Edge of Sanity: An Edge Novel (7 page)
Read Edge of Sanity: An Edge Novel Online
Authors: Shannon K. Butcher
“You can’t get rid of my phone yet,” said Leigh. “Mira is going to be sending me some information.”
“What information?”
“Both my brothers experienced lost chunks of time—they’d black out in one place and woke up in another. That happens to you, right?”
The memory of waking up covered in someone else’s blood was still too fresh in his mind. “Yeah,” was all he could shove out of his dry throat.
“If you can remember when those blackouts happened, then we might have a lead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I asked Mira to track your movements for the past few weeks—as far back as she could. If we know where you went when you weren’t . . . yourself, then maybe we’ll find out where the person doing this to you is.”
“You think that whoever did this would be stupid enough to meet me in person when I’m like that?”
“If they think they’re in control, what risk would there be? kuldfont”
“It’s worth a shot. I should have thought of it myself.” That he hadn’t thought of it told him just how clouded his mind was.
“Maybe you would have if someone wasn’t screwing with your head. There’s no telling what kind of measures they put in place to keep you under control.”
“Measures?”
She squeezed the steering wheel and her shoulders tightened, creeping up toward her ears. “I’ve thought about this a lot since Garrett was sent away. I’ve done some research. Most of what I read was garbage at best, but in theory, with the right mind-altering drugs, it’s possible that someone could have found a way to plant commands in your head.”
“What kinds of commands?”
“If I was some evil genius bent on turning humans into puppets, I’d want to make sure that my efforts didn’t go to waste.”
“Meaning?”
“I’d want them to defend themselves when faced with a threat. I’d want them to answer only to me. I’d want them to have a kind of homing mechanism that would bring them back if they wandered off for too long.”
Clay’s blood jelled in his veins, making his whole body go cold. “They can’t reach me now. If they did put something like that in my head, how long do you think I have before it goes off?”
She put her hand on his thigh, offering comfort where there was none to be had. He couldn’t bring himself to push her away, even though he knew it was the right thing to do. That single point of contact, that fragile strand of support she offered, meant more to him than he ever thought possible.
“You leave the country for jobs all the time, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“How long are those assignments?”
“There’s no set time frame. Usually I’m gone for a week or two.”
“These people would probably know your habits. They’d know about your work. My guess is that you’d have at least that long.”
“A few days to find these bastards and end them before I turn into some kind of mindless zombie wandering back into their clutches? Great.”
“You don’t know that. It’s just a guess. We have no evidence. I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
She started to pull her hand away, but he covered it with his, pressing her fingers against his thigh. He wasn’t ready to let go of her touch yet. It gave him something else to think about—something that wasn’t completely fucked-up and twisted.
“Don’t be,” he told her. “I’m glad one of us is thinking clearly.” The last thing he wanted was for her to withhold information because she thought he was too much of a pussy to face it. “What else did your research uncover?”
“Not much, really.” kh, it.
She was hiding something. He could hear it in her voice—feel it in the way her fingers twitched beneath his. “Spit it out, Leigh. I can take it.”
She let out a sad sigh. “Whoever did this to you did it when you were a kid.”
“You sound sure.”
“I am. Either that, or they only do it to men.”
“What makes you so sure that it has to be one of the two?”
“My parents were killed in an accident when we were kids. My brothers ended up in one foster home, me in another.”
That simple confession given in such a clinical tone spoke volumes about Leigh. It spoke of tragedy and loss, of grief and loneliness. Not only had she lost her parents, but she’d also lost her brothers.
“How old were you?”
“I was six. Hollis was seven and Garrett was ten.”
She was just a baby. At least Clay had had his mom around for a few more years. After that it was just him and the step-asshole.
“I got placed in a great home with a loving family. I still see them a lot. My brothers weren’t so lucky. I think that whatever was done to them happened then.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because when I saw them a couple of years later, they were different. At the time, my foster parents said it was because they were growing up and their hormones were changing. It wasn’t anything to worry about. But then when Garrett became a legal adult and adopted us, I knew they weren’t the same carefree souls I’d known.”
“They had to grow up fast. That doesn’t prove much of anything.”
“Except that both of them ended up like you. I didn’t.”
She had a point. “You think that the people who did this were your brothers’ foster parents?”
“No, but I think that they let it happen—either with or without their knowledge.”
A strange, distant memory appeared in Clay’s head, fully formed. He was young. Colin, his asshole stepfather, was speaking to a man in the shadows on the front porch of their crappy, run-down house. The man handed Colin cash. Then Clay was suddenly in the man’s car, driving away.
The memory lasted only a split second, but that was long enough to leave Clay shaking. He’d been afraid. Even as a kid he knew that the man in the car was bad news. But even more strange than the phantom memory was the feeling Clay had that he knew this man—he’d spent time with him. Shared meals, even.
He tried to remember what he looked like, but the details were fuzzy, as if someone had intentionally blurred them. The harder he tried to call the man into focus, the vaguer the memory became.
Clay’s head started to throb. ked nt. A slow, rolling nausea swept through him, leaving him sweating.
He let go of the memory and rolled down the window to stave off any stomach rebellion.
“Are you okay?” asked Leigh.
“Yeah. Sorry. Just a bad memory.” He rolled the window up so she wouldn’t get cold. “What if someone paid for us?”
“What? I don’t follow.”
“What if whoever did this paid your brothers’ foster parents off—paid my stepdad—to do this to us?”
A chilling look of anger crossed her face, driving away the normal softness he was used to seeing. “That would be in line with what I know about my brothers’ foster parents.”
“And definitely something my step-asshole would have done. He was all about making a quick buck—and not above using me to do so.”
She shook her head, drawing attention to her wildly mussed hair. The crazy notion of sliding his fingers through it to work out the tangles took him by storm, and he had to fight the need to do just that.
“What if they’re still doing this, Clay? There could be little kids out there right now being tortured by these monsters.”
“I will stop them.”
She glanced his way, but it was long enough for him to see the steely determination glinting in her brown eyes. “
We
will stop them. You try to ditch me, and I’ll make what they did to you look like a sunny afternoon at Disneyland.”
The seemingly sweet doctor had a thread of badass running through her. That was something Clay couldn’t help but respect, and damn if it didn’t turn him on. “I’m not making any promises, but right now, you’re in as much danger as I am.”
“More,” she said, as if the word had accidentally popped out of her mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, her lips clamped in silence.
“Leigh? If we’re going to be a team, you can’t keep secrets.”
He wasn’t sure she was going to speak. The road beneath them passed by in a hum of tires on pavement. Finally, she pulled her hand away from his thigh and donned an air of indifference he knew was a lie.
“That man I questioned? He didn’t say much, but one thing he did mention was that they needed you alive.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Me, neither, but what did surprise me—thanks to my naïveté—was that he admitted that he didn’t care what happened to me. In fact, his exact quote was, ‘No one’s paying me to bring you back alive, sugar.’”
He would have killed her. If Clay hadn’t managed to bust out that newel post, they wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.
kt nan">He wou
He’d almost lost her, which served only to highlight just how fragile she was.
Clay needed to abandon her at the first opportunity. She wasn’t safe around him. She knew that better than anyone. Her bruises spoke louder than any words ever could.
He checked behind them for signs they were being followed and found none. They were still well away from the city, with only sparsely populated towns dotting the countryside. The highway was nearly empty. On the eastern horizon, the faintest glow of sunrise was starting to show.
“Pull over at this rest stop up ahead,” he told her.
She didn’t ask why; she simply did as he requested, pulling up under a light.
Clay got out of the car and retrieved his flashlight from his duffel bag. A thorough search of the vehicle revealed one of Mira’s tracking devices, as well as something else he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t connected to any explosives he could see. But to be on the safe side, he waited until Leigh went into the bathroom before he tried to remove it. The little cinderblock structure was better protection from a bomb than standing around outside would be for her.
The device was held on to the underside of the car by a strong magnet. It consisted of a small circuit board and a thin antenna. No lights or sounds to indicate it was working.
Clay took it into the bathroom and mounted it to a plumbing fitting under the sink, out of sight. Mira’s tracker went into the trash can, wadded up in a thick layer of paper towels. The trash was full and would probably be emptied soon, giving anyone who was watching the signal a false path to follow.
He hated tossing away Mira’s hard work, but it was better than letting anyone follow them—including Mira. If she thought he needed her help, she’d do whatever it took to come rescue him. Even if it put her in danger’s path.
Leigh was waiting for him with her hips propped against the car. She’d brushed the tangles from her hair, and now the silky red tresses whipped around her face in the wind. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and she was huddled in, hugging herself like she was freezing.
His need to see her warm sped his steps.
“We’re good to go,” he told her.
“I can’t believe I’ve been driving around all this time without knowing I was being tracked.”
Clay shrugged as he got in the car. “Mira does that to everyone she likes. Take it as her way of looking out for you.”
“It’s a bit intrusive.”
“You’ll think that right up to the time when one of her gadgets saves your ass.”
“That’s what she said, too.”
“You talked to her?”
Leigh nodded as she started the engine. “She called while you were in the bathroom. She compiled that list for us and sent it ks aRoman">L.”
“Great. Now we need to print it off and then get rid of your phone.”
She didn’t argue about throwing away her expensive phone, which proved that she had at least some understanding of the danger they faced. Part of him wished she wasn’t so smart, because at least that way she wouldn’t have to be afraid. Still, he’d take her frightened and alive over oblivious and dead any day of the week.
“Does that mean you’re not looking to leave me behind?” she asked.
“For now.”
“I almost thought I’d come out of the bathroom to find the car hot-wired and you long gone.”
“I considered it, but those tracking devices—or whatever that second thing was—lead right here. No way would I leave you alone for someone to find.”
“That was considerate of you.” He could practically hear her rolling her eyes as she spoke.
Clay ignored the sarcasm and opened the map he’d found tucked in her glove compartment while searching for trackers. “Looks like there’s a decent-sized town up ahead about twenty miles. They’ll probably have a library or print shop we can use.”
He turned up the heat for her and scoured the map for a safe place to leave her—with or without the information the intruder had given h
er—somewhere Mira would find her but no one else would.
Once he got his hands on the list Mira had sent, he could retrace his steps and figure out where the hell he’d been going during those blackouts—especially the one the night before last.
Clay really wanted to know who he’d killed. And why.
Chapter Nine
L
eigh could tell Clay was making plans to ditch her. She could see it in the way he refused to meet her gaze and his slight anxious fidgeting with the map. His body was so tense she could practically feel the vibration of his muscle fibers traveling through the air.
Rather than confront him about it and warn him she knew, she kept quiet, figuring out how to outsmart him. The only thing she could think to do was to make herself valuable enough that he didn’t leave her the first chance he got.
She had to be a part of this. She couldn’t trust that anyone else would want to find a way to save her brother as much as she did. If she failed this time, there might never be another chance, and despite what Clay thought, he wasn’t able to do this on his own—not when he was always only one step away from turning into that empty, vacant husk of a man, willing to hurt whoever was in his path.
Leigh’s jaw still ached from where he’d grabbed her, and the bruises were ugly, but none of that mattered. If that was the price she had to pay for Garrett’s freedom, it was a small one.
< ns aRo">LWhatever it took, no matter how dangerous things got, she owed her brother for everything he’d given up for her. Finding a way to ingratiate herself with Clay was the least she could do. Greed, revenge, guilt, lust—whatever weakness she could find in Clay she would use to save Garrett. After all, he would do no less for her.
“Once we get rid of my phone and make sure no one can track us, I’ll tell you what that man said to me.”
He kept his gaze on the map. “You should tell me now.”
“If I do that, you’ll have no reason to keep me around.”
He turned in his seat, his wide shoulders blocking out the glare of sunrise streaming in through his window. “You’ll be safer without me around.”
“I’m not going through this with you again. You’re not getting rid of me. I’m the only one who can represent Garrett’s interests, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Does your brother have any idea what you’re up to? Does he have even a clue about the kind of risk you’re taking for him?”
“No, nor will he unless I decide he should know.”
“He wouldn’t want you to do this.”
“How do you know? You’ve never even met him.”
“Because any man who could create the kind of loyalty you’re displaying right now would never be the kind of asshole who would willingly let his sister walk into danger.”
Some kind of ache in his voice made her glance at him. His big body filled the space beside her, putting off strange vibes. It was like he was angry and intrigued all at the same time, and she didn’t understand why he would be either. “You’d do the same thing for your brother or sister, wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t have any.”
“Then Mira. You’d stick your neck out for her, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“See? It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not. You’re a doctor. Your life is valuable.”
“And yours isn’t?”
He shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I like living. But I’m damaged goods. I’ve hurt people.”
“That doesn’t make you less valuable.”
“Tell that to the families of the corpses lying in Payton’s living room.”
“That was self-defense. They came after you.”
Clay said nothing, offering her only stony silence.
She understood his guilt. He had killed those men, and there was nothing he could do to take that back. Chances were he’d killed others as well. By the time Hollis re siment>
She wasn’t going to let that happen to Clay. She wasn’t leaving his side until he was free of these compulsions, or at least until he was locked up for his own safety, the way Garrett now was.
They pulled into town before businesses were open. After a fast-food breakfast, they found a place to print out the file Mira had sent. Clay wrote down Payton’s number, as well as a couple of others, then made quick work of destroying her phone. The pieces went into three different trash bins on the street.
“Now what?” she asked, sticking right by his side, not letting him out of her sight.
He stopped by her car, opening the driver’s door for her. “Now you hit the road. Find a bank here in town and get as much cash out as you can. Go somewhere you’ve never been before—somewhere you’d never normally go—pay only in cash, and don’t leave until you run out of money. Call Payton before you come back to make sure it’s safe.”
“You still haven’t accepted that I’m not leaving you alone.”
“This isn’t a joke, Leigh. We both know I’m too dangerous to be around.”
“You’re too dangerous to not have a keeper. At least I have the drugs to deal with you if you go off the deep end again. I’m the only one who can keep you from hurting someone.”
His finger traced the bruises along her jaw so gently, it made her shiver. “And who’s going to protect
you
from me?”
Greed, revenge, guilt, lust.
Whatever it took.
Time to start looking for a weakness.
“I have information I’m willing to share, but only if you let me come along.”
“Then I’ll do it without your information.”
So much for greed. “If I’m with you, we can find these bastards faster. And when we do, you can do to them what you want—just as soon as they tell us how to fix you and Garrett.”
“I don’t care how long it takes. And when I do find them, there’s not a force on this earth that can stop me from making sure they never do it again. I don’t need you for that. You’ll only get in the way.”
And there went revenge. Time to lay on some guilt. “You hurt me, Clay. I think that means you owe me.”
He flinched, and his amber gaze slid to the ground. His shoulders drooped, and he seemed to fall in on himself, as if she’d taken something vital away from him.
Now she was the one feeling guilty.
“What do you want?” he grated out.
“To come with you. To bandage those cuts on your wrists. To make sure you find the people who did this. And to make sure you don’t hurt anyone else—at least not anyone who doesn’t have it com st hke sureing.”
He looked past her, staring at the businesses behind her. Until now she hadn’t realized how much she liked his direct gaze—how connected to him it had made her feel. She was floundering in this mess, unsure of herself and her ability to deal with it. Clay had been a source of stability for her, an anchor she could grab when she started to doubt herself. And now he was drifting away, out of reach.
She put her hand on his arm, feeling his muscles jump beneath the skin. “Don’t push me away.”
“It’s for your own good. The fact that you won’t be pushed means that anything that happens from here is your choice. This isn’t a question of me exercising more control, Leigh. When it comes to this shit—whatever it was they did to me—I have none. I can’t protect you. I won’t even know I’m hurting you until it’s too late.”
She nodded, but he didn’t see it. He wasn’t looking at her. “I understand. I won’t blame you. I’m a big girl, perfectly capable of taking responsibility for my own actions.”
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * *
Payton’s vacation home was a mess. Cleaning up the blood, broken glass, and bodies was going to take up precious time he wasn’t sure he had. So far his leads had all hit dead ends. There was only one more left to pursue, and Payton worried what would happen to Clay once General Robert Norwood learned the truth.
Bob answered his phone, despite the early hour. “If this is bad news, it can wait.”
“I’m afraid it can’t,” said Payton.
“Whatever. I wasn’t sleeping anyway. What’s wrong?”
Payton hesitated. Clay’s life was in his hands. He had to be careful about how he did this. “First you need to know that I have the situation under control.”
“Then why call me?”
“Because someone needs to know what’s going on in the event that I’m wrong.”
“About what?”
“Clay Marshall has been activated. Multiple times.”
“What?” bellowed Bob. “How is that possible?”
“I’m working on finding who is behind it, but I wanted you to know about it. If I’m wrong and he turns on me, someone has to take him out.”
“You let him live? Please tell me he’s on his way to the facility—that you at least had the sense to lock him up.”
“I know this man. He wouldn’t survive that. At least not for long.”
“So what? You let him roam around like a rabid animal? You know better than that. We’ve been through this before.”
“He’s not like the others ske en th.” Bob didn’t know Clay the way Payton did. He hadn’t worked with him every day for a decade and watched him struggle to find some kind of life for himself. He hadn’t seen Clay as a kid—neglected and scrawny, willing to do anything for even a scrap of affection. After what Payton and Bob had allowed to happen, they owed Clay more than a well-placed bullet or a life sentence in a secret, maximum-security holding facility.
“They’re all like that. We made them like that. If you can’t do this—if you’re too close to the situation—then I will.”
“No. Not yet.”
“Where is he now? Is he anywhere near Sloane?”
Bob’s daughter worked at the Edge alongside Clay. Payton couldn’t fault him for being concerned. “No. I’ve sent him away. He’s with Garrett Vaughn’s sister right now. She’ll know how to deal with him.”
Bob let out a prolonged sigh of fatigue and frustration. “Knowing how and being able to are two different things. If you get that woman killed, Vaughn will find out. He’s not stable enough for that kind of news.”
“I know. But Clay had to be watched, and I couldn’t do it—not while I’m trying to track down who triggered him.”
“It’s got to be Norma. She’s the only we haven’t found.”
“Maybe,” said Payton, “but I’m not sure. This doesn’t feel like her work.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You saw the report on Jake Staite. You saw what she’d done to him.”
Jake and many other men had been tricked into thinking that they were recruited into a secret special forces division of the U.S. military. By the time people from the Edge had found him, he’d been drugged, brainwashed, and subjected to torture and experimentation. They’d managed to save Staite’s life, but it wasn’t much worth saving. He was being held in the same facility as Leigh’s brother, kept isolated and sedated for his own safety.
Payton couldn’t stand the thought of the same thing happening to Clay.
“Yeah, I saw it,” said Bob. “Thanks for the nightmares, by the way.”
“Then you know what Norma did. It’s not like that with Clay. It’s different. More . . . subtle, like it was one of the others.”
“The researchers who aren’t dead went legit. I checked, remember?”
“Maybe we missed someone. We thought Norma was dead and we were wrong. Maybe we’re wrong about one of the others.”
“That’s why you want to keep him alive,” said Bob. “You want to use him as bait.”
“If I have to, I will. I’m doing everything I can to track down the person responsible. If Clay is dead or locked up, then he can’t lead me down the right path. Like it or not, we need him to be exactly where he is.”
“Roaming free, able to hurt countless people?”
“Leigh won’t let that happen.”
“You’d better be right about this. I’m really close to something big—something that may help clean up what we did.”
“What?” asked Payton, his voice betraying his eagerness. Any absolution he could find was more than welcome. If Bob had some to offer, Payton would grab it with both hands.
“Not yet. It’s too soon. I need a couple more days. Just know that if Marshall goes off the deep end and makes a mess, it will ruin everything.”
“I understand. I’ll be in touch.”
Payton hung up, considering his options. Bob was not the kind of man to exaggerate. He felt at least as much guilt over what they’d done in the ignorance of their youth as Payton did. If Bob thought there was some glimmer of hope that could make up for their past actions, then Payton had to respect that. He couldn’t allow anything to destroy that fragile hope. Too many lives were at stake.
Which meant that if it came down to a choice between Clay and all the others, Clay was going to lose.
* * *
Mr. Grady had yet to report in to Richard, which meant that he was dead. Not that it was much of a surprise. Clay Marshall was a man built to be a weapon. If the self-preservation programming had kicked in, Mr. Grady didn’t stand a chance.
Or perhaps that was Richard’s hubris talking.
Either way, none of the thugs had been able to find Marshall, so it was time to move on to another plan before he was locked away and out of reach the way Garrett Vaughn was. Richard remembered the names of only a few of his subjects, and most of them were now dead. Without the file he’d tasked Marshall to find months ago, Richard would never be able to prove that his methods were superior to Norma Stynger’s. And if he couldn’t prove that, then his funding would dry up by the end of the year.