Edge of Betrayal

by Shannon K. Butcher

  How could Gage not recognize him?

  Maybe because Gage was a good and decent man—the kind of man who saw what was inside the hearts of others. And when he looked inside Adam, there was nothing familiar looking back at him.

  * * *

  Mira was shaking by the time she’d bypassed the security system and they’d made it into Ruby’s apartment.

  Adam shut the door behind them with a soft click. “Plant your surveillance devices while I look around.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “As little as humanly possible.”

  She made quick work of identifying the prime areas to target and moved as fast as she dared. She’d gotten three of the bugs planted when she heard keys jangling on the other side of the door.

  She raced to the bedroom where Adam was and whispered, “She’s here.”

  He didn’t waste time asking her any questions. Instead, he grabbed her arm and shoved her into a small walk-in closet. He pushed her behind the open door and crowded her with his body.

  “Close the door,” she whispered.

  “No. It was open when we came in. Just be quiet. It’s probably the maid.”

  She squeezed back into the dark space as far as she could go. Adam shifted toward her and drew his weapon. With slow, practiced movements, he threaded a silencer onto the barrel.

  Mira desperately hoped he wasn’t going to need it.

  He put his mouth next to her ear. “We’ll wait until she starts to vacuum, then slip out.”

  But as the click of heels sounded on the kitchen floor, Mira realized the truth. That wasn’t a maid. It was Ruby Rypan.

  A second later, the woman crossed through the bedroom toward the bathroom. Mira could barely see her through the crack in the door, but what she did see made her skin go cold.

  Ruby moved with precise, almost robotic motions. Her hair was so perfect it could have been molded plastic, and her skin flawless enough that it must have been airbrushed. None of that was what bothered Mira, though. There was something else—something that tickled the back of her mind, something she hadn’t noticed on camera.

  But what?

  Mira studied her as she tried to let go of the frantic fear quivering in her chest.

  Ruby tossed her suit jacket on the bed and slipped off her heels as she walked. She was much shorter now, but still easily as tall as Bella. There was a birthmark on her left calf that looked almost like a child’s handprint.

  That’s when it hit Mira. She knew Ruby. They’d been kids together. She’d been one of the kids her father had taken down to his lab for hours, doing God knew what to her.

  She disappeared into the bathroom. Water ran into a tub.

  Mira didn’t realize she was gripping Adam’s shirt in her fist until he turned, gently tugging it free. One look at her face and he frowned in concern.

  “What?” he mouthed.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t talk about this now. Not here.

  They waited in silence while the tub filled. Ruby appeared again, this time in a silky black robe. Her hair was down and flowing about her shoulders. Gone were the stockings obscuring the birthmark on her calf—the same one Mira had seen on a scrawny child’s leg years ago.

  There was no mistaking it. Ruby was one of her father’s subjects. And she wanted to free him.

  The urge to flee pounded against the soles of her feet. Adam must have sensed her anxiety, because he reached back and stroked her arm in a slow, soothing sweep.

  Her pulse slowed. She was able to pull in a full, deep breath. She laced her fingers with his, not even caring that it made her seem weak and afraid.

  She needed to reach out to Ruby. To offer the poor woman help. She was a victim of her father’s evil, and it was Mira’s responsibility to do everything she could to clean up his mess.

  Ruby went back into the bathroom. The water stopped running. Splashing sounded as she got into the tub.

  Adam tugged on her hand. She followed in his wake, moving as silently as possible. They were out the door and on the elevator in seconds. It was only after the doors shut that Mira let go of the breath she’d been holding.

  He cupped her face and tipped it up. “You’re okay now. She didn’t see us.”

  All Mira could do was nod. Her whole body was quivering with adrenaline, and it made her wonder what the hell junkies of the stuff saw in it. All it did for her was make her feel like she was going to puke.

  His thumbs stroked across her shoulders as they rode down to the first floor. She let her forehead fall against his chest. His heart was beating slow and steady, as if nothing had happened.

  She envied him his cool.

  He turned as the car reached the ground. His hand casually circled her upper arm, forcing her to walk at a calm pace. When they were finally outside with the cold winter sunshine hitting her skin, she let go of her control and gave in to the single sob that absolutely needed to come out.

  “You’re okay,” said Adam again. “Just keep walking.”

  She did. His firm hold on her arm made sure of that. He opened her door, settled her in the seat, then went around the car. As soon as he was inside with the door shut, she blurted out, “I know her.”

  His frown told her he didn’t understand her meaning. “Of course you do. We studied her all morning.”

  “No. I mean I’ve seen her before. I knew her. When she was a kid.”

  That, he understood perfectly. “One of your father’s subjects?”

  She nodded. “I remembered the birthmark. She was about my age, wearing a bright yellow checked skirt. There was dirt on the hem, and it was too short for her, like she’d grown out of it. I remember her going down into the lab with some man. He came back out, but she stayed down there for a long time. When she came up, she was crying.”

  “What else?”

  “This was back when Dad was working out of the basement. There weren’t many kids then—just a few. Like Clay.”

  “Do you know what he did to her?”

  “No idea. We can look at the records. They’re not complete, but we might be able to figure out which subject she was.”

  “Ruby Rypan isn’t her real name. Her background was too clean for it not to have been a false identity.”

  “Do you think she knows?” asked Mira.

  “Knows what?”

  “That the man she’s working for now is the one who hurt her when she was a kid.”

  “The real question is whether or not she’s choosing to do any of this. We’ve seen others acting against their will. She could be doing the same.”

  Mira hugged herself. “This is all my fault.”

  “Impossible,” said Adam. “Your father’s actions are his own.”

  “Yeah, but if it hadn’t been for the success he had experimenting on me, he might not have hurt all those other kids. I’m the reason the Threshold Project went as far as it did.”

  “That’s not true. You can’t think like that.”

  He didn’t understand. No one really did. How could they? It wasn’t as though everyone grew up with a mad scientist father. “If only I’d known enough then to fudge the results of his tests, all the damage he’d done would have ended with me. I could have saved all those kids if I’d been smart enough.”

  “How old were you?” he asked.

  Mira shrugged. “I don’t know. Four? He might have done stuff to me earlier, but four was when I started remembering it.”

  “You were a baby. You didn’t know any better.” He pried one of her hands away from her tight hug and warmed it between his palms. “No four-year-old is responsible for the actions of her parents, no matter how smart she might be.”

  “Logically, I know that. But I wasn’t your average four-year-old.”

  “Because of what he did to you.”

&nbs
p; “I should have used it against him then.”

  He gave her hand a squeeze. “There is no possible way your involvement could have made or broken the Threshold Project.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I was born before you. The research had been going on for years by the time you were four. You couldn’t have stopped it if you’d tried.”

  “But I didn’t try. Maybe I could have at least slowed it down.”

  “Stop it. All this second-guessing is doing is making you doubt yourself now. Do you really want him to continue to have such power over you?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Then let it go. Do what you know is right now and destroy everything he’s ever worked to create.”

  He was right. Her father might have made her what she was now, but she was determined to use every bit of brainpower and stamina she had to see that his betrayal ended with her.

  She squared her shoulders and looked at him. “Take me back to the office. I want to look at the research and see if I can find out who Ruby really is. And how we can help her.”

  “She’s not the kind of woman we help,” said Adam, his voice ringing with the hard edge of steel on steel.

  “No?” asked Mira, confused.

  “No. Sadly, Ruby Rypan is beyond our help. She’s the kind of woman we destroy so that others can survive.”

  * * *

  Ruby lounged in her tub long enough to give her visitors time to escape.

  It had taken them long enough to find her. She’d been waiting for this for weeks, and the second her silent alarm had been triggered, she knew her patience had paid off.

  Adam Brink and Mira Sage were exactly what she’d been hoping for. They no doubt would have bugged her apartment, giving her the perfect way of conveying information to them that she so desperately wanted them to have.

  Now all she had to do was set her plan in motion.

  Dr. Sage would be free soon, and when he was, he would reward her for her faithful service.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sophie spent hours going through videos of the area surrounding the location of her abduction. When she found nothing, she moved on to the area where she’d finally managed her escape.

  Lila Mallory, a secretary who worked at the Edge, slipped into the room with a steaming cup of coffee.

  The woman was about as interesting as a used brown paper sack. Her drab clothes and plain face were made appealing only by close proximity to her mousy hair and gnawed fingernails. There was a nervous quality to her, as if she were expecting someone to jump out and scare her at any second. Her nose was pink, as if she’d recently been crying, though Sophie doubted that was the case since she’d looked like that for the past several hours.

  Every few minutes, Lila very sweetly popped her head into the conference room where Sophie was working, just to see if she needed anything. So far, she’d refused the kind offer, which, apparently, had led Lila to take matters into her own hands.

  She set the coffee next to the laptop. “I don’t know how you take it, so I brought cream and sugar.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lila slipped into the chair next to Sophie’s and waited. For what, Sophie wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t about to ignore the other woman.

  She sipped the coffee, covering the grimace over how awful it tasted.

  Lila beamed. “Are you having any luck?”

  Because it seemed to make her happy, Sophie kept drinking the coffee. “Not really. How did Riley get this footage, anyway?”

  “Payton pulled some strings. He’s got friends everywhere.” She leaned forward and whispered, “He’s rich, you know.”

  “I didn’t, but good for him.”

  Lila just sat there, letting the uncomfortable silence roll on.

  “I should probably get back to work here,” said Sophie.

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s just that everyone around here is gone all the time, and I get a little lonely.”

  “Not enough work to do?”

  “Not really. I usually finish before noon and just hang out the rest of the day.”

  “Boring.”

  “Very. But I’ll let you go.”

  Sophie took pity on the woman. “No, it’s okay. You can hang out here.”

  Lila smiled and relaxed in her chair.

  Sophie drank more of the vile brew as she queued up the next video. “So what do you know about Riley?”

  “He’s a great guy. Works really hard. Takes care of his mom. Bella couldn’t run this place without him.”

  Was that a hint of a crush Sophie heard in her voice?

  “Is he seeing anyone?”

  “Oh,” said Lila. “No. He doesn’t date anymore.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Something to do with his ex-girlfriend. Lots of drama. I didn’t hear much, but Bella was ready to shoot someone over the whole thing.”

  “I met Bella. She seems like the type who’s always ready to shoot someone.”

  “She’s not that bad. She took me in when I needed a job.”

  “And you’re very loyal.” Sophie stifled a yawn.

  “It’s easy to be. Everyone here is so glamorous. Did you know they have a whole room here just for evening gowns and tuxedos?”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve all got built-in armor and stuff. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Sophie didn’t know what it was about this woman, but she was practically falling asleep just listening to her. “Yeah. Cool.”

  “I put one on once. Bella made me do it. She said I needed to dress up once in a while.”

  “Is that so? Bet that was fun.”

  “Not really. It was stiff and itchy. And I didn’t really have enough boobs to pull it off.”

  Sophie’s head did this slow, lazy spin thing. Clearly, her exhaustion and dehydration were catching up with her.

  “You look tired. I’ll go now so you can concentrate.” Lila picked up the empty coffee cup and slipped out.

  Sophie pushed the laptop aside and laid her head down on her hands. She went lights-out in seconds.

  * * *

  Lila cracked the door open and made sure the drugs had taken hold. As soon as she saw Sophie’s limp posture, she knew it was time.

  She used the cell phone that had been given to her to dial the man who’d been waiting for her signal all morning.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “Location?”

  “First-floor conference room. Did she tell you when I can see my baby?”

  “She’ll be in touch.”

  “But that wasn’t our deal. She said if I did this, I’d get to see him.”

  “Take it up with the doctor. I’ve told you all I know.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, lady. If you don’t do the job, neither one of us is going to like what the good doctor does to us. Pull the trigger, already.”

  He was right. She had no choice. “Cameras down on your mark.”

  “I’m in position. Go.”

  Lila temporarily deactivated the cameras inside the first floor of the office. “You have two minutes to get her out of the building.”

  “I’ll only need one.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Riley couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept wandering back to Sophie.

  The way she looked wearing only his sweatshirt. The way she smiled at him. The way her eyes warmed when talking about sex.

  With him.

  He read the same paragraph for the tenth time, comprehending none of it.

  What he really needed was a couple of hours in the gym to blow off some steam. Too bad there wasn’t time for such things. The best he could do was take ten minutes in the john with his fist and his thoughts of a woman he
knew better than to touch.

  If the idea hadn’t felt so wrong, he might have actually given in to the urge.

  He pushed away from his desk and went to seek her out. If he couldn’t get her off his mind, maybe he could help her with the task of working through hours of video footage that might or might not have caught a glimpse of a face or license plate of the bad guys on tape.

  Without a solid lead to follow, there was no way to find and stop the men who were after her.

  A repairman passed Riley’s office, pushing the sagging remains of one of the gym’s battered heavy bags on a cart.

  The man smiled, but it was purely social, not quite reaching his eyes. “This thing’s seen better days, huh?”

  “We had a lot of good hours together. I left more than a bit of skin on that thing over the years.”

  The repairman pushed the elevator button to take him down to the garage. “Well, the new one’s up and ready for a beating whenever you are.”

  Something wasn’t quite right here. “Did Lila sign you out?”

  “She was going to walk me out, but she’s on the phone. I didn’t want to bother her.”

  Riley’s instincts were humming, telling him something about this guy was off. Bella normally didn’t allow people to traipse around without an escort—especially not since they’d taken on the new government contract. There was way too much sensitive information floating around to let strangers wander the halls.

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  “Thanks,” said the repairman, “but you don’t need to.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  “I was on my way out anyway,” lied Riley.

  The man nodded and pushed the cart inside. As it bumped over the threshold, the heavy bag shifted. Riley reached down to steady it.

  It was warm and didn’t feel at all like it had the thousands of times he’d thrown a punch at it. In fact, it felt . . . bony.

  A female moan rose from the bag. He knew that voice, muffled or not.

  Sophie.

  There was a flash of motion from the left. Riley saw a glimpse of the man’s weapon a second before it was too late.