Edge of Fear (The Men of T-FLAC: The Edge Brothers, Book 9)

229 Pages·2006·1.38 MB·English

by  Cherry Adair

Edge of Fear
Cherry Adair

Edge of Fear is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2006 by Cherry Adair
Excerpt for Edge of Darkness © 2006 by Cherry Adair

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINEand colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Edge of Darkness. This excerpt has been set for this edition
only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49349-1
eISBN-10: 0-345-49349-4
www.ballantinebooks.com
Contents

Title Page
Preview of Edge of Fear
Also by Cherry Adair
Dedication

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Sneak Peek of Edge of Darkness
Preview for Edge of Darkness
Don't be afraid...take yourself over the edge!
“Know what I want more than my next breath?”

Heather shook her head as Caleb leaned in, close enough for his breath to stir her hair. “To kiss
you.”

Her mouth parted softly. Her pulse leapt at the base of her throat, and her pupils flared in a
show of nerves and excitement. “Are—” She swallowed hard, then licked her bottom lip. “Are
you asking permission?”

He shook his head. “A kiss loses the lure of spontaneity if one has to ask.”

“Are you trying to lure me, Caleb Edge?”

“Not lure. Seduce.”

Skimming his fingers along the curve of her jaw he watched her eyes darken to aged whiskey
with anticipation. She dragged in a ragged breath.

Helpless to prevent it, good intentions be damned, Caleb’s vision blurred as his mouth touched
hers. Not giving her time to think.

Soft and unthreatening, he brushed his mouth back and forth until her lips parted on a sigh. His
blood pooled in his groin as the slick heat of her tongue came to greet him. She tasted amazing,
and her response sent a jolt of pure possessiveness through him.

Mine, he thought. Mine.

ALSO BY CHERRY ADAIR

Hot Ice
On Thin Ice
Out of Sight
In Too Deep
Hide and Seek
Kiss and Tell
Edge of Danger
To Rhonda Pollero
For curses, Curses, and laughter.
With the magic of hindsight,
I agree.
I do owe you
all the muffins
and bagels in the land.

A special thanks to
Heather Wieker from Sea-Tac Airport.
See? I was quite serious.

And for David, with love

Duty o’er love was the choice you did make
My love you did spurn, my heart you did break

Your penance to pay, no pride you shall gain
Three sons on three sons find nothing but pain

I gift you my powers in memory of me
The joy of love no son shall ever see

When a Lifemate is chosen by the heart of a son
No protection can be given, again I have won

His pain will be deep, her death will be swift,
Inside his heart a terrible rift

Only freely given will this curse be done
To break the spell, three must work as one
SAN FRANCISCO
MONDAY, JANUARY 16
15:15:47

“What does it matter what she looks like?” Caleb Edge said into the phone, hoping like hell the dark,
primal lust drumming through his veins didn’t bleed into his voice. He frowned absently at his control’s
odd question as he shifted the compact sat phone between chin and shoulder, and the binocs left an inch
for a better view.

A San Francisco street and a shitload of swirling fog separated the two apartment windows. The lights
over there were on. The lights here weren’t.

Desire tightened his body and clogged his throat. His heart, which was normally as steady as a rock,
still pounded uncomfortably sixty seconds after he’d lifted the binoculars to his eyes and taken his first
look at her.

Bam! Caleb felt as though someone had punched him in the solar plexus, grabbed his heart, and
squeezed. Hard.

That’s what Heather Shaw looked like.

Not that he’d share his physical reaction with his control, Lark Orela. She was like a frigging dog with
a bone if she thought her people weren’t focused. Unfortunately he was plenty focused.

“Earth to Edge?”

“She looks…I don’t know.” Classy. Beautiful. “Deluxe, expensive,” he told Lark smoothly. His heart
was racing, he assured himself, because his goddamned knee hurt like hell. He leaned a little more of
his weight on the shoulder he had propped against the wall.

Heather had pushed the sleeves of the soft-looking purple sweater up her creamy forearms while she
worked on something at the table. The fabric draped over her tall slender body as if it had been custom-
made. Probably had. Heather Shaw had more money than many third-world countries.

“Interesting location for her to hide out,” Caleb dragged his gaze from the gentle swell of Miss Shaw’s
breasts back to the top of her head. Look up again, honey, let’s see those gorgeous eyes again. “How
long’s she been there?” Were her eyes green? Brown? Hard to tell from this distance.

“About six months,” Lark told him. “Why?”

Reluctantly Caleb shifted the binocs. “Place’s pretty stark. Chair. Bed. Table. Nothing personal that I
can see.”

“She’s been moving around.”
“Yeah.” And not easy to track down, according to Lark. Finding Heather’s father first would’ve
expedited this op, and made it a lot more interesting, Caleb thought. Unfortunately, Brian Shaw had
been missing for the better part of a year. Not surprisingly, he’d completely obliterated his trail, so he
was a little freaking hard to find at the moment.

Which left his delectable daughter to the wolves.

Caleb figured he’d been in physical rehab for too damn long if just looking at the tango’s daughter
gave him a hard-on.

Long, elegant bones. Pale slender fingers. Silky-looking hair that would feel like sunlight on his skin.
He’d begged Lark to send him on a mission. Anywhere. Any damn thing to escape the hospital. This
had been the best Lark claimed she could come up with at short notice.

Bullshit. Fact was: She didn’t think he was ready to go back into the field.

This wasn’t an op. A simple question needed answering. Hell, someone could call it in.

But here he was. Because anything was better than being stuck in a rehab center for months on end.
Boredom seemed to be a family trait this week. His older brother, Gabriel, had visited him a couple of
days ago on his way to Arizona to get intel from some scientist there. He’d been uncharacteristically
cranky and out of sorts. Clearly needing a little action himself.

His younger brother, Duncan, was secretly lobbying to become head of the wizard council and was off
somewhere, totally focused on his goal. And when Duncan focused he was pretty frigging single-
minded.

So Caleb didn’t even have his brothers to spar with at the moment. Too bad, he wouldn’t mind a kick-
ass, sweaty workout with Gabriel and his claymores, or Duncan and his knives—or both—right now.

Instead he was in San Francisco watching the daughter of the banker to some of the world’s most
lethal tangos.

Surprisingly, Caleb’s reaction to the woman he’d been sent to find had been visceral and immediate.
He liked women just fine. No, he loved women. But he’d never had such an instantaneous, energizing,
chemical…jolt looking at a woman before.

Adrenaline junkie that he was, his physical reaction on seeing her—blood pressure up, libido up,
temperature up—intrigued him. Pheromones were one thing, but he wasn’t even in sniffing distance of
her.

His reaction was so immediate, so primitive it shocked the hell out of him.

Why her? Why here? Why now?

“Okay, then let me ask you an easy question,” Lark said in his ear. Caleb braced himself. Lark was an
empath, and he didn’t want her picking up any screwy signals. “How’s the leg?” she asked, throwing
him.
Yeah. Concentrate on something that made sense. The new knee still hurt. Which annoyed the hell out
of him. One of his unique powers was the ability to heal, but the only person’s injuries he couldn’t fix
were his own. Pissed him off no end. Caleb considered his body another tool in his arsenal against
tangos. He needed to be in tip-top condition to do his job well, and he worked to keep himself in the
peak of physical performance at all times. He was rarely ill, and this knee injury was the first time in
his career that he’d been stuck in the hospital for so long.

“One hundred percent A-okay,” he assured Lark.

He’d been pathetically grateful when he’d gotten the call an hour ago during his hopefully final
physical therapy session in San Jose. Hell yeah, he was only an hour from San Francisco, he’d talk to
Shaw’s daughter. Anything to cut short the boring sessions. He’d been going stir-crazy.

He’d commandeered an apartment across the street, one whose windows looked directly into hers. A
typical winter’s day in San Francisco. Damp, misty fog eddied in gossamer ribbons between the tall,
narrow buildings in an ever-changing screen that made it difficult to maintain a clear view into
Heather’s apartment, even with her lights on. Caleb had seen enough.

“Liar,” Lark told him. “Dr. Long just told me you’re still favoring that knee.”

“Then why did you ask?” He’d had his knee replaced, but there’d been some nerve and muscle
damage. It would heal. Eventually. These things usually did. He had plenty of scars to prove it.

Watching Heather Shaw was more interesting than discussing his knee. Which in turn made him bad
tempered. Which in turn made him even more antsy to get back to work so he could forget about it.

Based on photographs, Shaw’s daughter had changed some during the last year.

“To see if you’d lie,” Lark informed him.

Lying was the least he’d do to get back to work. “I have a medical release from the doctor and the
therapist. So, quit torturing me, honey. Find me something.Anything. I beg you. This lack of activity
has made me a basket case.”

“You’re a workaholic, Middle Edge.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Come on, Lark, help me out here. Send me to some exotic hellhole
to kick some terrorist butt.”

“Can you run?”

“Better than most.” No. But he didn’t want his control to know that his doctors were right. He wasn’t
fully back up to speed yet. But he’d get back into shape on the job. “And since when does an Edge
need to run? We show up and take names.”

“That may be, but you should still take some downtime until you’re fully recovered. Think of it as a
vacation.”

“I don’t want a vacation. I don’t need a vacation.”
Lark had a pretty laugh, even if it was mocking. “You sound like a truculent five-year-old. But I agree.
You can do your job just fine limping. Your trigger finger’s just fine. Your brain wasn’t damaged—
much —by that beating you took.”

“Heartless, Lark. I’m sharp as a tack.” Was she going to send him back in? Caleb imagined the young
woman who was his control. Lark Orela looked like a cross between a biker chick and a Goth rocker.
With spiked black-and-fuchsia hair, and half a dozen silver rings in each eyebrow, and one in her nose
for God’s sake. But behind that pale face and scary black eye makeup lived the brain of a brilliant
tactician.

“Tell me what you see.” She’d circled back to Heather Shaw.

This was a “look see.” He wanted to get back to real work. “Are you sending me back into the fiel—”

“Observations, Edge?”

Lark was like a particularly friendly pit bull. Caleb shifted to do a quick scan of Shaw’s one-room
apartment.

“How the mighty have fallen. Like I said, it’s almost empty. The walls are bare. No pictures. No
knickknacks. Nothing whatsoever to personalize her living space.” The covers on the narrow single bed
behind her were thrown about haphazardly. Restless night or lover?

His insides clenched at the thought of a lover, and his reaction surprised him. Good thing he would be
with Kris-Alice in Germany within the hour. That was one of the benefits of being who he was. What
he was. He could teleport with ease.

Caleb worked for T-FLAC/psi. T-FLAC was a privately funded counterterrorist organization. Psi was
the psychic phenomena offshoot.

This wasn’t a psi op. He’d been in Silicone Valley undergoing forced physical therapy on his knee—it
had been just a small bullet hole—when Shaw’s prints had been ID’d. Since he was closest, he’d been
requested to get intel from the woman. Intel they sorely needed if they had a hope in hell of tracking
down her father, Brian Shaw.

“She live alone?”

“Looks like.”

Caleb found downtime redundant. Unlike his laid-back younger brother, Duncan, Caleb liked to be on
the go all the time. But they’d insisted. Getting shot in the knee was a pain in his ass. Technically, he
was supposed to be off duty for another three weeks. He’d never been real big on technicalities. All he
needed was to be sent on an op now, and he’d prove to the team and control that he was in top form.
And this wasn’t an op. It was a frigging conversation. And a short one at that.

No action to prove he could still outrun, outjump, outshoot the best of them.