The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

  Brockman's tone was stark. “Another agent's been killed.”

  “What?”

  “Jack Gantry. He was in Vancouver, protecting a TV anchorwoman from a stalker. He escorted her home. When he walked back to his car, he got hit. A crossbow. Those things are almost as powerful as some pistols. No sound.”

  “A crossbow?” Cavanaugh's confusion made him feel as if the floor shifted. “Kim, do you have a backup for the printout you gave me?”

  She fumbled in her suit coat and gave him a memory stick.

  “Tell the police we'll contact them when we're safe.” Unwilling to trust the elevator, Cavanaugh motioned for Jamie and Eddie to follow him toward the fire door.

  6

  The stairs felt cold. Cavanaugh tried to assure himself that was why he shivered. Footsteps scraping, the group descended from the fortieth to the thirtieth floor, where he surprised Jamie and Eddie by opening the door.

  Eddie looked puzzled. “You said we were leaving the building.”

  “The others don't need to know.”

  Cavanaugh glanced inside and made sure that the softly lit corridor was empty. After they went in, he held three fingers in front of Jamie. “How many?”

  She told him.

  “Blurred?”

  “No.”

  “Headache?”

  “Yes.” Jamie wiped blood from her nose.

  “We need to wait and see if it's a concussion.”

  “How will we know?”

  “If you throw up or feel sleepy.”

  “Sleepy? At this hour? Imagine that.” Jamie turned toward Eddie. “We haven't been introduced. Jamie Travers.”

  “Eddie Macintosh. Are you an operator? You must be new. I haven't seen you around.”

  “She's my wife,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Wonders never cease.”

  “And yes,” Cavanaugh said, “she's an operator.”

  “Haven't seen you around, either. I heard you left the business.”

  “I tried. But now I'm back.”

  7

  Cavanaugh led them to a door marked WILLIAM FARADAY LAW OFFICES. He raised his jacket collar, reached into a slit in the material, and pulled out lock-pick tools that he'd taken from the Gulfstream's bug-out bag. He inserted one of the picks into the lock, probing to free the pins while he used another pick to apply torque and turn the key slot.

  It took him thirty seconds. Too long, he thought. I should have been able to do it in fifteen. Perhaps he was still dazed from the explosions. But perhaps his lock-picking skills had atrophied during the months he'd stopped being a protector.

  That made him worry about what other skills might have atrophied.

  He opened the door and heard the intrusion alarm's beep. If he didn't enter the access code within thirty seconds, the alarm would blare. Leaving the lights off, he crossed the waiting room to the control panel and pressed buttons for the code that he and William had agreed on when the system was installed.

  The beeping stopped.

  Jamie locked the door behind them.

  “Faraday,” a voice croaked. “Jerk.”

  Jamie and Eddie drew their guns.

  A dim nightlight revealed a parrot in a cage.

  “Faraday. Jerk,” the bird repeated.

  “What the hell?” Eddie muttered.

  “One of William's competitors sent the parrot after losing a case to him,” Cavanaugh explained. “William thanked the rival attorney and promised to keep the bird in his reception room.”

  “William did that?” Jamie asked in surprise.

  “He also swore to keep the bottom of the cage lined with photographs of the man who sent the parrot. William's clients find it amusing to look down and see bird droppings over the guy's face.”

  “Now that sounds more like William.”

  “Faraday. Jerk,” the parrot squawked.

  Cavanaugh hurried to the receptionist's desk and turned on its computer. Helped by its glow, he inserted Kim's memory stick and activated the printer.

  As the machine went to work, he asked Eddie, “Are you armed?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mind watching the front door while we clean the blood off us?”

  Eddie pushed back one side of his leather jacket and drew a Beretta nine-millimeter. He had big hands and could handle the double-stacked fifteen-round magazine. He put another piece of gum into his mouth.

  “Anybody who breaks through that door won't live to break through another one.”

  8

  “Still got a headache?”

  Cavanaugh used a moist paper towel to wipe blood from Jamie's face. The restroom didn't have windows, so it was safe to turn on the lights, which pained Cavanaugh's eyes.

  “Not as bad. You?” Jamie wiped blood from his face.

  “Shook up.”

  “You don't show it.” Her voice echoed off the room's tiles.

  “You're doing a good job of hiding it, also. Are you sure you don't feel dizzy?” The bright lights continued to hurt his eyes.

  “You mean, do I think I'm going to pass out from a concussion? No. How do I know? Because I'm starved for a medium pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms.”

  “I guess you're going to live.”

  “For now.”

  “Yes,” Cavanaugh said, the words sticking in his throat. “For now.”

  As he guided her toward the door to the hallway, she hesitated, no longer able to ignore her troubled thoughts. “How did they know to make the bedroom the target? I didn't turn the light on. They couldn't have known we were going in there.”

  “Maybe the phone call,” Cavanaugh replied.

  “You didn't answer it. They couldn't have known we were in that office.”

  “But then the call was automatically transferred to Brockman,” Cavanaugh reminded her.

  “You think he told them where we were?”

  “I have no idea. He claims the phone call was about another agent who was killed.”

  “We'd need phone records to find out where the call came from.”

  “Yes, and while we figure out how to get them, here's something else that's been troubling me.”

  In the harsh light, Jamie's eyes narrowed.

  “Duncan chose Brockman to be his chief-of-staff. It's a logical choice. Brockman's a first-rate administrator as well as a proven operator.”

  “So?”

  “Why didn't Duncan give the company to him?”

  “Because Duncan felt a bond with you.”

  “But he also knew I hated working at a desk. We were close, yes, but Duncan saw Brockman all the time and must have gotten along with him if Duncan kept him as chief-of-staff.”

  “I don't see where you're going with this.”

  “According to William, Duncan decided to make me his heir a month before he was killed. What if he gave GPS to me because he'd begun to suspect something was wrong with the company?”

  “Is that what you think? You told Brockman, Kim, and Ali you trusted them absolutely.”

  “I lied.”

  “In other words, we're not sure of anything.”

  “I'm sure of one thing. You.”

  9

  Cavanaugh sat in a corner of William's office. Away from the draped windows. On the floor. A desk lamp was next to him, the light so dim and sheltered that it couldn't be seen from a building across the street. Eyes scratchy, he read the printout: the details of his Global Protective Service assignments.

  Despite the windows, he heard faint commotion outside. Below on the street. Sirens. The rumble of what might have been fire trucks. Vehicle doors being slammed. Voices. He imagined what was happening in the opposite direction, ten floors above him in what was left of the GPS offices. Police officers and fire-department personnel would be questioning Brockman, Kim, and Ali about the explosion. The authorities’ frowns would deepen when they learned about the number of GPS operators who'd been recently killed. Teams would be rushing into buildings across the street, searching
for an indication of where the attackers had placed themselves, hoping to find whoever was responsible for the explosion.

  He concentrated on the printout. So many assignments. Hundreds and hundreds. They'd accumulated, blending in his memory until many of the names of clients were meaningless to him. How was it possible to devote oneself to protecting somebody to the point of being ready to risk dying for that person and not have the faintest mental image of what that person looked like?

  He read about the powerful, the wealthy, and the famous, or else about average people under terrible threats, the helpless, the preyed-upon. As far as Cavanaugh was concerned, GPS didn't accept enough of those latter cases. The victims couldn't afford the company's services unless they attracted a protector's attention and the work was done pro bono, but if Cavanaugh survived this, he was determined to change things. Take from the rich and give to the poor.

  He suddenly realized that he was projecting himself into the future to distract himself from the present. No, he warned himself. The only way to survive was to concentrate on now, but that meant concentrating on the past, and regardless of how much he tried, no summary of his former assignments jogged his memory about anything he might have seen or heard that would have made him a liability to a former client. His employers had always been careful to guard their secrets. As for the revenge theory, Cavanaugh had prevented so many assassinations and kidnappings that he found it impossible to single out any one incident for which an opponent might be determined to get even.

  Even so, there was something about one of his assignments that nudged at the back of his mind, something that connected with the way the GPS operators had been killed, something about knives.

  At once, Eddie came into the office. “Somebody's trying to get in the front door.”

  10

  When Cavanaugh hurried into the dark reception room, he saw Jamie's silhouette crouched behind the desk, aiming her pistol toward the door. Next to him, Eddie drew his own gun, aiming. Cavanaugh noticed a slight shadow in the sliver of light that came through the bottom of the door. He heard the scrape of metal as someone worked to pick the lock.

  Hearing it slide free, he tensed as he remembered that he hadn't reset the alarm. When the intruder opened the door and didn't hear the warning beep, it would be obvious that someone had entered and turned it off.

  Imagining the intruder removing the lock picks and putting them away before turning the knob, Cavanaugh hurried across the reception room's carpet and pushed the alarm's “set” button. He got back to the desk as a different scrape of metal indicated that the knob was being turned. In the darkness, Jamie and Eddie kept aiming.

  The door opened a few inches. From the hallway, a beam of light angled in. The warning beep began. Cavanaugh drew his pistol. A shadow obscured the beam of light.

  How many are out there? he wondered. The door's too solid for them to shoot through it or for us to shoot at them. They'll need to show themselves.

  “Faraday. Jerk,” the parrot croaked.

  The alarm kept beeping. In fifteen more seconds, it would wail, summoning security personnel. The intruders (it was foolish to believe there was only one) needed to make a decision—assume that the warning beep meant that no one had entered the office, or else take the chance of bursting in and shooting as the alarm went off, knowing that they had to finish the gunfight before the police who were already in the building hurried to this floor.

  No, there was a third option, Cavanaugh realized. Maybe the plan was for the intruders to throw in flash-bang grenades, temporarily blinding and deafening anybody in the office. Then they could easily charge in and finish anyone inside, avoiding a prolonged gunfight, gaining time to get away before the police arrived.

  With no time to try to protect his eyes or his ears, Cavanaugh tightened his grip on his pistol.

  And frowned as an object hurtled through the gap in the door, thumping onto the carpeting.

  Only one object. If the intruders were using flash-bang grenades, they'd have thrown several.

  The door was slammed shut. In the corridor, footsteps raced along marble.

  “Get back!” Cavanaugh shouted as the alarm blared.

  He tugged Jamie from behind the desk. Eddie retreated with them.

  The object detonated. But not with a roar and a flash. Instead it made a whumping sound that could barely be heard amid the alarm's wail. Even in the shadows, Cavanaugh saw a cloud burst from the object.

  “Back! Back! Back!” he kept saying, tugging Jamie, almost tripping over Eddie. “Into William's office!”

  They reached the corridor near the reception room. Looking over his shoulder, Cavanaugh saw the cloud obscure the murky furniture. Hissing pressure expanded it rapidly.

  “Faraday,” the parrot squawked. It didn't get a chance to add “Jerk” before it toppled to the floor of its cage, wings thrashing.

  Jamie and Eddie ran into William's office. Cavanaugh followed and slammed the door.

  “Poison gas!” His voice was barely audible amid the alarm as he recalled how much force the vapor had been under. “We can't stay here! It'll seep under the door!”

  He pivoted toward a wall of shelves that had an array of imposing law books on them. After yanking down a book on the right of the middle shelf, he flipped a lever, then tugged at the entire section of shelves. The section was on rollers. It swung smoothly out, revealing a circular metal staircase that led down.

  Jamie and Eddie looked surprised.

  “William got so paranoid about his security, he insisted on another way to leave his office!” Cavanaugh flicked a switch that illuminated the stairs and motioned for Jamie and Eddie to hurry down.

  About to follow, he balked and stared back at the closed office door. The gray haze was seeping under it.

  Unable to subdue his protector's instincts, he lunged for the desk, grabbing the phone.

  “What are you doing?” Eddie shouted from the staircase.

  The building's security guards, Cavanaugh thought. The police. The explosions put them on heightened alert. The alarm will bring them to this office. They'll burst in.

  They'll breathe the gas and die.

  William's phone system had an emergency button that directed a call to the lobby's security desk.

  “What?” a voice asked quickly, sounding harried.

  Pressing the phone hard against his ear, holding a hand over his other ear, Cavanaugh thought he heard sirens and urgent voices in the background. “There's an alarm on the thirtieth floor!”

  “We know! A team's going up there!”

  Cavanaugh stared again at the crack beneath the closed door. More of the gray haze seeped under it. “Don't go into the office! It's filled with poison gas!”

  He slammed down the phone and charged through the opening in the wall. The metal staircase echoed as he pulled at the section of shelves. Closing the barrier, he heard a latch click shut. Then he ran down the circular stairs, turning repeatedly, the echo rumbling.

  Jamie and Eddie waited at the bottom.

  A dead end.

  “How do we—”

  “That latch on the right!”

  Eddie yanked it and pulled.

  A section of the wall moved toward him. The light in the stairwell revealed a janitor's closet.

  They closed the wall, unlocked the closet door, and peered out, checking the corridor.

  After the dim light in the stairwell, the overhead fluorescents seemed bright when they emerged from the closet.

  “The police will search the building,” Jamie said.

  “And emergency-response teams,” Cavanaugh agreed. “Assuming they're all genuine.”

  He eased a stairwell door open. From below, footsteps and voices rumbled upward.

  “We can't go that way.”

  11

  I always get the shit duty, the fireman thought. His name was Ben Gutowski. Laboring up the stairs in complete firefighting gear, he felt sweat soaking his clothes. His legs ached.


  Would you rather be in an elevator? he asked himself. Suppose this is another World Trade Center attack. Suppose more bombs go off or rockets or whatever caused the explosion. Suppose the building collapses. How'd you like to be in a friggin’ elevator then? And what's this alert about poison gas? You want to be trapped in an elevator with that? Maybe the captain did you a favor.

  Breathing hard, Ben reached another stairwell door. Twenty-ninth floor. Below him, other firemen in full gear struggled upward, checking other floors. He pressed his hand against the door, feeling for heat. He did the same to the doorknob. Normal. He put his oxygen mask over his face, breathed, and opened the door. Assuming he didn't encounter a fire and his air-testing meter didn't detect any gas, he would then take off his oxygen mask and lumber along the corridor, making sure nobody was in danger.

  Bang! Crash! Clatter!

  Elvis Presley sang “Blue Hawaii.”

  Surprise made Ben almost drop his ax. Ahead, a janitor took a wet mop from a pail and swabbed the corridor while a radio played music through the partially open door of a maintenance closet.

  “What are you doing here?” Ben demanded.

  12

  While Elvis crooned, Cavanaugh peered up from mopping the floor. His gray janitor's coveralls covered the blood on his clothes and gave him the rumpled look of somebody who'd worked too many years on the night shift. The small radio was a bonus.

  “What does it look like I'm doing?” Cavanaugh answered, annoyed. The fireman appeared genuine, but after the night's threats, it was foolish to make assumptions. “And what are you doing here?” He almost let go of his mop in apparent sudden realization. “Wait a minute, is there a fire?”

  “Didn't you hear the explosion?”

  “Explosion?”

  “On the fortieth floor.”

  “What?”

  “And poison gas,” the exhausted fireman said.

  “Poison . . . Jesus, don't tell me it's terrorists!”