Rough Edges

by Shannon K. Butcher

  “I have a housekeeper who comes in once a month to keep the place livable.”

  “When was she here last?”

  “I don’t know. While we were gone sometime. Why?”

  He pointed to some crumbs on her floor next to a rusty brown smudge line, his face taut with concern. “Scuff marks. Someone’s moved your oven.”

  Before she had time to follow why he was upset by her oven’s position, he turned on a flashlight app on his phone and shone it back behind the oven.

  “Bella,” he said, his tone that same eerie calm he got during a firefight. “Turn around and walk out the way I came in. Don’t touch anything.”

  Serious worry settled in between her arousal and fatigue. “What’s going on?”

  He took her arm and forced her to start walking. “Someone tied what looks like an explosive device into your gas line. Time to go and call the bomb squad from outside.”

  Chapter Two

  Randolph eyed Dr. Norma Stynger with caution as he entered her stark white office. She was dressed in a clinging black sheath dress and a white lab coat that did little to hide the bony lines of her aging body. She sat behind her white desk with a backdrop of white walls and a white tile floor surrounding her. The only color in the room was a worn, singed, brown leather journal and the bright red lipstick that made her mouth look like a bloody gash in her face.

  She looked up at him, and the cold emptiness of her eyes hit him like a brick launched from a cannon. He let out a whoosh of air and struggled for his next breath.

  “You’re late,” she snapped, her tone waspish.

  Randolph knew better than to show fear. Dr. Stynger was dangerous in a way that was hard to predict, much less understand. His instincts had started shrieking the second he’d laid eyes on her, and over the past few weeks he’d come to realize that even that shrill warning hadn’t been loud enough.

  He was always only one mistake away from having a hole drilled in his skull and electrodes shoved into his brain. It didn’t matter that he was tough as hell, deadly with just about any weapon ever built, and ruthless in combat. One snap of the freaky doctor’s bony fingers and he’d wake up a puppet, like all of the other tough guys here.

  Randolph forced out a nonchalant shrug, keeping his expression flat. “Traffic.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and even that tiny movement was enough to make his blood run cold.

  “Is the job done?” she asked.

  “It is. I put the drug in her hot water tank, just like you wanted.”

  “And the explosives?”

  “A woman like that doesn’t bake brownies. You should have let me rig the device to something she was going to use.”

  “Adrenaline is necessary to initiate the chemical reaction of the drug. The threat needed to be real enough to create fear and paranoia, but not deadly. If she’s blown into a thousand pieces, not only do I lose an opportunity to see if the new drug works, it’s going to be much harder to autopsy her brain once I’m done with her.”

  “You’d be better off taking her out. I used to work at the Edge. She keeps that place running. Without her, the whole structure crumbles and all the people searching for you go find new jobs.”

  Stynger stood, and it was all Randolph could do not to back away. “I only need a little more time. Once the island facility is finished, they’ll never find me. If Ms. Bayne is killed, her men will never stop looking for the person responsible for her death. It’s possible they could assume it was me, even after you parted company with Ms. Bayne on such unfriendly terms.”

  He’d been fired. One little mistake and she’d cut him loose. No one was even going to miss the kid he’d accidentally killed. She’d been a street rat, worthless. Certainly not worth losing his job over. Considering the dusty, poverty-stricken hole she’d lived in, he’d probably been doing her a favor by putting her out of her misery.

  Bella had seen things differently. With the clout she had in the industry, Randolph hadn’t been able to find work since. At least not until Stynger’s job offer came along.

  Then it had hit him. Stynger had hired him because of his unhappy ties to Bella. The good doctor had set him up to take the fall if things went wrong, and it was only now that he realized how she’d set him up. He’d drugged Bella’s water supply. He’d rigged an explosive device in her house. Even as careful as he’d been there could still be some piece of evidence tracing him back to the job. Some camera that recorded him near her home. If anything happened to her, her people would find it. And then they’d find him.

  “You knew they’d come after me, didn’t you?” he asked, barely keeping his anger in check.

  “I have no doubt that I’ll be blamed eventually, but by then I’ll be out of reach, hidden and protected by my gracious benefactors. And their army.”

  Randolph had been played. The money she’d offered him was too good to be true. He should have known not to make a deal with the devil. There was no love lost between him and Bella, but he’d been an idiot to let his fury for the woman who fired him drown out his better judgment.

  Too late now. His only hope was to move forward and do whatever it took to keep Stynger from eating him alive. Because as deadly as the men and women who worked for the Edge were, not one of them was anywhere near as soulless and evil as the woman standing in front of him. All that would happen to him if Bella’s men found him was he’d be killed. If Stynger turned her wrath on him, he’d pray for death.

  “What do you want me to do now?” he asked.

  The red slash of her lips curved up in a smile. “Just a little errand. It’s nothing, really.”

  Chapter Three

  Bella didn’t call the authorities as Victor had hoped. Instead, she called in one of her employees who knew his way around explosives. Within thirty minutes, the device was disarmed and her house was being searched for other unpleasant surprises by a crew of people skilled enough to ease some of the tension radiating down through Victor’s limbs.

  If he hadn’t seen the device, there was no way to know how long it would have stayed there, ready to blow. The fact that it hadn’t detonated when he tried to turn on the oven was a small miracle. Just the idea of it happening while Bella was home was enough to make him sweat.

  Then again, Victor had spent the past several weeks sweating, constantly worried about a woman who would likely rather break his nose than welcome his concern. She took too many risks with herself while proactively guarding her employees. She was impatient. Impulsive. Sometimes even a bit reckless. And sexy as hell.

  He knew better than to stare, but he couldn’t help himself once her back was turned. She had the body of an Amazonian princess—tall, lean, with just the right balance of softness to round out the rough edges that made her the tough, kick-ass chick she needed to be to do her job.

  Tonight her black hair was damp from her recent shower, pulled up in a messy ponytail that made a man think about how it might have gotten into such tangled disarray. Friction from rubbing against bed sheets? Or a wall? A man’s fingers gripping her hair while he pulled her head back, taking her from behind? In every scenario he imagined, he was the one mussing his boss, and that was way out of line.

  Not that his body gave a damn that she was his boss. No, his body wanted him to take her, claim her. Make her his in the most primal, uncivilized way possible. Over and over.

  Victor’s very civilized, cultured parents would have been scandalized by the thoughts going through their son’s head. They had dreams for him that involved political office, exclusive charity galas and buildings named in his honor. His respect for them ran so deep, he’d never once thought about not following the path they had laid out before him.

  Until Bella.

  She wasn’t at all the kind of woman a man like him dated. No connections. No vast wealth. No pedigree.

  No hidden agendas.

  Mom
and Dad would hate her on sight. Maybe that was part of what made her so appealing—a youthful rebellion arriving twenty years too late.

  The clingy black yoga pants and thin gray T-shirt she wore highlighted her curves, rather than hiding them. In the glow of her front porch light, he could see that her feet were bare, her toes tipped in a glossy hot pink polish that seemed completely out of place next to the weapon strapped to her hip. Her gun was the only thing she’d insisted on taking out with her that wasn’t already attached to her body. Not her purse, cash, keys or ID. Just her Glock.

  He kept a close eye on her, making sure she didn’t do something stupid like run back inside to disarm the bomb herself. Instead, she sat on the hood of her truck, her hot pink toes propped on the front bumper. Tension radiated through her sleek body, and the promise of retribution was in her gaze as she stared at her front door.

  “Any idea who did it?” he asked, taking up a position next to her knee. If she jumped down, it wouldn’t take much for him to grab her around the waist and restrain her.

  He guessed that letting go, however, would have taken considerably more effort.

  A large part of him hoped she would stay true to her impulsive nature and charge into the house just so he could have an excuse to manhandle her.

  The one time he’d had his hands on her for sparring practice, it had been all he could do not to kiss her once he’d had her pinned beneath him. To this day he still wondered how she would have reacted. Would she have thrashed his ass and aimed a gun at his head for daring to take advantage? Or would she have welcomed his advance, melting beneath him in a way that had his balls tightening just imagining it? Sadly, his opportunity to find out was gone now. Lost.

  “There is a long list of people who want me dead,” she said, answering his question with a shrug. “Once we analyze the tech, we’ll be able to shorten that list.”

  “How long is long?”

  “I’ve pissed off a lot of powerful, spiteful people over the years. Good thing they were too stupid to know I couldn’t cook or I’d be charcoal by now.”

  The thought made some dark, feral part of him raise its head. “You knew you were in danger and didn’t have your house swept for devices before you came home?”

  “I did. Either the crew missed it, or the bad guy did the job this afternoon, after the crew left.”

  “How much time did the intruder have between the sweep and when you got home?”

  She swung her foot, distracting him with the shiny polish and her pretty toes. “A few hours. The crew doing the sweeps had the rest of the team’s homes to do. Including yours.”

  “Why not have them do your place last?” he asked. “You’re the biggest target, being the head of the company.”

  Her tone was distracted, and her gaze held on the front door with absolute focus, as if she could will the cleanup team to come out faster. “I don’t have family since I disowned Payton. Not as many people would miss me as would miss the rest of the team. The bigger window of time is a calculated risk I’m willing to take to protect my people.”

  Victor’s body tensed at her casual dismissal of her safety. He tried not to let his anger at her recklessness invade his tone, but failed. “Next time I’m checking your place out myself before you step so much as one pink toenail inside your front door.”

  She slid from the truck in a single, controlled move. Feminine muscles rippled under her skin, and the scent of ripe berries flowed around her damp hair. She faced him, hands on her hips as she got right up in his personal space.

  It took all his willpower to not grab her hips and drag her body up against his. Only the look of hostility on her beautiful face helped him hold his position. “If you think I need you to protect little ol’ me, baby cakes, then I’m going to have to fire you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t work with stupid people, honey. I may be a lot of things, but weak and helpless aren’t anywhere on the list. Or haven’t you heard about my past?”

  Victor had heard rumors. And ignored them. “Office gossip doesn’t interest me. Your safety, however, does.”

  “You were raised with genteel manners, so I’ll forgive you the slipup, but you’ll be happier if you don’t question my capability again. Especially not where my men can hear you.”

  “Your men are inside your house. They can’t hear a thing.”

  “Franklin,” she called without raising her voice.

  A second later, a young man with wing-nut ears, a crooked nose and an eager-to-please vibe poked his head out of her front door. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Bella gave Victor a look that screamed I told you so. “How’s progress?”

  “The device is disarmed and removed. We’re packing it up now for analysis.”

  “And the rest of the house?” she asked.

  “Clean, ma’am. And I fixed your microwave.”

  Franklin went back inside. Bella grinned, obviously pleased with herself for showing up Victor. “Kid’s got good ears. Handy as hell with tech, too.”

  “So what now?” he asked.

  “I go back inside and go to bed. You do the same.”

  His eyebrows went up at the idea of going to bed with her. A thrill of excitement surged through him, settling in his cock, and it began to swell with eagerness.

  “Your own bed,” she hurried to say.

  “What about dinner? And our conversation?”

  “The conversation you can have, at least for as long as it takes the team to clear out. After that, you’ll have to make an appointment with Lila to meet with me sometime this week.”

  Victor had been with Bella every day for two weeks, searching for signs of Gage or the hidden lab of a crazy scientist who needed to be put down like the rabid animal she was. Sure, there had been other people on the team with them, making the task less intimate, but he’d still felt like they’d grown closer—close enough that he didn’t need an appointment to see her.

  Apparently he’d been wrong.

  Victor covered his irritation and disappointment. She was his boss. He had a job to do, both for her, and for General Norwood, to whom he owed his life half a dozen times over. Whatever it took to complete this assignment of taking down Dr. Norma Stynger, he’d do. Even if it meant controlling his inappropriate feelings for the woman of his dreams.

  “Payton asked me to speak to you,” he said. “You have to stop ignoring him.”

  “Like hell.” Bella held up her hand. There was a small cut along her palm. Victor wanted to pull her hand to his mouth and kiss away her hurt so badly he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching for her.

  “You have to deal with him. He’s part of this whole mess.”

  Fury burned in her gray eyes, turning them the color of cold steel and hot ash. “He caused this whole mess, sweetheart. He was there from the beginning, helping drag kids in for those experiments. He covered his tracks. Hid the truth. From all of us. Don’t sit there and tell me I have to deal with him. He’s lucky I don’t simply put a bullet in his skull for the betterment of mankind in general.”

  She lurched forward, toward the house with the bomb still inside. Victor grabbed her wrist and pulled hard enough to make her turn to face him. “He’s trying to make up for what he did.”

  Anger was a living, breathing thing inside her. He could see it coursing just under her skin, tinting it a dark, furious red. “There is no making up for mistakes that big. What he did was intentional. He hurt children. Took them from their families. He used them.”

  She was hurting, and the wild feelings of anger and ferocity that evoked in him were barely controlled by his sympathy for the woman who stood before him now. He kept his voice calm and quiet, stayed as far away from pity as he could. Bella wasn’t the kind of woman who would react well to pity, no matter how well placed it might be. The children of the Threshold Project had
been used as lab rats, subjected to experimental drugs and brainwashing protocols that were designed to alter them in fundamental ways. Permanently. Bella loved people who’d been part of that, and that made her as dangerous as those who had hurt those kids. “Who did you lose, Bella?”

  She swallowed hard. Cleared her throat. “No one important.”

  “That’s not the whole truth. Tell me.”

  “It’s all the truth you’re going to get. And don’t bother searching the file, either. I’ve made sure everything was removed from the data we recovered. My life is my business. Only mine. Keep your nose out, Vic.”

  “Victor,” he automatically corrected.

  “I mean it, Victor. You stay out of my business or you’re fired.”

  “You can’t fire me. Not if you want to keep your juicy government contract. You’re going to have to find a bigger stick if you want me to be a good dog.”

  “I may not be able to fire you, but I can make you beg to quit.”

  “If you think that, then you don’t know me at all. I don’t have an ounce of quit in me anywhere. Why do you think Norwood asked me to take this job? His daughter works for you, for heaven’s sake. The man isn’t going to put some wet-behind-the-ears kid on this assignment. He wants results.”

  She closed the distance between them, dropping the anger from her expression until all that remained was a relaxed, almost wanton look. Her lips were parted. Her pupils dilated. Her gaze fixed on his mouth.

  Victor didn’t know what the hell to think. If he wasn’t certain that she had no interest in him as a man, he would have been convinced she was about to kiss him. Instead, her voice dropped to a slow, sexy Texas drawl. “Honey, there are an awful lot of things a girl like me can do to a man like you that would make him beg for mercy. And only half of them would actually hurt. The rest would feel oh so very nice.”

  She was right. She had much more power here than he’d first suspected. She might not be able to make him quit, but she sure as hell could make this assignment one he would regret for a long, long time.