Edge of Black

by J. T. Ellison

“Ah, see. Now that’s where all of you pretty things seem to slip up. Temptation. A concept that you don’t understand. We are bound by temptation. We are burned in hell for it. We must cleanse ourselves of our sins and be reborn in the image of our father.” His voice was getting louder and louder, until he shouted, “Go on!”

  “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.”

  “Amen,” he said, then leaped at her, shooting, bullets scattering the leaves around her.

  She couldn’t help herself, the scream ripped from her throat, and she braced herself for the sear of the bullet, the impact of his body, but it didn’t come. Instead, she heard a loud thwang, and Carter stopped moving forward, almost midair, like Wile E. Coyote over a gorge, when he realizes he is going to fall, but stays suspended in the air for a moment, just long enough to wave goodbye. He met her eyes and a smile came over his face, a secret revealed to him alone, then he dropped, all of a piece, face-first onto the forest floor. She shut her eyes and took a breath, then opened them to see the shaft of the arrow buried deep in Carter’s back. He wasn’t moving.

  “Sam, are you all right?”

  Xander.

  “Xander,” she cried. “I’m here. I’m okay.” Her voice had a ragged edge, and she could feel the swelling beginning around her trachea. She was going to have one hell of a set of bruises in the morning.

  He came from the woods, limping. She rushed to him. She ducked her shoulder under his arm and helped him sit. He was white as a ghost and she felt the wet of blood on his thigh.

  “What happened? Are you okay? Where’s Roth?”

  “He’s at the camp. We were trying to circle him, and the bastard slipped through. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. You’re not. You’re hit.”

  “Yeah. In the thigh. It’s not bad, a through and through. No bone or arteries. Hurts like shit, though.”

  “Let me get the kit. And your dad.”

  “No, honey. Let’s just sit here for a minute. I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Xander. Now is not the time for talking. I need to patch you up.”

  He clung to her shoulder and buried his face in her hair. His voice was odd, lilting, gaining strength then fading. “Really. Samantha, I love you. I want to marry you. I want you to have my babies, and be my woman, and build my life with you. I can’t imagine being without you. When I heard you scream I thought it was all over and I ran right into a hail of bullets so I could get to you because if you were dying I wanted to die with you. I love you, so much. I love...” His voice drifted off and he slumped against her.

  “Xander?” She slapped his face a little, trying to rouse him, but he was out.

  “Roth!” she shouted. “Roth, if you can hear me, I need you!”

  She heard a faint answering shout, and felt a tiny bit of relief. Xander had been in shock, his wound must be more serious than he was letting on.

  She eased him gently to the forest floor and started to feel around. Yes, he was hit in the thigh, but also in the stomach, and his upper right arm, as well. Holy crap. He was losing blood rather substantially through the wound in his stomach—it had probably nicked an artery. She needed to run back up the hill to the first-aid kit, but just as she stood to do so, Roth announced himself and stepped from the woods.

  He saw his son and his face paled.

  “Jesus, he’s hurt bad.”

  “I need your medical kit.”

  He swung his pack off his shoulders and dug in for the kit. He handed it to her and she knelt beside Xander again, started to work.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough. He’s lost a lot of blood. He passed out on me before I could get a read on things, but I daresay he’s just in a faint from blood loss.”

  “That hurts,” he groaned. “I didn’t faint. I can hear you fine. Tell me you’ll marry me.”

  Roth chuckled under his breath. “Careful there, Samantha. He gets stubborn when he’s hurt.”

  “He’s delusional and rambling incoherently.”

  “Samantha,” Xander moaned. “Dad, tell her.”

  She shushed him. “Xander Moon, you quit it right now. Let me do my job.”

  “Your job is to cut open dead people. Ow!”

  She’d pulled his jeans away from his thigh, the sucking crackling of dried blood started the wound bleeding all over again. He started to roll toward her, like he was going to embrace her, and she fought him back to the ground.

  “Hold still, I said.”

  She tempered her tone with a gentle palm to his forehead, brushing his hair back from his face. She leaned down and kissed him. And he passed out again with a smile on his face.

  She worked on his wounds, saying prayers of thanks that he was still with her. He was hurt badly, might lose his spleen, but he would live.

  The whump, whump, whump of a helicopter’s rotors became audible.

  Roth touched Sam on the head.

  “He must be in a bad way if he called me Dad. You take care of him. I’m going to go drop a flare so they know where we are.”

  She smiled at him. “He’ll be fine. I promise.”

  “If he has you, Samantha, I have no doubt of that.”

  He walked ten feet away and she heard the whispering crack of the flare, then an eerie green light filled the forest.

  It only took a few minutes for the helicopter to see them and start a hover, men snaking down nearly invisible lines to the ground. Roth briefed their leader and they came to Xander first.

  She’d never been so happy to see a bevy of men with guns in her life.

  FRIDAY

  Chapter 51

  Denver, Colorado

  Swedish Medical Center

  Dr. Samantha Owens

  Sam was reading in the soft sunlight flowing through the window of Xander’s hospital room when the attendant came in with a plastic tray and cheerfully sang out, “Chow time!”

  Xander gave her a hateful glance. “I don’t want that. I want real food. Solid food.” He turned to Sam. “Please, Sam, tell them to quit torturing me. If I see one more bowl of broth, I swear I’m going to—”

  “You’re going to what? Eat it? The broth is definitely in danger today, I can tell.” Sam stood and went to the tray, which housed a bowl of clear broth and little else.

  “You’re feeling better?” the attendant asked.

  “Yes,” he growled. “Tell them I want actual food.”

  “I’ll see if they’ll let you have some Jell-O for dinner.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  “Xander, be nice to the girl. It isn’t her fault you managed to get shot in the stomach and lost your spleen and part of your colon. These things take time to heal. At least they aren’t forcing a feeding tube on you.”

  “But I’m starving.”

  “And that’s an excellent sign. I’ve got it from here, Eunice.”

  The girl left with a grin, and Sam sat on the edge of Xander’s bed and picked up the soup spoon. “Choo-choo or airplane today?”

  His face turned puce. “Samantha Natalie Owens, if you dare, I will—”

  She cut him off at the pass with a kiss, which placated him enough to take the spoon from her hand and feed himself.

  He was banged up, his arm in a sling, his leg propped up, the drain coming out of the wound in his stomach. He was as stoic as they came and hadn’t complained for a minute about the pain. It was the lack of food that had him griping.

  He’d had a little bit of surgery to clean things up, and was already chomping at the bit to get out. The doctors promised he’d be released by the end of the weekend, assuming he continued to improve rapidly.

  “You know,” he said, between gulps of broth, “you never gave me an answer.”


  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “About?”

  “You know what about. On the mountain, when I asked you to—”

  There was a soft knocking on the door.

  Xander grumbled, “Damn nurses.”

  Sam glanced over her shoulder and saw Fletcher standing there.

  “Fletch!”

  She jumped up off the bed and went to him, hugging him hard.

  “Glad to see you’re both okay. But God, you’re a mess,” he said.

  Sam’s hand went to her throat, which was black with bruises. She knew how bad it appeared; she had looked at the mirror in her bag once, then quietly put it away. She’d gotten lucky. They’d both gotten lucky.

  “What are you doing here, Fletch? Aren’t you busy wrapping things up in D.C.?”

  “I am, but I volunteered to come out here and bring Loa Ledbetter to her daughter. She’s decided she wants to try for custody, after everything that’s happened. The people who adopted the girl, her name is Miranda but Carter called her Ruth, are coming out, as well. Apparently Carter kidnapped her last year. She’s been in the missing person’s database this whole time.”

  “At least they get to have a happy ending.”

  “That’s true. This whole case has been screwed up from the get-go. But the upside is Carter is dead, and they recovered all of his equipment from the camp, including the stores of abrin he’d managed to make. He had enough explosives to take out a small city. Who knows how many other places he was going to hit.”

  “Are there more injuries from the blast in Boulder?”

  “Seems not. Even though the bombs were laden with abrin, the explosion neutralized it. So instead of spreading it like he’d hoped, it was destroyed. And thank goodness, because if he’d managed to make it work, we’d have casualties on our hands.”

  “Small blessings,” said Sam.

  “Yeah. So good job to both of you for figuring out where he was. And since all that’s taken care of, I needed to talk to Xander for a moment. Sam, would you excuse us?”

  Xander shifted with a grimace.

  “Let her stay. Whatever you have to say you can say in front of Sam.”

  Fletcher shrugged. “All right. Don’t shoot the messenger. Alexander Whitfield, you are under arrest for the manslaughter killing of Ryan Carter. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you—”

  “What the hell are you doing, Fletch?” Sam felt her blood pressure spike sharply. “How dare you try to arrest him? He saved my life. He stopped a madman.”

  “And killed a man in the process. He’s not a cop, Sam. He’s a civilian, and he’s got to answer for his crime. I didn’t want it to be like this, but trust me, it was going to be worse. I talked Bianco down off the ledge. She was going to send in the Denver police and have them cuff him to the bed. I talked her into letting me do this so we can handle it quietly. Don’t worry. I’m sure things will work out in court.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Sam spit at him.

  “Hon, ratchet it back for a minute,” Xander interrupted wearily. “He’s partially right. I did kill a man, and I do have that on my conscience. But, Fletcher, I was acting in a legal capacity when I hit Carter with that arrow.”

  “How can that be?” Fletcher asked.

  “Call Reed McReynolds. Police chief up in Dillon. He deputized me before we went up the mountain.”

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What is this, the Wild West?”

  Sam watched Xander grin and couldn’t help smiling herself.

  “Yes, it is. Especially when you’re dealing with this much terrain, and crazy people. We did it just to be safe. I was happy to take that oath. I meant it. Every word.”

  “You did it to cover your ass. I told you I wanted him alive.”

  “He was about to kill Sam, Fletch. What did you want me to do?”

  Fletcher gritted his teeth and breathed deeply to try and calm down.

  “Off the record, I applaud what you did. But Bianco has her sights set on getting somebody behind bars.”

  “Well, I’m not willing to be her sacrificial lamb. But I can help you with something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My friend Will Crawford. Sam saved his life up on the mountain. He now owes us one. And since you might be interested in the things he’s been doing over the past few years, I thought you could arrest him, instead.”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “He’s a hacker,” Sam said. “Used to work for the government, then turned on them. He’s been buying and selling exceptionally sensitive information to the highest bidder. Ledbetter went into the Mountain Blue and Gray because she thought he was attached to them, and she was trying to track him down for the CIA. But it was Carter who was the link back to Crawford. He was the one she was after, though she didn’t know it.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Insane, yes, but true,” Xander said. “He’s been hurt pretty badly, but right now, I think he saw God and maybe is having a change of heart. You arrest him quietly, instead of me, and I bet you can get him to turn on his entire organization.”

  Fletcher scratched his eyebrow.

  “All right. I’ll see if I can make something happen with it. But let me ask. Why would you be willing to sell him out?”

  “I’m not selling him out. He did it to himself. If he’s spawning any more followers like this Ryan Carter character, he needs to be shut down. I didn’t say he was my friend because I agreed with him. It’s more that he’s someone I’ve known my whole life. And if he’s inciting this kind of hatred, he needs to be stopped.”

  Fletcher nodded. “I agree.”

  They were quiet for a moment, then Sam decided a change of topic was in order before Fletcher reconsidered.

  “So what about the rest, Fletch?”

  “Well, we’re still working on how Carter managed to dose the cigarettes and the inhaler, but since the congressman’s briefcase was ‘missing’ for a time and found at his house, we think Carter must have broken in and planted the tainted inhaler. We think that the Metro attack might have gotten Leighton worried, and in his stress he felt like he needed a shot of the inhaler. His wife told me he used it multiple times a day—apparently his lungs were totally shot.”

  “I saw a report that she’s running for his seat in the special election.”

  “That’s right. I went by her place last night, and she told me she was going to run. Told me a bunch of interesting things, actually. We were trying to figure out why Carter hit the reproductive center in Boulder—he had so many to choose from, why that one?”

  “That did cross my mind,” Xander said.

  “Turns out that’s where the Leightons were doing their in vitro. It’s one of the best clinics in the country, really cutting-edge technology, and Gretchen Leighton only wanted the best. After their son died, she wanted another child, but Leighton said no. When she found out about Ledbetter, that he had an illegitimate daughter, she put her foot down. The procedures were supposed to happen this week. We assume, since Carter was stalking her, he was aware of their plans, and tried to completely eliminate any chance they had at having another child. A completely perverted way to show his love to Loa.”

  Loa. The pawn in all of this, along with her poor daughter.

  “How’s Ledbetter taking it all? She’s lost a mother, a father and the father of her child.”

  Fletch shook his head. “She’s incredibly pragmatic. She knew he was bad news, that he was gearing up for something. He’d been emailing and calling lately, trying to touch base. She was scared to death of him, but she had no idea that he had any of this planned to woo her with.”

  “What about the text? Did you ever
figure out who sent it?” Sam asked.

  “We are still waiting for the paperwork to clear the service provider. I am starting to think it was a hoax, just a crazy reaching out. There’s no evidence of texts sent to Leighton from any of the players we’ve nailed down, so...

  “The first funerals are tomorrow, Dr. Ledbetter and Marc Conlon, one after the other at the Washington Cathedral. Leighton’s service is Monday, and there will be some typical D.C. pomp and circumstance around it.”

  “I don’t know if we’ll have Xander cleared to travel yet or not. But if we can, we’ll be there.”

  Fletcher looked at her. “There’s only one outstanding problem. Outside of me having to explain to Bianco why Xander isn’t in custody and me having to go to the A.G.’s office and get sworn affidavits that you actually were deputized.”

  “It won’t be a problem, Fletcher. I promise,” Xander said.

  “Good.”

  “What’s the problem?” Sam asked.

  “Remember the DNA match from the Indiana killings?”

  “Yes, of course. Did the second DNA test eliminate Leighton as a suspect?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Sam felt the shock on her face. “What? I thought you were sure it was Glenn Temple, the chief of staff, who committed the murders.”

  “I did, too. This is between us for now, okay? No, the new DNA came back, and it was a match to Peter Leighton.”

  “So Leighton was the killer?”

  “Not exactly. It was a familial match.”

  Xander and Sam looked at each other. “Who was it?” Sam asked, but then realized who it was. A legitimate mistake in the lab, if two men shared the same name.

  Peter Leighton, Junior.

  “The DNA showed it was the congressman’s son who was the killer. We think that’s why they shipped him off to the Army. To curb his unnatural tastes. And of course, he died, and there hasn’t been a murder on record that matches the M.O. since. We have a request in with his unit, asking about his behavior. Making sure there are no more victims. But it looks like the case is now solved.”

  “But what about Glenn Temple?”