The Dying Game. Beverly Barton

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      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. Too bad all that feminine lusciousness was wasted on a hard-as-nails, completely unlikable bitch.

      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—somehow 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, wish-you-were-a-man 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, something blatantly feminine.