Read Online The Edge of Trust: Team Edge by K. T. Bryan - Free Book Online
Authors: K. T. Bryan
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Ellie deserved more. She deserved pastel walls lined with ducks or kittens. She deserved to be rocked in a real rocking chair. She deserved a place in the world, a place she could call her own, a place where she felt secure, a place that didn’t change every day or week or every month.
Most of all she deserved to know her father’s gentle touch, his voice, his very smell.
Question was, what did Dillon want? More, what did he deserve?
Sara sat down, feeling fear and grief bubble through her veins.
Dammit, Dillon.
She took the wedding band she never wore in public out of her pocket and slipped it on. Some days she just needed the reminder.
Once, a lifetime ago, she’d been a regular woman with a regular job, married to a not so regular guy. But the not so regular hadn’t mattered. Until Sanchez. Now it mattered a lot.
The heat in the motel room was stifling, and she punched the air-conditioning button to dark blue. In one practiced move, she ripped the brown, bobbed wig off her head and tossed it toward the dresser. It landed with a swish and slid across the walnut veneer until it bumped up against a square green lamp. She unfastened the clasp at the top of her head and let her blonde hair spill free.
Freer now, but still so hot.
God, she missed the cool water and gentle breeze floating inland off the Pacific. The feel of soft sand between her toes.
She needed sleep but was too wary of the nightmares to even try. Instead, she peered out the window at the scorched landscape. The shimmering asphalt took her away to another time, another place. A happy place she hadn’t seen in forever -- a place where sun-kissed kites soared high above the heads of laughing children. A place where sailboats raced across the horizon.
A place where the sun gilded a man’s bronze shoulders as he took her hand and guided her into the sea to splash and play. To love and be loved. To know a look, a smile, a touch, was a love so pure it was almost not real. The power of the place, the man, was neither fantasy nor imagination. It was real. And it was hers.
In her heart.
A place where dreams came true and sandcastles held a million memories.
But those memories now stabbed with a pain so deep they almost broke her.
She stepped away from the window, letting the drapery fall closed.
There was a sad kind of sordidness in this small desert town. Nothing she could smell or hear, but present nonetheless. People striving to survive or looking for a way out.
Maybe it was the used syringes and piles of trash forgotten in the gutter. Or the vacant lots where children eyed each other, already wary, soon to fall through the cracks into social exclusion. Or maybe it was just the sense of desperation and despair floating like mute history on the very air she breathed.
She wanted the wind. A fierce wind of monstrous proportions to cleanse the despondence from her soul.
As she turned toward the bed, toward her child, glass shattered.
Tick.
The door flew open.
Tick.
She lunged. Grabbed the gun from her handbag.
Tick.
The bomb finally blew .
<><><>
FRIDAY
January 7 - Present day
Dillon’s office at the complex in Coronado was furnished in hunter green and trimmed out in magnetic slate. The chairs were leather, the furniture wood, the carpet thick, and all of it was understated, plush, and expensive. This building was the admiral’s refuge, and he’d spared no expense for his team.
Each office had its own touch-screen control panel for lighting, security, blinds, and temperature. A fitness center occupied the rear left of the building, while a state-of-the-art conference room, fitted with an 84” screen for full video conferencing capabilities, resided rear right.
The security measures alone included motion sensors, silent alarms, armored glass andsteel doors, and a Humatrek system that could all but read your mind.
Dillon was glad it
Ellie deserved more. She deserved pastel walls lined with ducks or kittens. She deserved to be rocked in a real rocking chair. She deserved a place in the world, a place she could call her own, a place where she felt secure, a place that didn’t change every day or week or every month.
Most of all she deserved to know her father’s gentle touch, his voice, his very smell.
Question was, what did Dillon want? More, what did he deserve?
Sara sat down, feeling fear and grief bubble through her veins.
Dammit, Dillon.
She took the wedding band she never wore in public out of her pocket and slipped it on. Some days she just needed the reminder.
Once, a lifetime ago, she’d been a regular woman with a regular job, married to a not so regular guy. But the not so regular hadn’t mattered. Until Sanchez. Now it mattered a lot.
The heat in the motel room was stifling, and she punched the air-conditioning button to dark blue. In one practiced move, she ripped the brown, bobbed wig off her head and tossed it toward the dresser. It landed with a swish and slid across the walnut veneer until it bumped up against a square green lamp. She unfastened the clasp at the top of her head and let her blonde hair spill free.
Freer now, but still so hot.
God, she missed the cool water and gentle breeze floating inland off the Pacific. The feel of soft sand between her toes.
She needed sleep but was too wary of the nightmares to even try. Instead, she peered out the window at the scorched landscape. The shimmering asphalt took her away to another time, another place. A happy place she hadn’t seen in forever -- a place where sun-kissed kites soared high above the heads of laughing children. A place where sailboats raced across the horizon.
A place where the sun gilded a man’s bronze shoulders as he took her hand and guided her into the sea to splash and play. To love and be loved. To know a look, a smile, a touch, was a love so pure it was almost not real. The power of the place, the man, was neither fantasy nor imagination. It was real. And it was hers.
In her heart.
A place where dreams came true and sandcastles held a million memories.
But those memories now stabbed with a pain so deep they almost broke her.
She stepped away from the window, letting the drapery fall closed.
There was a sad kind of sordidness in this small desert town. Nothing she could smell or hear, but present nonetheless. People striving to survive or looking for a way out.
Maybe it was the used syringes and piles of trash forgotten in the gutter. Or the vacant lots where children eyed each other, already wary, soon to fall through the cracks into social exclusion. Or maybe it was just the sense of desperation and despair floating like mute history on the very air she breathed.
She wanted the wind. A fierce wind of monstrous proportions to cleanse the despondence from her soul.
As she turned toward the bed, toward her child, glass shattered.
Tick.
The door flew open.
Tick.
She lunged. Grabbed the gun from her handbag.
Tick.
The bomb finally blew .
<><><>
FRIDAY
January 7 - Present day
Dillon’s office at the complex in Coronado was furnished in hunter green and trimmed out in magnetic slate. The chairs were leather, the furniture wood, the carpet thick, and all of it was understated, plush, and expensive. This building was the admiral’s refuge, and he’d spared no expense for his team.
Each office had its own touch-screen control panel for lighting, security, blinds, and temperature. A fitness center occupied the rear left of the building, while a state-of-the-art conference room, fitted with an 84” screen for full video conferencing capabilities, resided rear right.
The security measures alone included motion sensors, silent alarms, armored glass andsteel doors, and a Humatrek system that could all but read your mind.
Dillon was glad it
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