To the Edge

by Anna del Mar

  Note to blog: gags are a pain in the ass.

  And who the hell was going to hear me anyway? Avalon’s population amounted to 727 souls who lived mostly on the bay, ten miles down the gravel road. The cabin was surrounded by the Luz wildlife refuge, my grandfather’s doing. I was in so much trouble.

  What would my mother say if they found me out here, burned to a crisp, shackled in a cage? Her embarrassment, not to mention her rage, would probably far exceed her grief. The newspapers. Social media. The scandal. I wiped the image from my mind and concentrated on the cuffs. I wasn’t going to burn, wasn’t willing to die, not yet, not this way.

  A voice caught my attention. A call came from the outside. A call? I squealed back in reply. Within moments, the back doors exploded off the hinges. A man broke through, angled forward like a linebacker, tall and broad-shouldered. His run came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the living room. He took in the scene and quickly assessed the situation like a man who was used to danger.

  The look of competence in his stare restored my hope for a longer life. Thank you, God! I would’ve whooped with elation if I could. His eyes widened with surprise when he registered the cage—and probably my attire—but he didn’t hesitate as he rushed over.

  “Hang on,” he said as he unlatched the cage’s door. “What the hell is going on?”

  I craned my neck to follow his progress, mumbling frantic gibberish through the gag. Something about him was familiar, the wide cheekbones, the straight angle at the jaw, the eyes, black, soulful and deep. My heart jerked to a sudden stop. I did a double take. No way. It couldn’t be.

  I stole another look at him. My elation turned to shock. Was I losing my mind? I rose on my toes, lifted my face to the heels of my hands and managed to knuckle my eyes. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe he was a ghost. Maybe I was suffering from oxygen deprivation, even though the smoke didn’t look nearly that bad. I blinked several times to clear my vision. It couldn’t be, shouldn’t be, and yet, when I looked again, there he was, the same man, the face I remembered so well.

  A rush of blood heated my face. No. Oh, no. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to find him here, now. Of all the people in the universe, he would’ve been the last I wanted to see me in my current state. How could this be?

  His appearance weakened my knees and demolished my fortitude. My rescuer, the one person who’d heard my cries and who could potentially get me out, was also the same man who’d almost destroyed me once. He might not be able to recognize me yet, but I sure recognized him. The last time I’d seen him was right here, in this house, an hour before he broke my heart. It was him. The first man I ever loved.

  Noah Blake.

  Chapter Two

  Noah

  The cloud blackening the sky above my kitchen window alerted me to the sort of trouble I didn’t need. My senses ratcheted to high alert. I downed the last of my protein shake, plunked the glass on the counter and raced upstairs. It was a fluke that I’d left my office in the middle of the day and spotted the smoke at all, but after stalking my prey for forty-two hours straight, my eyes needed a break.

  For several days now, my team and I had been trailing one of the world’s most wanted, a terrorist with many aliases, code named Josephus. He was the mastermind of a series of lethal attacks on Americans abroad. His deadliest role included recruiting disaffected children of the West to kill their own kind, something he did over the Internet and the Dark Net with infuriating regularity.

  My team and I had already identified and helped capture most of Josephus’s recent contacts, but I was determined to get the fucker. I’d traced the asshole all the way to Spain. The takedown operators had reported they’d missed him by less than five minutes. The snake had slithered away at the last minute, but the raid had netted the rest of his cell, including his cousin Rashid, who was now in paradise fucking a bunch of ex-virgins. Son of a bitch. I was going to get Josephus.

  I reached the top of the spiral steps, barged into the octagonal room at the top of my newly restored widow’s walk and grabbed the binoculars. From my perch high above the ground, the profile of a single roof pierced the tree line west of me. Sure enough, a column of smoke rose from the clearing, billowing from the only other house remotely close to mine, a place I knew well.

  Dammit. We didn’t have a fire station on Avalon Island. We did have a loosely organized volunteer fire crew, mostly composed of local fishermen who weren’t sitting around waiting to fight a fire at the moment. Even if I gave the alert, it’d be at least thirty minutes before anyone showed up. Hell, if anyone was trapped in the house, they’d be toast by the time the fire crew got there.

  I ran down two flights of stairs. What the hell was going on? In the past two years, no one had visited the Luz compound, not even summer renters. In any case, the island’s brief summer season was over. Leaden clouds darkened the afternoon and the Chesapeake Bay roiled in advance of an October gale.

  I jammed my arms in my jacket and rushed out the back door, coming to a screeching halt at the end of the deck. My body refused to move forward. An invisible barrier held me back, jolting me like an electrified fence. My heart boomed. Slowly, I put a tentative foot on the ground. The lawn bulged and pulsed under my shoe. I gritted my teeth. Tick-tock, a countdown began in my mind. Shit. I jerked my foot back.

  “There are no improvised explosive devices buried in the yard,” I muttered, pacing the deck, trying to impose logic over irrational emotion. “Stick to reality, Noah.”

  None of my frozen muscles reacted to my brain’s logical appeal.

  “Fuck this.” I stalked back into the house and kicked the door shut. “You fucking coward.”

  I plopped down at the base of the stairs, raked my fingers through my hair and sank my face into my hands. How the hell had I turned into such a useless pile of crap? I wasn’t some ignorant grunt. I was an ex-Navy SEAL and a high-level intelligence operative. I’d fought wars, infiltrated hostile countries and hunted the world’s most dangerous terrorists, yet here I was, trapped in my own house. What a joke. I pressed at my temples. Someone could be in danger and all I could do was watch from afar.

  I clenched my jaw so hard that my teeth ached. Even a piece of shit like me had to admit that the house currently on fire was the number one reason why I’d chosen this place for my self-inflicted exile. The Luz compound was one of the few places on earth I associated with happiness. Those memories were the only thing I had left. Would they evaporate like so many other things in my life if the house burned?

  Hell, no. I couldn’t let the memories go. Not yet, anyway.

  My gaze fell on the little green bottle on the kitchen counter. The last time I’d had some of that, I’d been sick for days. But it had allowed me to make it through the funeral. I’d even gone to the grocery store for a few minutes. LCOS, the guys from the support group liked to call it, liquid courage on steroids.

  I got to my feet and made my way to the counter. I picked up the bottle and rolled it between my fingers. No label, no warnings, nothing. Home brewed by some biochemically savvy veteran in his basement and most definitively not FDA approved. If it were any other uninhabited house on the island, I might have called it in and been done with it. But this was the Luz house. I couldn’t let go. What the hell. I unscrewed the top of the bottle and, after suctioning half a measure into the glass dropper, squeezed it underneath my tongue.

  Bitter. Sharp. Sour. My taste buds screeched. The poison set my throat ablaze. I shut my eyes, gritted my teeth, and clutched the counter until the world stopped whirling. Toxic. That’s how the stuff felt as it burned through my body. As if it was killing me, right before it freed me.

  Thirty seconds later, I could think again. That’s when the vascular spasm hit me. My toes and fingers went numb and my fingertips turned white, all side effects from the liquid courage. It would take a few minutes to work
, but the Luz house was burning right now.

  I forced myself out the door, onto the deck and down the steps. I closed my eyes and, heart pummeling my ribs, settled a boot on the lawn. Nothing exploded. I let out a rattling breath and took another step. I edged my way across the trees, fighting an irrational impulse to run back to my cottage and the false assumption that I’d be safe in there. Safe from this moment, maybe, but not safe from myself.

  “Mind over matter,” I muttered to myself. “Baby steps. Fear is the mind killer.” Whatever cliché worked, it didn’t matter. I forced myself forward, hoping that the stuff I’d taken would kick in soon.

  I made it to the woods and onto the deer track then ran through the scrub. No IEDs here. No booby traps or shooters. Move, move, move. My mouth and nose sucked in the humid air, and my feet hammered the earth in an all-out race toward the fire. My ears and eyes worked the terrain, anticipating the snipers hiding behind the trees, the enemy waiting in ambush. The fear pounding in my temples was as vivid as the flashbacks.

  I broke through a line of overgrown sedges and into the backyard of the main house, heart pumping to the point of pain. I bent over my knees, assessing the Victorian mansion between gasps. Most of the grand old house was intact, but a small window on the far side of the house puffed with a stream of smoke. The liquid courage must have kicked in then, because my entire body flushed. A roar ignited my blood and bellowed through my veins. For an instant, I felt superhuman. Best part? The earth stopped shifting beneath my feet. My nerves settled and my mind cleared. I focused on the present.

  I cupped my hands at either side of my mouth and shouted at the top of my lungs. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

  A muffled scream broke through the fire’s rumble, shrill, sustained and desperate. Was it real? I called out once more. The sound came again, undefined but urgent, echoing from the first floor, where, if memory served me right, the main living room of the house was located.

  Someone was in there.

  I reverted to my old self. I considered the house with the eyes of an experienced SEAL evaluating the mission. It helped that I remembered the interior layout so well. So far, the smoke came only from the south corner of the house. I had a few minutes yet.

  I mounted the wraparound porch and tested the French doors. They were locked. I stepped back to gain some momentum. That’s when it hit me, a sense of impending catastrophe, the knowledge that I was at a crossroads, and choosing this path would result in the destruction of my life as I knew it.

  Fellow veterans and survivors often spoke of experiencing this powerful sense of doom, right before their arms and legs got blown off, an instant before getting hit. I’d felt the odd emotion before, advanced notice that the world was about to tilt on its axis, an inexplicable sense of fate, danger’s clear and imminent warning. Standing on the porch of the Luz house, I felt the shift coming my way. My hackles went up. The world contracted as an invisible pulse thumped through me, heralding a cataclysmic detonation like the one that had rendered me captive in my own house.

  And yet I made the same choice I’d made before. I had to go in, because dread was not an excuse for cowardice and bravery was the act of punching through one’s fears.

  I kicked open the doors and rushed into the living room. It was like time travel, like stepping into the past, where an old black-and-white reel whirled before my eyes. The stately old home showed none of the luster I remembered. The furnishings were covered with sheets. The place felt drab, forlorn and forgotten. Smoke puffed from the hallway and drifted into the living room in an ethereal, foul-smelling haze.

  An odd sound caught my attention, a primal mewling. My head swiveled toward the fireplace. An antique Victorian aviary stood in the corner, the same tall, elegant wrought-iron cage that I remembered admiring fifteen years ago. A pop of color caught my attention.

  What the hell?

  Time slowed down as I took in the odd sight. For an instant, I forgot about the fire, because the cage—which had once housed a pair of expressive, impressive macaws—now held another species, an erotic mirage. No, not a mirage. A real woman, and not just any woman, but one plucked right out of my head, true to my personal definition of beauty down to the smallest physical details. My oldest, wildest and most treasured fantasy come true.

  Chapter Three

  Noah

  I did a double take. The woman stood in the center of the cage with her back to me. A pair of sturdy cuffs shackled her wrists to the cage’s scrolled dome. Her arms flexed in the air, showcasing a trace of definition at the biceps. Tension squared her shoulders and straightened her back, where a set of crisscrossed laces secured the leather corset that narrowed her waist. Below the corset, her body flared into a set of wide hips and the creamy expanse of a round, plump ass divided by a leather thong.

  The blood rushed out of my head and straight to my dick. The sudden bulge between my legs actually ached. The liquid courage I’d taken must have magnified my reaction, because the sight left me breathless and light-headed. It was as if the image had been plucked directly from some fetish website for my exclusive benefit.

  A muted hiss came from behind the walls. A rush of heated air gushed from the hallway and reminded me that time wasn’t a free commodity. The woman squirmed in the cage. Her back muscles bunched up as she yanked on the cuffs. Snap out of it, Noah. I rushed over and tested the padlock.

  “Hang on.” The metal clanked as I lifted the hasp and pumped it. Every cell in my body pinged with warnings. “What the hell is going on here?”

  She craned her neck around. Her entire body froze. I caught a glimpse of sparkling blue eyes through the mask’s narrow slits, along with a gleam of panic. Her jaw dropped. Her plush lips separated in surprise. I got the impression that my appearance shocked her almost as much as her presence in that cage stunned me. She actually jerked away from me when I threw open the cage’s door.

  “Easy, now. I’m here to help.”

  A crash down the hallway startled us both. The woman’s plush lips worked around the ball of a gag. What was it about those lips that I found so distracting? She mumbled something urgently and lifted her face upward. The cuffs. Of course.

  I reached up and tried to release her wrists, but the handcuffs were locked in place. They were standard police issue, plated steel, Hiatt type, circa 1990, doubled locked, modified with extra links to allow for the longer chain that wrapped around the overhead bars.

  “Where’s the key?” I asked.

  She muttered something unintelligible.

  “Let’s take this thing off, shall we?” I grappled with the leather strap and released the buckle on the back of her head.

  She spat the ball out. “No key.” She pressed her lips together, moistened them with a swipe of pink tongue and pointed with her chin at the door. “He took them when he left.”

  “Who?” My hackles sharpened. “Who brought you here?”

  There was another crash beyond the hallway, the sound of glass exploding.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Her voice chimed to my ears, sparkling notes full of fear but also somehow familiar, like an old song I hadn’t heard in a long while, a sound that electrified my brain and threatened to throw off my concentration.

  “I need an answer, ma’am.” I groped through my pockets, looking for some sort of tool that might help me spring open the cuffs. “Did somebody force you to come here?”

  “No.” Her cheeks flushed into a deep shade of red. “I... I came here on my own.”

  My balls tightened. “You came here of your own free will?”

  “I know. Stupid,” she said. “But please, hurry up. I don’t want to die like this.”

  Me neither.

  “We’re getting out of here.” I scoured my surroundings for a tool, any tool. “Count on
it.”

  I spotted a bobby pin at the base of her neck, where her hair was trapped in a bun. I plucked it from her nape, disturbing the ribbon that kept her mask in place. The mask stayed on. Was it prop or disguise?

  I filed my questions for later and concentrated on the task at hand. I unfolded the bobby pin and flattened it into a straight line before I stepped into the cage and squeezed my shoulders into the tight space. “I’m afraid it’s going to be cramped quarters for a bit.”

  She pressed herself against the bars, straining her arms, trying to make space for me. “Whatever it is you’re going to do, please, do it fast.”

  Yeah, sure, only the small problem of the locked cuffs. I twisted like a goddamn contortionist, until I had a good angle on the cuffs’ keyhole. If the situation wasn’t so dire, I might have taken a moment to laugh at the irony of someone using the Luz house for a kink den, considering the family’s reputation for righteousness. Truth be told, Senator Luz was one uptight bitch. She’d have a cow if she knew. Hell, she’d probably burn this little witch at the stake if she got her claws on her.

  Concentrate, Blake. I put the pin to the keyhole and bent it at an angle. I turned it around and bent it again, until I shaped it into a squiggle. Now I had to test the old skills. I fit the end of the shaped wire into the keyhole and began to feel for the mechanism. It was hard, because my fingertips were numb from the liquid courage.

  The woman squeaked. “Can’t you go any faster?”

  “Trying over here.” I had to reshape the wire. “This is asinine. Careless too. No safety release. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to leave you all locked up in here?”

  “He was supposed to come right back.”