On the Edge

by Heather Graham, Carla Neggers

  Without further angsting, Robert raised one half of the kayak paddle in one hand and the knife in the other and leaped out from the sprawling rosebush, thorns ripping harmlessly across his poncho. He slipped in the wet grass, but didn’t fully lose his footing as he lunged for the back steps.

  Callahan was looking in the opposite direction. The wind and the ocean were making so much noise, Robert was able to get a split second jump on him.

  Flawlessly, in one effective motion, he hit the major in the kidneys with the paddle.

  It was like hitting a tree trunk.

  Robert was stunned. “Fuck!”

  He’d planned to follow up with a knife in the heart, but Superman Callahan didn’t even go down on his knees. He absorbed the blow and swung around fast and hard, his entire body poised for the fight. Major Stud knew how to handle himself in battle. That was clear. Robert did not. He was a floor-mopper—he used to get the shit kicked out of him at school. He could feel the old panic welling up in his throat.

  He slashed the knife wildly, catching Callahan in the upper arm.

  Next thing, the major had the kayak paddle. Robert had no idea how the bastard had gotten it. He could feel himself breaking out in a sweat under his flapping poncho. Now what?

  His gun—damn, it wasn’t in his waistband under his poncho. He must have dropped it behind the goddamn rosebush!

  He pointed the knife at the major. Stand off. Robert knew if he went after Callahan, he’d get the kayak paddle up the side of his head. On the other hand, if the wannabe senator went after him, he’d get the knife up whatever Robert could reach first.

  “You don’t want me to kill you now,” Robert said, like he had the definite upper hand and didn’t realize it was a standoff. “Then the bitch doctor will be at my mercy.”

  They were both drenched, fighting the wind. Puddles formed at their feet. The grass was so slippery, it made it almost impossible to get any decent traction. If he fell, Robert figured he’d end up stabbing himself. Then he’d bleed to death. The doctor wouldn’t help him now that he’d stabbed her stud boyfriend and nailed him in the kidneys. Forget the Hippocratic Oath. Forget the law. She’d let him bleed to death in the sand. Pretend Hope had done the damage.

  That would be it for him. The end of the story. There’d be no revenge, no justice, no satisfaction.

  “The storm’s hitting,” Callahan said, ignoring his bleeding arm as he kept a tight, menacing grip on the paddle. “You don’t want to be out here. Put down the knife—”

  “So you can kill me and tell the police it was self-defense? Hell, no.”

  The major didn’t react. It was amazing. Talk about control. “What’s your name?” he asked, all tight-lipped.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Come on. Put down the knife. You haven’t hurt anyone yet.”

  “You.”

  “Not that much. I’ll let it go if you put down the knife and come inside with me. The hurricane—”

  “I’m not worried about the hurricane.”

  But Robert glanced up at the cottage. The bitch doctor was there in the screen door. So beautiful. Damn, it wasn’t easy to be strong and go through with what he knew he had to do.

  He wasn’t going to beat Callahan in a fair fight.

  That left him two choices, Robert thought. Surrender, or get the hell out of there.

  He wasn’t surrendering.

  He turned abruptly and ran away from the cottage, leaping through the brush and sand and bird shit, hoping he didn’t slip and stab himself in the heart. Another bad ending to the story. No ending at all, accidentally stabbing himself to death.

  But he didn’t slip, and he hung onto the knife, so at least he could defend himself if Callahan followed him.

  He didn’t look upon himself as retreating. In a way, he’d accomplished his original mission. Callahan wasn’t dead, maybe not even entirely out of commission, but he was hurting. He knew Robert meant business.

  They’d both be scared now.

  Robert pushed through pine trees and junipers and splashed through ankle-deep puddles, then rolled down his big dune on the other side of his campsite.

  Christ Almighty. The ocean was there.

  A monstrous wave caught him and knocked him backward on his ass. He choked on saltwater and rain, the wind tearing at his clothes, kicking up sand that ate away his skin. He screamed in agony and frustration, letting it all out, knowing no one could hear him, and scrambled up the dune, back down to his campsite on the other side. He didn’t have long before the water would reach it.

  The red welts on his hands and forearms were on fire. He thought he’d go out of his mind.

  Fuck. They weren’t bug bites. He had poison ivy. It bubbled and oozed and burned and itched and swelled. No wonder he hadn’t managed to give Callahan a knockdown blow! He was a goddamn mess!

  Robert managed to stand upright, but he could see that the sky and the sea and the landscape were all a greenish-gray now, the wind gusting hard enough to lift him off his feet. He could taste the tropics in the air, feel the cloying humidity sucking at him.

  And this wasn’t even the full brunt of the hurricane.

  Jesus.

  He had to get back to the rosebush and find his gun. He dug in his pack and checked his ammo. Twelve bullets. That was it. He wished he had a machine gun, but his .38 and a dozen bullets would have to do. He still hoped he wouldn’t need to shoot them, not with a perfectly good hurricane on its way.

  Snorting, trying not to scratch, or scream again, he made his way back to the cottage and took up position in the scrub pine, never mind the water dripping off the tangle of poison ivy. Why worry about poison ivy now?

  The good doctor would be tending the major’s wounds.

  Robert knew he had to act now, while they were distracted.

  He gulped in a breath and dove for the rosebush.

  His gun was still there, in the sopping grass. Leave it to the two losers inside not to know he’d left it behind. He cocked it, so that all he had to do was pull the trigger and a bullet would zip out. He knew just enough about guns and shooting to be dangerous, he decided. Not that he’d ever had any instruction in firearms. He figured any idiot could handle a gun, and since he was smarter than most people, he wouldn’t have any trouble. He had no patience with learning things, practicing—he liked just to know them.

  He retreated back to his position in the pines. He was drenched. Mad with itching. He used his thumbs to get the rain out of his eyes, figured he was spreading poison ivy into his eyes and pretty soon they’d be swollen and itching, too. But he could see okay now and peered at the cottage. It had two windows on this side, a bunch of lilac bushes—he could see the front porch and the back steps from his vantage point. He didn’t worry about the one side he couldn’t see, because it had no windows.

  But if he could see them make a move, they could see him. It wasn’t another standoff since he was the only one with a gun.

  Presumably, he thought. He wasn’t about to stick his head up and get it blown off. Not the best way to find out for sure they were unarmed. But a doctor? A guy running for the senate, out here after the doctor, no idea she was in trouble? Nah. They didn’t have a gun.

  “I’ve got you covered.” Even to himself, he sounded like a maniacal John Wayne. “You have no way out. Stick your foot out a door or a window, I’ll blow it off. Your head? Same thing.”

  No response. He wondered if they’d heard him. If they were in there, cowering. He could do it, he thought. He could shoot Antonia’s foot off. He was a good enough shot—why wouldn’t he be?—and he’d waited long enough to see her bleeding and in pain.

  “Scared?” He waited, but still no answer. “Good. I hope you are. I was scared when I came to the bitch doctor for help. How about it, Dr. Winter? Suppose I give you the same treatment you gave me? How’d you like that?”

  He remembered her slender hands on him as she’d examined him. Her soft, kind words. He’d trusted her, believed in h
er. He thought she’d finally open up to him. He assumed she’d recognized him.

  But she didn’t. She’d asked him his name, as if she’d never seen him before, and even before she turned him in to the cops, he knew he’d misplaced his trust and affection.

  He was a nobody to her. A zero.

  Then he thought—hell, she and the boyfriend didn’t know he had a gun. They didn’t know they had to take him seriously.

  “In case you doubt me, here’s a little taste of your future!”

  Robert fired a bullet into the side window, the gun kicking back the way it had when he’d shot himself in the foot. The loud bang startled him. The wind was howling so much, he didn’t hear the old glass in the window shatter. But he saw it, and smiled.

  He didn’t know what he’d do next, but right now, he had the big important doctor and her hero boyfriend under his total control.

  9

  The wind blew water and bits of leaves and twigs in through the shot-out window above the sink. The bullet had lodged in the bathroom door. It hadn’t hit anyone, no thanks, Hank thought, to the son of a bitch outside. Why the hell take a potshot at them? Just to scare them? Why not burst into the cottage and shoot them both, before they realized he had a gun?

  Whoever the guy was outside, he had his own agenda, his own way of thinking—but now that they knew he had a gun, Hank realized, they had a chance. Staying low, out of the bastard’s line of sight, his arm bleeding from the knife wound, his back aching from the hit with the kayak paddle, he and Antonia had quickly barricaded the front door with an overstuffed chair and the back door with a couple of extra folding chairs. Their handiwork wouldn’t stop an intruder with a gun, but it’d give them warning, trip him up so Hank could act. He had a knife of his own now, as well as the kayak paddle and the determination not to be taken by surprise a second time.

  But he didn’t think Antonia was up to any kind of combat, and he hoped it wouldn’t come to going after the man outside—killing him—in front of her.

  Despite her obvious fear, she stayed calm and, once they’d secured themselves as best they could inside the cottage, insisted on bandaging his arm. “Fine,” Hank said, “provided I can keep an eye out for our friend.”

  She nodded. “If I were him, I’d hide in the trees along the edge of the side yard. That way I could see both entrances and the windows. Since he shot the window above the sink—”

  “It makes sense.”

  They moved the table down along the wall so that Hank could sit at one end and still have a view of most of the side yard, without exposing himself in the window.

  Antonia set an ancient first-aid kit she’d pulled out from under the bed on the table and rummaged in it. He could see her tension, but knew she had the training and experience to focus on what she was doing. “You should have stitches.”

  Hank grunted. His arm throbbed, but he’d endured worse injuries. “I should have fed the bastard that goddamn knife.”

  “Ty would have.”

  “North’s trained to feed people knives.” Hank smiled, because he knew she’d deliberately made that comment to get him to smile. The doctor easing her patient’s mind. “I’m just a mild-mannered helicopter pilot.”

  “Ah.” She found a tube of antibiotic ointment and squeezed a bit onto a supposedly sterile gauze pad—the stuff had to be long past its “use by” date. “That’s just what I thought when I saw you take the kayak paddle from our friend outside. Mild-mannered helicopter pilot.”

  “Scared the hell out of you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He has a gun—”

  “I know, but first he has to get to us.”

  She glanced at him. “You’re not saying we have the upper hand, are you?”

  “I’m saying right now we’re okay. First things first, Antonia. We’re doing everything we can.”

  If possible, she was even more pale, but she wasn’t one to panic. “Let’s see this arm of yours.”

  She helped him get his shirt off, and he’d been touched when she blanched at his injury—not because she didn’t see worse every day, Hank assumed, but because this time it was him. She worked quickly and efficiently. He watched her, noticed that her hands were steady as she swabbed and dabbed and bandaged.

  “You won’t have to amputate if I don’t get stitches, will you?” he asked lightly.

  “Only if you get a nasty infection and we can’t get to proper help.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate a straight answer. You’re supposed to say no, you’ll be fine.”

  She managed a smile. “No, you’ll be fine.”

  He moved his arm the wrong way and caused himself a stab of pain. “Now I feel a lot better,” he said with good-natured sarcasm. He wasn’t worried about his arm. He’d done worse working on boats as a kid. What he worried about was the bastard outside with the gun. He peered through the rain and wind, but saw no sign of their guy. “I can’t believe I let that s.o.b. nail me.”

  Antonia taped a gauze bandage over the ointment-covered wound with a few deft moves. “You’re lucky. The cut’s not deep, which is a good thing. I’m not set up here for major wounds and fractures.”

  It didn’t look to Hank as if she was set up for three-inch superficial knife wounds, either, but he liked the feel of her fingers on his skin. “I should at least have followed him,” he said. “I don’t think he had his gun on him when he came after me. I could have kept him from getting it—”

  “What if you were wrong and he did have the gun? What if you’d passed out?”

  “I wouldn’t have passed out.”

  She added one last piece of tape, then waited, appraising her handiwork, he assumed. “Ty not only could take on this guy outside, but he could bandage your wound. He jumps out of helicopters with a fifty-pound med ruck strapped to him—”

  “I know. He jumped out of my helicopter enough times.”

  She nodded absently, and he could tell her mind wasn’t on Tyler North or helicopters, or even Hank’s wound now that it was bandaged. She wasn’t trying to distract him anymore. She was trying to distract herself. She peeked out the window. “Tell me what he looked like to you,” she said quietly.

  “You saw him—”

  “I didn’t get a close look—I was more worried about you. And you’re objective. I’m not. Not if it’s who I think it is.”

  Hank didn’t push her for more information. “White male in his mid-twenties. Five-eight. Blond. Clean-shaven. His hair was medium-blond, curly, long enough to put in a ponytail if he wanted to. He was quick—quicker than you’d expect at first glance.”

  “Physically, you mean?”

  “Yes. Mentally, I’d say he’s a survivor. He wanted me to think about what would happen if I went after him and didn’t succeed—I fell for it. It distracted me long enough for him to clear out.”

  “If not for the hurricane—”

  “I’d have his ass.”

  Antonia smiled faintly, but was still clearly distracted. She nodded at his bandaged arm. “I can’t vouch for the ointment, but the bandage is just about perfect. How’s the pain?”

  “I hurt more where he smacked me with your kayak paddle.”

  She didn’t smile. “There’s not much I can do about that with anything Babs has left behind. Just let me know if you pee blood.”

  “Sure, Doc, I’ll do that.” He rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t make her smile again. “I can take on bad guys if I have to?”

  “I have plenty of bandages.”

  He winked at her. “That’s the spirit.”

  “Hank—”

  “We’ll get out of this mess, Antonia.” He got to his feet, avoiding standing near a window, and slipped his shirt back on. It was damp and bloody, but he was running out of dry clothes. “You recognize this guy, don’t you?”

  She sighed, nodding reluctantly. “It’s Robert Prancer.”

  Hank had never heard her mention the name before. He was sure he’d have remembered if she had. “Is it a gue
ss, or are you positive?”

  “I’m positive. The knife—” She lifted her eyes to him. They were doctor-serious. “I should tell you that it was my knife. I grabbed it when I heard you whistling. It made sense at the time.”

  “You thought I might be this Prancer character.”

  “I didn’t have him in mind as a suspect at the time. He’s one of perhaps a dozen names that I jotted down to look into—patients I’d treated in the past few weeks.”

  “Who is he?”

  But he doubted she’d even heard him. “I thought I’d covered my tracks, so that no one could follow me from Boston. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I even borrowed Carine’s car.”

  “That all makes sense now that I know—”

  “But I—I had no idea. I hid behind the rosebush out back. It seems ridiculous now.”

  “Imagine if it’d been Prancer instead of me,” Hank said. “Not so ridiculous after all.”

  “You’re probably right, but when I look at your arm—” She didn’t finish the thought. “I didn’t want to look silly when I realized it was you whistling, so I stuck the knife in the sand and forgot about it.”

  Hank shrugged. “Prancer could just have easily got it out of the sink while we were on the other side of the island. Hell, we’re lucky we didn’t find him hiding under the bed when we got back. He’s probably kicking himself for not thinking of it now that he’s outside and we’re in here.”

  Her eyes settled on him. “I’m sorry.”

  He stood to one side of the back door and looked outside, but saw no sign of Prancer. “If he hadn’t had the knife and the kayak paddle, he might have used his gun on me instead of the window. Maybe the knife’s what saved my life. Antonia—this guy—”

  “I treated him for a gunshot wound to his left foot. I had to report him to the police.”

  Hank nodded. “It’s the law.”

  “I don’t think he realized that. It’s surprising how many people don’t. He wouldn’t tell me what happened—the wound was almost certainly self-inflicted. I sent him for X-rays, and he took off from the X-ray room. I don’t know how he managed it. He was in a johnny, he was on an IV, he had a bullet wound in his foot—he must have pulled out the IV himself.”