybody outside his tightly-knit unit. His skill set wasn’t really appropriate for a normal job, and he wasn’t about to become a rent-a-cop at some mall, where the most dangerous person he’d run into would be a fifteen year old girl who thought the world owed her whatever she wanted.

Not that money was a problem. He could live comfortably on his retirement pay. It wasn’t like he’d know what to do with a whole house. And living in the suburbs just seemed laughable to him. His room in the Highview Hotel, a flophouse, really, was cheap and just fine. Nobody bothered him. Out on the streets many people assumed he was homeless. That might have been the result of his limited wardrobe and the fact that he hadn’t shaved or gotten a hair cut since they kicked him out.

The real problem was ... he was bored.

He’d been bored before, of course, plenty of times, in fact. The old saying about the Army, concerning “hurry up and wait” was as factual and reliable as the patterns of the sun and moon. But those times of boredom were bearable because you knew action would come. It might come sooner ... or later ... but it would come.

Now, though, the boredom he experienced felt like it just might be permanent. His days of action were over.

Or so he thought.

Ten minutes after leaving the market, the internal radar that had been fine-tuned by years of training and field work came alive. The first blip on that radar was the carriage of a man in the crowd. He was walking in the throng of people on the street, but not with it. Once his attention was on the man, Bob saw that his clothing was also out of sync with the people around him. The coat he was wearing was too long and too heavy for the current weather conditions.

Curious, Bob started following the man, and within another minute realized that the man was following someone else.

Checking for counter surveillance, Bob detected nothing. The man was on his own. Casually, he closed the distance between them. Within another two or three minutes he decided that a woman some twenty yards in front of them was the target. She was wearing a navy blue skirt and jacket, but that was all he could tell about her, other than that she had her blondish hair up in a bun.

The man’s body language changed and Bob’s radar flared to danger! The way he was holding his right arm suggested he was armed, and he was speeding up, closing with the target.

Bob thought about what to do. Being behind the man would give him a tactical advantage, but he didn’t know what kind of weapon was in that right hand. Whatever it was, though, the guy thought of it as a weapon. If it was a gun, then there was little Bob could do, other than try to deflect the shot when it came. But if it was a gun, then the shot could be off before he could reach the man and do anything about it.

Better to be in front of the guy, so he could watch the face and eyes, as well as that right hand.

He thought of a way to disrupt the flow of events, and broke into a run.

Running past the man, he caught up to the woman and reached to grip her elbow.

“Hey Cindy!” he said, loudly. “There you are. I thought you were going to meet me for lunch.”

Startled eyes turned on him, but he paid no attention to her face. Instead he was looking past her at the man following her. He was coming on, now, speeding up.

“Get away from me!” yelped the woman. “I’m not Cindy! Who are you?”

“You’re in danger,” he said, his voice low. “Move into that store over there!”

“Get away from me!” yelled the frightened woman, again. “I’ll call a cop!”

“Go right ahead,” said Bob, who saw that rather than disrupting the man’s plans he had accelerated them. He was coming now at a fast walk and Bob saw the tip of a knife protruding from the sleeve of his right arm. No doubt he thought he could use the uproar to let him do whatever he had in mind and then melt into the crowd.

She batted at Bob with her free hand, yelling, “Let go!” and Bob used her motion to swivel her behind him, bringing him face to face with her attacker.

The fight, such as it was, was short. To most people watching, it looked like the two men bumped into each other, at which time one of them tripped and fell down. Something black clattered behind Bob as he levered the man’s right arm, dislocating the shoulder. There was a grunt of pain and the man’s foot lashed out, hitting Bob’s ankle, sending him to the ground, as well.

As he rolled and came up, the other man did too. Disarmed now, and with an arm that no longer worked properly, he spun and ran, fleeing into the crowd.

Bob turned to find the woman staring at him as if he were a raving lunatic. He bent to pick up the knife that had come free when he dislocated the attacker’s shoulder. He recognized it instantly as a Kizlyar Irtish tactical knife, the kind the Spetsnaz and the KGB preferred. Though they were not rare, he was still surprised that a street thug in New York would have one. He held it out to show the woman.

“He was going to attack you with this,” said Bob. “He’d been following you for a while. Probably after your purse.”

Her demeanor changed almost instantly.

“That’s not what he was after. Thank you. You probably saved my life.”

“No problem,” said Bob, easily.

“How did you know he was following me?”

“I’m ex Army,” he said. “I’ve had some training and I saw some things that tipped me off. I thought I could disrupt the attack.”

“So when you accosted me, it was to get into position to do that,” she mused.

“Yes. I’m sorry if I startled you.”

“Would you be interested in a job, Mister... ?”

“Shepard,” said Bob. “Bob Shepard. I’m not really looking for a job.”

“Well, Mister Bob Shepard, my name is Lacey Cragg, and, as I said, I don’t think that man was after my purse.”

“Lacey Cragg,” said Bob. “I read about you in the paper.”

She smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. Her face looked pinched.

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “As I said. You probably saved my life, and I’d like to hire you to protect me in the future.”

“I don’t know,” said Bob. He didn’t really need a job. But he was bored.

People were flowing past them now, and they stood as boulders in a stream, parting the rushing water, sending it on each side of the obstruction.

“I’d think the government would provide you security,” said Bob.

“I’ve asked them to, but there’s red tape involved, and the Marshal Service likes to have a confirmed threat before they act. As you can see, I need protection now, instead of later.”

“Like I said, I’m not really looking for a job,” said Bob.

“Why not? You can’t be a bum forever.”

“I’m not a bum!” he said. “I’m retired military.”

“Well you look pretty scruffy to me. The point is you know how to handle yourself and I need somebody to keep me from ending up like the last prosecutor on this case.”

“I thought he was in an accident, a car crash.”

“There are things the public doesn’t know about that,” she said. “Will you at least come with me and let me do a formal interview?”

“You already offered me the job,” he pointed out.

“Humor me,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you a bum. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. It’s the least I can do.”

“What the hell,” he said. “I didn’t have anything else on my calendar anyway.”

Bob sat across the small table from the woman. He had time, now, to look her over.

She was in the range of five-seven or so. Her navy suit covered a utilitarian white blouse, and the overall effect was somewhat mannish. She wore little, if any, makeup and the skin on her temples and forehead was stretched by the tight bun her hair was pulled into. She looked plain, but Bob could see the potential for something much more feminine.

He knew only what he’d read about her in the paper, that she was a rising star in the prosecutorial world, and had replaced the former prosecutor on a big, human trafficking case when he’d been killed in a car crash. The defendant was Russian, and his mind made the connection to the Kizlyar knife, now tucked into the back of his waistline and covered by his shirt. She hadn’t wanted to call the police, saying there was nothing they could do since the man had fled.

“The former prosecutor died in a car crash, and when they offered his case to me I thought getting it would be good for my career,” she said, sipping her latte. “Then I was informed that the crash John Rawlins was killed in wasn’t a single car accident, as originally reported. They found evidence that he was sideswiped, forced off the road. They found the car that did it several miles away, abandoned. It was stolen, of course. Some argue that it was still just an accident, but it’s also possible John was murdered.”

“The knife that guy had is Russian made,” said Bob.

“Why they think going after me will do them any good, I don’t know,” she said. “All I’m doing is prosecuting the case. The man they want to kill is under heavy protection.”

“I can think of a reason they want you out of the way,” said Bob.

“Why?”

“Because they want the right prosecutor on the case.”

“You mean one they can bribe,” she said.

“Yes. I’m guessing they can’t bribe you.”

“You’re guessing right,” she said, firmly.

“They’ll try again,” said Bob.

“Which is why I need you, protecting me. You saw this guy before he made his move. And then you stopped him.”

“It was just what I was trained to do.”

“Tell me more about that,” said Lacey. “Your training, I mean.”

He shrugged.

“Army, twenty-five years, Special Forces and then Delta Force. Got to go to exotic places, meet interesting people and then kill them.”

“Really? You’ve killed people?”

“What do you think your Army does?” he asked, his voice wry.

She looked away, obviously uncomfortable.

“I guess the average person doesn’t think much about that.”

“We don’t ask them to,” said Bob. “All we really want is to be able to do our job and then go home, like anybody else.”

“So ... will you come to work for me?”

“I’m sure the feds will give you a security detail, especially considering what you told me about the accident and what happened today.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m sure they will. I work with those guys all the time, though, and they haven’t done what you’ve done. I’m imagining one of them having been with me today. He’d have been yelling, ‘Stop! Federal Agent! Show me your hands!’ or some such thing. But you took action. You took out the threat. That’s the kind of man I want protecting me.”

Bob thought about it. She wasn’t much to look at, but it was a pretty good bet that her staff included a bevy of pretty, young interns, or paralegals, or whatever kind of jobs supported her endeavors. The life he’d led hadn’t had room in it for a girlfriend, much less a wife. There had been women along the way, once in a while, but most of them were either hookers or female soldiers on the support side of operations. He was only forty-two, which wasn’t too old to meet a woman and start a family. And working for her might just expose him to some potential chances to enter the dating game. He hadn’t done that since high school. But how hard could it be? Be charming, tell a few war stories, get the girl all excited, and see where things went.

“I can’t protect you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.

“You can if you live in,” she said. “And when the Marshal detail shows up, they can take up the slack.”

“They won’t like working with me,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t like working with them,” he said, smiling. “We have different philosophies about how to handle a threat.”

“You’ll be in charge,” she said, firmly.

“I don’t think they’ll go for that.”

“They will if I tell them to,” she said. “Especially if I tell them I only need two or three men, to supplement you. A full detail is expensive, and they’ll jump at any chance to keep from having to spend some of that money.”

“I thought prosecutors got paid squat,” he said.

“We do. While I was in college I had a double major, economics and law. I understood the stock market and did pretty well.”

“So if you were making money, why’d you end up in law? And being a prosecutor on top of that?”

“I’m adopted. My biological father murdered my biological mother when I was three. I got put into foster care, and a couple of years later was adopted by the people I think of as my parents. My biological father went to prison, but only for a short time because he copped a plea. They could have taken the case to trial. I’ve actually seen the case file. It was a slam dunk, but the prosecutor got lazy and did the easy thing. Or maybe he was overworked. I don’t know. But I’ve always wanted to put bad people in jail, and keep them there.”

“So you went to prosecutor school,” said Bob.

“Not exactly. After law school I clerked for a judge. That’s where I learned about how to prosecute a case. I was lucky and got in the DOJ honors program. I helped with some big cases and then got assigned a high profile case of my own. It was one of those cases they couldn’t just decide to drop. I think they thought it couldn’t be won, which is why they gave it to me. If I lost it they could chalk it up to me being a rookie and it wouldn’t soil their reputations. But I didn’t lose it. And I didn’t lose the next two cases nobody else wanted to prosecute either. I hope some day those stuffed shirts will have to answer to me.”

“What will your husband think when you bring a bum home with you?” asked Bob.

“I’m not married.”

“Okay, then, what will your boyfriend think?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend. “I work 80 hours a week. I have no time in my life for a man.”

“I know the feeling,” said Bob, but he was thinking that, with her appearance, it wasn’t likely men were beating down her door asking for dates in the first place.

She looked at her watch.

“I need to get to work. What do you say?”

“Do you really want a man intruding on your personal space?”

“Not just any man. You.”

“It will affect your privacy,” he warned.

“I live in a four apartment brownstone,” she said. “My apartment has two bedrooms and the one I sleep in has bars on the windows. You don’t need to be in my bedroom, just in the apartment.”

“How long will this last?” he asked.

“Just during the trial. That shouldn’t take more than three or four months, six if the defense can get their motions to delay through.”

Bob thought about it. It might solve his boredom problem. And then there were all those sweet young things in her office.

“What the hell,” he said. “We actually have something in common.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m a product of the foster care program, too. Spent my entire life in it.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I have no idea. My earliest memories are of having foster parents. I got bounced around a lot. Was even adopted once, but that didn’t last.”

“Why not?”

“I had a problem with authority figures. It’s why I went into the service. I figured four years in the Army beat eighteen months in jail. I’m not complaining, though. It finally taught me some discipline. The Army’s who I think of as my parents.”