way home, just to see what it is. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but the GPS leads me to an industrial area off a small corporate airstrip most of the way back to Port St. Mary.
I step inside the door and find Spencer Security takes up the entire inside of a steel warehouse that has to span an acre. To the right at the near end, there is a cluster of offices partitioned off with portable walls. At the far end, I can see what looks like a soundproofed area that spans the entire back of the warehouse. A series of pops echo through the cavernous space from that direction. An indoor shooting range, most likely, which intrigues me almost as much as the private jet positioned next to a roll-up door in the airstrip side of the building. To my left is a row of half a dozen limos of all shapes and sizes, from Town Cars to Escalades, standard to stretch. Across from the jet, behind the offices, are a regulation boxing ring and two martial arts mats.
“Can I help you?” a smoky female voice asks. I turn to see a stunning woman in her forties strutting toward me.
“I was told to stop in about a job.”
She raises her eyebrows. “By who?”
I look her over. She doesn’t look like someone who messes around, and I’d bet my left nut she’ll be running a background check on me if she’s hiring for any kind of security. I know Robert Davidson should come up clean, but it still feels like a risk to have a professional digging around.
“Sorry,” I say, holding up my hands and backing toward the door. “My mistake.”
“Robert Davidson,” she says. It’s not a question.
I stop and lower my hands.
She folds her arms over her chest. “Chuck Murdock gave me your name. Said you were a friend of a friend and you’d be stopping by.”
“What is it you’re hiring for?” I ask.
“We’re having trouble holding on to qualified bodyguards.”
I bark out a laugh. “You want me to be a bodyguard? Seriously?”
“It’s good pay and only one or two evenings a week, though there are occasional clients who need short-term round-the-clock service.”
I move back to where she stands. “And what makes you think I’m qualified?”
“I was told you’re ex-military.”
“You were told wrong,” I say, holding her gaze and waiting for the reaction.
She arches an eyebrow at me. “Then you tell me. Are you qualified?”
“Probably. What’s qualified?”
“Someone proficient in firearms and hand to hand, who can carry himself in a highly professional manner and keep his head under pressure.”
“That sounds like my life,” I mutter.
“Doing?”
I give her a cynical smile. “I could tell you, but then I’ll have to kill you.”
Her smile is just as cynical. “Not if I kill you first.”
This woman is a firecracker. “Who are you?”
“How rude of me,” she says, pressing a hand to her chest in an I’m-so-shocked gesture. She holds it out to me. “Elaine Spencer.”
“Who flies the jet?” I ask, shaking her hand.
She gives me a sideways smile. “My pilot . . . unless that’s a skill set you possess as well.”
There’s a pang in my chest as I think about Sherm. He wants to be a pilot when he’s older . . . or at least he did, before all this started. “Who are your clients?”
She slicks back a strand of her long, black hair. “Celebrities and wannabes mostly, and the occasional politician or businessman.”
“You’ve got yourself a bodyguard.”
“Why don’t we start with the application first.” She turns for the offices. “Follow me.”
I follow her into the first door and find a sofa along the back wall pointing at a flat-screen TV. There is a rack of DVDs on the table under the TV. I move to the stack and look at some of the names scrawled across the cases in sharpie.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding about celebrities.” I turn to look at Elaine. “What are these DVDs of?”
“We run through itineraries a week before the event for security issues that need to be addressed prior to a client’s arrival. We keep the tapes for training purposes.”
“Thorough,” I say, picking up a case dated last week and labeled Tiger Woods.
“Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
She disappears through a door in the back of the room as I settle into the sofa. When she comes back a few minutes later, she’s got some papers on a clipboard. “This is our basic employment application, and a psychological screening.”