Read Online Off the Edge (The Associates) by Carolyn Crane - Free Book Online

you’re okay now?”
    “Only because he’s doing a 10-20 year bid in an Arkansas prison.” Thanks to evidence she’d collected. “Prison only made him madder and meaner.”
    Maxwell asked a lot of questions—he seemed really to want to know about her plight. She found herself telling him about the scary messages Rolly would send from inside. You’re mine. Only mine. She’d moved deep into the panhandle, staying with distant cousins, but Rolly’s men found her all the same and tried to bring her to him—in prison—and it was only luck that she slipped away. She told him about all the woman-on-the-run tricks she developed, even back in the States. She fled to D.C. and they found her again. She told him how she finally traveled to Bangkok with the help of a dear friend.
    “That’s not the story of a coward,” he said. “It’s the story of a fighter.”
    She looked up at him. She could tell he had something more to say. “What?”
    “The hat…I can’t say the hat is the best disguise ever.”
    She frowned. “It’s a great disguise.”
    “No,” he said simply. “It’s not.”
    “Is the linguist suddenly an expert on disguises?”
    “It’s obviously a disguise. You need to change the look of your face, not hide it. Hiding invites speculation.”
    “Trust me, it’s under control,” she said. “It’s a 1940s look. A torch singer thing.”
    “Laney—”
    “You’re just very perceptive. You’re the only one on the planet who got the dragon thing. And hey, it’s worked for two years, hasn’t it?”
    And bottom line, the Shinsurin brothers would’ve said something if they thought the disguise was bad. Who better to know disguises than shady characters like the Shinsurin brothers? Not that she said that to Maxwell.
    Something changed in him then—he seemed almost to disengage. He took her paper cone from her fingers and tossed it in the trash bin with a charming smile. “Come on, then. Dragon’s this way.”
    The mission. Back to the mission.
    On they went, out of the night market on the restaurant side. Maxwell was still very aware of their surroundings; she might not have noticed if she wasn’t the same way. She might not have noticed their circuitous route, either, if she didn’t take those, too. Maybe not wanting to meet up with Rolly’s thugs. That wouldn’t turn out well.
    He stopped at the opening to an alley that dead-ended at a cement wall covered in graffiti. “Can you see it?”
    “No,” she said.
    He pointed at a convex mirror mounted high on the side of a building. And there it was, the dragon, reflected in the mirror. Which would mean it was behind the wall at the end. Visible from the street.
    “Cheater,” she said.
    “Can you not see it?” he asked. “Is it not the best?”
    He was right on both counts, and he knew it. This one was far more amazing than any of the others. You could see that even from the mirror.
    He extended his hand, palm up. Cool, remote, charming Maxwell. “Pay up.”
    “I want to see it,” she said. “Up close.”
    He hesitated. Was he so eager to get her back? “Okay.” He led her in and pulled up a cement block.
    She eyed the wall. “Yeah, that might work for somebody who’s six feet tall.” Like him.
    “Get up there and grab the top. I’ll lift you.”
    She hesitated only a moment. Then she looped her purse over her neck and shoulder and stepped up. She felt his solid body draw close, felt strong hands grab her waist. He lifted her easily and she scrambled up to the top.
    And there it was, a plaster dragon the size of a small car, fierce and wild and colorful. He hoisted himself up and sat next to her.
    “I love how he’s guarding the collapsed building parts behind him. Loyally guarding the ruined slabs,” she said.
    Maxwell looked at her strangely. “Yes,” he said simply.
    She snapped a photo. There was a misshapen block of concrete next to the dragon’s crumbly shoulder. Like a tilted table for the dragon. Scrub trees