The Chosen. BEVERLY BARTON
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and opened the door for her. His gentlemanly action surprised her, so much so that she gasped and then glanced over her shoulder.
“I’m just showing you that I can be a good boy,” Judd said, smiling. But his smoky topaz eyes remained void of any real emotion.
She nodded. “If I take you home with me to Griff’s place—”
“I’ll behave myself.”
“If you don’t …” No, don’t issue him another warning. Just tell him exactly what’s what. “Griff’s your friend, or at least he’s tried to be. But you haven’t made it easy. If you screw up this time, it will be the last time as far as Griff is concerned. You’ve used up all your second chances with him.”
“What about you? Are you ready to wash your hands of me, too?”
Lindsay got inside her SUV, slid behind the wheel, and glanced up at Judd, who stood by the open door. “If you want me to help you one more time, let’s not make it personal.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
He nodded, then closed the door, rounded the back of the vehicle, and got in on the passenger side. Once seated and belted, Judd said, “It should never have gotten personal between us. You’re too nice a girl to get hung up on a guy like me. I’ve got nothing to offer you and I never will. You know that, don’t you?”
Lindsay started the engine. Clutching the steering wheel with white-knuckled force, she closed her eyes for a millisecond, then said, “I know. You’ve made it abundantly clear, more than once.”
She backed out of the parking place and headed the Trailblazer into the late evening traffic.
Griff had told Rick Carson to stay in Williamstown and stick close to Lindsay, to be prepared to move in and protect her from Judd if it became necessary. Although he’d known Judd a lot longer than Lindsay had—and maybe because he had—he didn’t trust his old friend’s emotional and mental stability these days. Despite enduring everything he’d put her through during the past three and a half years—like a real trooper—Lindsay couldn’t take much more. When everyone else had given up on Judd, she hadn’t. And now, once again, she’d persuaded Griff to give the guy another chance to straighten up and fly right.
God, he hoped her faith in Judd wasn’t misplaced.
“We need to talk,” Nic Baxter said, as she came toward Griff, a scowl on her face. A really pretty face.
The woman was relentless. She had followed them to the airport. What part of Barbara Jean’s I’m-going-with-Mr. Powell statement didn’t she understand?
Give her some slack, he told himself. Baxter’s just doing her job. Curtis Jackson would be doing the same thing. He’d keep trying to persuade Barbara Jean to accept FBI protection instead of flying off in the night with the owner of a private security firm. It wouldn’t have mattered to Curtis any more than it mattered to Nic that Griff could provide twenty-four-hour-a-day protection for Barbara Jean, as well as give her a job to keep her occupied and her mind off the fact that she was a key witness.
“Give it up, Baxter,” Griff said as Nic approached him. “Ms. Hughes has made her decision.”
With a hint of pink in her cheeks—a sign of her barely controlled anger—Nic huffed loudly. A very unladylike sound.
“I understand that you want to nail this guy every bit as much as I do, but you have to know that your interference creates problems,” Nic said. “I can’t name a specific, but what if your involvement—your agency’s involvement—some how has already jeopardized this case? Why can’t you just back off and let us do our job?”
“My agency has done nothing to jeopardize your case,” Griff said. “I’ve made sure of that. Besides, there have been a few instances when we’ve actually helped you, given you information you didn’t have.”
Nic rolled her big brown eyes. “If anything happens to Barbara Jean—”
“Nothing will happen to her.”
“You can’t be sure of—”
“Neither could you. But I think she’d much prefer living and working on my estate to being hidden away in a safe house somewhere.”
“That was the clincher—the job offer. Money talks, doesn’t it, Mr. Powell?”
“Is that why you dislike me so much—because I’m rich?”
Nic grunted. “I dislike the fact that you use your money to get what you want.”
“No, that’s not it. You dislike me, not my money and power.”
“Off the record, just between the two of us?” She eyed him hostilely.
“Off the record, tell me exactly what you think.”
“I think you are an annoying, know-it-all, arrogant bastard.” Griff chuckled. “And, off the record, Nicole Baxter, you’re a self-righteous, irritating bitch.”
She simply stared at him for a full minute, then smiled. Her smile took him by surprise. There was something damned appealing about her when she smiled.
“When Barbara Jean is ready to work with a sketch artist—” Nic said.
“I’ll call you.”
“Before or after you hire your own sketch artist?”
“After,” he admitted. “Of course, if you were willing to share with me the way I share with you, it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“You know it’s against the rules.”
“And you never break the rules?”
“No. Never.”
Griff leaned down so that they were eye to eye and whispered, “Never say never, honey.”
Ruddy had rented a late model Chevrolet, something inconspicuous so that hopefully no one would remember either him or his car. And he’d dressed in a pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, and a quilted jacket he’d bought at Wal-Mart. He hoped he looked like an average Joe.
He needed to learn the reason why there had been no recent updates in the local or national news about the vicious attack on Gale Ann Cain; so he had decided the best thing he could do was find out for himself by coming to Williamstown. Incognito.
Where better to pick up local gossip than the town’s Waffle House? When he’d parked outside, he’d seen a police car and hesitated coming inside. But after reminding himself that he had nothing to fear from the local lawmen, he entered the greasy spoon as if he were just a regular guy passing through town. As luck would have it, he managed to find a booth directly behind the two patrolmen who were eating a late dinner.
A tall, skinny waitress with chopped-off blond hair, streaked with purple and pink, refilled the two cops’ coffee cups, then stopped at his table.
“Want coffee?” She eyed his overturned cup.
He quickly righted the cup, smiled at her, and said, “Yes, please.”
After filling the cup to the rim, she said, “Do you know what you want?”
“Uh …” He glanced around and saw the menu was on the table. “What would you recommend?” He smiled at the girl whose name tag read Tammy.
“Depends. Do you want breakfast, a sandwich, or a regular dinner?”
“Breakfast. Maybe bacon and eggs.”
“Sure thing. Toast, too? Wheat or white?”
“White.”
“Scrambled eggs?”
He nodded.
When she left to place his order,