Cleo North is an independent Security Consultant.
If you run a business and worry about someone stealing your secrets, you might give her a call because she can spot weaknesses in a company's set-up with the best of them. If, however, you are worried about someone stealing you, you definitely need to give Ms. Cleopatra Aphrodite North a call. A word of warning, though, is you should never call her by that name. It is her name. You should not use it.
North was for several years a member of the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, the jet-jockies version of the Navy's NCIS, and it was such that she became very, very good at her job. With a glance at a crime scene she could spot those who were nervous for not-so-obvious reason. She could follow leads and learn from clues and apprehend miscreants as good as anyone else. Where she really shined, though, was in highly professional way she handled herself when the shooting started or dark alley had to be checked or terrorist nailed. When the assignment got especially hoary, that is when she was at her best.
No one is perfect, of course, and one case where she did not listen to her guy resulted in a suspect in a domestic argument later killed his girlfriend and then himself. While others said there was no way she could have known it would happen, she blamed herself and decided she had had enough. She resigned.
In the nearly ten years since her departure, she has taken the small security firm she stated to earn some sort of living and turned it into a major success story. She only had a couple of people with whom she worked regularly but she had a wide assortment of trained operative ready to freelance with her whenever needed. She also has a master martial arts instructor, former Special Forces soldier, who comes when called and who is forever training her when there is no case. She makes a lot of money and earns every dime.
One other thing going for her in the three-book series is the occasional presence of Major Jack Donovan, a man still in the OSI and someone she once worked with during a particularly dangerous assignment in Central America before her departure. In the heat of the climate and the peril they did more than just work together and now, after almost a decade, situations have come up that puts them in close (very close) contact. The action is definitely centered around North but having someone like Donovan around to help is not a bad thing, either. Certainly he is nothing bad to look at.