The Protector

"Yeah, the ozone layer's getting thi

"How are your injuries?" Duncan asked.

"Healed."

"The ambassador sends his regards."

"He's very lucky."

"Yes. To have had somebody as good as you ru

Cavanaugh couldn't resist gri

Duncan gave him a "guilty as charged" look. "Do you think you're ready to go back to work?"

Taking another glance over his shoulder, Cavanaugh noticed that the man in the black suit looked more intense as he checked his watch yet again and continued staring toward Avery Fisher Hall. The open cuff around the thick watch became more bothersome.

At once, the man saw something that made him sit rigidly. With the briefcase on his lap, he placed his hands on the buttons that would open it.

"Excuse me a minute," Cavanaugh said to Duncan. He stood and rounded the fountain, following the man's gaze toward Avery Fisher Hall and a red-haired woman who had just stepped out. In her thirties, well dressed and pleasant-looking, she was with a man, whom she gave a "see you later" kiss on the cheek. Then she started across the open area. In ten seconds, she would pass through the crowd and be close to where the man in the black suit sat staring at her.

Cavanaugh came up on his blind side as the man opened the briefcase just enough to reach inside it.

The woman came closer and glanced in the man's direction, amazing Cavanaugh, inasmuch as most people never noticed anything around them. She froze as the man dropped the briefcase, revealing a pistol in his hand.

Several things happened almost at once. The woman screamed, the man moved toward her, and Cavanaugh darted behind him, shoving his arm into the air. He wrenched the pistol from the man's hand, dragged him backward, tipped him into the fountain, and pressed his head underwater.

Duncan came over to him. "Yes, you're certainly feeling better."

"Are you just going to stand there enjoying yourself, or would you mind calling a cop?"

Duncan pulled out a cell phone. "Don't you think you should let him breathe?"

"Not really, but I guess we'll never hear his story otherwise."

"She told him she wanted a divorce-something like that- and he couldn't take the rejection, of course," Duncan said.

"Of course. But I want to know why he dressed up. He doesn't normally wear a suit. You can tell, because his watch is too big for the cuff on a dress shirt."

"If you don't let him breathe pretty soon, you'll never know."

"Spoilsport." Cavanaugh pulled the man's face from the water, watched him splutter, and demanded to know about the suit.

With a little more submersion, the man was persuaded to explain. After shooting his wife, who had indeed asked for a divorce and who'd been going to meet him at her lawyer's office, he had pla

"Just when you think you've heard everything," Cavanaugh said.

But there was more. The man had kept checking his watch because he'd known when to expect his wife to leave work and go to her appointment with her attorney. One of the three dials on his watch indicated the current time. Another dial showed the amount of time that had elapsed since she'd told him she wanted a divorce; a third counted down the remaining seconds that she'd had to live.

Cavanaugh shoved the man's head underwater again.

"So what do you think?" Duncan asked.

"About?"

"Are you ready for another assignment?"

2

The Warwick Hotel had recently been renovated, but its marble and dark wood lobby still evoked the tradition and character of a Manhattan landmark. Cavanaugh turned left and entered the hotel's quiet bar, where an attractive woman with green eyes and an intriguing expression sat at a corner table. He approved of her choice of location-her back to an inside wall, away from the bar's numerous windows-although if he'd believed she was in any danger, he wouldn't have let her appear in public in the first place.

Her name was Jamie Travers, and until recently, she had lived in seclusion with him at his ranch in the mountains near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from where he had periodically set out on security assignments, taking care that her weapons training was up-to-date and that colleagues in need of R and R were there to watch over her when he had to go away. Two years earlier, she had testified about a gangland killing she'd witnessed. The mob boss who'd gone to prison had put out a contract against her. Twice, despite police protection, she'd nearly been killed, prompting Cavanaugh, who admired her determination, to step in and arrange for her to disappear. The contract had finally ended when the man who'd ordered it choked to death while eating spaghetti and meatballs in a federal prison. Despite the seeming i

Shoulder-long glossy brunette hair made the beige pantsuit and the emerald blouse she wore perfect choices. Admiring his wife, he moved a chair so that he could sit in the corner with her. The location allowed him to survey both entrances to the room as well as the pedestrians passing the windows along Fifty-fourth Street and the Avenue of the Americas.

"What are you drinking?" he asked.

'Perrier and lime."

He tasted it, savoring the lime. "How was your afternoon? Enjoying being a tourist?"

"Love it. I haven't been to the Museum of Modern Art in so long. It was like seeing an old friend. And how was your afternoon?"

He told her.

"You accepted another assignment?" Jamie looked surprised.

"We pla

"But you're barely healed from the last job you did."

"This one's easy."

"That's what you said the last time."

"And the money's good."

"I've got more than enough money for both of us," Jamie said.

Cavanaugh nodded. His protective agent's income allowed them to stay at the Warwick, which was comfortable without being palatial. But if they'd used Jamie's money, which came from the sale of a promising dot-corn company she'd founded during the Internet frenzy of the 1990s, they'd have stayed in a master suite at the Plaza or, at the very least, the St. Regis.

"Why don't you let me take care of you?" she asked.

"Foolish male pride."

"You said it. I didn't."