Razor's Edge (11 page)

“Which is why I want Jake's journal and letters locked up,” said Roxanne. “It may be the only proof we have that something bad is happening to him.”

Payton folded his hands, and an eerie kind of calm settled over him. “You both look tired. Why don't you get some sleep in one of the on-call rooms, and I'll lock up the journal and make a few calls.”

“To whom?” she asked.

“Sloane's father is a general in the army. I'll speak to him and see if he can track down your friend. We'll locate him and make sure there's nothing to worry about.”

Sloane was one of the best employees the Edge had. If her father was half as capable as she was, he was going to be a valuable asset. “And if there is?” Roxanne asked.

“No sense in borrowing trouble. Get some rest. I'm sure you're exhausted after what you've been through.”

“How can I rest when Jake might be in trouble?”

Payton stood, holding out his hand for the sack. “How can you help him if you can't even stand up straight? Besides, do you have any idea where to even look for him?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then sleep. I'll do some legwork, and we'll figure out where to go from here.” He gave an expectant nod toward the bag she held. “May I?”

What choice did she have? She didn't have the same connections Payton did. And if he could use them to find Jake, she had to trust him enough to let him try.

Roxanne handed him the sack, praying she wasn't making a huge mistake.

 

 

Tanner followed Roxanne to the on-call rooms and saw her safely inside one before heading to the vacant one across the hall. He turned and nearly ran smack into the uncomfortable meeting he'd been avoiding since interviewing for a position at the Edge.

Reid O'Connell, Tanner's brother, stood with his hands fisted on his hips, his feet braced apart as if expecting a fight.

Tanner wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

He nodded in greeting. “Morning.”

Reid shared the same blue eyes as all the O'Connell men. His head had been shaved a few days ago, showing the shadow of new growth. Only the long, thin scar bisecting his scalp over his left ear was left pale and glowing under the fluorescent lights—the scar Reid had earned protecting Tanner when they were kids.

The two years that separated their ages had given Tanner a serious case of hero worship for his older brother when he was a kid, but now the gap was much wider. Dad and Brody were dead, and a river of grief stood between Tanner and Reid. They were the only two men left in the family, and it had been a long time since they'd seen eye to eye.

“What are you doing here so early?” asked Reid.

“Doing my job, like Bella asked. Why are you here?”

“I have a ton of paperwork to do, but I'm leaving early for the picnic, so I'm making up the time now.”

“Picnic?”

Reid simply stared at him for a moment, as if he were slow. “Millie's first birthday. Don't tell me you—”

“I didn't forget,” lied Tanner.

“You're going to be there.”

While his older brother's order didn't sit well, Tanner ignored his irritation. Their youngest brother was dead. Their sister-in-law had her hands full with two small children—one with serious health problems. Millie was turning one year old today, and Tanner was going to be there.

“Of course.”

“You had forgotten,” accused Reid. “Shit, Tanner, it's not like we have all that many parties these days. If you don't show, Mom will—”

“I'm not going to make Mom cry again.” She'd done enough of that, both while he was away serving his country, and after the death of her husband and youngest son. “I said I'll be there. I don't need you—”

“Apparently you do. If I hadn't mentioned it, you would have forgotten. Just like—”

“That was different. I was in another time zone. I called her on her birthday, just not in this part of the world.”

“You always have an excuse. There damn well better not be any more today.”

“I said I'll be there.”

Reid stared at him for a minute before finally nodding, letting it go. “Bella said you're assigned to Razor for a few days.”

Tanner hesitated to confirm it, wondering how his brother could twist something so simple around and make him feel like more of an ass than he already did by forgetting Millie's party. “That's right.”

Reid looked up and down the hallway, making sure they were alone. He lowered his voice, but the warning ringing in his tone was clear nonetheless. “Razor's tough, but not as tough as she thinks. And she hates working with a partner.”

While he could see her resistance to teamwork, Tanner thought she'd done well when faced with danger last night. She hadn't lost her head or panicked. She'd used the weapon at her disposal and acted before it was too late. That soldier would have pulled the trigger. Had Roxanne hesitated, the O'Connell family would be mourning today instead of celebrating a birthday. “I think you might be underestimating her.”

“I'm not. And you'd better not overestimate her. She's been through hell.”

“You make it sound like the two of you are close.” And the thought made jealousy spread out through Tanner on rotten wings.

Reid shrugged. “Not really. But there are a lot of rumors floating around about her and what happened to her when she was a kid.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“I'm not going to spread gossip. If you want to know, ask her. But I can tell you that she's not tough like some of the other women Bella employs. That's why you got guard dog duty. Even Bella knows she needs a keeper.”

A slow, simmering anger began to build behind Tanner's eyes. “I'm not sure if that's more judgmental or condescending. You've taken a turn toward prick since I left.”

“I'm a hell of a lot more realistic than I used to be. If that hurts your feelings, so be it, but you need to know what you're dealing with. I put my neck on the line to get you this job. If you fuck it up, we could both be out—”

“I'm not going to fuck up anything. I may have been a dumb, scrawny kid when I went into the military, but I'm no longer the baby brother you remember. I don't need you to hold my hand anymore, so stop pretending the world will cease to exist without you.”

Reid's jaw clenched in anger. “While you were away doing whatever the hell you felt like, I was the one taking care of the family and—”

“Doing whatever the hell I felt like? Is that what you think I was doing overseas? Lounging on a beach, drinking—”

“Might as well have been for all the good it did the family. You were on leave for only three days after the accident. I was with Mom and Karen every day. I held them while they cried. I was there when Millie was born, because Brody couldn't be. I'm the one keeping this family together, and now that you're home, it's my job to take care of you, too. If you won't take my advice, fine, but don't blame me when Razor is true to form and takes off without you.”

Reid was right about having to do the heavy lifting after their dad and Brody died. Tanner had only managed to get a few days of leave. He'd had no choice but to return to the battlefield and abandon his family to deal with the loss on their own. But at least they'd had one another. All he'd had was the crushing loss of his brother and father with no one around who knew what he felt. He'd kept it hidden, secret. He'd stayed tough and shoved the grief away so he could do his job. Some days that had been all that had kept him sane. “If she does ditch me, I'll find her.” Again.

“Before or after she gets herself—”

“I'm on it,” said Tanner. “I don't need your help.”

Reid shook his head. “I guess we'll see.”

They would. Tanner would make sure he did whatever it took to handle things on his own, because, despite Tanner's never having really lived up to his dad's expectations the way Reid had and despite the chasm between them having widened over the years, Tanner still loved his brother.

Reid was carrying too much weight. Not only was Tanner determined not to add to it by fucking up; he was going to find a way to lighten his brother's load. After months of shouldering the burden alone, it was time for Reid to accept some help—whether or not he wanted it.

 

 

Payton took no chances. He locked himself in the vault and read the young man's journal from beginning to end. What he saw had to be a mistake.

Jake Staite mentioned Dr. Stynger—who was dead. Payton had killed her himself, trapping her inside that burning lab so she'd go up in flames with Dr. Leeson and all of his research.

She couldn't be alive. It had to be a coincidence—someone else with the same name.

Even as the thought entered his mind, he dismissed it. The things the young soldier described in his journal were too familiar—just like the photos of that lab Bella had destroyed in Mexico.

Payton's worst fears were being confirmed. The Threshold Project wasn't dead and buried as he and the others had wanted to believe.

He left the journal behind in the vault, then went to his office and locked the door. The security of his phone line at work was good but not as good as what he had in his basement at home. Sadly, it would have to do. He couldn't waste any time driving home.

General Robert Norwood was an early riser, and he answered his personal line on the first ring.

“We have a problem,” said Payton.

“Is it Sloane?”

“No. She's fine. This has nothing to do with your daughter.”

Bob let out an audible sigh of relief. “Then talk fast. I have a meeting.”

“I need you to find a soldier for me. Captain Jake Slaite from Dallas, Texas.”

“Why?”

“Can you please just do it? The whys aren't yet clear, but I'm hoping you can help with that.”

“How soon do you need to know?”

“Yesterday.”

“Hang on,” said Bob. “I'll see what I can do.”

Payton waited on hold for five minutes, twisting in impatience, before the general came back on the line. “He left the service in January. It was voluntary. Honorable discharge.”

That made no sense. The dates in his journal were more recent than that.

“I have to say I'm surprised, though,” said Bob. “He had a hell of a record. Wish I'd had a chance to talk him out of resigning.”

“Are you sure he left? Do you have any kind of forwarding address?”

“What's this all about, Payton? Why the interest?”

“Are you alone?”

The general paused. “Yes.”

“I have his journal. He wrote about being recruited into a secret special forces group he never named.”

“He's a prime candidate for Delta Force, but he hadn't been invited yet. As far as his record is concerned, this man is now a civilian.”

“He doesn't think he is. He mentioned four other men who were recruited with him, but he doesn't mention any names.”

“I can check for men who left around the same time he did, but it will take some time.”

“There's something else you should know,” said Payton. “He described the place where he's being trained. It sounds a lot like the facilities we used to use. What if there's a connection?”

Bob stayed silent for a long time. “That's a pretty big leap.”

“He talked about being given daily injections, that they were told they were vitamins, but the men were having negative side effects—aggression, depression, weight loss.”

“That could be a coincidence.”

“He mentioned a woman named Dr. Stynger.”

“She's dead.”

“Is she?”

“You told me you took care of it.”

“I did. Or at least I thought I did. I never went back for the body.”

“Sloppy.”

“Hardly. If I'd gone back, we all would have been caught. I saved your ass that night, as well as the senator's.”

“There has to be some kind of mistake,” said Bob.

Payton didn't know how much more proof the man needed to see the truth. He tried to keep his voice free of irritation, but it came out clipped, anyway. “Adam Brink shows up out of nowhere, looking for people on the List. And then Bella takes those photos of that Mexican facility that looks all too familiar. Then Staite walks away from a military career and gets pumped full of drugs by a woman named Dr. Stynger? We can't chalk those things up as coincidence. We have to face this.”

“Maybe Staite was on the List. He could be having flashbacks from his childhood. Delusions. He could have gone off somewhere on his own and is writing down his memories in that journal.”

“That doesn't make sense, considering the police arrested another man here last night who has to be connected to Staite.”

Bob snorted. “How the hell do you tie them together?”

“The man arrested last night was looking for Jake's journal, which happened to be in the possession of one of our employees. She's friends with Jake, and she's not going to let this drop. She wants to look for him.”

“Was she one of ours?”

Payton knew what he was asking—if Razor had been one of the children in the Threshold Project experiments. “No. Her parents and I were friends. I never would have let that happen to her after seeing what it did to Bella.”

“I want to see this journal.”

“You'll have to come here. Bella's out of the country and I can't leave, especially not now.”