The Edge Read online

  She stood there just shaking her head back and forth, her hands on her hips, very nice hips I’d noticed nine days ago when I finally wasn’t so dulled from painkillers. I sighed. “All right, if it’s really against your ethics, or Doug’s ethics. But I’ll tell you, Midge, I just don’t see why it’s such a big deal. And why your husband would care is beyond me. He’d probably be begging just like I am if he was in my shoes. Hey, maybe you could call Mrs. Luther. She’s tough, but maybe she’ll give in. I think she likes me, just maybe—”

  “Mac, are you nuts? Mrs. Luther is sixty-five years old. For God’s sake, you can’t be all that desperate. Ellen Luther? She’d probably bite you.”

  “Why would she do that? What are you talking about?”

  “Mac,” she said with great patience, “you’re horny after two weeks of celibacy. I can understand that. But Mrs. Luther?”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong idea here, Midge. I don’t want Mrs. Luther. I want you in that way, but you’re married, so I only think about that in passing, like any other guy would, you know, maybe once every five minutes or so during the day, maybe more the better I feel. No, what I’m dying for, what I want more than anything in the world, is a beer.”

  “A beer?” She stared at me for the longest time, then she started laughing. That laughter of hers grew until she had to come into the room and close the door so she wouldn’t disturb other patients. She was doubled over with laughter, holding her sides. “You want a beer? That’s what all this is about? A damned beer? And you’ll go real slow?”

  I gave her my innocent look.

  She paused a moment in the open doorway, shaking her head and still laughing. Said over her shoulder, “You want a Bud Light?”

  “I’d kill for a Bud Light.”

  The Bud can was so cold I thought my fingers would stick to it. There couldn’t be anything better than this, I thought, as the beer slid down my throat. I wondered which nurse was hoarding the Bud in the nurses’ refrigerator. I drank half the can in one long slug. Midge was standing beside the bed, just looking down at me. “I hope mixing the beer with your meds doesn’t make you puke. Hey, slow down. You promised you’d make it last. Men, you really can’t believe them, not when it comes to beer.”

  “It’s been a long time,” I said, licking beer foam off my mouth. “I just couldn’t help myself. The edge is off now.” I heaved a thankful sigh and took a smaller drink, realizing that she wasn’t likely to get me another beer. At least the terror of that nightmare was deep below the surface again, not sitting right there on my shoulder, waiting to whisper in my ear again. I had about a quarter of a can left. I rested it on my stomach.

  Midge had moved next to me and now she was taking my pulse.

  “My neighbor, Mr. Kowalski, waters my plants when I’m out of town or in the hospital, like now. He also keeps things dusted. He’s a retired plumber, older than the paint on my great-aunt Silvia’s house, and real sharp. James Quinlan—he’s an FBI agent—he sings to his African violets. Healthiest critters you’ve ever seen. His wife wonders when she’ll wake up some morning to find some plants cozying up to her in bed. Oh shit, Midge, I want to go home.”

  She lightly cupped my face against her palm. “I know, Mac. Soon now. Your pulse is just fine. Now, let me take your blood pressure.” She didn’t tell me what it was, but she hummed under her breath, something from Verdi, I think, and that meant it was good. “You need to go back to sleep, Mac. Is your stomach happy with the beer? No nausea?”

  I took the last pull of beer, kept the burp in my throat, and gave her a big smile. “I’m fine. I owe you, Midge, big time.”

  “I’ll collect sometime, don’t you worry. Your plants sound great. Hey, how about I get Mrs. Luther for you?”

  I whimpered, and she left me alone, grinning and waving at me from the doorway. In the next instant, Jilly’s face slammed back into my mind.

  “You’ve got to face it, Mac,” I said very quietly to myself in the still night, looking toward the window that gave onto the nearly empty parking lot. “All right. Let’s just say it out loud. Was that a dream or some kind of prophecy? Is Jilly in some sort of trouble?”

  No, that was bullshit. I knew bullshit.

  I didn’t go back to sleep. Truth was I was too scared. I wished I had another beer. Midge dropped by at four A.M., frowned at me, and shoved a sleeping pill down my throat.

  At least I didn’t dream for the three hours they gave me before the guy with the blood cart came by, shook my bruised shoulder to wake me up, and shoved a needle in my vein. He never paused in his talk—I think it was about the Redskins—slapped down a Band-Aid hard over the hole in my arm, and whistled as he pushed his torture cart out of my room. His name was Ted and he was, I thought, what the shrinks call a situational sadist.

  At ten o’clock that morning, I simply couldn’t wait any longer. I had to know. I dialed Jilly’s number in Edgerton, Oregon. Her husband, Paul, answered the phone on the second ring.

  “Jilly,” I said, and knew my voice wasn’t steady. “Paul, how’s Jilly?”

  Silence.

  “Paul?”

  I heard a shuddering breath, then, “She’s in a coma, Mac.”

  I felt an odd settling deep inside me, the slow unwrapping of the package whose contents I already knew. I hadn’t wanted this, but it hadn’t really surprised me at all. I prayed as I asked, “Will she live?”

  I could hear Paul fiddling with the phone cord, probably twisting it over and over his hand. Finally he said in a dead voice, “Nobody wants to even take a guess, Mac. The doctors did a CAT scan and an MRI. They say there’s hardly any damage to her brain, just some tiny hemorrhages and some swelling, but nothing to account for the coma. They just don’t know. They hope she’ll come out of it really soon. Bottom line, we have to wait and see. First you getting blown up in some godforsaken place, and now Jilly in this ridiculous accident.”

  “What happened?” But I knew, yeah, I knew.

  “Her car went over a cliff on the coast road last night, just after midnight. She was driving the new Porsche that I gave her for Christmas. She’d be dead if a highway patrolman hadn’t been passing by. He saw the whole thing, said she just seemed to let the car drift, then speeded up through the railing. He said the Porsche made a perfect nosedive into the water. The water isn’t more than fifteen to twenty feet where she went over. The Porsche headlights were still on, thank God, and the driver’s side window was open. He got her out on his first try, a pure miracle, he said. No one can believe he managed it, that she’s still alive. I’ll call you as soon as something changes—either way. I’m sorry, Mac, real sorry. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes, much better,” I said. “Thank you, Paul. I’ll be in touch.” I laid the receiver gently back into its cradle. Paul had evidently been too upset even to wonder why I’d called him specifically about Jilly, at seven o’clock in the morning, West Coast time, the very morning after the accident. I wondered when Paul would think of it, wondered when he’d call me, asking about it.

  At that moment, I didn’t have a clue what I’d tell him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mac, for God’s sake, what are you doing out of bed? No way the doctors said you could leave. Just look at you. You don’t look so hot. Your face is as gray as dingy old curtains.”

  Lacy Savich, known to everyone in the Bureau as “Sherlock,” began shoving my chest lightly, pushing me back toward the bed. I’d managed to get my legs into a pair of jeans and had been in the middle of fighting with a long-sleeved shirt when she came in.

  “Back into bed, Mac. You’re not going anywhere. How’d you get those jeans on?” Sherlock tucked herself under my armpit, trying to turn me around, trying to force me down on that damned bed.

  I stopped and she couldn’t move me. “Listen, I’m all right, Sherlock. Let me go. I don’t want you under my bare arm. I haven’t had a shower yet.”

  “You’re not that ripe. I’m not moving until you at least sit dow
n and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Okay, I’ll sit,” I said, and truth be told, it was a good thing I planned to sit quickly, though not on that bed. “Oh, all right. If you insist, Sherlock.” I smiled down at her. She was a small woman with a head of thick, curly red hair, confined this morning at the back of her neck with a gold clip. She had the whitest skin and the prettiest smile that was warm and sweet unless she was pissed, when she could chew metal if it came right down to it. We’d come into the Bureau at the same time, all of two years ago now.

  She managed a surprising amount of my weight, walking lock-step, veering sideways so she could push me down onto a hospital chair. Once I was seated I grinned up at her, remembering the two of us going up the ropes in our final physical exam at the Academy. I hadn’t known if she’d be able to do it or not, and I hadn’t been about to leave her. I’d hung beside her, encouraging her, calling her names, insulting her at a fine clip until she finally made it all the way up the rope with those skinny arms of hers. Sherlock didn’t have a lot of upper-body strength, but she had something a whole lot better—guts and heart. She was more fond of me than I probably deserved.

  “You’re going to talk to me. The doctors are shaking their heads. They’ve already called your boss and I’ll betcha they’ll be here ready to roll you into the floor if you take so much as one step toward that door. Here’s reinforcements. Dillon, come here and help me figure out what’s eating Mac. Look, he’s even got his pants on.”

  Dillon Savich raised a dark brow at that, his expression saying quite clearly to me, The shit better have his pants on.

  I settled back in the chair. What difference did five minutes make? I’d still be out of here soon enough. Besides, it was best that some of my friends knew what was going on.

  “Look, guys, I’ve got to go home and pack. I’ve got to fly out to Oregon. My sister was in an accident last night. She’s in a coma. I can’t stay here.”

  Sherlock knelt beside the chair and took one of my big hands between hers. “Jilly? She’s in a coma? What happened?”

  I closed my eyes against immediate memories of that demented dream, or whatever it had been. “I called Oregon early this morning,” I said. “Her husband Paul told me.”

  Sherlock cocked her head to one side and studied me for a moment. Then she asked, “Why’d you call her?”

  Sherlock not only had heart and guts, she had this brain that could accelerate electrons.

  Savich was still standing by the open doorway, looking fit and big and tough. His eyes were on his wife, Sherlock, who was just looking up at me, waiting for me to strip open my guts for her, which I was about to do. No contest.

  “Just sit back and close your eyes, Mac, that’s right. I won’t let anyone bother you. I wish I had some of Dillon’s private reserve whiskey from Kentucky. It would mellow you out quicker than Sean can get Dillon up with his best yell.”

  “That didn’t make a whole lot of sense, Sherlock, but let me tell you that Midge brought me a beer last night,” I said. “I didn’t puke. It tasted really good.” An understatement. I couldn’t imagine sex being better than that one Bud Light.

  “I’m so happy for you,” Sherlock said, and patted my cheek. And waited. I watched her look over at her husband, standing there just inside the hospital room, all calm and relaxed, his arms crossed over his chest. It was a pity that there weren’t more like him at the Bureau, instead of the clone bureaucrats who were too afraid to do anything that hadn’t been sanctioned for at least a decade. I hated it when I saw it, prayed I wouldn’t turn out to be like that in the years to come. Maybe I had a chance not to be, in the Counter-Terrorism section. The bureaucrats did their thing in Washington, but in the field the rules fell away. You were on your own, or at least you were if you were on the ground with a terrorist group in Tunisia.

  “A dream,” I said finally. “It started with a dream last night. I dreamed about drowning, or about someone drowning. I think it was Jilly.” I told them everything I could remember, which was nearly all of it. I shrugged and said, “That’s why I called so early this morning. I found out the dream, or whatever it was, had happened. She’s in a coma.” What is that going to mean? I wondered yet again. Will she live but be a vegetable? Will we have to decide whether or not to unplug her?

  “I’m scared,” I said, looking at Sherlock. “More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Facing those terrorists with only a .450 Magnum Express wasn’t even in the same ballpark. Getting blown into the air in that car explosion didn’t come close to this, trust me.”

  “You wasted two of them, Mac,” Savich said, “including the leader, and you would have been blown into a thousand pieces if it hadn’t been for a bit of luck—the angle of the blast was sharper than they intended—and a well-placed sand dune.”

  I paused a moment, then nodded. “That I understand, but I don’t understand this dream; it’s just plain scary. I felt her hit the water. I felt pain, then nothing, like I was dead.

  “I was with her, or I was her, or something. It’s crazy, but I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I’ve got to go to Oregon. Not next week or even in two days. I’ve got to go today.”

  Because Sherlock was right here with me, because I was so scared I wanted to howl and cry at the same time, I leaned over and pulled Sherlock up against my good side. One skinny little arm came around my neck. I felt tears clog my throat, but I wasn’t about to let them out. I’d never live that one down, even if neither of them told a single soul. No, I just held her close, felt that soft hair of hers tease my nose. I looked over at Savich. The two of them had been married a year and a half. I’d been Sherlock’s Man of Honor at their wedding. Savich was well known and well liked in the Bureau. Both Savich and Sherlock were in the CAU, the Criminal Apprehension Unit, headed by Savich, who’d created the unit some three years before. I managed to get myself together and said, “You’ve got a good one here, Savich.”

  “Yeah, on top of everything else, she gave me the neatest little kid in all of Washington. You haven’t seen Sean since he was a month old, Mac. It’s time you did. He’s pushing five months.”

  “I’ll get over as soon as I can.”

  “See that you do. Hey, Sherlock, you okay? Don’t worry about Mac. He’ll go to Oregon and see what the hell’s going on. We’ll be here if he needs backup, not more than a five-hour plane ride away.

  “Mac, are you sure you’re ready to climb back onto your horse? You still look a bit on the weedy side. How about coming to stay with us for a couple of days before you take off? We’ll put you next to the baby’s room. Too bad you can’t breast-feed. That would make up for us having to take care of you.”

  As it turned out, I ended up staying at the hospital for another day and a half until, frankly, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I spoke to Paul twice a day. There was no change in Jilly’s condition. The doctors were still saying there was nothing they could do but just wait and see. Kevin and his boys were in Germany, and my sister Gwen, a buyer for Macy’s, was in New York. I told them I’d keep them posted as often as I could.

  I flew west that Friday, on an early morning flight from Washington Dulles. I rented a light blue Ford Taurus at the Portland International Airport without much hassle, which was always a pleasant surprise in my experience.

  It was a beautiful day, not a hint of humidity, no rain clouds, a mild seventy degrees with a light breeze. I’d always liked the West Coast, especially Oregon with its raw, wild mountains and deep-cut gorges with rapids roaring through them. And the ocean, sweeping against the coast for some three hundred miles, all of it savage and magnificent.

  I took my time, knowing my physical limits, not wanting to feel like I was going to fall down in a dead heap. I stopped at a Wendy’s in Tufton, a little town near the coast. I saw the sign to Edgerton off Highway 101 an hour and a half later. There was only a spur west, 101W, a narrow paved road that ran four miles to the ocean. Unlike the scores of towns that were bisected by the coast highway,
Edgerton was luckily situated west when they’d decided to take the highway more inland to the east. There were a few signs advertising three bed and breakfasts. The BUTTERCUP B&B sign was the biggest, shaped like a psychedelic flower and painted purple and yellow, announcing that it was right on the edge of the cliff, and showed a gothic structure that looked bleak and menacing on the billboard. If I remembered correctly, Paul had told me once that the folk here in Edgerton called it the Psycho B&B. There was another sign for a small diner called The Edwardian, claiming to have the best British cuisine, something I thought must be an oxymoron, based on my culinary experience during my year at the London School of Economics.

  I remembered there had once been a small hotel on the narrow strip of beach at Edgerton, but it had been washed away during a winter storm in 1974. I tried to imagine such a thing and couldn’t. I remembered the movie where a tsunami at least a million feet high had taken out Manhattan, and grinned. I remembered wondering if the Indians would be interested in buying back the island after that. I stuck my head out the window and smelled the ocean, tart and clean and salty. I loved the smell, felt something expand inside me anytime I was close to the sea. I sucked in that wonderful sticky, salty air. That really deep breath hurt me just a bit, nothing close to what it would have done if I’d tried it a week ago.

  I slowed the Ford down to navigate a deep pothole. My brother-in-law, Paul Bartlett, Jilly’s husband, was a man I didn’t know all that well even though he and Jilly had been married for eight years now. They’d wed right after she’d gotten her master’s degree in pharmacology. Paul had finished his Ph.D. the year before. He’d grown up in Edgerton, gone back east to Harvard. He’d always seemed to me a bit standoffish, a bit of a cold fish, but who really knew what another person was like? I remembered Jilly telling me how great sex with him was. No cold fish I knew of was into that.