Edge of the Heat 3 Read online

  Edge of the Heat 3

  Edge of the Heat, Volume 3

  Lisa Ladew

  Published by Lisa Ladew, 2014.

  Edge of the Heat 3

  By Lisa Ladew

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Lisa Ladew

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Get The Newest Books

  Could You Help Me Out?

  Stay Connected

  About the Author

  Dedication/Acknowledgements

  Also By Lisa Ladew

  Chapter 1

  Vivian ran as fast as she could, legs pumping, closing the distance between herself and the road in record time. In all her years of high school track, she’d never run this fast. But she’d never been chased by a madman before. Never been responsible for whether her sister lived or died before. She listened for the gunshots behind her. Knowing if they came, she would again be sisterless. She pushed herself harder, the dust from the cracked ground tearing at her throat. It didn’t matter. Nothing would matter if her sister died because Vivian was too slow. Norman was crazy. He’d kidnapped them both, drugged them, and hidden them under a bed in his RV, planning to somehow get them across the Mexican border and then who knows what he had planned. That made him the worst kind of crazy in Vivian’s mind.

  The road! She’d made it. She almost overshot right into traffic, but managed to stop and start waving her arms at the nearest car. It didn’t stop. She kept waving and ran in the road. Cars swerved around her. She got so close to one car that its side mirror hit her left forearm. The pain shook her.

  Vivian dragged her eyes open, forcing herself to wake up before the gunshots came. Again she’d had the nightmare. That made 4 times so far this week. She rubbed her eyes. Sunlight streamed in the window. At least she’d made it to morning this time. Maybe she should go to Emma’s doctor. She hadn’t told anyone about the dreams yet, hoping they’d go away, or at least lessen. Norman kidnapping her and her sister had been the most traumatic experience of her life. Of course it was going to bother her. But it had been almost a month and the dreams were coming more frequently. Almost every night now.

  Her left arm throbbed. She looked at it. A large bruise was forming on the forearm right where the car had hit her in the dream. She must have hit it on the side table. Briefly, she thought about moving the table away from the bed, but then thought better of it. She knew she flailed about during the dreams. What if instead of hitting her arm she threw herself right off the bed? Maybe she should try to sleep more in the middle of the bed, and pile up some pillows around her.

  Unbidden, the events after she had reached the road in real life came to her mind. She couldn’t seem to let them go.

  In reality, the first car she had waved at had stopped. The woman inside let her use a cell phone. She called 911, not knowing what police station her call would go to.

  She’d been winded from the run, and it took her a few minutes to get the story out to the dispatcher. The dispatcher put an officer on the line almost immediately and he said he was in touch with Agents Masterson and Kinkaid who were in a helicopter a few minutes out from her location. Vivian wept with relief, almost collapsing on the side of the road. But she hadn’t seen or heard a helicopter yet. She looked back over the field and what she saw chilled her. Emma and Norman were fighting. They were close together, but far enough away from her that she couldn’t tell who was who or what was happening. She took a few steps in their direction, thinking she had to go back and try to help Emma. But she couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t take her. They were rubbery, jelly-like. She felt like a newborn fawn trying to stand for the first time. She sat down in the dust, fear for her sister eating her alive, and prayed. Prayed that Craig and Hawk would get there in time.

  The whup-whup-whup noise of a helicopter made it to her ears. Please let them make it in time. She saw it, flying closer to the ground than she’d ever seen one before, coming in over the overpass to her left.

  And then she heard a gunshot. Then two more. Purest terror shot through her. “NOOOOOOO!” she screamed. In that instant, she knew her sister was dead. Knew she never should have left her sister to die in the desert with a madman. Knew it was all her fault for running. For giving Emma the Narcan that had woken her up under that bed, for picking the lock on their handcuffs and getting them out of there in the first place. If she hadn’t done that, Emma would still be alive. They’d still be in danger, yes, but still alive. There would still be a chance.

  Vivian pushed herself to her useless legs and tried to run to Emma, tears streaming down her face. Her legs wouldn’t go. So she crawled, the hot desert ground burning her hands. She crawled half the distance back to Emma and Norman, sweat and tears and dust doubling and tripling her vision, her own pulse beating in her ears loud enough to drown out any sound.

  A shadow fell on her. She stopped and looked up. She couldn’t tell who it was, just that it was a man. If it was Norman, so be it. She would accept her fate. But not before she spit in his face.

  A silky, masculine voice reached her ears. “Vivian, are you hurt?” Hawk’s voice, soothing her as he knelt beside her.

  “Emma, where is Emma? Is she shot?” she wailed, not knowing if she was hurt or not.

  Hawk had leaned down and taken her in his arms, picking her up effortlessly.

  “No, Norman is shot. Emma shot Norman.”

  Emma shot Norman? Emma was OK? Vivian’s brain couldn’t quite grasp this. She’d been so sure that her sister was dead.

  Hawk carried Vivian the rest of the 1/2 mile or so to get back to the helicopter. Vivian had taken comfort in his hard-muscled chest under her head. His warm male scent of clean sweat and musky cologne had filled her nose. Hawk wouldn’t lie to her. She knew it. Emma must really be OK.

  Vivian saw Norman on the ground, the desert dust mixing with his blood, turning it orange. Police officers swarmed around him.

  Hawk carried her to the helicopter where he lifted her in gently. Emma was sitting there, Craig pressing something against her side. Emma looked at her and burst into tears, pushing herself over to reach Vivian. They had hugged and cried for what seemed like hours.

  An ambulance took them both to the local hospital. Emma was x-rayed and treated for badly bruised ribs, and Vivian was treated for 2nd degree burns to her hands from crawling across the hot desert. She never even noticed the pain until Hawk had pointed out the blisters on her hands.

  Vivian shook away the mental image of that horrible day and looked down at her hands. It had been almost a month since that day and her hands were almost fully healed. She no longer had to bandage them at all. She remembered Hawk grasping he
r hands gently and holding a cold compress to them in the back of the ambulance.

  Ugh, Hawk. He’d been so sweet after the incident, taking care of her, talking softly to her, basically being a nice guy. Then she’d gone home for a few days to get her house in order there and when she’d returned, he was back to his old ways of grunting and disappearing when she was around. He hadn’t been downright mean in the last month, whenever they’d seen each other, so that was an improvement, but the sweet, kind, caring Hawk she’d seen in the desert was gone.

  Every time she thought of him her heart hurt. She knew she was falling for him. Vivian laughed a disgusted laugh to herself and rolled over in bed, burying her face in her pillow. Scratch that. She’d already fallen for him, head over heels, hook line and sinker - pick your cliche, she was living it. He was just so … manly. When he walked by, all the women turned their heads to look at him. She’d seen it. He was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, and don’t forget broad through the shoulders and chest with a slim waist that tapered perfectly above an amazing butt. All she wanted to do was put her hands all over him every time she saw him. Or heard him. His voice was low and gruff usually when she was around. It sent shivers down her spine every time.

  Vivian got up and padded to the bathroom, silently berating herself for her superficial lust after Hawk Kinkaid. She barely knew the man. She didn’t know if he was smart or stupid, funny or dull, generous or stingy. Well, she did know he was brave. And she knew he was good at his job. And she knew he was the best friend of her sister’s boyfriend.

  Oh, and she knew that Hawk didn’t like her. That much was obvious. Not only did he obviously not like her in that way, but he also seemed to think she was some kind of a jerk or something. She didn’t know why. She’d never done anything to him. In fact, he’d seemed to dislike her the first time he set eyes on her. She hadn’t even had a chance to irritate him. Unless it was her looks that had done it.

  Vivian sighed and turned on the shower. These circular thoughts about Hawk that never led her anywhere but frustrated were as common as her nightmare.

  Yep, definitely time to see a shrink.

  ***

  After her shower, Vivian ate breakfast and then worked on unpacking boxes until it was time to go meet Emma at the restaurant. She hadn’t wanted to put everything away until all her new furniture was delivered, and the last piece had come in yesterday. She looked around at her new place, a feeling of satisfaction making her happy. She was so glad she had found her sister and decided to move here to live closer to her. Her adoptive parents were excited too and were planning a trip out to meet Emma. She’d put in for a transfer at her job but they didn’t have anything in the area at the time so she decided to just take an extended vacation. She’d been thinking about a vacation anyway, since she’d found out that the tumor in her abdomen could be stress-related.

  At 11:30 she called Emma to make sure she could still meet and then drove to Duci’s Restaurant. Emma and Jerry were already at a table when she got there, both in uniform, taking a lunch break from working on the ambulance.

  She waved when she spotted them and ran up, giving Emma a big hug. She still couldn’t believe she had a twin sister. She stared into Emma’s sapphire eyes, identical in color to her own, and smiled. That was where the resemblance ended though. Where Emma was fair and strawberry-blond, Vivian had more olive skin tones and dark brown hair. They were fraternal twins.

  “Hi Viv, thanks for meeting us,” Emma said.

  “Of course! Hi Jerry.”

  Jerry stood and smiled. Vivian gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He was such a sweet guy. She didn’t mind at all that he had broken off their short dating stint because her money and her intellectual nature had put him off a bit. It had happened before and it would happen again. She preferred buff, hard-working men and most of them liked to date her at first but for some reason always ended up feeling like she was “out of their league” or something. She had tried to figure if it was something she was doing but so far had come up short. Maybe she’d ask Jerry some day.

  Briefly, she wondered if that was why Hawk didn’t like her too. Did she put on airs or come across as arrogant and not know it? Maybe she’d ask Emma too. She sat down and picked up her menu.

  “You have to try the shrimp scampi here,” Jerry told her. “It’s delicious.”

  “Sounds great,” she said, and put down her menu, ready to order.

  After the waiter took their orders and served drinks they fell into a light, easy conversation.

  A thought struck Vivian. “Hey Emma, whatever happened with you asking Craig and Hawk to help us find our mom?”

  Emma’s face lightened. “Oh my gosh, I haven’t thought of that since Craig was in the hospital! I haven’t asked!”

  “Well, maybe he won’t even need to. I should have the results back from my DNA search by Friday. That may give us some names.”

  “How does that work?” Jerry asked.

  “Well, I ordered a kit on the Internet. I took a scraping from inside my cheek and mailed it back to them. They are going to isolate my DNA and compare it with their database. If anyone in our family is in the database for whatever reason, I will get back their names.”

  “Wouldn’t that be awesome if we found our family through the database? I should have done that a long time ago,” Emma said.

  Vivian nodded. “Yeah, I never would have thought of it if it weren’t for my tumor. When my doctor asked me about my family history and I said I didn’t have a clue, that was the first thing he suggested. It’s just taken me a while to get to it, with everything else that was going on.”

  The waiter brought their food and conversation stopped while everyone started eating.

  Jerry looked at his watch. “Emma, we have 20 minutes.”

  “Ok.” She dug into her chicken cacciatore and started telling Vivian about the party she and Craig were hosting on Saturday to say goodbye to most of the FBI agents that had been undercover with Craig.

  “So does everyone have to go but Craig and Hawk?” Vivian asked.

  “Yep, they are all being reassigned. Everyone’s cover was blown when they tried to arrest Norman, so now they are all on to new assignments. They just don’t need that many investigators in the new phase of the investigation.” Emma answered.

  “So this Senator guy, can they arrest him yet?” Vivian lowered her voice, not wanting to be overheard.

  “No, apparently they haven’t found any real evidence linking Norman’s actions to the Senator yet. Hawk is heading out to the prison hospital tomorrow to see if Norman will talk yet. So far he hasn’t said a word.”

  Vivian’s heart beat faster at the mention of Hawk.

  “So Norman can talk?”

  “Yeah, apparently. He’s paralyzed from T8 down so he can’t move his legs or do much with his arms, but his face and neck are OK. My first bullet hit him in the left arm, and the other two went into his chest, one of them grazing the 8th thoracic vertebrae, twisting it and putting pressure on the spinal cord there.”

  Jerry leaned over and placed a hand on Vivian’s back, right at the top of the bony part of her shoulder blade. “This is where T8 is,” he told her.

  Vivian nodded. “Ah.”

  Vivian watched Emma’s face when she finished talking about shooting Norman. It remained calm. The incident didn’t seem to bother her as much anymore. Vivian wondered if she was still having the nightmares. She’d ask later.

  For now, she smiled. She’d been worried about the consequences of Emma having to shoot Norman. Would it scar her? Mar her sunny and sweet outlook? So far things seemed back to normal. Sometimes though, Vivian wished Norman was dead, instead of paralyzed in a prison hospital. It seemed to her that it would be easier not to be afraid of someone if they were dead and gone.

  Chapter 2

  The inside of Norman’s lip bled freely. The slightly metallic taste soothed him. He felt around with his tongue for a new, smooth spot to bite and, finding o
ne, chewed it to pieces. He tried to breathe deeply. Goddamn nurses and doctors didn’t give a shit if he was paralyzed forever, or even if he lived or died, Norman thought, imagining he could feel steam coming out of his own ears. He’d been a Captain in the Westwood Harbor Police Department for fuck’s sake! And now they treated him like he was lower than an ant, lower than dirt, worth nothing.

  Norman could still smell, and that’s how he knew he’d soiled himself. The heavy aroma of his own stink surrounded him. He didn’t recognize it as his own smell. It wasn’t the smell of a strong, healthy man whose digestion worked fine. It was the smell of an invalid. A putrefying, decayed smell.

  “GODDAMN IT GET DOWN HERE AND CLEAN ME UP!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. It hurt to do so. But someone needed to know he was still alive in here.

  He held his breath and listened. No one was coming. Goddamn fucking shit piss fuck fucking CUNT! he screamed, only in his mind. Emma had done this to him. Emma had shot him. Emma had put him in this hellhole. This was all Emma’s fault. If she ever came to see him … his mind went off on a daydream. One he’d had many times before. He’d whisper to her, whisper quietly so she had to come close, close enough for him to use his teeth. He’d bite something off and swallow it quicker then she knew what was happening. Maybe her nose. Or a piece of her cheek. Or her lower lip. And then he’d laugh and laugh.

  Norman stared at the gray wall opposite him and felt his mind cracking under the strain. His arms and legs were paralyzed. They never sat him up. He didn’t have a TV or books or even music. He’d done nothing but lay on this bed for 24 hours a day for 28 days now. He’d memorized the crack pattern in the concrete wall. He’d analyzed every thought in his head. He’d tried to recall books and movies and stories - anything to pass the time. They only turned him once a day. His neck muscles were incredibly sore from being in the same position for 24 hours, but nobody cared. His body was wasting away to nothing. He wouldn’t eat so they fed him through a tube and an IV. They didn’t even have to sit him up for that.