At the Edge of the Sun

by Anne Stuart

  “I’ll stay put. I’d rather face things than hide from them.” If her voice carried any extra meaning he chose to ignore it, concentrating instead on the instrumentation of the tiny twin-engine plane that was parked just beyond Cul de Sac’s compound.

  They were airborne within minutes. Randall flew the damned plane flawlessly. Maggie sat there, watching him, admiration and frustration warring for control. If only he’d show some sign of weakness, some sign of vulnerability.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me?” His voice seemed to come from far away, and she roused herself with an effort.

  “Ask you what?”

  “Ask me again if Bud was lying.”

  “You knew he was alive, didn’t you?” She fastened on a more interesting topic. “You never thought he was dead.”

  “I didn’t know. I’d heard enough rumors that there was a strong element of doubt, but no one was talking. The name Lazarus was just too damned coincidental.”

  “He is dead now, isn’t he?”

  Randall cast her a brief look. “He’s dead.”

  “Good,” she said, leaning back in the seat and shielding her eyes against the glare of the rising sun.

  “So ask me.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “Whether I hired him to kill Pulaski.”

  Maggie sighed. “I thought we’d settled that long ago.”

  “We didn’t.”

  “Okay, Randall, I’ll humor you. Did you hire Bud Willis to kill my husband?”

  “Yes.”

  Her heart stopped, slamming to a halt that was physically painful, before it started a slow, heavy jerking. “Explain.” Her voice was as raw as Mack’s had been.

  “Two years ago I ran into Mike Jackson at a restaurant in Washington, and like a fool, I asked about you. He just happened to have a picture of you and Pulaski in your house in Maine. The two of you looked so goddamned happy. I said all the right things, and that night I went out and got drunker than I’ve ever been, before or after.”

  “And?” Her voice was cold and still.

  “And I ran into Bud Willis. Or Bud Willis came looking for me. It doesn’t really matter which. And we proceeded to drink together, and get even drunker. And at one point during the evening he asked me how much it would be worth to me to have Pulaski iced. And I told him money was no object.”

  “You didn’t mean it.”

  “I was too drunk to know what I meant. Bud just said fine and ordered another round. Three days later Pulaski was dead and Bud sent me a bill for twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Did you pay it?” Everything hinged on his answer. Her whole life hinged on it; his too. If he said the wrong thing she would take the gun from her waistband and shoot out the instrument panel on the plane. And that would be the end of it. “Did you?”

  His bleak, despairing gaze was everything she could have hoped for. “I went out and found Bud. I broke his arm, three ribs, and wrist. I would have killed him if someone hadn’t pulled me off him.”

  Maggie leaned back, shutting her eyes as relief swept over her. Relief that was so sweet she felt dizzy with it, relief and love that threatened to burst within her. The final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place, and it was the only possible answer she could have accepted. He’d been as great of victim of Bud Willis’s madness and evil as she had.

  “So you can see it’s hopeless,” Randall continued, his eyes trained on the dawnlit horizon. “There’s no way you could live with someone responsible for Pulaski’s death.”

  “That’s true,” she said evenly. “So it’s a good thing I’m not planning to live with Lazarus.”

  He cast a brief, startled glance in her direction, but her expression was bland, giving nothing away.

  “We can probably make it as far as Cairo,” he continued. “You can make connections there.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He hesitated. “I have to go back to Lebanon.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a need-to-know basis.”

  Maggie sighed. “I hate Beirut in the winter.”

  “Then it’s lucky you don’t have to be there.”

  “Aren’t you going after all?”

  “I just told you I was going.”

  “Then I am too,” she said simply.

  She’d finally gotten his full attention. “Why?”

  “Because people who love each other live together and I’ve spent too many years without you,” she said.

  “No, Maggie,” he said gently, his voice inexorable. “You deserve better than me, and I’m setting you free.”

  “But I don’t want anyone better than you,” she cried. She could feel it slipping away, her only chance at happiness, and the more desperately she grabbed for it, the faster it dissolved.

  “No, Maggie,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. Maybe he was right or maybe he simply didn’t love her enough. Either way, she wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. Not right now.

  Maybe not ever. The days, weeks, years stretched ahead of her, alone in that sparse apartment of hers that now seemed more of a prison than a haven. Never had life looked so bleak, when she should have been weak and dizzy with relief. Instead she felt cold, lost, and confused.

  “I think I’ll go in the back after all,” she murmured.

  Randall said nothing, his narrowed eyes peering into the dawn-lit sky. Maggie rose, skirting his seat, and for a moment she thought she felt his hand brush hers. But when she looked he was still intent on the horizon.

  She pulled the curtain behind her and sank into one of the seats in the tiny cabin. For a long moment she stared out into the slowly lightening sky. Her eyes were stinging, burning, and her heart felt like lead. Leaning back, she fastened the seat belt with shaking hands and slowly she sank into a troubled sleep.

  When she awoke things were still and silent. She blinked her eyes open, disoriented, and the bright midday sunlight was pouring in the window, washing over her and the piece of white paper lying in her lap.

  When you have time to think about it you’ll know it couldn’t work. Part of you will always blame me, and I’ll always blame myself. But I have loved you, the best I know how to love. Even if it was second best.

  Her own words flayed her. She’d accused him of coming in a poor second to Mack, and he’d never forgotten. But it had been a lie, a lie she had never confessed to. She’d loved Mack, with all her heart and soul, but she’d loved Randall first, and she loved him last. And there was no way she was going to spend the rest of her life without him.

  She was off the plane in a flash. He’d left the plane too damned far away from the terminals, but she ignored the distance, racing across the deserted runways toward the cluster of dun-color buildings. They couldn’t have been sitting on the ground that long—he wouldn’t have been able to get far enough that she couldn’t find him.

  It was a close call. The third person she asked spoke English, but he hadn’t seen a tall American. The fifth person had seen Randall, but wasn’t sure what direction he was heading. The seventh person thought he might have been heading toward the Pan Am terminal, the eighth person saw him going toward Lebanon Air.

  She’d just wrapped desperate hands around a European businessman’s lapels when she saw him. He stood head and shoulders above the crowds, moving away from her with oblivious determination. Moving toward the boarding gate of Lebanon Air, away from her, out of her life.

  Shoving the startled businessman out of the way, she ran after him. She had only enough breath left to run, not enough to call to him. She raced on, watching him disappear out the door with despairing eyes.

  If the neatly dressed Lebanon Air boarding clerk thought he’d stop an Amazon like Maggie Bennett he was painfully mistaken. She slammed him against the wall as she raced past him, into the blinding sunlight.

  He was almost out of sight. She stopped just long enough to summon enough breath. “Randall,” she scream
ed, but it came out in a rasping croak, one that he couldn’t hear over the noise of the jet engines.

  He had one foot on the boarding stairs. If he got on that plane, if he flew back to Lebanon, he wouldn’t come back. He’d die there in that war-torn country, and she’d be left to mourn him, left empty and alone.

  “Randall,” she cried again, but the sound was even more strained. She could feel the wetness of tears pouring down her face, drying in the hot Arab sun. He couldn’t hear her, he was lost to her, forever.

  He took one more step, and then he stopped. Slowly he turned, to look directly into her desperate eyes.

  “Randall,” she said again, and this time her voice was gone completely, only a whisper of sound. “I love you.”

  And then he was moving. Past the disgruntled passengers, back down the stairway, across the tarmac. And she was running, her heart bursting, her lungs aching, running, running, with the sun burning down around them, gilding their entwined figures. Into his arms. Into the light at the edge of the sun. And the darkness was gone forever.

  Author Bio

  I’ve been writing since the dawn of time. A child prodigy, I made my first professional sale to Jack and Jill Magazine at the age of 7, for which I received $25 (admittedly my father worked for the publisher). Since then I’ve written gothics, regencies, romantic suspense, historical romance, series romance—anything with sex and violence, love and redemption. I misbehave frequently, but somehow have managed to amass lots of glittering prizes, like NYT, PW and USA Today bestseller status, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Romance Writers of America, and a decent smattering of Romantic times and RITA awards.

  I live on a lake in Northern Vermont with my incredibly fabulous husband. My two children have flown the coop, but the three cats do their best to keep us from being lonely.

  In my spare time I quilt and play around with wearable art, and the rest of the time I write write write. Apparently women of a certain age get a rush of creativity, and I’m currently enjoying it. Too many stories to write, not enough hours in the day.