Close to the Edge

by Dawn Ryder

  Of course, the memory of him wearing a ski mask was making it sort of hard to accept her circumstances.

  Special Agent Servant …

  The special part likely allowed for the ski mask.

  It calmed her down, right until she recalled that Sam had been planning to work that same party. Her blood chilled as she contemplated demanding Servant tell her if Sam was okay.

  But her head was pounding and her legs quivering. It seemed whatever they’d shot her full of, its grip wasn’t completely broken.

  And Special Agent Servant wasn’t exactly the sort she wanted to take on without all of her wits.

  But she was going to take him on. That thought kept her company as she settled onto the bed and fought to get the comforter over herself.

  Yeah, the guy had another thing coming if he thought she was going to roll over for him.

  Jenna Henson never gave up!

  * * *

  “The place is wired,” Dare reported to his section leader, Kagan.

  The man didn’t have a last name, and Dare wasn’t even sure if Kagan was a first name. It was just the title the man went by. Dare knew enough about Shadow Ops to understand the need for obscurity.

  He had a female shackled to a bed in the back room because she’d seen him.

  It wasn’t fair, or right, but he had to catch the bag guys, and that wouldn’t happen if he played by the rules.

  “I have a civilian in custody.”

  There was a soft sound from his section leader.

  “She caught us bugging the house,” Dare explained. “Can’t let her blow our operation.”

  It took a moment for Kagan to respond. That was another thing about his section leader that Dare was accustomed to. Kagan would think things through.

  Every time.

  “Agreed.” There was another pause. “Tag her before you turn her lose. Keep her if she even smells like an evidence link.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kagan killed the call. Dare dropped his phone back into his vest pocket. He stood for a moment, drawing a breath and letting it out.

  “What’s wrong, Servant? Digging deep?”

  Thais Sinclair was a femme fatale.

  Her face was perfectly sculpted, and her lean body combined with it to produce a female that turned heads and made his collar feel too tight on occasion. Her dark eyes could tempt a man to venture too close, which was right about the time she’d be close enough to either use her very accomplished skills of seduction or kill him with her equally polished abilities in hand-to-hand martial arts.

  “Interesting.”

  She also purred when she spoke. It was undermining a man’s ability to think straight. Today however, he found it irritating.

  “Kagan wants our guest tagged before we release her.” Dare was giving Thais an order, but his fellow agent only sent him a little smile that made him feel like she was peeling away his layers.

  To get at what, he wasn’t really certain.

  But he was pretty sure he didn’t want to think too long about it.

  Thais was good at a lot of things. Pushing men’s buttons was at the top of the list.

  Greer entered the room.

  “Kept if there is any reason to think she has evidence against Kirkland,” Dare finished.

  “Didn’t look like it to me,” Greer responded. “She’s clean as a nun’s sheets. Even has a couple of cooking trophies to support her being there to take over. The buddy called her right after the first chef called in to him.”

  “Let’s get this finished.” Dare sent Thais a hard look. The agent’s eyes narrowed with distaste, but she stood up and went toward a long table where they had equipment cases laid out. He heard the chirp of the fingerprint scanner as she opened the case that held the air gun.

  Dare was turning into the hallway, but he knew what Thais would be doing. She’d take out one of the tracking location chips and check it against their systems before loading it into the gun. It wouldn’t hurt any more than an ear piercing.

  Physically that was.

  Dare was pretty sure their civilian was going to have plenty to say about how much she disliked knowing her privacy was being shredded.

  He stopped at the bedroom door and drew in another breath.

  That just irritated him again.

  He didn’t need to be digging deep over her. There were two mothers who would be burying their daughters once he traced the girls back to their homes. His job was to find the connection between Kirkland and those murder victims. And who knew what else. Kirkland was trafficking humans. Ones he considered disposable. Getting the girls into the country wasn’t easy. Ship holds, shipping containers, all of the options were less than comfortable to say the least and there was no way to know how many of them died before reaching U.S. ground. It sickened him to know Kirkland’s people preyed on the desperation of those girls, hunting them in the poor parts of Asia and Korea where even the poorest of families still raised their daughters with morality. They were promised nanny positions and housekeeping jobs.

  And ended up being turned into prostitutes. A shame they could not see past, which accounted for why they didn’t come forward once they had the chance.

  Kagan didn’t assign Shadow Ops teams to simple cases. His section leader was keeping his jaw tight to prevent himself from tainting the evidence. Dare’s job was to dig where the local police hadn’t ventured. He had the numbers to support Kirkland’s lack of income from his pop-music career. Now he needed to prove where the money was really coming from.

  That included ensuring Jenna Henson was as innocent as she claimed. His job was to doubt her, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

  * * *

  There was a single rap on the door before it was opened.

  The shade was pulled down on the window but there was enough light in the room to give her a solid look at Agent Servant.

  She could have done without it though.

  The guy was all hunk.

  From his muscle-bound frame to the midnight color of his hair. His jaw had that hard cut to it that came from a level of fitness only movie stars and military personal could claim. The way he took in the room before coming inside only added more fuel to her suspicions of him being some sort of Special Ops guy.

  He crossed the room and picked up her wrist, fitting a little silver key into it. There was a click, and she was free. She rolled over the opposite side of the bed and landed on her feet. He sent her a harassed look.

  “Please…” she muttered with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “You.” She pointed at him. “Don’t get to look insulted by me trying to put distance between us.”

  “Wasn’t insulted.”

  She was rubbing her wrist. It was red and bruised from her tugging on the shackle. “Flashing me a badge, in a semi-dark room, doesn’t confirm you are a ‘good guy.’”

  “If I wasn’t a ‘good guy,’”—he sent her a hard look—“you’d be dead. Living room, five minutes. Don’t make me run you down.”

  You’d be dead …

  Her mouth went dry as he left her alone with that pearl of truth.

  There was no way to talk her way around it. Even the black eye he was sporting didn’t help bolster her courage.

  No, all that shiner did was confirm that while she might have gotten a good strike in, she’d lost the battle in the end.

  And she could be very dead right then if he’d been the sort who murdered people.

  She shied away from thinking “killed people” because she got the idea he wasn’t a stranger to shedding blood. The fact chilled her blood, but it also set off another feeling. This one was in direct conflict with her desire to loathe him. That was on account of the fact that she agreed with him. She’d been helpless and at his mercy. The fact that she’d woken up was defiantly a point in favor of him being a “good guy.”

  Great.

  Being deprived of her ability to be pissed at
him was really a downer, considering she really needed to have a target for all her emotions.

  But that would require her discarding logic.

  She let out a sigh and went toward the bathroom to make use of her remaining four minutes.

  Good guy? Well, at least he was letting her face him without bed head. That wasn’t going to qualify him for any position beyond she wouldn’t hate his guts, but it was a step up from kidnapper.

  Why had she decided against staying home and moping again?

  Sure seemed like she’d made a bad call.

  As in—epic failure.

  * * *

  The living room was just that—a standard space with a sofa and love seat that might have belonged to any family.

  The computer terminals set up in it and the long table with black cases laid out on top was where the normalcy ended.

  And the guns.

  There were a crap load of them. At least to her civilian eyes anyway. The three men in the room actually wore chest harnesses. There were guns on tables and next to keyboards as well.

  “Have a seat, Ms. Henson,” Servant addressed her. “We have some questions for you.”

  They’d already placed a chair in the middle of the room for her. It gave all of them different angles to watch her from.

  “What?” she asked as she sat down. “No super bright spotlight in my face?”

  “Disappointed?” Servant asked as he sat down and faced her.

  “Well, you were wearing ski masks the last time we met.” She shrugged.

  But now, they all had badges on their belts. Clipped to the right side, those shiny things just looked real. It helped dispel the last of her fear, leaving her facing the unknown reasons for why she was sitting in a room. She was pretty sure she would be a lot better off not knowing what those reasons were.

  “What do you want?” she asked softly. “With me?”

  “What were you doing last night?”

  Such a simple, mundane question. So much so, it gave her a moment of pause because she realized Agent Servant had a slightly bored look in his eyes. Oh, the guy was focused on her, intently so, but he already knew the answer to the question.

  “If you don’t already know,” she muttered, “you aren’t any type of special agent.”

  It wasn’t the wisest thing she might have said, but acting stupid had never been her thing. Okay, to be blunt, she’d put her foot in her mouth countless number of times and couldn’t seem to break the habit. Her filter between brain and mouth was about the size of a dime.

  Servant’s lips twitched. He controlled the little impulse quickly, returning to his stoic expression.

  But she’d surprised him.

  “Indulge me, Ms. Henson,” Agent Servant said.

  “My friend Sam owns Joyful Occasions, a catering business for high-end parties and exclusive events. His primary chef had unexpected car trouble…” She stopped talking as her brain latched onto that bit of information.

  “And?” Servant pressed her.

  “And Paul has a brand-new Jeep because he can’t be rolling up to client sites in a beater.” Jenna said what she was thinking.

  “The part where you were at the house?” Servant pressed her.

  His tone held a tiny hint of frustration.

  Well that made sense, the guy liked control. And he was good at it, she’d grant him that one.

  Jenna slowly grinned. “You messed with Paul’s car. Thinking Sam wouldn’t be able to replace him on such short notice because of the bonding issue.” She sent him a hard look. “That’s messed up. Know that? Sam could lose his business if one of his clients gives him a bad review.”

  “You’re missing the point…”

  “No, I get it.” She sat forward and eyeballed him. “I walked in on you doing something you don’t want anyone to know about. Well, spilt milk now. Don’t waste my time by asking me questions you already know the answer to. Or don’t special agents have better things to do than trying to intimidate me?”

  “I suggest you take this seriously.”

  “Oh, I am,” Jenna assured him. “I’m just saying, let’s cut the shit, and get on with whatever it is you’ve decided is going to happen to me. You already know who I am, what I was doing, and what I saw.”

  There. Maybe she had more balls than wisdom, but at least she wasn’t going down as too chicken to look them in the eye and speak her mind.

  Servant got it, too.

  She watched the way his black eyes glittered with approval. His expression didn’t change, but she knew what she’d seen and held onto that bit of knowledge as he cast a look across the room toward the female agent in the room.

  They proved their badges right as they moved. Without a spoken word, the female knew exactly what Servant wanted as the other man came at her from the side.

  She held onto the arms of the chair out of the sheer need to prove she could control her panic.

  There was no escape.

  So, running would only prove her incapable of controlling her emotions.

  If her dignity was the only thing left to her, she’d hold on for dear life.

  Servant watched her through it all. His dark eyes on her as the male agent grasped her neck and held her steady. The female pulled some sort of gun from behind her and pressed the muzzle against Jenna’s shoulder.

  Her heart stopped as she heard a click.

  There was a searing pain, and then she was free as whatever they’d put into her shoulder throbbed.

  “This is a classified operation,” Servant informed her. “Speak one word about it and we’ll know. That chip will make sure we can find you. Do yourself a favor and make sure we don’t have any reason to come looking for you.”

  * * *

  “Prick.”

  Jenna grumbled as the door of the car she’d been in slammed shut after she’d been kicked out on a random street. A moment later, the guy in the front passenger seat dropped her purse onto the sidewalk and the car pulled away into traffic.

  “Colossal prick.”

  She sucked in her breath as she reached for her purse. Her shoulder ached.

  Why couldn’t she meet one of those tall, dark, handsome, great secret agent men that there were books about?

  Because that’s not reality …

  That was why. And reality sucked.

  At the moment, it sucked great big donkey balls.

  She clutched her purse to her chest as she looked around and tried to get her bearings.

  Okay, Servant had some redeeming qualities. His men had dropped her three blocks from Sam’s tasting room store front. The wave of relief that swept through her nearly buckled her knees.

  But it also drove home just how false her bravado had been when she’d faced down Servant.

  Yeah, well, she’d done it.

  There was a definite sense of satisfaction attached to that thought. It got her moving toward the crosswalk and down the next couple of blocks before she opened the door of Joyful Occasions.

  There was a delicate ringing of bells to announce the front door opening. The receptionist desk was empty, but Sam came ducking through the doorway in response to the chimes.

  “Welcome to—thank god!”

  Sam had her clasped in a hug that threatened to crush her. “We’ve been out of our minds!”

  There was a scamper of steps on the floor before Paul came through the doorway.

  “Jenna!”

  She soaked up the hugs, listening to the chattering of her friends. They pulled her through the doorway and into the salon. The velvet-covered furniture was normally intended to impress upon prospective clients the level of taste and quality Joyful Occasions delivered in their services.

  Today, Jenna sunk down onto one sofa and just felt like she was home.

  And that she’d failed to appreciate how wonderful it was to be there.

  “What happened?”

  She lifted her head and looked at Sam. Her friend was watching her with wide eyes.


  “I found the remote on the kitchen floor,” Sam said. “So, I know you were there but your car…”

  “Was back in your garage…” Paul exclaimed. “Like you’d been abducted by aliens or something.”

  “What happened?” Sam repeated.

  God, she wanted to tell them.

  Jenna had to clamp her mouth shut and fight the urge to challenge agent Servant’s warning to keep quiet.

  Even if he was a prick, the guy did strike her as pretty serious.

  Okay, deadly serious when she factored in the guns and drug dart thing they’d used on her.

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  Her shoulder throbbed right on cue, making it a lot easier to deal with the look her friend shot her.

  “Sam, believe me, I wish I could. Just know this, I am so glad to be home,” Jenna said.

  She’d likely never spoken truer words. They seemed to be the last thing she could really manage before her strength deserted her. Sam was the one who noticed the color draining from her face. They bundled her into a car and drove her home.

  Humiliating? Sure was.

  But it made her feel so cherished, it was worth the shot to her pride.

  Yeah, she’d failed to appreciate the value of the life she had. They said everything happened for a reason, maybe that was the reason she’d run into Agent Servant.

  Because it sure wasn’t for his charming demeanor!

  * * *

  “Satisfied?” Greer asked.

  Dare lowered the pair of binoculars he’d been watching Jenna through. “For the moment. A secondary team is going to be keeping tabs on her.”

  “In the meantime, we need to cut Norton and Cline loose,” Greer said as he pulled into traffic. “Missing that security clearance was too much.”

  “Agreed.” Servant pulled his phone out and pressed in a line of code. “I’ll get some fresh fish.”

  “Nothing wrong with spuds.” Greer suggested Army instead of Navy. “The Hale brothers have you too used to squid recruits.”

  “Norton and Cline were CIA,” Dare muttered.

  Shadow Ops teams pulled from unique ranks, the happy hunting grounds occupied by ex-SEALS and other special forces because the sort of man it took to make it into those elite fighting units never really retired.

  “And you’re Scottish.”