Edge of Sanity: An Edge Novel

by Shannon K. Butcher

“You didn’t have to leave. At least not on my behalf.” Her gaze met his, and he could see now that she was angry. She was holding it back, hiding it, but he could see it flickering there in her eyes.

  “We both know that what we did was a bad idea. We’re working together. That has to come first.”

  “Meaning there can be no second? I don’t know about you, but I’m fully capable of multitasking.”

  He just bet she was, and the images that presented were enough to make his mouth go dry with lust.

  Clay took a swig of soda. “But I’m not. My brain is all fucked-up. I’m struggling to stay sane here, and I can’t fight these compulsions I keep feeling and my desire to sleep with you.”

  “All the more reason not to fight it. Your desire, I mean.”

  “I could hurt you again.” And that was his true shame. “Seeing those bruises on your arms . . . it reminded me of just how out of control I really am. I don’t know what’s going to set me off. If I went all batshit while I was with you like that, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Do you really think that sleeping with me will trigger that side of you? Does that make any sense at all?”

  “Maybe not, but it’s not worth the risk of hurting you again.”

  She let out a humorless laugh. “Then you’ve never felt the way you made me feel. Pleasure like that is worth a hell of a lot of risk.”

  Her praise went to his head and then straight to his cock. It swelled, making its desires known with painful effectiveness. “We should drop this line of conversation. I like you too much to take risks with you. Please, just leave it at that.”

  She didn’t nod or make any sign that she agreed, but she pushed a notepad toward him, sliding it across the little table. “I saw a pattern in the coordinates. I think I know where we should go next.”

  He flipped through the pages, taking note of how much work she’d done while he’d slept. “I’m not sure how safe it is to go anywhere at this point. You heard what those men said. This doctor guy is hunting for me, sending people where he thinks I might go.”

  “So we just sit around here? I don’t see how that’s going to help.”

  “It won’t.” Clay expelled a long sigh that did nothing to relieve his tension.

  “Wherever this place is, you went there a lot. In fact, you went there almost as often as you went home or to work. See?” She held out the stack of pages and flipped through them. “Everywhere there is an X is when you went here.”

  There were a hell of a lot of Xs.

  “I think we should check it out,” she said.

  “We could be walking into a trap.”

  “At least this time we’ll know what to expect. That makes it about as safe as it can be.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I know, but there’s no way to know how much time you have. If that doctor put something in your head to make you go back to him, then we have to do this now.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible?”

  Leigh shrugged, and he tried not to trs Ten Lwatch her breasts jiggle under her shirt. The stupid little blue puppies should have been a huge turnoff, but all he could think about was how he wished he could be one of them right now, nuzzling up against her chest.

  “At this point anything is possible. I’m keeping a dose of tranquilizer handy in case you start to wander off. That’s part of the reason I was so freaked-out earlier. I was afraid you weren’t yourself.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “Forget it. Water under the bridge. We need to move forward. Garrett needs me to move forward. So do those kids.”

  Clay had tried not to think about them. Knowing they were out there ate at him in a way he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to take. He’d shoved his worry deep, burying it as far down as he could. Her mentioning them made helpless fury rise to the surface, forcing him to start the process of shoving his rage and fear down all over again. “Okay, then. We’ll go here next.”

  “It’s not far. It’s a storage facility pretty close to your house.”

  “We should go in after dark.”

  She held up her hands. “This is your area of expertise. You plan and I’ll follow along. Right after you let me change your bandages.”

  “They’re fine. I’ll just—”

  “Nope,” she said, cutting him off. “This is my area of expertise, and you’re going to shut up and let me keep you healthy.”

  She was going to put her hands on him again and make him crazy, and there wasn’t a single excuse he could think of to make her back off. Best just to have it over and done so he could shove his head into planning their next move—one that involved as little touching as possible.

  * * *

  Adam stood in Clay Marshall’s living room, searching for something that would lead to him.

  The place was Spartan, coated in dust, as if no one had bothered to really clean for months. A trio of empty beer bottles littered a scarred coffee table. The couch was worn, with sad, flat cushions dented in the shape of a big man. A pillow and blanket sat rumpled at one end of the couch, as if someone had slept here.

  An obvious bachelor pad; there were no decorations or softer touches—just dingy white walls and mismatched furniture. The flat-screen TV was new and too big for the room, sitting on the hearth, blocking the fireplace. Power cords stretched across the dated shag carpet to reach what few electrical outlets there were.

  This was not a home, but a place where one could sleep and eat in solitude. One of the bedrooms was empty. The other had only a bed, a dresser, and one nightstand. There were few dishes in the cabinets, and those looked like something picked up from a variety of garage sales ten years ago.

  Clay Marshall didn’t live here; he merely subsisted.

  Adam had researched him and knew thimoman">he man had enough money to live much better than he did, which begged the question of why he lived like this. It was almost as if he were punishing himself.

  Not that Adam cared. Marshall was simply a tool to use—one that would pry from Dr. Sage the name of the brother Adam had lost. Now all he needed was another tool that would dig up Marshall from wherever he was hiding.

  Adam had almost given up on finding one here when he saw what he was looking for. There, mounted next to the door, was a framed photo that had been kept in pristine condition. No dust or cobwebs, it hung perfectly straight, right where Marshall would see it every time he left the house. The position indicated that it wasn’t here for guests, but for the man himself to see.

  Adam pulled the frame from the wall and pulled the photo out. On the back was scribbled, Mira and me on her twenty-third birthday.

  The couple on the front was smiling. Marshall’s arm was around this pretty young woman. She leaned into him, complete trust evident in her pose, and for some reason, it made Adam wish that anyone trusted him half as much as Mira trusted Marshall.

  There was something familiar about her.

  Her canted eyes. He’d seen eyes that exact shade of green before—bright, with a starburst of vibrant gold radiating out from the center. A fam

  iliar, keen intelligence glittered in her eyes, only he didn’t remember ever feeling as drawn in by them as he was now.

  Data shifted in Adam’s mind, changing shape as he went through images and names of people he knew, searching for where he’d seen Mira.

  And then it hit him. He hadn’t seen her before. He’d seen her father, years ago. They had the same eyes.

  This photo was of Mira Sage, daughter to Dr. Richard Sage—the man who’d sent him to find Marshall.

  Adam wondered how Dr. Sage was going to feel when Adam used his daughter as a tool. Perhaps the same way Adam felt about the good doctor using Eli as one.

  Sometimes karma did work.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The coordinates led Clay and Leigh to a storage facility that had seen better days. The asphalt was cracked, with dead weeds poking out around the edges. A rolling gate barred their path
, but the ground had settled, making the latch not quite close.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait in the car?” asked Clay.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’m getting set to do something illegal.”

  She gave him a pointed look, trying to stifle the guilt her admission caused. “I’ve committed assault on at least one person a day since meeting you. A little breaking and entering doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

  “Assault?”

  “Giving drugs to people without their consent? Yeah. Big no-no. If anyone reports me, I’ll lose my medical license.”

  “You don’t sound too worried.”

  Oh, she was worried, all right, but her decision was made years ago, the first time Payton came to her with a gunshot wound he didn’t want her to report. He’d offered to pay her brother’s enormous legal fees in exchange for her silence. She’d accepted. Patyon’s expensive lawyer took over the case and proved Hollis’s death had been a suicide. Garrett had been acquitted of murdering his brother. The price—going against her principles—had been worth the reward.

  Not that Garrett’s life was much better now than it would have been if he’d been convicted of murder. He was still locked up in a secret facility, cut off from the world, and refused to come out until they found a cure for what had been done to him. Which she would find. She had to believe that.

  Leigh couldn’t look Clay in the eye. “If it means helping my brother, then it’s worth it. After all, he was the one who put me through med school to begin with. Seems fair somehow.”

  “You’re a good sister. I’m sure Garrett appreciates what you do for him.” Clay covered her hand with his, sending a barrage of delicious shivers marching up her arm. She was sure he hadn’t intended to offer anything but comfort, but her rebellious hormones could only remember how those fingers had made her feel a few hours ago.

  “Actually, he wishes I’d quit trying to help him. He says he’s a lost cause.” She forced herself to look at Clay, hoping he hadn’t interpreted her statement wrong—that she could ever believe for one second that giving up was the right thing to do. “He’s not, you know. I believe that.”

  Clay nodded and pulled his hand away. “Then it’s best if we get in there and see what we can find. I just pray to God it’s not a pile of dead bodies I hid in there.”

  That thought was enough to chill any lingering heat from his contact. She kept forgetting what Clay was like when he checked out and left his body—when that other man took over and turned him cold and hollow.

  He moved the car to the parking lot of a neighboring grocery store and they walked over to the storage facility. The gate opened with a slight push, and once they slipped in, he shut it behind them, using a chunk of rock left for that purpose to hold it closed.

  “I haven’t seen anyone on our tail, but keep your eyes open,” he said.

  “There’s a camera mounted on the side of the office.”

  “It’s probably not monitored. My guess is it’s there as a deterrent more than for active surveillance. That model is too old for Web-based monitoring, and there’s no one inside.”

  The office building was mostly dark, with just one light left burning over the front desk. There were no signs of movement inside, or any that she could see out here.

  “Do you know which unit we’re looking for?”

  p wat she cou“Nope. But if I was wanting to do secret stuff, I’d pick one near the back, away from prying eyes.”

  He moved purposefully, checking behind him every few steps to make sure she was still there and that no one was following them. His vigilance scared her more than a little, but so far he hadn’t shown any signs of tension or fear. He was clearly in his element now, slinking around in the dark with possible danger lurking around every corner.

  Leigh, on the other hand, didn’t like the jarring bursts of adrenaline at all. They made her jumpy and queasy. She had no idea how Clay could stand it.

  He came to a sudden stop and went still.

  She looked around, sure someone had jumped out, but saw nothing. “Clay?”

  His posture changed, and all that relaxed smoothness seemed to spill out of him. His spine went rigid and he reached into his pocket. As he stared down at the keys, unmoving, Leigh started to worry.

  She slid in front of him and shone her flashlight so its glow splashed onto his face. “Clay? What’s going on?”

  “I know where we’re going.” He sounded shocked and sickened at the same time.

  “Where?”

  “This way.”

  He led the way down the rest of the row into the deep shadows at the end. The security light here was broken. Not just burned out, but shattered, as if someone had bashed it out—or shot it.

  He singled out a key and slid it into the heavy-duty padlock on one of the units. It went in easily, turning without effort.

  “Stand back,” he said and waited until she did as he asked before he hefted the overhead door up along its track.

  Lights came on automatically. Clay aimed his weapon, moving it as he sought out a target.

  “There’s no one here,” she said. “The lights must be motion activated or something.”

  A desk sat in the back corner of the unit, complete with a single chair. One section of wall was covered with corkboard. Clinging to it were dozens of photos and sticky notes. A bunch of boxes were stacked across one half of the opening, forming a sort of wall.

  Clay stepped inside, caution dripping from him. He looked overhead and low to the ground as if searching for traps. His flashlight beam gleamed off a thin wire near the floor. “Trip wire. Stay out there.”

  He didn’t need to tell her twice. She kept an eye down the row of storage units, making sure no one had found them.

  Going only so far as the threshold, she watched as he crouched behind the boxes with his pocketknife in hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Disconnecting the trigger device from the explosives. Move out to the other end of the row—just to be safe.—just tsafvin

  Leigh took a terrified step back, nearly stumbling over her own feet. If she hadn’t ditched the slick, dressy shoes and bought a pair of nice, grippy tennis shoes earlier, she would have fallen. “Explosives? Are you kidding me?”

  “No, but I built this device.”

  He built it? Theoretically, she knew he was a badass, but she figured he was more like a bodyguard than some kind of demolitions expert. “What the hell is it you do at your job?” she asked.

  “Little of this. Little of that. I’ll be done in a second. After you move away.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was distract him, so she did what he asked and hurried several yards away. As the seconds ticked by, the muscles in the back of her neck started to clench with worry.

  He was in there, risking his life like it was no big deal—like his life was of little value. That was how Hollis had acted, too, right before he’d killed himself.

  “All done,” he called out.

  Leigh ran back, anxious to see him alive and well with her own eyes.

  He stood up, pocketing his knife. “Come in and get out of the wind.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to go in there, but standing out here in the open, backlit like she was, wasn’t the safest option, either.

  Leigh took a deep breath and stepped inside. Clay reached high and slid the door down behind her. He shoved the padlock through a metal plate on the inside of the door—one she was fairly sure wasn’t a standard feature on these units—and bolted them inside.

  As she became aware that she was locked up with a man who was not always so nice, an uneven attack of anxiety hit her.

  He watched her, and the subtle frown of acceptance told her that he’d read her thoughts.

  His voice was low and soft, as if speaking to a wild animal. “I’m not trying to trap you in here with me, Leigh. I don’t want anyone to see the light and start nosing around. Say the word and you can leave a
nytime you want.” He held out the keys to her.

  She took them, mute. They jangled in her grasp, giving away how unsettling this whole situation was to her. Not only was being in here nerve-racking, but being anywhere in a small, enclosed space with Clay had the power to steal her breath away. It made her all too aware of his size and power. While part of her was still clamoring with fear, the rest of her was perking up to attention, watching for an opportunity to get them right back to where they’d been earlier, with his hands drawing the kind of pleasure from her she’d never forget.

  That she could even think of sex right now proved she was crazy.

  “I’m okay. Just jumpy.”

  “You’ve got those drugs with you, right?”

  She patted her jacket pocket and nodded.

  “Good. One wrong look from me, and you use them. I won’t hold it against you later, okay?”

  For some reason, that made her feel better. While she wouldn’t have done anything differently, there was still a small part of her that felt guilty for drugging him. His acceptance made that guilt lighten. She’d been carrying around so much lately that until now she hadn’t realized just how much her failure to help Garrett had been weighing on her.

  Clay went to the wall of photos and notes. The light from the desk shone over them, leaving dark shadows lingering behind the curled edges. “This is my handwriting, but I have no idea who these people in the photos are.”

  Leigh unpinned one from the wall. It was a photo of a white man in his thirties. He was looking to his left, and the angle of the shot was high, as if it had been taken from a rooftop or window. “He doesn’t look like he’s posing. I doubt he even knew his picture had been taken.”

  She turned it over. All that was on the back was a date—one she remembered as being a day when Clay had lost time.

  “Did you write this?” she asked, showing him the back.

  “Yeah. I did. Not that I remember.” He moved away and went to the desk and started rifling through the drawers.

  The notes were cryptic, most listing single words that meant nothing to her. Zebra, cantaloupe, mountain. “Any idea what the words are all about?”