Edge of Danger (49 page)

 
Coming in August 2006

from Ballantine Books

 
SANFRANCISCO

MONDAY, JANUARY16TH

15:15:47

 
“What does it matter what the hell she looks like?” Caleb Edge said into the phone, hoping like hell that the dark, primal lust he felt 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 an inch left.

 
A foggy 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.

 
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 looks like.

 
“She looks like a woman with more money than sense,” he told Lark absently. His heart was racing; he assured himself it was because his goddamned knee hurt like hell. He leaned a little more of his weight on the shoulder he had propped against the wall.

 
She’d pushed the sleeves of the thin purple sweater up her creamy forearms while she worked. 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,” his control, Lark Orela, 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 hell of a lot more interesting, Caleb thought. Unfortunately Brian Shaw had been missing for the better part of a year. Interesting, but not surprising, that such a high-profile individual could completely obliterate his trail to disappear like that.

 
Which left his delectable daughter to the wolves.

 
Caleb figured he’d been in 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 hair that would feel like sunlight on his skin. He was damn sorry now that he’d begged Lark to send him on a mission. Anywhere. Any damn thing to escape the hospital.

 
This had been the best Lark had come up with at short notice. Bullshit. She didn’t think he was ready.

 
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. Surprisingly, Caleb’s reaction to the woman he’d been sent to find had been visceral and immediate. He liked women just fine. Hell, 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 knee was sore. Which annoyed the hell out of him. The only person’s injuries he couldn’t fix were his own. Pissed him off to no end.

 
“One hundred percent A-okay.”

 
He’d been pathetically grateful when he’d gotten the call an hour ago during his hopefully final physical therapy session. Hell yeah, he’d check out 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 challenged 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 ached like hell. 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. He’d been off for three months now. Even one more day with nothing to do but physical therapy would drive him straight up the wall. “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, babe, 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, take names and kick ass. There’s no heavy lifting and I like the hours.”

 
“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. You 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.

 
The operatives under her control, Caleb included, weren’t fully aware of the full scope of Lark’s various wizardly talents, which intrigued him. Among other skills, Caleb was damn sure she was clairvoyant. But she never talked about it, and discouraged questions.

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

 
This was a “look-see.” He wanted back to work. Yesterday would have been good. “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. 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 clenching at the thought of a lover 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.

 
But to go and talk to Miss Shaw he’d merely stroll across the street and knock at her door. 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 Silicon Valley undergoing forced physical therapy on his knee—hell, it had just been 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 hauling ass to prove he could still outrun, outjump, outshoot the best of them.

 
Right now even watching a woman through binocs beat lying around on a sun-drenched beach somewhere doing nothing. Give him action and he was a happy man. An op relaxed him. Hell, a fast-paced op made him sleep like a baby at night.

 
Watching Heather should have been a step in that direction. But instead his body grew even more coiled and tight. He needed to get a grip.
And not,
he thought with a mental bitch slap,
on that perfect body of hers.
Still, the mere thought of running his fingers through her honey-colored hair, allowing his palms to slide over the gentle curve of her hip, either, both, was interfering with his assignment.

 
Time to focus.

 
Yeah. That.

 
He finished checking out Heather’s living quarters. The kitchen occupied one corner, an open door led to the bathroom, another door led, he presumed, to the stairwell. The bed, and folding table where she now sat, were the sum total of her furnishings. The small, sterile accommodations, after living the high life, must really cramp the socialite’s style.

 
She was seated at the table, some sort of small tool in her hand, prying a stone out of a piece of jewelry, or putting one in. She made and sold her own jewelry to local jewelers. That’s how she’d been found. Her fingerprints had been lifted from a jewelry store after a robbery there yesterday.

 
From there it had been simple to track “Hannah Smith” to this address. Even simpler to determine that Hannah Smith
was
Heather Shaw.