Edge Of Fear

340 Pages·2016·1.28 MB·English

by  Adair Cherry

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ALSO BY CHERRY ADAIR

Hot Ice
On Thin Ice
Out of Sight
In Too Deep
Hide and Seek
Kiss and Tell
Edge of Danger

Read on to catch a sneak peek at
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the final sizzling adventure in the Edge Brothers Trilogy
by

MONTANA

Thud!

A flash of orange lightening lit the room, followed by the sudden materialization of a man, dumped
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unceremoniously onto the middle of the conference room table. He was soaking wet. Water funneled on
the wood surface around him, then started to pour over the sides.

Duncan Edge merely raised a brow as he shifted his chair out of the way. The other five T-FLAC/psi
operatives in the meeting jumped to their feet at the unexpected interruption, grabbing up computers,
paper, and assorted items before everything was saturated.

“What the hell…?”

“Hey!”

“Holy shit!”

“Who the f—”

Shaking his head, Duncan focused on the rivulets of water, using his power of telekinesis to prevent the
stream from reaching his body or cascading to the floor. He knew the who and the why.

Serena Brightman.

One of her strongest powers was her mastery over water. Clearly she hadn’t changed. She still had a
bad temper,stillcouldn’t control it. And still had to have the last damned word.

The woman was a menace.

“This is personal,” he told the others. “Take five.”

“Hell, take ten. Color me intrigued,” Jordan told him affably, closing his computer and setting it on the
credenza nearby out of the way. There were general murmurs of agreement from the others.
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Great. He’d never allowed his personal life, such as it was, to infiltrate his professional life. But of
course he’d never tried to help Serena before. No good deed goes unpunished. Now he had five
freaking witnesses to his folly. Crap.

He waited patiently as his man gasped for air like a beached whale trying to regain use of his lungs.
Understandable, since the guy had hit the solid wood of the table hard and fast. Duncan retrieved the
note pinned to Chang’s crumpled shirt while he waited.

“I believe this belongs to you,”he read the curlicue handwriting out loud. Oh, yeah. He knew the who.
Absently he touched the scar bisecting his left eyebrow. Damn woman had lost her temper that time, too.
He’d almost been blinded by a flying pencil. “You gonna make it, buddy?” he asked the young half
wizard.

“S-she made me,” Chang managed, gray faced and still spread-eagle in the middle of the highly polished
Koa wood table. He’d had the air knocked out of him. His pride, too, if Duncan knew Serena.

“Yeah. Figured that one out for myself,” he said dryly. “Told you she was sharp.”Too damned sharp,
Duncan thought with a stab of irritation. He’d sent Chang, Jensen, and Prost in to watch her back.
Serena Brightman had been a stubborn pain in Duncan’s ass since wizard grade school. But for some
annoying reason he always needed to know where she was and what the hell she was doing.

Apparently, time and maturity hadn’t improved her temper or her stubbornness one iota. He hadn’t
seen her in what, five? Six years? Not since some Foundation charity fundraiser he’d been dragged to by
a date whose name he now couldn’t remember. Odd, since he remembered with photographic clarity the
backless emerald gown Serena had worn that night.

The glittering material had clung to every curvaceous inch of her body, but had left the upper swell of
her creamy breasts and one long,longleg exposed. The leg men attending the black tie function that night
had salivated when they’d looked at her, the breast men had their tongues hanging out, and every straight
man with a pulse had wanted her.

That was Serena.
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Help herechoed in his head like a broken record. He recognized Henry Morgan’s voice, weak though it
was. His old mentor was not only head of the Wizard Council, but he also worked in some scientific
capacity for the Campbell Foundation which Serena now ran. He’d been ‘calling’ Duncan for the past
three days.

“Help her.”

The only ‘her’ he and Henry had in common was Serena.

Serena was Henry Morgan’s Goddaughter, and the old man loved and treated her as his own. Which
had sometimes made his and Duncan’s friendship difficult.

“Help her. Stop her.”

A running litany with growing telepathic urgency but no clear explanation. Why didn’t the guy just pick
up the damned phone? Henry was one of the few people who had Duncan’s private cell number.

Henry’s insistence that he help Serena, and Chang’s untimely return, were indicative of something.What
, he had no idea. Now he realized it was time to pay both Henry and Serena a visit. If nothing else, it
would be amusing to see if he could get a civil answer out of her. Probably not.

He’d contact both of them later that evening when he returned to London, he decided. See what was
what. Helping Chang off the table, he noticed that the guy’s stick-straight black hair was covered with
sand, as if he’d rolled around on a beach. Interesting.

Albert Chang ran a shaky hand over his jaw, his eyes still a little glassy, his breathing ragged. His
triangular face flushed with embarrassment as he saw who else was in the room. “I can t-try again.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Duncan crumpled Serena’s note and lobbed it into the trash can in the corner. He
could almost feel her animosity radiating off the orange colored, flowery scented paper. “The others will
keep tabs.”
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“Man, I’m sorry, Edg—”

Duncan sent the kid home.

The men picked up their scattered papers and reassumed their seats. “That was interesting,” Jordan
said mildly, reaching for his pen. “Are you using halves as minions these days?”

‘Half’ was the term for someone with muted wizard powers. Their claim to fame was that they couldn’t
be detected by full-breed wizards which was why Duncan had sent the three to watch over Serena. They
had a few powers of their own, but nothing major. They were neither fish nor fowl. Not fully integrated
into the wizard world, but not part of the non-wizard world either.

“Just a little side job,” Duncan told them. Prost and Jensen had more experience working side jobs for
him than Chang. Serena wasn’t going to knowtheywere around.

Satisfied that he still had the Serena problem covered, Duncan glanced around. “Now, where were
we?”

Zzzft. Orange lightening fizzled and blinked. “Ah, shit,” he muttered, shimmering all the miscellaneous
papers off the table before they got soaked.

A saturated Prost, swearing a blue streak, crashed into the spot in the middle of the table that Chang
had just vacated. The coral Post-it note protruding from the top of his shirt pocket was dry, and read:
“And this!”

Duncan got rid of the puddles, and crushed the note in his fist. This was just bullshit, not to mention a
serious waste of his time. “Getanything?”

“Other than, she’s drop dead gorgeous with a temper to match that bright red hair?” Gingerly Prost
swung himself off the table. “No.”
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Duncan rubbed a hand over his jaw. “See anything suspicious? Dangerous? Out of place?”

“Not in the forty-eight hours I was tailing her. Just so you know, they’re having an unseasonably hot
January, and it’s one hundred and nine in the Gobi desert right now.”

Duncan was feeling a lot hotter. “Miss Brightman returned Chang as well,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You mean Mrs.Campbell?Yeah,” Prost said with a grimace. “She let me know in no uncertain terms
that my presence was far from welcome. That woman can yell without raising her voice. Scary, that.
Want me to go back in?”

Campbell. Right. As if he could damn well forget. She’d married. And buried Ian Campbell last year.
“No. Jensen’s still th—”

Zzft

“Goddamn it!”

It was the weakest of lightening flashes. Serena sucked at creating fire. Tom Jensen landed on all fours,
just shy of the table, tucked and rolled, then sprayed water in all directions like a dog after a swim. He
staggered to his feet and handed Duncan his note. It had been attached to his shirt with what looked like
a diaper pin.

“I’m trying tohelpher,” Duncan said more to himself than the others. He glanced at the note.And this
one as well!“What the hell is she doing sending you guysback?”

“Says, and I quote: She doesn’t need your freaking watchdogs following her around, and not to send
any more. She’ll send all of us back to you, and she won’t be nice about it.” Prost caught Jensen’s eye
before both men turned back to Duncan. “Think she pretty much means it, boss.”
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“I gotta tell you, Duncan,” Jensen grimaced, tucking his shirt into his shorts and looking both
embarrassed and annoyed. “That woman scares the crap outta me.”

Both men had clearly been out in the desert sun. Even in the few days they’d been wherever Serena
was—theGobifor Christ’s sake?—their skin was already painfully red and peeling. “Duncan, nobody’s
gonna hurt that one,believeme,” Jensen muttered. “She’d flay their skin open with that tongue of hers
before anyone could draw a weapon.”

Yeah. Duncan knew that only too well. “Thanks for your help, guys. You did good.”All things
considered.These half wizards weren’t employed by T-FLAC, they weren’t trained in covert ops.
They’d done as he’d asked. Kept a low profile, stayed invisible, and watched over Serena. Doing what,
he wasn’t sure.

“Where can I send you?” Each man told him where they wanted to be teleported, and Duncan sent
them on their way. The sizable deposits in their bank accounts would come from his own pocket.

“What’cha do?” Brown asked curiously. “Send those yahoo Halves to observe a female tango?”

Worsethan a female tango. “Serena Brightman-Campbell.” The name said it all.

“Ah. The bimbo who married that multimillionaire old guy, Ian Campbell?” Chapman asked curiously.
“He died last year, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.” They’d been married all of two years. It had made Duncan’s flesh crawl seeing the front page
pictures in all the newspapers. Thirty-year old Serena and that old fart arm in arm at her white—whitefor
Christ’s sake!—wedding three years ago. There was only one reason a beautiful young woman married a
guy like Campbell. Duncan figured not even the combo of Serena and a blue pill could get a rise out of
the seventy-nine-year-old groom.

Still, they’d both been grinning like besotted fools in the pictures. Duncan knew that forcing himself to
look at every one of the pictures was like holding his tongue to dry ice. Not too bright and a touch on the
painful side.
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Serena Brightman-Campbell had gotten every last freaking dime when her doddering old husband had
reached his expiration date. Word out there was that Campbell’s two sons—older than Serena by a
good thirty years—were gunning for blood. Their pretty, young stepmother’s blood.Allof it.

By calling out to him telepathically, Henry Morgan had made Serena’s problemDuncan’sproblem.

“She’s an old friend. Her judgment has pissed off a few members of the Campbell family,” Duncan said,
figuring discretion was the better part of valor. “I hired a few guys to watch her back.”

“You gonna send more Halves to keep an eye on your ‘friend,’ Edge?” Hart asked curiously. “I’ve
seen pictures. She’sgorgeous. Shitloads of cash as well. Too plum an assignment for a Half. Beauty,
bucks, and she’s a full wizard to boot. You’ve got some downtime coming. Maybe this requires your
personal attention.”

“Not interested.” One freaking Curse on his head was enough. “Let’s finish this up so we can get out of
here.

NEWYORKCITY

Serena teleported directly from the desert into her New York apartment bathroom. Dirty, tired, and still
seriously pissed off, she turned on the shower, then yanked off her boots, and stripped off her
sweat-stained, sand-encrusted shorts and tank top, kicking the pile aside. She still wasn’t sure if she’d
been antsy all week because she’d somehow sensed she was being watched. Or if it was a presentiment
of impending—what? She had no idea. Things at the Foundation had been copacetic. Much-needed
money had poured in from the last fundraiser. Ian’s two adult sons had been ominously quiet.

Which was almost more disconcerting than when they were harassing her with their latest attempt to
vacate the terms of Ian’s will. Maybe someday the greedy bastards will understand that their father had
left everything to her for a reason. Ian had known long before he’d married Serena that his sons didn’t
share his humanitarian leanings. And she would use the very last breath in her body to make sure Ian’s
wishes were followed to the letter.

Had Duncan Edge somehow gotten involved with Paul and Hugh Campbell? It seemed doubtful. But,
hell, anything was possible.
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This, however, wasn’t the hour to worry about it. Right now she was going to take a lovely hot shower,
slather herself in scented lotion, and crawl between her one-thousand-thread-count sheets. After a good
night’s sleep she’d look into Duncan’s intrusion. She shivered just thinking about Duncan joining forces
with Ian’s greed-driven sons. Hell, she shivered just thinking about Duncan period.

She gave herself a shake, enjoying the glide of her long hair down her bare back. Tonight was for her.

Used to extreme temperatures in the places she visited for the Foundation, weather barely phased
Serena. Hot or cold, it was a given that each location she and her team visited would be poor and rural;
she was used to sleeping on the ground wrapped in a blanket, used to not looking too closely at what she
was eating, used to primitive facilities—assuming there were any facilities at all. Which was why she
relished her infrequent visits home. She could hike the jungles with the best of them, but that didn’t mean
she wasn’t a girl who appreciated the indulgence and sanctuary of her perfectly appointed penthouse.

Like the rest of the apartment, her bathroom was spacious, and opulently luxurious. Creamy,
peach-veined marble, twenty-four carat gold fixtures, and plush carpeting the color of ripe apricots. They
were her favorite colors. But knowing exactly what she loved was just one of the many things her
husband, Ian, had been good at. He’d spoiled her, and loved her, and known her, sometimes better than
she knew herself.

Her heart squeezed painfully. God she missed him. Missed his dry sense of humor. Missed the love
he’d lavished unstintingly on her. Missed his council and his wisdom.

The fact that he’d given her almost everything her heart could desire, and countless things she hadn’t
even known she’d needed or wanted, was immaterial. Those had only beenthings.

She missed him every day. And at night, when she lay in their vast empty bed, she missed the comfort
of his arms around her.

Neither of them had cared what people said. Their world was complete. They’d had each other, and
they’d had the Foundation. And knowing intellectually that her husband would die decades before she
did, hadn’t softened the heart-wrenching emotional blow when he’d closed his eyes that night a year ago
and never woken up. How stupid to think that just because she’d anticipated being a widow, Ian’s death
wouldn’t have a devastating emotional impact on her.