Edge of Sanity: An Edge Novel

by Shannon K. Butcher

  “No windows,” said Clay. “That’s going to make it impossible to pick any of them off once they’re inside.”

  “Sage is no fool. He knows we’re armed. He picked this place on purpose.”

  “He knew we wouldn’t go firing indiscriminately with Mira and Leigh inside.”

  “Like I said, he’s no fool.”

  “I should sneak up there—get a little closer.”

  Payton stalked toward him, wearing a look Clay had never seen on the older man before. It was hard, cold, with more than a hint of badass. “Get behind that rifle and keep your eyes open. If things go bad, I’m going to need you ready to fire. There are a lot more of them than there are of us, so you need to man up and keep your head in the game, understand?”

  Payton was right. Clay was scattered—his worries for the women sending his thoughts all over the place. This wasn’t like him. He was usually calm and cool under fire.

  Then again, usually the lives of the women he loved weren’t at stake.

  Panic flickered around the edges of his consciousness as that thought simply sprang to life, fully formed. He didn’t dare look at it or even acknowledge that he’d had it. Not here. Not now. Instead, he shoved it away and put his eye to the scope.

  “I see two men outside,” said Clay. “One of them is watching us.”

  Payton lay down on the cold ground and eased behind the second rifle, settling in as if he’d just slipped into a favorite bathrobe. “Let him watch. We’re playing by their rules. At least for now.”

  “And as much as I hate their rules, we’re going to do whatever we have to to keep Mira and Leigh alive. I know you have it out for Sage, but all I care about is the women.”

  “Agreed.”

  But when he got them home and reassured himself they were both safe and whole, he was going to come gunning for Sage and deliver the payback that he had coming his way, even if that meant Clay had to stab out his own eardrums. That man was never going to threaten his loved ones again. Ever.

  * * *

  Leigh stepped into the dimly lit barn. Apparently, she wasn’t fast enough for the man behind her, because he gave her a good shove, making her stumble forward.

  The paint left on the wood had mostly peeled off. What had once been a concrete floor was now more the consistency of gravel. Large pitted areas had lifted up and crumbled away. In the center was an oil stain the size of a child’s wading pool. Stalls lined one side of the barn, and on the other were stacks of moldering hay bales. A couple of folding tables and chairs had been set up, along with an array of electronic equipment. On the screen of one laptop, Leigh could see the colorful blobs indicating the heat signatures of two people.

  “They can see you,” she whispered, hoping that her voice was loud enough to carry to the matching earpiece Payton wore.

  They’d taken her gun away, and the syringe of tranquilizers she’d kept on hand, but either hadn’t noticed the earpiece or pretended they hadn’t.

  She scanned the room, counting men. She wanted to convey whatever information she could to Payton in the hopes that it would help if things turned ugly. “Which one of the six of you is Dr. Sage?” she asked. “And where is Mira?”

  A muffled sound of fear rose from one of the stalls—a woman’s voice.

  Leigh moved in that direction on pure instinct. “It’s okay, Mira. I’ve got what they want. We’re going to walk out of here in just a minute.”

  The stall door creaked open, revealing a man in his sixties, with a stooped posture and rounture andd glasses. He was mostly bald, with wispy bits of white hair over his ears.

  Her first thought was that Dr. Sage didn’t look like a deranged mad scientist. Her second thought was that the gun he held against his daughter’s side proved how wrong appearances could be.

  “Open the briefcase,” he ordered.

  Leigh didn’t hesitate. She set it on the chunky floor and showed him what was inside. Paper, USB drives. She didn’t spare the stuff more than a glance. It had no meaning compared with Mira’s life.

  “Let her go. You have what you want.”

  “Not until I’m sure that it’s authentic.” He nodded to one of the armed men. “Check the drives.”

  A man took the briefcase and slipped one of the drives in. The dark screen flared to life. He frowned. “There’s data here, but it’s encrypted.”

  “You have what you want,” said Leigh. “Let Mira go now.”

  A shadow shifted behind Mira, forming the shape of a man. He’d been hiding in the darkness near the hay bales, so still that she hadn’t seen him until now. He was tall, lean. He looked angry, but his gaze was fixed on that gun at Mira’s side, as if he could move it through sheer will alone. “I’ll take the women outside and drop them off a few miles away.”

  “No,” said Dr. Sage. “If the data is encrypted, then we need Mira to decrypt it.”

  Leigh barely kept herself from screeching at him. Instead, her voice came out as a harsh, guttural thing. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “It is now.”

  * * *

  Mira stared at the computer screen, knowing that she couldn’t let her father see this information. He’d done bad things, but she’d hoped that all of that was the in past.

  She knew better now.

  The information contained in these files was dangerous. It had the power to destroy lives, and Mira was not going to help him do that. Not anymore. She’d been an unwilling participant in her father’s experiments for years. He’d used her—changed her.

  But she was no longer her father’s puppet. It didn’t matter what it took; she was not letting him get this information. Ever.

  Before she could think better about her decision, she deleted all the data on the drive and replaced it with a repeating string of text listing the URL for a foulmouthed blogger who liked to rant about the color of paint used in men’s bathrooms across the Midwest. Once that was done, the old data overwritten multiple times, she re-encrypted the information with a simple substitution cipher, making it look like it had before—a bunch of gibberish.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it,” said Mira. “This encryption is beyond my ability. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  Her father turned toward her, looking at her as he had for years, with disgust and thinly veiled hostility hovering in his eyes. She hated that looking at his eyes was almost the same as looking into a mirror. She hated knowing she had that connection to him—that the two of them shared anything in common. But mostly she hated that part of his success was at least partially her fault.

  “Of course you can do it,” said her father. “You’re just not trying.”

  He grabbed Leigh by the hair. She yelped in pain and leaned sideways, trying to relieve the pressure on her scalp. He dragged her to where Mira was sitting at the computer and pressed the barrel of his gun against Leigh’s temple. “Perhaps you should try harder.”

  Hot, sickening terror set in the pit of Mira’s stomach, burning like a live coal. There was no question as to whether her father would kill Leigh. She knew he would.

  Mira tried not to show her fear. Her father would feed on it, and it would make him stronger, bolder.

  She shrugged as if she didn’t care what happened to her friend, even though her nerves rattled so hard they threatened to tear her apart. The damage was already done, and she couldn’t undo it. Not with the number of times she’d rewritten over the data. There was no getting it back, which had been her exact intent when she’d made the decision. “There’s nothing I can do if the data is corrupted.”

  “If the data is corrupted, then they failed to bring me what I needed, and you’ve forfeited a life.”

  Bravado was not Mira’s strength, but she shoved her chin up and pretended like she was some tough chick like Bella. “Then kill me now, because there’s not a fucking thing I can do about corrupted data.”

  “It’s not you I’ll kill first. I’ll kill your friend. Slowly.” He moved the gun
to Leigh’s arm.

  That stopped Mira cold. Sweat broke out along her spine.

  Leigh quivered in his grasp, but Mira couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger. “You fire one shot, and the men I brought with me will swarm in here and take you down.”

  Richard looked unconcerned. “I hardly think they’d risk you womenfolk in the cross fire. Besides . . .” He leaned close to Leigh’s ear and whispered something Mira couldn’t hear.

  Leigh went white and looked like she might throw up. “That won’t work. He wasn’t listening,” she said, though she didn’t sound certain.

  Richard smoothed her hair behind her ear and plucked out the comm unit she’d been wearing. “Then I guess you won’t be needing this anymore.” He crushed it under his heel.

  The expression of horror on Leigh’s face told Mira everything she needed to know. That had been their lifeline, and now it was gone.

  Adam stepped out of the shadows behind her, moving silently. He hadn’t been far away since they’d left the lab. Everywhere she went, she could feel his eyes on her, watching her. His gaze had been steady and intense, filled with some hidden msome hideaning she couldn’t translate. “Perhaps one of the other drives will work,” he suggested, his voice smooth and calm.

  Mira stared at him in shock, realizing instantly what he was doing. He’d been standing behind her. He could have easily seen the screen—and that she’d been able to open the file for one brief moment.

  She’d been so intent on deleting the information that she hadn’t had the presence of mind to consider that there was more left for her to destroy. “He’s right. I should see if any of the other drives are salvageable.”

  Mira went through the drives, one by one, deleting data as fast as she could. Adam’s shoulders blocked Richard’s view of her screen, so even if he had looked her way, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything.

  “If you make Mira nervous,” said Adam, “it’s only going to take her longer to do what you want. Why don’t you let the woman have a seat and stop waving the gun around?”

  “I know my own daughter,” said Richard. “She never does anything without the proper motivation.”

  Mira ground her back teeth together in an effort to keep her mouth shut. Anything she said would only make it that much worse

  for Leigh.

  Adam kept talking, his voice so calm and reasonable, it helped soothe some of the nervous chaos rioting in Mira’s stomach.

  She had to do something to prevent her father from getting any of this data, while still giving him enough to let them go. After several tense, brain-racking minutes, she knew what she had to do. It was so simple, so symmetrical, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  “I need to connect to the network at the Edge,” she told her father. “I’ve been working on some new encryption algorithms that might help.”

  “No outside connections,” said her father. “I won’t have you contacting anyone.”

  Adam shifted his body just enough that he came a few inches closer to her. “She already has men outside who can contact whomever they like. No one is going to move in while you have these women at gunpoint. If you want the data, then you need to let Mira access her tools. You hold all the cards here, Sage. Let her do her job and we’ll be long gone before reinforcements arrive. The longer you take, the more men will pile up outside.”

  Richard looked at one of his men. “Take two men and make sure no one is sneaking up on us.” Then he turned to Mira, a warning of violence in his gaze. “You have ten minutes to get me what I want, or I start motivating you.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Mira was in big trouble. Leigh was in even more. She knew she was expendable, unlike Mira. It was going to be Leigh who took the first bullet.

  She’d stitched up enough gunshot wounds to cringe at the thought of what Dr. Sage’s gun would do to her arm—her right arm.

  The question was, was he bluffing or did he mean it?

  Based on the way Mira’s fingers were flying over the keyboard with frenetic haste, Leigh guessed that her time was running out.

  She had waited too long to say that her legs felt like noodles—uttering the code word that would have Clay and Payton charging in here like the cavalry. Now the chance was gone and she was on her own. And all she could think to do was to give these men what they wanted.

  The tall guy was right. If gunfire broke out, there was a really good chance that she or Mira would be caught in it. At least the way things were now, no one was shooting.

  Mira’s fingers stopped, sending the room into silence. “There. I think that’s it.”

  Dr. Sage shoved Leigh toward the closest goon, who caught her with a less-than-gentle grip.

  Sage went to his daughter’s side. His eyes scanned the screen, and a slow smile spread over his face. “This is it. You did it.”

  “Good. Leigh and I will be leaving now.”

  Mira got up off the stool, but Dr. Sage grabbed her arm. “You still have three more drives to go through.”

  “Do it yourself. I installed the program on your machine. It will decrypt any files using the same or a similar code.”

  Dr. Sage stared at Mira for a long minute, studying her face. She started to squirm, twisting her fingers together in a childlike gesture of guilt.

  The tall man grabbed her hands. “I’ll take them back to the road and drop them off. It’s a half-mile hike to where their backup is parked. That will give you time to clear out.”

  “No,” said Dr. Sage. “One of my men will do it.”

  The tall man went completely still for the space of three heartbeats. Then his expression changed, going dark and feral. “We had a deal.”

  “What do you care?” snapped Dr. Sage. “You got what you wanted from me. I don’t even know why you’re still here.”

  “To see the job through to the end.”

  “Adam, I think you’ll be happier if you don’t see what happens next.” Sage looked to where the tall man’s fingers were wrapped around Mira’s. “It seems like you’ve developed some kind of attachment.”

  Leigh’s whole body went cold as the reality of the situation set in. Sage had never planned to let them go. Now that he had what he wanted, he was going to kill them both.

  She struggled to keep her breathing steady and not hyperventilate, but with bleak terror rampaging through her veins, her body was an alien place completely out of her control.

  “I won’t let you kill her,” said Adam. There was some quality to his voice that made the primitiv the prie parts of her brain shove out the command to flee. Only the crushing grip of the goon holding her arms kept her feet planted.

  “It’s none of your concern,” said Sage. “Leave now. Your presence is no longer needed or desired. I want no witnesses.”

  This was where Leigh was going to die, in this run-down, dingy barn—and there wasn’t a thing she could think to do to stop it from happening. Sage was going to kill both Leigh and Mira, and very likely take out Clay and Payton.

  No witnesses.

  Gunshots rang out in the distance.

  * * *

  Clay saw Payton’s face and knew things had just gone to hell. “What happened?”

  “Comms went dead. Stay here,” ordered Payton. “I’m going in.”

  “Not alone, you’re not.” He wasn’t sitting on his ass out here, watching everything happen. Not when Leigh and Mira were in there in need of help.

  “You’re a liability. Sage already said the trigger phrase once. He knows you’re here. He’ll turn you on us inside of ten seconds.”

  “Not if I can’t hear him.”

  Clay grabbed Leigh’s medical bag and pulled her stethoscope from it. He shoved the earpieces in, held the flat pad next to his weapon, and fired.

  Pain blasted his eardrums. A wave of dizziness spun over him, and loud ringing set up shop inside his skull. He doubled over, unable to tell where the ground was until he crashed into it.

  Payt
on’s face appeared in his line of sight. His mouth was moving—his face contorted with rage. Clay heard nothing but a loud, constant ring.

  He shoved Payton aside and hopped behind the wheel. “Cover me,” he shouted, hoping it was loud enough for Payton to hear.

  He sped over the uneven ground, going airborne at times and leaving deep ruts furrowed in the ground when he landed. Leigh’s car was never going to be the same again, but he’d gratefully buy her a new one if they all made it out of this alive.

  Bullets sparked off the hood. Two men stood outside the barn, firing at him. One of them went down, thanks to Payton. The other one ducked for cover, popping up only to take more shots every few seconds. One of his bullets hit the windshield, making it burst into a thousand cracks. Clay kept driving.

  In the rearview mirror, Clay saw flashes from the muzzle of Payton’s rifle. He could feel the shots vibrating in his chest, but none of the sound penetrated through the ringing in his ears.

  This was as close as he was going to get without getting shot, so he skidded into a spin, letting the car slide into some low brush. It acted as a screen, giving him enough concealment to climb out of the car unscathed.

  His head was still spinninstill spg some, and his balance was off. He kept a firm grip on the car door to give himself a reference point and something to keep him steady.

  There were more men out here than they’d originally thought. Apparently some of them had been keeping out of sight. But they were here in force now, decked out in body armor and as much firepower as a small army.

  Light from inside the barn spilled out over them, giving Clay several visible targets. Inside the barn he could see Leigh struggling against one of the men. Mira’s body was mostly blocked by a tall man, but Clay could see her as well—pale, shaking, and afraid.

  The odds were bad. There were at least eight of them. All Clay had going for him was the cover of darkness and the certain knowledge that there wasn’t a single one of them who was going to stop him from saving the women he loved.