Edge of Honor: An EDGE Security Novel

by Loye, Trish

  She rubbed hard and fast, keeping the rope as taut as she could. Her wrists screamed at her to stop, but she couldn’t. She needed the pressure and the friction to make the threads snap. And finally, they started to. The rope frayed. She rubbed harder, her fingers numb, her wrists on fire.

  A quick glance at the clock. Eight minutes to go.

  Halfway through the rope. It was working. She moved her arms faster. Up and down, legs pushing, her wrists feeling like the rope was sawing through them.

  Almost there.

  She had to get this done. Jack still hadn’t moved. Freckles said something. She jerked and looked over her shoulder. He still faced forward, hand on the stick. He spoke into his radio, still not paying attention to her. She turned back to sawing at the rope. Her wrists screamed when she started up again, but she had no time to go easy. She sucked in a breath and pushed harder, rubbed faster, and kept up a string of curses under her breath that would make even Jack’s eyes widen.

  The rope snapped.

  “About fucking time,” she muttered, shaking off the loose coils. Blood coated her wrists, and feeling returned with a rush to her hands and fingers. She bit back a moan as a thousand needles pricked her muscles and flesh. She didn’t have time to wait for the feeling to dissipate.

  Six minutes left.

  She forced her fingers to work on the knots on her ankles. When she got out of this, she was going to make sure she had a razor blade in the sole of every shoe she had. The ropes came free.

  She crawled to Jack and shook him. “Wake up!” she whisper-hissed. She started to untie his hands, her eyes darting to the timer and then back to the knots. She got his wrists untied. Jack still hadn’t moved. Jesus, what if they’d hit him so hard he was in a coma?

  Don’t worry, she thought. I won’t leave you.

  Five minutes.

  “Well, look who’s awake,” Freckles said. She spun into a crouch. He had a gun in one hand and a parachute in the other. “Boss’ll be happy to know you were able to see your death coming.”

  “You put the plane on autopilot.”

  “Yup.” He nodded at the timer. “Won’t be long now.” He stuck the gun in his pants and shrugged on the parachute. It would be the only one, to ensure they had no escape from the plane when it shut down.

  She needed that parachute. Freckles looked down to connect one of the straps.

  Now or never.

  She launched herself at him. He jerked back, pulling the gun from his waistband. He was quicker than she’d thought—the gun was pointed at her. She swept it aside as she crashed into the red-haired man she’d come to loathe.

  The crack of the shot deafened her. One of the porthole windows shattered, and wind blew through the cabin as the air got sucked outside.

  “Crazy bitch,” he said, grabbing her shoulders and jerking her to one side.

  She grabbed one parachute strap and held on, her other hand raking at his face. Clawing at his eyes. He threw a blind punch at her. She ducked and brought up her knee. He dodged it, but she kept coming. She could tell he was a street brawler and didn’t know any actual fighting techniques; he just kept swinging. She didn’t stand a chance on pure strength. The only way she could win a fight was speed, agility, and by using as many dirty tricks as she could, as fast as she could use them.

  He struck at her and she grabbed his wrist, digging her fingers into the tendons and twisting. At the same time, she used a palm strike against his nose. Blood spurted and he cursed. She twisted the wrist harder and he yelped, bending over to relieve the pressure on his arm.

  She grabbed the back of his head by his hair and slammed it down as she brought her knee up. She did it again and again. Freckles slumped and thudded to the cabin floor. She faced the cockpit and could see the water of the Thames below.

  She glanced at the timer.

  Three minutes.

  Fuck. They were almost over London.

  “Jack!” she screamed. ”Wake up!”

  She leapt at the bomb and pulled off the cover that protected the circuitry. The small kill switch she’d so carefully placed was gone. And the dampening effect had been taken out, too. Someone had gone over the schematics and fixed the bomb. It would go off if she tried to shut it down.

  Two minutes.

  When the pulse went off the plane would shut down, all of its circuits fried. It would crash. If she wanted to live, she needed to get off this plane. She eyed the parachute that Freckles wore. If she jumped now, even if she figured out how to put the damn parachute on, she’d be damning all of London to the Dark Ages and Jack to certain death.

  But she’d be alive.

  She knelt by Jack and shook him, yelling his name and finally slapping his face hard.

  Jack’s eyes snapped opened and he caught her wrist. “What the bloody fuck?”

  A small hysterical giggle escaped her.

  He sat up and looked around the cabin. “Sit rep,” he said as he untied his ankles.

  “The bomb will destroy the plane’s electronics in eighty seconds. We need to get it over water and then get off it. I don’t know anything about planes.” She swallowed. “Oh, and there’s only one parachute.”

  He nodded. “I’ll deal with the plane. You do what you can about the bomb.”

  She crouched by the device again as Jack slid into the pilot’s seat, flicking switches and gently moving the stick. The plane began to veer to the right, heading out over the Thames.

  “One minute,” she yelled to Jack.

  There was no hope for the plane they were on, but she could diminish the effects of the pulse. The lower it was, the less area it would affect. She needed to drop the device out of the plane. She did a quick calculation even as she raced to the cabin door. She heaved on the handle, her hair flying about her face, blinding her. The wind almost sucked her out, and she grabbed onto the cabin’s frame.

  Holy shit, she was standing in the open doorway of a plane three kilometers above the ground, with no parachute or safety line. How had her life become so insane?

  “Jack!” she screamed as she grabbed the device. Shit, it was heavy. “Twenty seconds!”

  She dragged it to the door and then pushed her creation out. Without taking into account air resistance, falling at 9.8 meters per second squared would mean that it would drop about two klicks in the twenty seconds. It would still be a kilometer in the air when it went off. She bit her lip. The plane wouldn’t be out of range.

  Her internal clock chimed in.

  Ten.

  Jack appeared in the cabin, his face determined. He started to pull the parachute off Freckles’ unconscious body.

  Five.

  There was only one chute. She looked at Jack. She had no idea how to use a parachute. He should be the one to take it.

  Maybe the plane would be out of range when the bomb went off. Maybe they could survive this together somehow.

  One.

  She stilled and looked at the cockpit.

  It was dark. The plane’s engine sputtered and died. The only sound was the wind screaming through the cabin.

  20

  Jack got the parachute rig off of the red-haired guard and pulled it on. The floor sloped, and he had to lean back to counter it. The plane was headed down. Fast. Wind rushed around him from the broken window and the open cabin door. Charlie looked like a lost little girl.

  “We have to jump,” he said. He snapped the straps of the rig together across his chest and through his legs.

  “There’s only one parachute,” she repeated.

  Now he understood her expression. “Holy fuck. Did you think I’d jump without you? Get over here.” He gestured to her.

  The tilt of the plane increased and she stumbled into him.

  The standard civilian chute could carry close to four hundred pounds. Charlie looked to be only about eight or nine stone, or around 120 pounds.

  The problem wasn’t their combined weight, but what would happen when the chute opened. When the parachute fi
lled with air, it jerked the jumper hard—hard enough that holding onto another person was almost impossible.

  “We have to be tied together,” he said, snagging some of the rope from the floor.

  The plane picked that moment to tilt more, and she stumbled back from him toward the cockpit. He grabbed her before she could fall. They had to get out of there now. He looped the rope around her waist and then around his, before going around both of them once more. He knotted it hard. It wasn’t ideal and they’d both have rope burns, but it was better than her dying.

  “I thought I would face front,” she mumbled from down near his chest.

  “You can wrap your arms and legs around me this way. It’ll be easier for you to hold on.” He palmed her butt and lifted. She squeaked, but obediently wrapped her legs around his waist.

  He strode to the cabin door. They were on the low end for a jump. If they started to tumble, he wouldn’t have time to straighten them out. Or if it took too long to pull the chute, they’d thunder to their deaths.

  “Hold me as tight as you can.” He didn’t pause, just leapt from the plane, his back arched and spread-eagled trying to stop any tumbling from the buffeting wind of the crashing plane.

  He wasn’t completely successful.

  Charlie screamed and her arms and legs tightened hard around him. His ribs shrieked in protest, but he didn’t curl up. He couldn’t. They had to straighten out or the chute wouldn’t open and catch air.

  He counted seconds in his head, trying to calculate from his height estimation how much time they had left before they hit the ground. Tears blinded him as he squinted into the rushing wind.

  One. They spun forward and to the right.

  Two. He leaned left and arched his back.

  Three. The spinning slowed.

  The ground raced toward them. The tumbling stopped. Now or never.

  He reached back and behind him to the chute with his right hand while putting his left up near his head to counterbalance.

  “Hold on,” he yelled at Charlie over the rushing wind.

  He deployed the chute with his right hand. It flared open and caught the rushing air. He held Charlie tight. The yank hauled at his shoulders. Charlie jerked and slid out of his grasp and down his body. The rope caught his waist and under her arms. She cried out. He grabbed at her and hauled her higher. Her wide eyes looked up at him.

  “Are we safe?”

  “Almost, Sherlock,” he said. “Keep holding on to me.”

  He reached overhead to the steering toggles. Time to figure out where to land. Water sparkled below them and land lay on both sides. They were still in greater London. Houses lined the river. Further east he could see some open terrain.

  In the distance, the plane dropped faster than it moved forward, truly falling from the sky. It went nose first into the river. Water flew up as the plane cartwheeled and broke in half.

  He tore his gaze from the wreck. He had to focus on getting them down safely.

  Inner-city London lay behind them about thirty klicks, and they were due east along the Thames. There was an open area just north of the river. He pulled on one of the toggles, letting the wind lift and turn the chute. Then he applied equal pressure once they faced the right direction. They would be coming in hot.

  “When we land,” he said, “keep your legs lifted. Hug me tight. This might not be pretty.”

  She nodded, her head against his chest. He wanted to hug her back, reassure her, but that would have to wait until they’d reached the ground. The wind whipped strands of her hair from her braid and into his eyes.

  “There’s a field ahead that I’m going to aim to land in,” he said.

  “Sounds awesome,” she said without looking.

  “Are you scared of heights?”

  “No,” she said, keeping her head tucked. “I’m scared of being this high up without my own freaking parachute.”

  He chuckled.

  The field was an irregular patch of green with a small road running beside it. A silver pickup truck barreled down the single-lane road toward the field. He frowned.

  “Charlie, we might have unwanted company.”

  “Are you seriously going to make me look?” she grumbled.

  Jesus, this woman made him laugh. Something that he hadn’t done much of in the last two years. “I’ll let you know if I need you.”

  He turned the chute so they flew into the wind, slowing them down before pulling on both toggles, braking them further. “Twenty seconds,” he said.

  “Till impact?”

  He snorted. “Give me some credit. I was SAS. I can get us down.”

  He hoped.

  The truck swerved to a stop and a dark-skinned man in a suit hopped out. “Looks like the partner.”

  Tom stood at the edge of the field waiting. He must not have realized they weren’t his partner. “Did you happen to grab the pilot’s gun?” he asked.

  She nodded again and relief surged through him, even as he saw Tom grab something from under his jacket. Then he pointed a gun in their direction. Something ripped through the chute above them.

  Sunlight streamed through a small hole in the chute.

  “Get the gun,” Jack said. “The bastard is shooting at us. I need you to return fire.”

  She lifted her head and pulled the gun from the side pocket on her cargo pants. All fear vanished from her eyes and she looked around. “Where?”

  He could love this woman.

  He squashed that thought. “Your five o’clock. Five seconds till landing.”

  She twisted her upper body until she just held onto him with her legs and one hand. She sighted on the man firing on them and pulled the trigger.

  “Damn,” she muttered, and fired again.

  He couldn’t look, since he was concentrating on bringing them down. “When I say, I want you to hug me tight and get your head tucked into my chest. Let me take care of the landing.”

  “Wilco,” she said, and fired again. “Shit.”

  “Two. One. Now.”

  She gripped him tight and he lifted his legs at the same time, coming in low, skimming the land, and then when the speed had lowered enough he dropped his legs and began to run, hauling the chute down so it wouldn’t carry them back up.

  The jolt of hitting the earth went through his bruised body, but he didn’t let go and forced himself to move fast. The chute tugged and pulled them off balance. He dropped and rolled onto his back so he wouldn’t crush Charlie. He released the chute’s lines even as Charlie sat up, straddling his waist. Her gun was raised, and she squinted. He concentrated on the chute and let her take care of the man firing at them.

  She fired. A man cursed. She fired again and there was silence.

  “That was for taking my aunt,” she said quietly.

  Jack unhooked the last strap and let the chute blow away, something they’d never done in the SAS. They’d been taught to always gather your chute and hide it if inserting into enemy territory, so no one would know you’d been there. It felt wrong to let it fly away, but they didn’t have time to worry about it now.

  He looked up at the woman straddling him. She’d lowered the gun, but still stared where the gunman had been, scanning the area, a warrior in her own right. Her hair tumbled down her back completely free of her braid and she looked fierce and so fucking sexy. The rope tying them together had loosened, but it still dug into his waist. He didn’t care.

  She looked down at him, a warrior queen assessing him. “We’re alone.”

  Blood and heat surged through him, hardening him. He lifted up until he sat, her legs tightened around him, and he cradled her face in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

  She arched an eyebrow. Not a no, but a challenge.

  He couldn’t resist a challenge.

  Her lips molded to his, soft, warm, pliant. He licked at them, silently begging her to open. She did and he groaned at the heat. She shifted on his lap, settling herself directly over his hard length and he
tightened his arms around her, dragging her even closer, one hand cupping the back of her head, angling her mouth for a deeper kiss. Her fingers were in his hair and a small moan escaped her. The most erotic sound in the world. It set his blood on fire.

  He hated to do it, but he pulled back. “We’ll finish this later.” A promise. One he fully intended to keep.

  She nodded, her eyes losing that deliciously glazed look, and for a moment he wanted to say to hell with the world and kiss her again. He wanted that look back.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” she said.

  “I’m counting on it.” He leaned back so he could untie the knot on the rope. They stood and he retrieved the gun Charlie had dropped on the ground, handing it back to her. “Let’s get the keys off your friend there,” he said. “We’ll use the truck to get back to London.”

  “Hopefully he has a phone, too. Maybe we can back-trace it and use it to find Logan.”

  They strode to the dead man sprawled face down in the field. Jack patted the body down, pulled out a phone and a set of keys, and picked up the man’s dropped Beretta M9.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, heading for the pickup. He glanced at her as they walked and it made his gut clench. Her hair was wild about her face and shoulders, her full lips still swollen from his kiss. And he wanted to do it again. She kept running her hands over her hair as if trying to tame it.

  “Leave it,” he said, and realized his voice had come out rougher than he’d wanted it to.

  She arched a brow at him. “It’s a hazard when it’s down. It blinds me sometimes. I should just cut it.”

  “No,” he said. “I love running my hands through it.” That damn eyebrow stayed arched. Well, it was true. Though he wanted to do more than just run his hands through her hair. He wanted to grip it as he drove into her, making her arch and cry out his name.

  She looked away. Had he let too many of his thoughts show in his face?

  He forced himself to shrug and keep walking. They had to finish this, and then they would figure out what was between them. A night together should do it.