Edge of Fear

331 Pages·2005·1.24 MB·English

by  Adair Cherry

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

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 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,still couldn’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.

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,long leg 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.

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.”

“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 knowthey were
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.”

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 tohelp her,” 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.”

“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—theGobi for Christ’s sake?—their skin was already
painfully red and peeling. “Duncan, nobody’s gonna hurt that one,believe me,”
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.

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.All of it.

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

“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.

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.