Edge of Forever

by Taryn Elliott

“Don’t you say that.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Don’t ever say that.”

  She turned her face away from him to look out the window. He understood why she did it, but she gutted him nonetheless.

  “Izzy, please.”

  “I’m tired.”

  He tucked a loose lock of hair around her ear. She turned her face further into the pillow and he drew back. “I’m not going anywhere, Isabella.”

  She hunched her shoulders up, but didn’t say anything else.

  Seething anger pushed him across the room and out the door. “Where the fuck is the nurse?”

  “Baby’s coming a few rooms down. She said she was on her way.”

  “Where are those flowers?”

  “I took care of them, Lo.” Zeke moved in front of him and put a hand up. “You are not going to go scare the crap out of the candy-striper.”

  “Did you ask her where they came from?”

  “She said they were on the cart this morning.”

  “Was there a note?”

  Zeke clenched his jaw. “Yeah.”

  “Give it to me.”

  He drew it out of his pocket. When Logan reached for it, he flicked it out of reach. “Don’t play her game.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Zeke let him take the card.

  Sorry for your loss.

  That was all it said. Not even a signature. Not even her pretend one. Absolutely benign.

  He juggled his phone out and dialed Marcus. He answered on the first ring. “She sent something,” Logan said without preamble.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Logan shoved his phone into his pocket. He looked down the corridor and spotted the nurse power walking his way. “She’s awake.”

  The older woman nodded. “I’ll check on her.”

  Logan stood in the doorway and watched the exchange. Izzy barely acknowledged the nurse. She simply stared out the window and nodded or shook her head at the appropriate times. Lost. That’s all he saw.

  She was utterly lost to him and he didn’t know how to fix it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What the hell are they going to do about it? Why the hell do you think I went to the private sector for this, Roth?”

  Logan paced the confines of the cafeteria of the hospital. It was between the breakfast and lunch rush, and only a handful of people were in there. Marcus sat at one of the cafe tables, his hands clasped on the tabletop.

  He knew it was a tactic. Marcus had been trying to handle him since the day he hired him. Normally he appreciated the even-tempered man. It kept him from going off the deep end about this whole deal.

  Today?

  Not so much.

  “Logan, I know the police haven’t helped in the past—hell, I know why. There’s a reason that twenty percent of my workload is stalking cases. The laws are definitely not in your favor. But this isn’t just nuisance threats.”

  “You said yourself—no proof.”

  “Yes, but we need the police to be involved to cover your ass. These people count on wearing you down and isolating you. And you know Aimee is a special case. She has money and smarts on top of her crazy. Even if we can’t prove that she was involved in the bookstore’s fire, it means she’s escalating.” Marcus sat back in his chair. “In a big way.”

  “I think we should disappear.”

  Marcus’s eyebrow lifted. “What are we talking here?”

  “Off grid. New names.”

  “With your fame? Are you serious?”

  Logan crossed his arms. “Just long enough to get Izzy well. She’s grieving, man. I can’t have her in full bodyguard lockdown at the cabin. Aimee has already gotten to her there. I need to find somewhere that she’ll feel safe. And I need to find a way to end this. One way or another.”

  “We’ve discussed this. I don’t do mercenary work—no matter how rich you are.”

  “I want to go on the offensive. I’ve been playing defense for way too long. Being the bigger man isn’t getting it done. I need her destroyed in social media. She thinks she’s untouchable. That is not the case.”

  Marcus tilted his head. “Like what?”

  “That kid in college. That went off grid for a year. I need to know what happened to him. I don’t care what it costs, or how blurred the legal lines get. I need you to find out what happened to him. There has to be something there.”

  “I can do that.”

  Logan turned around to find the tattooed guard from Isabella’s room detail.

  “Bishop—”

  “Marcus, there’s a reason I’m on your payroll. I don’t mind doing these bodyguard jobs, but I’m good at the research and undercover work. I’m good at getting around the red tape. Use me.”

  Marcus, usually unflappable, had gone rigid. Logan frowned. He had a feeling there was something else going on with that exchange. But right now he didn’t fucking care about whatever personal shit was going on between these two men. He needed results.

  Logan focused on Bishop. He had a colorful sleeve of tattoos and longer hair that he kept in a current style. The guy could be twenty-three or thirty-three. He had that kind of chameleon look to his face. He had the insolent rock star look that Logan understood.

  He’d been on tour with more than one guy that had a similar quality. Bishop also had an intelligence flashing in his mercurial hazel eyes.

  Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is a long shot.”

  “I built my career on long shots,” Logan said.

  Marcus lifted his head and zeroed in on Bishop. “I don’t have any pull with anything surrounding Asher DeSalvo. You’d have to go undercover without any backup.”

  “Done it before.”

  “This is not before,” Marcus said with a sharp warning in his voice.

  “I know that.”

  “He works in a damn ad agency.”

  “All that surveillance work made me damn good with a camera and line of bullshit. I’ll get in. You know I will. It’s important.”

  “Why?” Logan asked. This guy didn’t know jack about him besides it being a job. Marcus was invested because that was how he was built. To Dane Bishop, they were barely more than a folder full of information—and as Marcus said, stalker cases weren’t exactly special in their line of work.

  “I knew someone very much like your Aimee Collen. I know how far they can go. I don’t want that to happen to you two.”

  “I’m not too proud to use your skill set, Bishop. Nothing means more to me than Isabella’s safety. I’m tired of sitting back and hoping she’ll fade away. I need to do something.”

  “You know this might not lead anywhere, right?” Marcus asked.

  “I don’t care. I want all options explored. Because if I go underground with Isabella, Aimee is going to snap. It’s one thing when she can see me and my torture on television or however she’s keeping tabs on me, quite another when she can’t get to me.”

  “And that could make her even more dangerous.” Bishop held up his hand to Marcus and moved in front of Logan. “The store was only the beginning.”

  Logan nodded. “I think you’re right. I don’t think she meant to target anyone but Isabella—whether it was just to take what was most important to her or to actually harm her, I don’t know.”

  “Announcing your engagement seemed to be the big deal. The chapel was her initial focus, too.” Marcus tapped the folder under his hands. “There has to be a trigger there.”

  Logan hadn’t thought of that before, but it could have been. Aimee had never had the most stable home life. Her parents were still together, but in name only. They’d built the hotel empire, and in public they seemed to be the American dream. Being with Aimee for a few months, he’d seen behind the curtain to the excesses.

  He was a musician that lived through the grunge era and the vanity drugs, as well as the hard. The Collen family made his tours look like a Disney parade.

  “I’ll get to work with Aidan on a way in.” Bishop
nodded to Logan then strode out.

  He pushed his hands through his hair.

  “Aidan is the best there is on undercover operations.”

  “I know. It’s not about that.”

  “Has Bella come around?”

  Logan barked out a humorless laugh. “I just had to tell Iz that her best friend died. You should have seen the hate and the blame flicker to life in her eyes before she shut everything off. Shut me out.”

  “She’s out of it on meds and grief. Just give her some time.”

  “That’s why I want you to get us out of the country. Aimee has way too many resources.”

  “Not just new identities?”

  Logan shook his head. “I need somewhere isolated, but not completely cut off.”

  “I’ll make some calls.”

  “Thanks. I know I’ve been a shit to deal with.”

  Marcus met his gaze. “She’s your family.”

  Simplest terms, that was Marcus Roth. “I’d die for her, and kill for her. No question.”

  “It’s the only reason I’m still here. I get that. Even when I want to drop you in the darkest hole in the middle of Antarctica for the shit you pull, I get it.”

  Logan grinned. “You’re not the only one, pal.”

  “All right. Go check in on your girl. I’ll have you on a plane as soon as her doctor gives her the all clear.”

  “I’ll be in contact.”

  ∞♦ ∞

  Bella wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring out the window. Logan had come and gone twice. Each time he tried to talk to her, she blocked him out. It wasn’t hard to do with the morphine swimming in her veins.

  Really good stuff.

  Floating away from the flashing, confusing memories was a lot easier to deal with. Logan’s face in the flames and smoke. The glass raining down on her. The lick of heat over her shoulders and hands.

  Nic’s gargled scream.

  That one kept coming.

  On a loop.

  She hadn’t felt the tear at her side when it happened. Small miracles, she supposed, though it was the one that radiated the most. A throb that washed over her like a wave and an undertow were warring against each other, then they recessed, leaving her drenched in sweat.

  And all she could do was sit there and take it.

  She couldn’t move. Her ribs made breathing a contact sport. Her fingers looked like radioactive shellfish. Blistered and angry, ugly and swollen. She could only imagine what her shoulders looked like.

  She’d bear every ache and pain without the morphine just to have Nic back.

  She closed her eyes and when she woke again, it was full dark. A dim light came from the corner of the room. Zeke was on the couch with a snoring Cody draped over him like a blanket.

  Pain had her suck in a deep breath as she turned her head. A chair clattered back and Logan’s large hand appeared before her with a cup of ice chips at the ready. She kept her eyes downcast as he coated her lips.

  “Is that all right?”

  She nodded.

  He slipped a sliver between her lips and she let its coolness wash over her thick tongue and parched throat. His thumb slid over her cheek and she turned away again. She couldn’t even say why.

  She just couldn’t look at him.

  Not when she knew that she got to live and Adam lost his soulmate. Not when she knew it was their egos that had done this. That they had to push Aimee and show that she wasn’t going to hold them back from a future together.

  And now her best friend didn’t have one.

  And Adam had his stolen away.

  So she couldn’t look at him.

  Couldn’t face it just yet.

  Didn’t deserve to.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Logan drew the blinds against the mid-September sun. It was streaking through her room, but the temperature was more like July. Indian summer in the Adirondacks was always a sight to behold. The trees were making their change from the cold nights, but the days tricked you into a dip into the frigid lake.

  It’s what they should have been doing.

  A day at the spring at the falls should have been how they spent today. Instead, it was their fifth day since Izzy had woken. And the fifth day that she hadn’t said a goddamn word.

  Wouldn’t even look at him.

  Her beautiful topaz eyes hid behind her lids, her lashes, her tears every night. The tears were the part that shredded him. The silence was a crushing weight, but the raw tears in the night eviscerated him.

  Each night he tried to go to her, and each time she shrank away from his touch.

  In the day, she was back to the blank face looking out the window. People from town called him, emailed him, texted him—wanting to know if they needed anything. If they could visit. He’d asked her if she wanted to see other people, but she only shook her head.

  The one thing that he lived for.

  How sad that he lived for a no every day, but he did.

  Each day Julian came in and read her a chapter of On the Road. The words seemed to calm her. Zeke brought Cody in to jump onto her bed and rest his huge head over her feet for a few hours—those were the hours she seemed to rest the easiest. Where she would drop off to sleep.

  Christian, Morgan, and Emerson came in as a team with their guitars and played the most random songs they could come up with. From “November Rain” to “Wrecking Ball” and all genre of songs in between. They even managed to get a half-smile out of her a few times.

  But the long nights were theirs.

  He longed for them, even as they were killing him.

  “All right, out you hooligans.”

  Right on time. Barb, Izzy’s nurse, came in to change her bandages. The guys packed up their instruments like the lean days of their club tours when everyone still had to do their own tuning and transportation.

  Logan followed them out, giving a last look over his shoulder as Izzy shifted uneasily, waiting for her hands and shoulders to be redressed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay longer? We can wait until Barbarella is done with her Nurse Hatchet routine and keep her company.”

  Logan clapped his hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “I’ve got work to catch up on. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You look like an extra on The Walking Dead.”

  Cody bumped his thigh until Logan crouched to scratch his ears. “I just have to stubborn her out.”

  “If anyone can, it’s you. What’s Hot Doc said about her?”

  Logan snorted and straightened. “You and your nicknames.”

  Zeke flashed a dimpled smile. “She likes it.”

  “You are legend in your own mind, son.” He stood and gave Cody one last stroke. “She’s worried that she’s not talking, but she keeps reminding me that people grieve differently.”

  “Bellamina has the sads, but it’s more than that. I think it’s good that you guys are going away when she gets the all clear.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “I talk until I’m hoarse about every-damn-thing. No response. I don’t know if she’s blocking out everything I say, or if she’s just uninterested.” Or if she was so far inside herself that it just didn’t matter what he said.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Three days.”

  Zeke whistled. “How long are you going to stay away?”

  “Depends on Isabella.” It depended on if he’d get his Izzy back. Now she was just a shell of the vibrant woman he’d fallen in love with.

  Because of him. Because of Aimee.

  “Do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “The only person that seems to really break through is Cody.”

  Zeke curled his arm around the massive Akita’s head. “I love you man, but you can’t have Cody. We don’t do well without each other.”

  Logan laughed for the first time in days. “No, I just need a Cody. I need a big, loving dog that can protect her
if necessary.”

  “That I can do.”

  “I know it’s a time crunch, but I think it’ll help.”

  “That’s why there are therapy dogs, my friend. I’ll find you the perfect one.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  Zeke dragged him in for a slapping hug.

  Logan grunted at the palmprint that ignited his little scratches to itch again. But the quick hug was worth it. “All right. Get out of here.”

  Zeke turned with Cody and gave him a hand gesture so the dog did a sassy wiggle.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do without Zeke. He was the only one to keep him sane this past week. He scrubbed his hand through his hair and rolled his neck before going back into Isabella’s room.

  Laptop already open to the accounting page, Logan started moving money into the account for Marcus to do his magic with before it finally became Jack Madigan’s personal account.

  About as unobtrusive as possible. Jack and Kate Madigan spending the fall in Maine in a remote cabin where they’d work on their manuscript. Christ, Aidan did have a sense of humor. But it was the perfect cover.

  Writers could be hermits and the cabin was off the beaten path. A few seasonal cabins surrounded them, but would be emptying out in the next few weeks. It was the perfect time to let Izzy heal.

  Let them both heal.

  And give Bishop enough time to come through with the details to hopefully turn the tide in taking Aimee down.

  He tuned in with half an ear as Barb kept a running commentary about Izzy’s healing, about the woman’s family, and about Adam’s progress—or lack thereof.

  He was still in a coma. They weren’t sure when or if he would be coming out of it. There was no medical reason for it. The swelling from his fall had come down. It was as if he knew Nic was gone and was doing his own form of hiding.

  So much worse than Izzy’s coping mechanism.

  That news didn’t do much to draw Isabella out. The hand exercises Barb made her do to keep her fingers pliable were usually followed by a dose of meds that knocked her out until dinner.

  And he was alone with the quiet.

  Again.

  ∞♦ ∞

  “Are you sure about this?”