On the Edge

by Shannon Stacey

  “Thank you, Grace.” She disconnected, then picked up the in-house phone and rang for the manager.

  “I have a list of things I need you to get, and I need it yesterday.”

  —

  Charlotte drove the rental car into a small, depressed village and found the ramshackle boathouse the GPS tracker led them to. She pulled up in front of it and left the engine running.

  Only one face peered out at her through a grimy, distorted window, and Charlotte took a deep, steadying breath. Her best hope was that Ludka had hired some unemployed local guy to guard the prisoner for a few bucks and a beer. Worst case, he’d hooked up with some of Anetakis’s old crew.

  Charlotte swung her legs around so they were the first part of her to exit the car. She wore black, four-inch heels and a skirt that wasn’t much longer, so she knew any heterosexual male within view was drooling right about now.

  Grace Nolan had her skills. Charlotte had her own.

  The black jacket of her suit was cut low in a sweetheart neckline, showing off a generous helping of cleavage and just a hint of black lace. She’d skipped the wig, but she’d gone through what seemed like pounds of make-up to cover the bruises. She might not look quite like a million bucks, but she knew she hit the high six figures.

  She closed her door and started walking. The boathouse door opened a crack and the face peered out, as well as the barrel of a revolver. “Who are you?”

  This guy neither looked nor sounded like a seasoned criminal. He still had a gun, though. “I represent the people the man who’s paying you is trying to…barter with. I’m here to inspect the property and ascertain the condition before financial terms are settled.”

  His mouth worked like a fish’s as he tried to make sense of her words. She leaned close, distracting him with the cleavage. “I’m here to make sure the man being held for ransom is still alive.”

  “Okay. Just you. And I frisk you.”

  She’d counted on being frisked. Looking the way she did, it was almost a given. She’d made the gun obvious. Between finding that and wanting to give extra attention to frisking the best parts of the female anatomy, he missed the thin, folding blade tucked under the waistband of her skirt.

  When he actually stepped aside and let her pass, Charlotte had to let her eyes adjust to the dim lighting. There didn’t seem to be any other guards in the building.

  She finally spotted Tony sitting in one corner, and it killed her to hide her reaction.

  He was bound to a post and a disgusting rag was tied into his mouth as a makeshift gag. Dried blood crusted his nose, his lips, his scalp. His eyes were both blackened, indicating his nose had probably been broken. His breathing was fairly smooth, but his chest caught at the end of each inhale, as if his ribs hurt. Mostly he looked…weak. Depleted. Defeated.

  “He needs food and water and a doctor,” she told their captor, as if she had every right in the world to make demands. “We’re not going to pay your boss if he dies.”

  He looked her up and down, and she felt the chill crawl over her body, tracking his gaze. If he weren’t holding a gun, she’d drive his balls up into his throat.

  “We talk about what I need,” he said in an oily voice that left absolutely no doubt as to what that something was.

  So she hadn’t put it all behind her after all. A decade of working her ass off for success, money, power, respect—self-respect—and she was right back where she’d started. She wanted something, there was a price, and her body was the currency.

  She’d walked in here knowing she only had one decent card and if she couldn’t bluff, she’d have to play it.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, letting her voice fall into the husky tone Alex called her phone-sex voice. Tony’s body jerked against the pole.

  “Petros.”

  “Well, Petros, why don’t you tell me what it is you need?”

  He licked his lips, then scratched at his temple with the barrel of the gun. Another schmuck who watched too much television. No doubt the bad guys thought it looked cool, but it was also a good way to shoot one’s self in the head. Too bad reality didn’t smack Petros upside the brain matter.

  While part of the plan had been making sure the guy was overcome with lust, it also made it so he wasn’t taking his eyes off her. At this point she had to accept it was unlikely she’d be able to get to her knife.

  “I fuck you, he get water.”

  “Water alone isn’t even worth a blowjob, pal.” Never, ever take the first offer on the table. She propped one heel on a paint can, drawing his eyes to over three and a half feet of prime feminine leg. “A full meal. At least one full gallon of water. A doctor.”

  Tony was straining against his bonds now, shaking his head furiously and growling into the filthy gag. She knew what he was trying to tell her. Don’t do it, Charlotte. Not worth it, Charlotte. Once upon a very long time ago she’d screwed a guy for a plane ticket to Paris. He thought she couldn’t take the ninety seconds it would take this filthy pig to get off in exchange for his life?

  Petros was hesitating, and she figured it was the doctor holding him up. He was afraid to bring in anybody from the outside. She sighed, exaggerating the thrust of her breasts, arching her back and causing her skirt to creep just a little further up her thigh.

  “There is a nurse in town. Very good. She bring food and water and look at him.”

  “Fine.”

  He pushed her up against an old work table and bent her backwards over it. “Open your shirt.”

  With steady fingers, she unbuttoned the suit coat. Then she unhooked her bra, blocking out the disgusting growling sound he made. Impatient, he pushed her hand away and grabbed her breast.

  She turned her head and her gaze met Tony’s. There were tears in his eyes, but he didn’t look away.

  He was lost to her now. Charlotte knew he wouldn’t be able to move past this, no matter how much he might want to. He wouldn’t be able to accept what she’d done for him, and their future was over before it even began.

  “I love you,” she mouthed to him, just so he’d know.

  Tony closed his eyes and the tears spilled over onto his cheeks. Then he opened them and started fighting again, struggling against the ropes. His words were absorbed by the rag, but his fury didn’t need words.

  Petros pinched her and she turned away from Tony. She reached deep down inside herself, searching for the skills that had served her so well in the past—the ability to disassociate herself from what her body was doing and what was being done to it. The body that had been used and abused in a barter system as old as time had known a lover’s touch now, and it wasn’t going to let her get away with this.

  Her bag of tricks was empty. She couldn’t hear the music—couldn’t imagine herself on a dance floor, her body moving in a rhythm all its own. She tried to imagine Tony’s hands touching her breasts, but it was impossible with him struggling so nearby. His mad rantings into the gag had subsided into what sounded like ragged sobs and Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut lest her own tears try to escape.

  Several more excruciating minutes passed before Petros grew bored with pinching her nipples and turned his attention lower. Even as she fought the gorge rising up in her throat, relief came. It was going to be over very, very soon. Perhaps even sooner than Petros thought. She’d learned a few new positions since leaving her old way of life behind.

  He was using one hand to fondle his pathetic little dick, and Charlotte almost smiled. In his hurried anxiety to score with no doubt the hottest woman he’d ever had, he was going to need his other hand to steady himself while he tried to find the right spot. Then it would be only a matter of seconds before it was all over.

  “Spread your legs,” Petros ordered, and she felt the burn in the back of her throat again. When she’d joined the Devlin Group and discovered you didn’t gain respect flat on your back, she’d sworn to herself she’d never again take that command from a man.

  But now she did, extending her
legs into a wide vee. She didn’t bend her knees or hook her heels on the edge of the table. She simply opened them straight out.

  Petros started panting, then closed in on her. Charlotte took a deep breath. Waiting. Waiting.

  He took himself in one hand, then rested the other on the inside of her thigh to steady himself. There was no cold touch of metal.

  In the blink of an eye, she moved. Charlotte scissored her legs, her left one trapping his back while her right came across his chest. She caught under his chin with the inside bend of her knees. With a sudden force that rocked her body off the table she levered them—pulled with the left, pushed hard with the right—until snap. She felt the pop of Petros’s spine. Maybe his neck, maybe his back. She really didn’t give a shit.

  She released her legs and he flopped to the floor, unmoving.

  It was a few minutes before she trusted herself to stand, and she refastened her clothing and pulled her skirt down. Then she walked around Petros’s body, working the blade out of her waistband. Rather than take the time to sort through the knots, she cut the ropes restraining Tony. When she pulled the gag from his mouth, he said nothing.

  She had to kick off the heels and use every bit of her strength to help him to his feet. Even then he could barely walk, and together they staggered to the car. She helped him lower himself into the passenger’s seat and then grabbed her shoes.

  She put the rental car in gear and sped out of the village, eager to put it as far behind her as possible. When it no longer appeared in her rear view mirror, she reached into the backseat and grabbed a bottle of water. She pulled the top off and held it out to Tony. But he only closed his eyes and said nothing.

  Chapter Ten

  “You guys are starting to make a habit of this,” Doctor Savakis said as he packed up his medical gear.

  “This is the last time,” Tony told him. “We’re leaving the country very shortly.”

  It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe. Hell, it even hurt to think. And physical pain wasn’t the half of it. The broken nose, bruised ribs, split lip, reaggravated gunshot wound and a cheekbone that may or may not be fractured he could live with.

  Charlotte…that was a pain he couldn’t live with.

  “Good luck to you both,” the doctor said before slipping out the door.

  He left a vacuum of silence behind him. Charlotte sat in the armchair, her heavily made-up eyes red and her crimson lips pressed together.

  He didn’t know what to say to her.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  “I’m going to take a shower before we leave,” Charlotte said. She stood and started for the bedroom.

  “What if you hadn’t been able to break his neck, Charlotte?” Shit. He hadn’t meant to just yell it out like that. But now he couldn’t stop it. “What if he’d rolled you over or held your ankles? What if he hadn’t put the fucking gun down?”

  “Then I would have let him finish. Then I’d have waited while he got the food and the water and called for the nurse, and thought of another way to get us out. Then I would have taken a long, hot shower and put it behind me.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Yeah, just like that. If that bastard had made it so I couldn’t kill him and he got his nasty self inside of me, it still would have been worth it. Even though you don’t want me now, I would have let him do it over and over and over again if it meant you could live. Because I love you, Tony.”

  “No,” he said, and his voice cracked as the damn tears started coming again. “Don’t tell me you did this because you love me. I’m not worth this, Charlotte.”

  “You are to me.”

  “How could you do it? After everything you told me about self-respect and putting your past behind you, how could you do that to yourself?”

  “You mean how could I do this to you, because I can live with what I did today.”

  “I can’t.”

  She gave him a sad little smile. “I know, Tony.”

  He waited until he heard the shower before he let the sobs out, holding his bruised ribs while he cried.

  —

  Charlotte let her tears mingle with the soap washing down the drain. She’d run out of hot water soon, but for now she imagined the steam opening her pores and washing Petros away.

  She heard the door open, and then the shower curtain opened. Tony had wiped his face, but she couldn’t look at his puffy, red-rimmed eyes.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Charlotte.”

  “But you can’t accept the price I’m willing to pay for your life.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked lost, and Charlotte wanted to pull him into her embrace. But she didn’t. Not only because his bandages would get wet in the shower, but because it would be so much harder to let him go.

  “I felt so fucking helpless, Charlotte. I felt weak and worthless and there was not a fucking thing I could do to stop you. To stop him.”

  “You are not worthless,” she snapped. “You’re not worthless to me, Tony Casavetti, and that’s the point you’re missing. I’m not suddenly some worthless whore again. I haven’t sacrificed everything I worked to become because it was my choice. My choice. And if I had the strength to make that choice, you need to have the strength to accept it.”

  The water started running cold and she turned the faucet off. She snatched her robe from the hook and slipped it on without drying off.

  Tony put out his hand to touch her, then drew it back. “I’m afraid I’ll never get it out of my mind. I’m afraid I’ll see it every time I touch you. And I’m afraid remembering how helpless I was and how terrified I was for you will swallow me up.”

  Her phone started ringing and she moved past him. “I can’t make it better for you, Tony. You’ll either accept it—and me—or you won’t.”

  It was Gallagher on the other end, and Charlotte was tempted to let her voice mail pick it up. She’d already been given hell by Grace for removing her earpiece before going into the boathouse.

  “He slipped out of the net,” Gallagher said abruptly. “He’s still got Tony’s phone and before he shut it off, the GPS said he was heading for the bird, in a hurry.”

  “Talk to Tony,” she said, tossing the phone to him.

  She pulled on some clothes and then moved around the suite, packing their vital gear into one suitcase and one carry-on bag. She didn’t want Tony to have to carry anything.

  They were in her rental car in just over five minutes, then speeding toward the airport. She could tell Tony wanted to be driving, but even he had to admit his ribs weren’t up to it.

  “They gave Rogers a heads-up, right?” she asked. “And the airport security?”

  “Yeah. He won’t get on board.” He synched his own earpiece with her phone and called Gallagher back. “Do we have any idea what he’s driving? A red compact car. Well, that’s pretty fucking helpful.”

  Charlotte tuned him out, concentrating on weaving through traffic. They were getting close to the airport when she saw it in the rear view mirror. Though she was driving a little too fast, threading her way through the traffic, there was a red car coming up behind them, going faster.

  “Tony,” she said, “seven o’clock.”

  He turned and swore. “Slow down a little. Blend and let him go by.”

  She did as he said, concentrating on not causing an accident and not losing track of the red car. She tried not to concentrate on Tony, who was double-checking the back-up S&W he’d pulled from his suitcase earlier. He wasn’t in any shape to be in a gun fight.

  “He’s coming,” she said. She took her phone and held it to her left ear, using her hand to somewhat hide her face without looking obvious.

  Tony pulled the lever on the passenger seat and laid it back flat. The change in his position must have been hard on his ribs because he made a breathy, grunting sound, but he was effectively out of sight of the smaller car.

  She held her breath as the red car pulled up alongside them, then
slowly let it out as he went by without recognizing her.

  “Don’t be too aggressive, but don’t lose him,” Tony instructed from his horizontal position to her right.

  “I drive a kick-ass Mustang in New York City, sweetheart. I’ve got this covered.”

  And she did. She kept him in sight, but never crowded him, and managed to blend in with the other bland sedans surrounding hers. The airport was coming up fast, though, and she was starting to worry.

  “What, exactly, is the plan here?” she asked.

  “There isn’t one beyond me shooting him before he shoots me.”

  She laughed. “Of course. I should have known it would be that simple. It’s only an airport teeming with thousands of people, so you should have no trouble sneaking up on him and blowing him away.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly inconspicuous right now, what with my face all busted up. And the gun rarely goes unnoticed. So I guess the plan is to hope he parks somewhere reasonably quiet. Hell, maybe we can drive by and shoot him and I won’t even have to get out of the car.”

  They followed Konrad Ludka right up to the main entrance of the airport and watched him park and get out.

  “Think of a Plan B,” Tony said, raising his seat back to its upright position with more than a little effort. “Pretty damn quick.”

  “You know, if all the Devlin Group jobs went as smoothly as ours has, we’d all work at McDonald’s.”

  She slowed to a crawl and they watched airport personnel yell at Ludka, waving their hands at the no parking signs. He just kept walking—clearly a man on a mission.

  “Let me out,” Tony ordered.

  “No. I’m not—”

  He opened the door and jumped out, slamming the door behind him.

  “Well, isn’t that just fucking great?” she muttered as an airport security officer waved at her, telling her to move it along.

  She couldn’t just ditch the car the way Ludka had. They still had gear in the backseat she couldn’t leave behind. She took a few precious seconds to resync her own earpiece back to her phone, then she called in.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?” Gallagher yelled. “And why do you two keep going off comm, dammit?”