Free Dead by Morning by Beverly Barton

won in her past, but he saw beyond the exterior beauty to the deep scars inside her. Maleah Perdue was a survivor.
    Derek suspected she just might be a worthy opponent for Browning.
    But at what cost to her?
    Griffin Powell had entrusted Maleah to Derek, expecting him to keep her safe and protect her from emotional trauma. Griff had a protective attitude toward all of his employees, but Maleah was special to him because she was his wife’s best friend. And the big man possessed an exaggerated sense of responsibility when it came to the people in his life, especially the women. Apparently, on a subconscious level, Griff thought of women as the weaker sex. He was, in so many ways, an old-fashioned gentleman. A good old Southern boy, raised the right way by his mama.
    Derek might have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and Griff a poor boy, but Griff was far more of a gentleman than Derek ever had been or would be. Derek had spent most of his life rebelling against his mother, his family, and the inherent snobbery and selfindulgent lifestyle that inherited wealth so often imposed on the heirs to multi-million-dollar fortunes. From his early teens, he had deliberately done the unexpected, anything and everything to piss off his mother and grandparents, and to snub his nose at the society in which they existed. Military boarding school had been their solution. His response had been to skip college after high school graduation and bum around the world like a penniless vagrant. He had certainly seen the world through the eyes of a man who had to earn his keep wherever he went.
    At twenty, flat broke and determined not to touch his trust fund, he had joined a group of unsavory characters, a sort of ragtag group of wannabe mercenaries, bluffing his way into their fold. He had learned later on that he hadn’t fooled them and they hadn’t expected him to survive his first mission. He’d been nothing more to them than an expendable foot solider.
    At twenty-four, he had returned to the States, worldweary and old beyond his years. Then he had taken just enough money from his trust fund to attend Vanderbilt and had graduated summa cum laude. He came from a long line of highly intelligent savvy businessmen and his family had expected the prodigal son to take his place in the business world alongside his uncles and cousins. He had shocked them all when he had joined the FBI.
    “Are you asleep?” Maleah asked Derek.
    “Nope.”
    “We’re almost there.”
    He opened his eyes and sat up straight. “Have you ever been inside a maximum security prison before today?”
    “No, I haven’t.” She paused just long enough to inhale and exhale. “I suppose you have.”
    “Yes, I have.”
    “I don’t need another lecture, so whatever you were going to say, keep it to yourself.”
    “I wasn’t going to give you a lecture,” he told her.
    “Good. Just remember that I will be conducting the interview, okay?”
    “Sure thing. As long as you understand that I may want to occasionally make a comment or ask a question.”
    “Keep your comments and questions to a minimum, will you? You’re here as an observer. That is your area of expertise, isn’t it, observing and forming an opinion?”
    “Yes, ma’am, it is.”
    He had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her that he had been observing her for quite some time and had formed a definite opinion. She was, without a doubt, the most irritating, aggravating, combative woman he’d ever known.

    They followed normal procedure, up to a point. They had parked in the facility’s designated visitor parking lot. They had presented positive ID prior to their admission and then undergone a preliminary search by electronic surveillance instruments. But after that, they were escorted to the warden’s office. Slender, gray-haired Claude Holland greeted them with quiet reserve, his facial expression giving away nothing and his handshake firm and quick. He scanned Maleah, his gaze simply