Read Online At the Edge of the Sun by Anne Stuart - Free Book Online Page B

happened to them?”
    “Maybe they got caught.”
    “Reassuring, aren’t you?” she drawled.
    “I’m not here for your reassurance. If you want someone to hold your hand you’ll have to look elsewhere.” He stalked back across the room and threw himself down on the sofa again. His strong body knocked the table, the cards slid to the floor, and his own glass of whiskey took a dive toward his lap. He caught it deftly enough, cursing, and glared at Holly. Number twenty-two, she thought. They were coming more frequently now. At this rate, even if Randall and Maggie made it back safely they might return to discover their accomplices’ bodies, locked in a death struggle.
    “What are you grinning at?” he demanded.
    Holly let her aquamarine eyes sweep over him with insolent cheer. “Just trying to figure out the best way to murder you,” she said sweetly.
    He didn’t even blink. “Plenty have tried.”
    She believed him and suddenly her amusement fled. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
    He didn’t bother to look at her, or doubtless it would have been glare twenty-three. He stared down at his glass of whiskey, contemplating it as if it held the secrets of the universe. For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer her, and she couldn’t blame him. As usual she’d been astonishingly tactless.
    He lifted his head, his green eyes meeting hers. “Yes.”
    Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, she thought. “How many?”
    He could have thrown his half-full glass of whiskey at her, and she wouldn’t have blamed him. She had no right to ask him these questions, but the alternative was to worry about Maggie, and she couldn’t spend another minute doing that without going crazy.
    He didn’t throw the glass, he drained it and set it down on the table in front of him. “I’ve been a soldier. I’ve been in wars. People lose count.”
    “Do they?”
    “Does it turn you on, lady?” he countered roughly. “Do you get all hot and bothered hearing about blood and death and violence? I’d be more than happy to tie you up and beat you if that’s your fancy. Just don’t expect me to screw you afterward.”
    “You’re a pig, Ian.”
    “So I’ve been told.” Dead silence reigned in the room, an uncomfortable silence. There was a sullen peat fire in the blackened hearth, and the hiss and spit seemed unnaturally loud. Ian was staring into that fire, unmoving. “Seven,” he said.
    For once Holly stopped her unruly tongue. It was too alien a concept, the deliberate ending of seven lives, and she simply sat there, trying to absorb it.
    “And it’s going to be eight,” he added.
    Holly raised her head. “I hope you don’t mean me?” she said lightly.
    “No. I don’t kill women, either for duty or pleasure.” He shrugged. “Timothy Seamus Flynn is going to be number eight.”
    “What about a trial? What about innocent until proven guilty?”
    “That’s an American concept. The first chance I get I’m going to kill Flynn,” he said.
    “Unless he gets you first.”
    “I’m going to have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
    “And if you fail?”
    He smiled suddenly. It was fatalistic, ironic, and absolutely devastating. Holly just stared at him, momentarily besotted. “Then you, dear lady, are going to have to kill him for me.”
    “This sounds like a fascinating conversation,” Randall drawled from the open doorway. “Are we allowed to interrupt?”
    “Maggie!” Holly leapt off the couch and flew across the room, enfolding her sister in an enthusiastic embrace. “What the hell took you so long? Ian and I nearly murdered each other.”
    “Don’t!” Maggie said, shuddering.
    Holly drew back, her beringed hands still clasping Maggie’s shoulders beneath the thick green cape, and her eyes were searching. “What happened? You look like holy hell. Did you find Flynn?”
    Randall reached over and removed Holly’s hands, so deftly that she barely noticed. “Why don’t you get