Edge of Darkness

by Vikki Romano

  “I need to talk to Calder,” she said.

  Gage nodded and gave her arm a squeeze.

  “I’ll drag him back in here,” he said with a wink, then left the room.

  Sierra’s mind swarmed with questions, concerns, fears… so many things that when Calder came back into the room, albeit hesitantly, she nearly broke into tears. And he saw it.

  He came to her bed then and sat in the chair that Gage had vacated, and his blue eyes searched hers.

  “Do you need something? Are you OK, in pain?” he asked, leaning toward her, and she shook her head. This time she was the one who turned away, and she let out a ragged breath as she felt a hot tear trickle down her cheek and immediately absorb itself into one of her bandages. Before she could compose herself and turn back to him, she felt his hand on hers. It was large and warm and immediately made her feel safe.

  “I’m so sorry,” she finally said, turning back to him.

  He lowered his eyes.

  “So am I. I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he said, not looking back to her, but his thumb caressed the back of her hand and she couldn’t help but notice the heat that it stirred in her, an errant flame traveling up her arm.

  “I deserve it. I should have waited to hear from you,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze, and he looked up then, his eyes now an intense sapphire blue.

  Letting out a sigh, he pulled his hand away and tucked into his lap with his other hand.

  “I tried to contact you, but my system was fried,” he said, shaking his head as he smoothed a hand over the grid on his wrist. “I didn’t even know if you’d talk to me again.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I wasn’t sure if you were alive. I don’t remember anything I did before I got to the cabin.”

  Sierra openly stared at him, shocked. And then she remembered the look in his eyes at his apartment, how empty and dark they were.

  “Nothing?”

  “No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Frightening, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “I mean, you didn’t feel anything? Have any residual memories?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you don’t remember trying to kill me or choking Cooper?”

  Calder flinched and swallowed hard. “Is he OK?”

  “Oh yeah, he was shaken, but he realized it wasn’t you. I knew that too, otherwise you’d be dead.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It was your eyes,” she said. “They were black, lifeless… I could tell your brain had just completely shut off at some point.”

  Calder blinked at her, and looked away as if he were going to be sick.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, turning back to her. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant for you, any of you, to become involved.”

  “I know that,” she said, putting a hand to his knee. “There’s no way you could have predicted any of this, or change what happened.”

  “I could have not uploaded that program. That was stupid. You’re right, I should have known better. With all the shit going on in this world, you’d think I’d be more careful.”

  Sierra shook her head. She had never seen him vulnerable like this. He was always the one to plow straight ahead to justify everything he did. If this was a residual effect of the augment, she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  “What are we going to tell the precinct?” she asked, turning her head on the pillow to watch him. “You know they’ll start looking for us. They can’t know about this.”

  “Shit, I completely forgot about work,” he said.

  “Yeah, funny how easy that can be,” she said. “What are we going to tell them?”

  Calder huffed out a low breath, clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Not sure. Maybe tell them we’re onto a big case and can’t be contacted for a while. I’ll see if they can extend our leave.”

  “Why go back at all?” Gage asked as he came into the room and leaned a hip against the end of the bed.

  Sierra and Calder both looked to him open-mouthed.

  “We have to go back. Our jobs depend on it,” Sierra said, painfully pushing herself up to sit. Calder jumped to his feet and helped her, propping pillows behind her back.

  “Why work for the zone when you can work with us? The pay is better, there’s more action, and I can guarantee you’ll never end up at a desk.”

  Calder’s gaze shifted to Sierra, and she looked at him with a questioning glance. They had both been at the precinct for several years and had made a name for themselves among the squads.

  Could they really just leave?

  “Work at the precinct is legitimate,” she said, turning back to Gage, and he crossed his arms and shrugged.

  “What one considers legitimate can be debated,” he said. “What makes that job more legitimate than this one?”

  “It’s legal,” Calder said, crossing his own arms.

  “Again, up for debate. Our jobs are contracted and paid legally, just like yours.”

  “Sure, but how you come by them isn’t always so legal, is it?” Sierra asked.

  “Depends on which side you’re on, I guess,” Gage answered with a smirk. “Your precinct protects the very corporations that are destroying this country. Our crew… not so much.”

  Sierra looked to Calder to judge his reaction. His face was stern, but unreadable as always, though she noted the twitch in his jaw. Then he looked at her and she saw it in his eyes.

  “All right,” he said, nodding to Gage. “I’ll come to your team under one condition.”

  “What’s that?” Gage asked.

  “You help me take down GenMed.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jonathan Weller entered his office, picked up a stack of paperwork from the edge of his desk, and took a seat in his high-backed leather chair. He looked smart in is his Armani suit. The clean lines of his plum Ferragamo tie were a sharp contrast against his white linen shirt.

  Fucking princess.

  Grimacing, Calder tapped his scope to zoom out and took in the expanse of Weller’s office. Large oak desk perpendicular to the door into the hallway. Low couch along the east wall. South and west walls made up of floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass. Quite the view from the twenty-seventh floor, facing the south side of the city and the ports, and if it weren’t for the bulletproof glass, Weller would be dead.

  Calder pulled back from the scope and checked his settings. He was a block away in a utility building that he was able to gain access to using his now-void precinct identification. It was a tricky situation considering they could easily report back to the precinct that he was there. The last thing he needed was metro climbing up his ass about this.

  As he adjusted the scope to check distances, he looked down at his wrist and noticed the time. He’d been on the roof for a half-hour double-checking the surveillance information Gage had given him, and he had been expecting to hear back from Sierra twenty minutes earlier. Where the hell was she? It was totally unlike her to be late. She was so OCD about those kinds of things.

  He tapped the bud at his ear and waited for the familiar beep.

  “This is base, go ahead,” he heard.

  “Target surveillance complete. Just checking a few more things.”

  “Affirmative. What’s your ETA to base?”

  “ETA twenty minutes. Has Ice Queen checked in?”

  “Negative.”

  Calder sat back for a moment collecting his thoughts.

  “What was her expected ETA at base?”

  “Nineteen thirty.”

  Just as Calder expected. It was after eight and he had yet to hear from her. Where the hell was she?

  “Ghostwolf out. ETA twenty.”

  He quickly bagged up his gear, and as he headed down the stairwell, he tapped his comm again and rang Sierra directly. The call went immediat
ely to her messaging system. It was then the telltale, trickling burn started to run over his scalp. Something wasn’t right.

  Letting out a quick breath, he tapped his comm again and put a call through to her home. Maybe she was running late. He gritted his teeth when Eric answered instead.

  “I need to speak to Sierra,” Calder said blandly, trying to cover the disdain he had for the man Sierra called her boyfriend. The guy was a flaming asshole, and Calder had no idea why she was still with him.

  “Sorry, she can’t come to the phone.” His tone was glib, and Calder’s hands curled into fists.

  “She was expected on a job twenty minutes ago. What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. She just won’t be in.”

  Calder blew out a breath and chewed his lip. Eric wasn’t going to let her talk. He’d done this before with him, and it never went well.

  “Just put her on the damn phone!” Calder shouted, and seconds later, the call was disconnected.

  Motherfucker…

  He’d had enough. He tapped his comm again and waited for the connection.

  “Base, belay my last. ETA forty-five.”

  “Is there a problem, Ghostwolf?”

  “Need to check on Ice Queen. Will contact base if I need further assistance. Out.”

  He made his way through the building and out the back stairs to where he had parked his rig. He quickly threw his gear in the trunk and took off into the city, heading to the suburbs where Sierra lived with Eric.

  She had been with him a couple of years, and Calder just didn’t get it. Not at all. They seemed to fight, often, and Sierra bitched about him constantly. She chalked it up to the job, that she wasn’t home a lot and Eric complained about it, wanted her to be home more. Why, Calder had no idea, because they didn’t seem to do anything together. She never brought Eric to functions when they had them, and she’d stopped coming to the bar on Friday nights like she used to before she met him. She had agreed to meet up with Calder at the range that day and he knew it was because Eric was at work, otherwise she wouldn’t have even offered.

  Thinking about the whole situation on his way to her house only put him in more of a foul mood than he already was. And when he pulled in front of the small ranch unit, it took him a moment to calm himself before he got out of the rig.

  He messaged her again just to be sure, but she didn’t answer.

  He noticed movement inside the house--not that it was odd, but something about it didn’t seem right. That little voice niggled the back of his mind, prompting him to shut off his engine and exit the rig.

  He stood there for a moment, leaning against the roof, hoping she’d suddenly appear at the door. Instead, that niggling voice began growling when he heard voices raised inside, one of them being hers.

  He made his way to her door with quick strides and stood there for a moment, steadying his countenance. He couldn’t just rush in if nothing was going on. There had to be a reason to just barge into someone’s house.

  Bowing his head, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the muffled voices. The male voice, presumably her boyfriend, was lower and much louder, but Sierra’s voice was distinct. He knew it well, and its clear tones came through as if she were speaking directly to him.

  She was perturbed, and he sensed faint anxiety. The punctuation of her words made their meaning clear to him. She was trying to get her point across and her boyfriend was having none of it. Calder had been in that situation with her a thousand times over the years, and he learned it was better to just step back and let her dance right by than to interfere with her opinion.

  Calder rubbed his eyes, waited for her to make that final, snarky remark like she always did, always keen to get the last word in before she closed out the argument as a self-proclaimed victor, but what he heard made his head snap up and his eyes immediately focus on the door.

  That was a slap.

  Holding his breath, he waited for a retort. It was quite possible Sierra had slapped her boyfriend and Calder would look like a complete asshole rushing in to intervene. His fingers hovered at the glowing keypad next to the knob.

  He didn’t have to wait long. A few more shouts between them and then he heard a punch, sharp and clear, followed by her voice. Pleading.

  Calder had keyed in the code and rushed into the room before his mind even registered the door being opened. Sierra was on her knees trying to come to her feet when he saw her boyfriend kick her, throwing her back several feet.

  In an instant Calder had moved across the room and lifted the man off his feet by his throat while his other fist bludgeoned his face.

  “Calder, stop!” he could hear Sierra cry behind him, but the more she wailed at him, the more he wanted this man to feel pain. Lots of pain.

  Sierra was a strong, brave woman, one of the best agents he had ever had the honor of working with, and he had never seen her like this--broken, defeated… weak. This man in his hand, whose deep red blood now trickled down his forearm, he’d done this to her. He’d made her this way. To make matters worse, Sierra had to have some feelings for this prick for her to allow him to change her, to allow him to manipulate her, and Calder just couldn’t swallow that.

  Eric had been struggling against him, but it was like holding a small child now with his amped-up strength. He knew the struggle would be over soon. As Calder squeezed the man’s windpipe, tiny squeals erupted from his bluing lips. With a flick of his wrist, the man’s skull knocked against the wall so hard that it nearly snapped his neck, and Calder tossed him onto the floor.

  For a moment, he was in that haze. That unmistakable dream state he found himself in after any time his augmented self took over. His adrenaline slowed its drip into his veins and his system began cranking down, notch by notch, until he felt almost human again.

  He let out a long breath and turned to find Sierra on the ground next to his victim, wiping his face with her hand. The sight of her actions made something clench inside him, take a step back. The man had just beaten her, literally kicked her when she was down, and now she was coddling him, giving him aid.

  “You could have killed him!” Her voice was sharp, like a slap of her own, and she glared at him through blood-streaked hair.

  “I should have killed him!” Calder snapped. How could he feel otherwise? How could she not?

  “You’re a monster.”

  “That goes without saying,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants. “If I hadn’t stopped him, then what? He could have killed you.”

  “He would never go that far.”

  Calder choked on her comment. Seriously, she was that deluded, that invested in this prick at his feet, that she would allow him to beat her?

  How often did it happen?

  He paced away from her, his hands balling into fists at his sides.

  “That you would even let him touch you like that is disgusting,” he said, turning back to her. “How can you live with yourself knowing the person you say you love is beating you senseless?”

  “It was never that bad,” she said, wiping blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “Do you hear yourself?” Calder asked, going to her, crouching down to take her face in his hands. “Do you hear yourself?”

  She stared at him as if he spoke a foreign language. It was the most heartbreaking, frustrating feeling, knowing this strong woman had been brought to this by a man who cared so little for her.

  “It should never have been bad at all, Sierra, especially not this kind of bad. He should never have raised a hand to you. Ever.”

  “And you don’t think women deserve it?”

  And now, he wanted to hit her, hard, across that smart mouth of hers, but he didn’t. He never would. It wasn’t because he was old-fashioned. It was because respect didn’t have restrictions.

  She knew better than to accuse him of being a misogynist. He had never treated her any differently than anyone else. Never degraded or con
descended to her. That she would do it now, after he had saved her from bodily harm, well, it turned his stomach.

  He got to his feet and stood dazed for a moment as she sobbed. Normally something like that would affect him, but it didn’t this time. If she was going to be that stupid to cry over some asshole who beat her, then let her sob.

  “You’re late for work,” he said blandly, heading out the door, which he slammed behind him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Gage’s voice held an amused burr as he leaned against the counter next to where Calder was working.

  Calder didn’t look up to acknowledge him; instead he continued to stare at the monitor in front of him, as he had been for the last two hours.

  “You look like your head’s about to explode,” Gage added, leaning down to look into Calder’s eyes, then he waved his hand there. “Are you in pre-rage mode or something I should know about? I mean, there’s a lot of expensive equipment in this room that I’d rather not have to replace.”

  After a few beats, Calder leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and dropped his head back to glare at the ceiling before righting himself and turning his eyes to Gage.

  “You think you know somebody,” he said. “You think you know them well enough that they don’t blindside you with shit they’re keeping from you.”

  Gage quirked his head and gave him a questioning look.

  “I take it you’re talking about Mason?” he asked.

  Calder growled and shoved away from the desk, coming to his feet to stomp around the room.

  Gage took a step back, wary of him. It was something Calder was getting used to now that he was known as the unstable monster in the group. After his run-in with Eric, he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone.

  Returning an answering glare to Gage, he huffed through his teeth and scanned the room for something to destroy, but even the cinder-block wall wouldn’t stand a chance if he laid into it. The tweaks Jordan had done at the cabin allowed him to control the beast within, but he was inexperienced with this side of himself and it still crept up on him, hovering, ready to strike unannounced. He could feel his adrenaline notching up slowly, enough to send the forewarning burn under his skin.