The Edge

Chapter 13

After leaving Kingman in her little apartment, Devine passed by the cottage where Jenny Silkwell had been staying. He had already seen her rental car in the front parking area awaiting a thorough processing. Devine hoped to find her laptop and phone in there or her cottage.

The lights in the cottage were off, and there was police tape across the only entrance.

He stood there in the cold air, his hands stuffed in his pockets, and stared at the little building, which seemed to be a duplicate of the one he was staying in. He wondered what Jenny Silkwell had been thinking on her last night on earth, not realizing that it would be so.

Unfinished business? That could mean a lot of different things.

He also wondered whether he should break into the cottage and her car to see if her electronic devices were inside. That would piss off the local cops, but national security would trump all that. Yet, if the items had been in there, the enemies of this country, if they had killed Jenny Silkwell, surely would have already retrieved them.

Then he heard a noise. His hand went automatically to his Glock. He moved forward and then around the side of the cottage. He took one hand off the Glock, reached into his coat pocket, and produced a small flashlight with a high-intensity focused beam setting. He clicked it on, held it just above his Glock while keeping both hands on the weapon, and kept moving forward, toward the sounds.

In three more steps he saw the source of the noise.

The woman was perched on her haunches on the ground. And she was sobbing.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

When his beam found and held on her features, Devine sucked in a quick breath as he recognized her.

“Get that fucking light out of my face,” barked Alex Silkwell.

Devine killed the light and simply stood there gaping. His mind was whirring, trying to process all this. He looked around to see if a window on Jenny’s cottage had been broken, or any other sign that her sister had intruded into what was potentially a treasure trove of possible evidence in a murder investigation. He saw nothing of the kind.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

She rose. Alex was tall, about five eight, and lean.

“Who are you exactly?” she asked in a calmer tone.

“Travis Devine.”

“Right. The man they sent to find out about Jenny.”

“And you’re her sister.”

“How brilliant you are. They must have been thrilled when you became a detective, or whatever it is you actually do.”

Devine pulled his creds and flashed the light on them. “Homeland Security.”

“Right. Anybody can print a card and make a badge. I can make them for you. How many more do you need?”

“What are you doing here?”

Alex Silkwell was beautiful, but there was such misery in the woman’s features that her looks became a secondary consideration. With each rapid breath of hers, visible air was propelled into the sky. Devine’s breaths were less rapid, but not by much. She had done to him what the two assassins on the Geneva train and the three drunk idiots back at the bar had failed to do: thrown him off his game.

“My sister,” she began.

“Yes. By everyone’s accounts she was a wonderful person. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Not everyone’s account, Mr. Devine. You haven’t talked to me yet.”

And with that stunning statement, she pushed past him and strode off.

Devine knew he should have gone after her. But he didn’t. At least not right away. When the paralysis that had gripped him finally receded, he turned and raced back down the path. Once he reached the main street he gazed up and down it. He hadn’t heard a car start up, and then he recalled being told she had a bicycle.

He trudged off to his cottage, where he checked to make sure none of the traps he had laid had been disturbed. They were all still in place. He stripped down to his skivvies and stared into the bathroom mirror. Devine traced the graphic surgical scar along his shoulder where the Glock round had impacted.

He had a similar wound on his other shoulder from a sniper round fired at him in the Middle East that had penetrated a defect in his body armor. The Iraqi could have finished off the immobilized Devine with a head shot, but Devine supposed it had been his lucky day — though he hadn’t really felt all that lucky while he’d been airlifted out nearly unconscious and bleeding like a bitch.

He eyed his calf where the IED had said hello by leaving its bomb pattern forevermore on his flesh.

Will the fourth time punch your ticket for good, Devine? Maybe.

He stretched, and then grimaced as his limb ached from the effort. He lay down on yet another strange bed and stared up at the ceiling. He was most definitely a ceiling starer, where he could watch the imagined frames of his life and his myriad mistakes troop by. This was his version of very cheap therapy. Like many military folks he found it difficult to talk to people about anything, much less his inner feelings, whatever the hell those actually were.

The world used to be divided into black and white for Devine. Good guys versus bad guys. This demarcation used to be true and unassailable and easy to differentiate.

Now?

Now Devine relied on himself only. Thus his long-standing grueling early-morning workouts, and the ceiling analysis of his past actions. He needed to make sure that he could survive. Anything. He trusted only his finely honed military instincts that had told him to turn left instead of right, to duck at just the right time. To wait beside a door just a second longer so the shotgun blast could blow through it without killing him.

Two other faces appeared on the ceiling of his thoughts, as they often did.

Captain Kenneth Hawkins, and Lieutenant Roy Blankenship.

He had served with both men, who were also now both dead. Hawkins had murdered Blankenship and made it look like suicide. His motive was as old as time: he coveted Blankenship’s pretty wife, with whom he was having an affair.

Army CID had clusterfucked the case, hamstrung by military politics, and Hawkins had gotten away clean. That was until a suspicious Devine, who had previously learned of the affair from Blankenship, had tried his best to get CID to take another look. When he was stonewalled, Devine had resorted to a personal accounting. He had lured Hawkins out into the Afghanistan mountains, and a furious fight had ensued. Devine had not meant to kill the man. But he had died anyway.

And then Emerson Campbell had come along with all the evidence to put Devine away in the Army prison out in Leavenworth, Kansas. But the man had given Devine a choice.

Prison.

Or this.

His therapy session over, he closed his eyes and, like the Army had taught him, fell asleep within a minute.