At The Edge

6

" I still can't believe you did that. I could have ditched them."

"I told you to drive around the city," Corey said. "If you'd done what I asked, this never would have happened."

She shed her trench coat and walked into the family room as Denny closed the garage door a little too hard.

"This place'll be crawling with cops. We don't have a helicopter like your buddies. I'm not going down for this. You did the shooting, not me. They could be dead for all we know."

"Relax," she said. "Go watch your TV."

He cursed as he climbed the stairs to his room. Corey sat back in the easy chair, staring at the ceiling's beautiful polished box beams: gleaming, satin smooth. With its redbrick fireplace, leather furniture, and plaid carpeting, the room had an earthy, masculine feel. On the walls hung wooden Indian masks, grotesque screaming objects, ghouls from some bad dream, the tools of terror of a medicine man.

A bullwhip sat coiled in the glass display box built into the coffee table. It had been her father's and now it belonged to his demon, her name for the memory of him that lingered on, tormenting her, a phantom so elusive she had grown weary of the chase.

She craved a joint but knew she shouldn't. It would dull what was to come. Instead, she lay back and let the image of Maximillian Schneider invade her mind.

It began in her bedroom, tucked inside a palatial Georgian mansion, on her Queen Victoria canopy bed. It started with a laugh, Corey's long, rolling laugh — her dead mother's laugh. Her timing couldn't have been worse. Her father, drunk as usual, had been pacing by her room, back and forth — pausing only to stand silently outside, then to resume his pacing.

He stormed into her room, white-faced with rage, as if she 'd been laughing at him. He yanked her from the bed and pummeled her like a butcher pounding meat. With each punch, her insides felt as if they were coming up her throat. Then he began tearing off her nightclothes.

"Get up," he growled when she lay naked, immobilized with pain, panting and moaning on the cold, tiled floor.

Ten minutes later, she was on her belly; her lips had been painted a sloppy, horrific red by his shaky hand. Her arms, tied with white silk scarves to the bedposts, ached. The strap bit into her bare flesh, searing, penetrating, the white-hot leather whistling at her again and again.

This was much worse than anything he'd ever done to her before. Without warning, he stopped. She turned, looking over her shoulder. He was gulping air, sweat pouring down in little rivulets over the white fat-puffed skin. He hefted the strap for another swing. She vomited, causing his hesitation — and probably her own salvation. With all her strength she pulled at the scarves. The right-hand bedpost snapped off. She hurled it to the side, hitting his soft body.

He made a sound that was pure rage. She rolled to the far side of the bed, trailing the scarf from her right hand, her left still tied. Her fingers worked at the knot as she watched him fingering a huge red welt on his neck.

"Stay put." His voice sounded choked, hoarse.

She ignored him, her fingers working fast. In seconds she was free. She ran around the bed, snatching up her robe. He moved to cut her off but slipped, unsteady on his feet. One hand touched the floor. It was enough of a fall that she was able to slip by him. For once the booze was her ally. Spooked, she ran. Her father lunged into the coffee table with his knees. He rose, bellowing his rage.

She sprinted down the stairs to the massive front door, twisted the dead bolt open, flew off the porch, and dashed into the night.

The world was a blur. Ahead the forest opened its arms to her, ready to take her to its bosom. If she could make it to one of the small breaks in the mountainous green wall fencing the lawn, she could make it to her hiding place — disappearing like a gopher down its hole. He had never set foot in her safe harbor.

In seconds she had found her haven. Engulfed in the heady scents of jasmine, earth, and mint, she stilled her breathing to listen. Outside the cave, the sounds of crickets, frogs, and owls reassured her that she was not alone. The forest, she thought. Mother Earth. My protector. She just carries on, taking care of all her living creatures and growing things. Pure and beautiful, never painful: Mother, indeed.

In the morning she awoke in her bed. She had sneaked back inside, once certain her father had sobered. Strange engine sounds came from the backyard. The window rattled in tune to the throaty bark of a chain saw. She ran downstairs and out into the sunshine.

"Get out of my sight," her father commanded when she begged him to stop the bulldozers and saws. He had found his ultimate revenge: Before her eyes, he was destroying her forest. As she watched, the machines ripped and tore, dragging and cutting until her only refuge was no more.

She needed to kill him — a man for a forest — but he never gave her a chance; he killed her forest, and then he killed her plans for sweet revenge. Later that day, right after tying her spread-eagled between the bedposts, directly following the most gruesome acts she'd ever endured, he called Uncle Jack into the room. Uncle Jack, the one she loved, the only one in the family who had ever shown her kindness, was staring at her with mortified eyes. Then her father shot him dead. Slowly Maximillian turned the gun on himself, shoving it deep down his throat before pulling the trigger.

After that day, anguish never left her. But it was not yet the howling, crushing pain that kills people from the inside, making them shrivel up and literally die, or stare silent, vacant stares out the window for years on end.

That kind of anguish she had known only when, weeks later, she overheard Aunt Jessica tell a friend that Maximillian Schneider had not been her father. Her real father was her beloved uncle Jack Schneider; Corey had been the product of an affair between her mother and Jack. And in an instant, she saw Jack's many kindnesses for what they had been: hollow acts of repentance for his guilt. His concern now felt no better than mockery: far too little and far too late.

It was then, in the grip of soul-crushing pain, that Corey first considered her calling. At first she only felt it, but didn't understand it. In something of a confused state, after the death of both men, and fighting with her aunts and the trustees, she joined the marines and then the military police. Stationed as an officer in administration at a military prison, she found a legally sanctioned outlet for her anger and relief from her aunts. On her twenty-fifth birthday her trust was dissolved; her aunts were no longer in control of her money. She resigned her commission and moved to California.

She had the money to step full measure into her real mission, to define it as a duty, for with the wealth of both men, enough to last her several lifetimes and then some, she could do whatever she chose.

Corey rose and called up the stairs for Denny. It was a few minutes before he came down and sat in the family room.

"You don't like those masks, do you?" She sat on the leather couch opposite him.

Denny didn't answer for a moment. "No."

"Why not?"

Denny just shrugged. "Don't know if I need a reason. Just don't like the look."

"You know, in merry old England they used to flog people. Flay them alive, actually, little metal hooks on a whip tearing off their skin in strips until they didn't have much left. To keep them alive as long as possible, they'd hang them upside down so their heart and vitals would get the last of the blood. How'd you like to do that, to get revenge on your biggest enemy?"

"I don't have any enemies that big."

"You're indifferent, right?"

Corey imagined exactly how she would do this. He was making it easy. She was rolling it around like a ball on a table, weighing it.

"Did you know that statistically, serial killers are almost never women?" she asked. "When the cops look for one, they always start with a man. Always. That's because women are watchers, mostly. What would you do to your worst enemy? Somebody that really hurt you."

"I'd shit in his Porsche and shove it over a cliff."

"With him in it?"

"Mm, no."

"Think you could get excited about taking a shower with me?"

"Together?" asked Denny with undisguised amazement.

Corey stood and was already peeling off her clothes in the middle of the family room. "We'll celebrate doing the job. Then we can turn on the cop channel and see if they reported anything."

Denny was smiling now.

"We'll do it until you can't do it anymore, and then we'll wait and do it again," she said.

Fleeting glimpses of her body were all Corey had given him until now. She was amused at the way his eyes darted to her breasts. He made no move to get undressed, out of touch with everything except what he saw.

When she was naked, she stood before him, one hand on her hip.

"Are you just going to look?"

Corey lathered her hands slowly and deliberately with a giant bar of yellow soap. "Stand under the shower. It'll relax you." It was a large stall tiled in blue and turquoise to the ceiling, with two showerheads, but only one of them turned on. Her friends, some pot growers with taste, said the decor was very "boy."

He stood with his back to the nozzle, the hot water cascading over his shoulders, loosening the tightly drawn muscles at the base of his neck.

She began to soap his chest and belly, teasing him. "Should I soap the rest of you?"

Denny's eyes rolled back in his head. Men were such funny creatures, Corey thought, their minds so easily distracted.

"Turn around," she told him.

Breathlessly he followed her orders. She pushed herself close against his back. Reaching around him with her left hand, she began to do things she knew would utterly transport him.

"Close your eyes," she whispered. "Relax."

Within seconds, sure that he was now lost in sensation, she reached her right hand high to a tiled ledge and a small lacquered box. There, from inside the black-and-red box, she quickly withdrew a small. 22 automatic. As she placed the barrel at the base of his skull, time slowed down to let her observe every detail of the scene. There was her hand wrapped around the mother-of-pearl pistol grip. There was the red dot showing the safety off. And his wet brown hair in need of a trim.

"A little present from Mother," she whispered in his ear.

As Corey dragged his body from the bathroom, dread hung like black sheets at the edges of her mind. Then her certainty returned: She had rid the world of a weakling who didn't believe in her cause; Denny would have broken the first time they squeezed him, would have copped a plea to save himself. And she would've gone to jail, or worse.

Denny's absence wouldn't be noticed for months-and perhaps not at all. She had checked his background as carefully as she had planned his demise. A drifter with no family outside a sister who hadn't seen him in years, he had no close friends and only a few acquaintances in the entire county. He had called himself a cowboy-she supposed because he had a hat. She buried him in the woods behind the house, grateful that no one who mattered had ever seen them together.

After it was over, after she had covered the corpse in the hard clay hole by the charred stump, after she had mopped up the blood and scrubbed herself clean, she sat on the shower floor, exhausted, once again letting the warm water pour over her, letting the blackness fill her head.

The sound of the ringing phone barely penetrated the soothing shower sounds.

"How did it go?" There was a nervous edge to the deep accented voice. She was certain the man was German. It wasn't the usual time for his call.

"Not good. Some stud the size of a mountain gave her the money. He was ready for a fight. They followed us partway up the hill."

"What happened?"

"I blew them off the road with a. 300 Weatherby Magnum, that's what happened. Right front tire. They went over the bank."

"Are they dead?"

"Probably. Nothing on the police bands."

"Why did you put a transmitter in the briefcase?"

Her breath caught in her throat. "What are you talking about?"

"You put a transmitter in the briefcase?"

"The hell I did."

"We took care of it," he said. "That's all that matters. What about Denny? What's he know?"

"Nothing. Besides he up and left. Headed for Florida."

"Are you sure?"

"I said he left for Florida." She didn't trust the German voice-especially after today. "Why is industry paying McCafferty? I mean what exactly does she do for them?"

"If you figure it out, let us know. Maybe she just gives in to their demands if what they pay her is right enough."

"I doubt if it's that boring," she said. "Did you know the courier would be built like a brick shithouse?"

"Had no idea."

"You wanted me to get away with the money?"

"Came for our share, didn't we?"

''Why'd they build a big Cyclone fence around that complex of theirs in the Highlands?" She thought she heard a deep sigh. "It's Amada, isn't it?"

''Don't know anything about it. What do you think?'' She was sure the voice was tighter. Or was it her imagination?

"Why did you hesitate? What do you know about this?"

"That's not the nature of our arrangement." The voice came back icy. "So if you value our relationship, all the tips, the money, perhaps you would be wise to tell us about this fence."

She needed time to think and wished she hadn't brought it up.

"I know that men come and go. Mostly at night. I know that they have a big permanent staff and I know they spend most of their time inside, not outside. Something glows, iridescent, in the night. I can see it like a halo through the trees."

"Interesting. What else?"

"Guys come in the night. They put on protective suits and unload stuff into the buildings. They work in the dark, never with a light. There's an old mine shaft nearby. They go into that as well. Around the shaft they also built a fence and they're working there during the day."

"What do you think they're doing?"

"At first I thought they might be making Taxol from the bark of the yew tree-like they tell the government. You know, latest cancer drug. I got some government documents under the Freedom of Information Act. They're distilling Taxol, but I don't think that's all they're doing."

"And how do you see all this if it's dark?"

"Government surplus infrared night-vision goggles."

"You see the glowing with these goggles?"

"No, that's with the naked eye, looking down from up in a tree."

"So how did you find out in the first place? You creep around with goggles, or what?"

She was feeling nervous. This guy seemed a little too interested in the mechanics. But she'd gone this far.

"I was watching the Highlands. They were building a so-called research road, which was actually a logging road. Before the fences were done, I told you they were doing work around the mine shaft during the day."

"What sort of work?"

"Just carrying stuff in and out. Guys with clipboards standing around.'' She waited for some comment. Some hint that the man on the line knew something. "And they've had a couple pipes going into the mine. Now, what do you know?"

"I told you, that's not the nature of the relationship."

There was a click and the line went dead.