Edge of Reason (EDGE Security Series Book 2)

by Loye, Trish

  A signal.

  Shadowed figures surged from the trees on the far side of the road, north of the jeep.

  “Ambush,” she shouted, diving for Madu. He was their only link to the senator’s son. Bullets ripped through the night. Something heavy hit her on the side, taking her to the ground before she could reach Madu.

  Rhys.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled over the barrage of gunfire.

  “Saving your life,” Rhys said. “You’re welcome.”

  “Get the fuck off me,” she snarled. “Where’s Madu?”

  Rhys had his rifle in his hands firing back at the men running toward them. “By the jeep.”

  “Warn Doc and Spooky.” She ran to the man who’d signaled the start of the ambush.

  “Valkyrie!”

  She ignored Rhys and slid in beside Madu. He groaned when she grabbed his shoulder. “Where’s Dr. Hutchins?”

  Madu moaned. He’d been shot in the chest—there was no saving him, she knew. She shook his shoulder. “Answer me.”

  “I’m…sorry,” he said. “Took…my family…”

  He stopped speaking and his head lolled.

  “Fuck.”

  “Valkyrie. Time to go,” Rhys said.

  “Roger.” She pulled a surprise from a pocket on her webbing and threw it into the jeep. Then, she sprinted back to Rhys while he covered her, keeping the ambushers back until she dropped beside him.

  Zach’s voice came over her earbud. “Valkyrie, we hear gunshots.”

  “Enemy contact,” she said. “We need you. Our location.”

  “On our way. Keep the party going.”

  “Copy that.” She turned to Rhys. “Go. I’ll cover.”

  He hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

  “Now, sailor!”

  “Roger.” He took off while she lay down, suppressing fire.

  Twenty meters away, he dropped to a prone position and began shooting.

  She sprinted to him, careful to stay out of his line of fire. She dropped and shot the tangos who’d almost made it to the jeep.

  “Reloading,” Rhys shouted.

  “Copy,” she said. She pressed her mic. “Doc. ETA.”

  “One minute.” From Zach’s breathing she knew he was running full-out. “A truck. A dozen tangos. Incoming.”

  Fuck. They had reinforcements.

  “Copy that.” Rhys had finished reloading and was keeping the enemy back. They had superior firepower, but limited ammo. “Let them get to the jeep,” she told him.

  He frowned, but stopped firing. The men scrambled up from where they’d been huddled on the ground and ran toward Cat and Rhys, screaming death.

  “Valkyrie?” he asked.

  “Three, two, one,” she said. An explosion rocked the jeep and thundered against their ears. A second explosion, louder than the first, lit the night with fire and shrapnel as the gas tank blew.

  Rhys grinned at her. She grinned back.

  “We’re on your six, Valkyrie,” Doc’s voice said in her ear. “Looks like you’re having fun, but company’s on its way.”

  “Party’s over,” she said. “Provide cover, Doc.”

  “Roger that.”

  She and Rhys stood and raced for the trees, where Marc and Zach waited shooting at their pursuers. The truck couldn’t follow them into the trees. She signaled for silence, and they ran north and west. Their NVGs allowed them to dodge trees and brush, and to see their pursuers stumbling in the dark with just a few flashlights.

  It wasn’t long before they’d lost all pursuers. The team slowed but still continued to jog as they made their way north. With the slower pace, they each caught their breath and sipped water as they ran. When they’d put five kilometers between them and the last sighting of the enemy, Cat let them rest.

  “So what the fuck?” Marc asked, after sucking hard on the hydration tube attached to his ruck.

  Cat scowled. “It was a trap. The asset was compromised.”

  “Did you get any information?” Marc asked.

  “No,” she forced herself not to look at Rhys. “He was shot before he could tell us anything. What about the village? Anything?”

  “It was a fucking slaughterhouse,” Marc said.

  “What?”

  “The village is gone,” Zach said softly. “If anyone survived they’ve run off.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Zach looked at his feet and swallowed. “It was…”

  “It was a massacre,” Marc said bitterly. “Mostly men and old women…and kids, all shot or hacked. The houses burned.”

  She looked at Zach. “Women and girls?”

  Zach nodded. “From what we saw, it looks like they took them.”

  Fuck. She turned away to try to control her rage at the thought of what had happened to those innocent people, the families destroyed, and what the women and girls taken were going through right now. And she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  She swung back. Rhys stood next to her, his hand outstretched as if he had been about to pat her back. Did he think she needed comfort? She scowled at him and stepped away.

  “We’ll add it to the report when we get back.” She brought out her GPS and oriented herself. “Time for a ruck march, boys.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Griffon helicopter circled the roof of the E.D.G.E. building in Montreal. Cat could see Blackwell waiting for them on the roof. This would not be good. Neither she nor Rhys had spoken much since they’d made the exfil yesterday. They’d been flying almost nonstop to get back to Montreal. Usually after a mission the team would be rowdy, ribbing each other, and after cleaning their gear, they’d head to the operator’s lounge for a quick debrief and beer.

  Instead, her team sat silent and sullen. The simple mission that should have built camaraderie with their newest member had instead splintered the unit. She needed to get a handle on this fast or she’d be pulled as leader—and maybe even from E.D.G.E. itself.

  That wasn’t an option. She grit her teeth. She would make this work. Somehow.

  As soon as the chopper landed, before the rotors had even started to slow, she jumped off with a wave to the crew chief and went to meet Lieutenant Colonel Blackwell, whose dark eyes scoured her. He jerked his head behind him, indicating she should follow. He turned without a word and strode inside.

  Cat handed her rifle to Zach before following him to E.D.G.E.’s private elevator, where there was no chance of a civilian seeing her in her BDUs, and down to his office. He didn’t say a word or in any way indicate what he was thinking. Blackwell was stone faced at the best of times, but somehow this was worse. Inside his office, he sat behind his desk and she came to attention. She stared at a spot over his head and waited.

  He let her stew in the silence for a moment. “At ease, Captain,” he said. “Report.”

  She relaxed her stance, placed her hands behind her back, and told him what had happened without any excuses.

  “What went wrong?” Blackwell asked. “How did the asset get killed?”

  “I failed to protect him from the militants, sir.”

  “I’m sure you did your best, Valkyrie.”

  She could just leave it at that, but she felt she needed to own the whole debacle. “Sir, I think we could have saved the asset and gotten information if I’d been a better leader.”

  His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “How so?”

  “I let Petty Officer Lafayette get distracted, sir.”

  “Distracted? By what?”

  Her muscles tensed as she decided how to answer this, and then went with the truth. She sighed. “By protecting me, sir.”

  “Explain.”

  She shrugged. “He obviously hasn’t worked with women in such situations, sir.”

  “That shouldn’t compromise his training, Captain.” He sighed. “Do you think you can handle him?”

  Her hands curled into fists behind her back. This was her challenge to overcome.

  “Yes, si
r. I’ll work with him.”

  “You realize as soon as we have more information we’ll need to send a team back to rescue Dr. Hutchins. Should I brief Bravo team?”

  “No, sir,” she said. “I can handle this. My team will be ready.”

  Someone coughed behind her. “Excuse me, sir. May I say something?”

  Cat stiffened. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rhys stand at attention beside her. What was he doing here? Had he come to report on her? Shit. Maybe she should have left him back in Nigeria.

  “At ease. Both of you,” Blackwell said with a sigh. “Tell me, Petty Officer Lafayette, what happened on this mission. Why was the asset killed?”

  Cat waited for Rhys to throw her under the bus. It’s what any number of soldiers had done in similar situations. It hadn’t happened as often once she’d made it into special operations, and not at all at E.D.G.E., but it was a pattern she was used to. Some men just couldn’t handle a woman on their team, and they made their issues her problem—one she had to figure out in order to make things work. Was Rhys one of those men?

  “It was completely my fault, sir,” Rhys said. “I take full responsibility.”

  “What happened?” Blackwell growled.

  Rhys hesitated. “Captain Richards is right. I haven’t worked with women before. I need to adjust my thinking. I let my doubts get in the way of the mission.”

  Blackwell waited a long moment before speaking. “I’m very disappointed. The captain is a valued member of E.D.G.E. You need to remember that, or this might not be the place for you. I’d hate to think we made a mistake recruiting you. Dismissed.”

  “Sir.” Rhys caught Cat’s gaze. She could read the concern there and frowned at him. She didn’t need his protection. He turned and left the room.

  “Valkyrie,” Blackwell said. “You are an excellent operator. I believe you can also be an excellent leader, but I need you to get a grip on your team. If you can’t handle them, then I’ll find someone who can.”

  The rest of the team waited in the staging room.

  Cat dumped her gear before snagging a chair at the long table. She disassembled her rifle alongside the others, bending her head over it as she cleaned the barrel. Zach and Marc spoke quietly about their plans for the night.

  She lost herself in the intricacy of the detailed cleaning, inspecting each piece before rubbing it down with gun oil and cloths. The work soothed her, and she let her mind wander.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Cat looked up. Zach and Marc had left and Rhys sat across from her, his rifle in one piece, his cleaning complete. She cocked her head. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

  Like her, he’d stripped off the outer layer of his BDUs and sat in an olive green t-shirt. His biceps flexed when he ran his hand through his overly long, sandy-blond hair.

  “For not trusting you,” he said. He sighed. “I’m not sure what I was thinking, but when you stepped forward into the gunfire I couldn’t help but stop you.”

  “I’m not some helpless civilian,” she said. “I’ve got just as much training as you. I’ve been in many nasty situations. If you’re on my team, you’ll need to trust me. You’ll have to follow where I lead. Can you do that?”

  He studied her face. She wondered if he could see beyond her blonde hair and blue eyes, to the soldier underneath.

  Finally he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” She smiled grimly. “Then you and I start training together tomorrow.”

  “Training?”

  “Meet me in front of the building at 0530. We’ll start with a run.”

  Rhys yawned and swung his arms to warm them up, before jogging a bit in place. The streetlights still lit the road, though the gray predawn light made everything visible. Five twenty-five a.m. Cat came out of the building’s front doors wearing only running shorts that showed off her long, muscular legs, and a tank top. He swallowed.

  No inappropriate thoughts, Rhys. He grit his teeth, but couldn’t help envisioning what he’d like to do with her. Those long legs featured a starring role wrapped around his waist.

  No. She was his team leader.

  It didn’t help that memories of that night six months ago resurged with palpable ferocity. He pushed them away and managed to keep his eyes up and on her face, rather than on that delectable body.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  He was more than ready.

  Don’t smile, he ordered himself. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She shook her head. “Lose the ma’am.”

  “Okay, Valkyrie. Let’s go.”

  This would be torture, he thought, trying not to watch her for however long she decided to run. He figured it wouldn’t be that bad, maybe thirty minutes at most. He could avoid looking at her for that long.

  They started off at a loping pace, nothing too strenuous. She took them east for the first couple of miles. Once they’d left downtown, she lengthened her stride. Their feet hit the pavement in unison, the cool morning air refreshing against his heated skin. Montreal was not a flat city. She led him up and down hills as they continued to work their way east, before she turned north.

  Within half a mile she’d turned back west so they ran toward the Mountain, the name Montrealers gave the elevated park in the middle of their city. It seemed to loom over downtown, and Valkyrie headed straight for it.

  So she was going to prove how tough she was to him? He almost rolled his eyes, but decided to play along.

  “So,” Cat said, sounding barely out of breath. “Tell me about yourself. Something not in your file. Like why you would want to join E.D.G.E.?”

  He studied the side of her face for a moment. She wasn’t sweating that much, and didn’t seem to be breathing hard as she kept pace. This could get interesting.

  “Something not in my file?” He let his drawl thicken. “I love Creole food.” He waited to see what she’d do with that info.

  “Why?”

  “Because of the spiciness.”

  “Indian food is spicy. Why do you like Creole?”

  “Because I’m from N’Awlins,” he said, his accent as thick as any time he spoke.

  “So you like reminders of home?”

  “Are you trying to play amateur psychologist?”

  “Don’t you like talking about your home?”

  He decided he didn’t like her games anymore and lengthened his stride—time to see if she could keep up. She kept pace and didn’t acknowledge what he’d done.

  “You know I don’t have a home,” he said.

  “I know no such thing,” she said. “I know you said you have no family. That doesn’t mean you don’t think of New Orleans as your home.”

  He didn’t say anything, but increased the pace again. They neared the mountain and the incline increased. He wanted to leave her behind.

  “Why did you join E.D.G.E.?” she asked.

  “Why did you?”

  This time, she did look at him. An eyebrow cocked, but she didn’t reprimand him for his snapped question. “I want to be the best soldier I can be,” she said. “When E.D.G.E. asked me to join, I leapt at the opportunity.”

  “Why?” He made his voice softer this time. “Why did you want to be a soldier?”

  “To help people. To make a difference.”

  “Why not a doctor?”

  She snorted. “You sound like my mother. Do you believe like she does, that a woman is too delicate to be in a war zone?”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer that. Sure, he’d seen some tough women in his time. He knew logically that women were already in wars all over the world, but he just couldn’t believe they could do the types of jobs he could do.

  She shook her head slightly. “Men,” she muttered, and increased the pace again. He frowned but didn’t say anything, just stretched his long legs. They were in the park now, racing up the hilly path toward the top. He could feel his quads burning as he plowed up the hill beside her. Sweat ran down his back and he breathed deeply. More r
unners were out and they dodged them as they ran the circuitous path.

  They’d been running for about thirty minutes, and he figured they’d covered a good four miles. The woman beside him seemed to be going faster the steeper the incline. He grinned and pushed himself to go a bit faster, just to see if she could keep up.

  She bared her teeth in a fierce grin and kept up stride for stride with him. They pounded up the slope, breathing hard. Sweat dripped down his back and his muscles loosened and warmed. He pushed harder, faster. The top was in sight. The woman beside him flew beside him like the fierce warrior woman she was nicknamed for.

  Within moments they’d hit the top, an area cleared of trees with a view of the city below. Montreal lay before them. The morning sun with its orange-red light struck the mirrored buildings of downtown, creating shadows and silhouettes that demanded he pause.

  He slowed. Cat did too, once she noticed him looking.

  They jogged in place. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “A melding of manmade and natural beauty.”

  “Beautiful,” he agreed, but he watched Cat and not the view anymore. Her long limbs were covered in a slight sheen of sweat. She pushed her blonde bangs out of those incredible blue eyes. She froze when she caught his gaze, her mouth parting slightly. He could tell she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she’d like him to believe. It made him smile.

  Careful, Rhys. Time to get his thoughts back on track.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Track star?”

  She nodded carefully. “I did some track. We should head back. We’ll take a more direct route. You ready?”

  “Anytime,” he said.

  The run back was almost lazy. It wasn’t slow by any means, but it wasn’t the fierce, driving pace they’d come up the hill with. Cat kept it steady and strong, but he couldn’t help being disappointed. She didn’t look winded, but maybe she’d used all she had already.

  The exhilaration he’d been feeling drained away, leaving his body itchy to do more, press harder. Maybe he’d do another loop of the route they’d just done and then hit that gym Jake had told him about. Would she come with him?