At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

She wanted to break the spell that was weaving its insidious way around her. She wanted to lash out at the man beside her, the man whose deep voice seduced her, the man whose tall, lean body aroused her. She wanted to drive him away, but the words wouldn’t come. Her only defense was to keep her face averted, refuse to look at him, refuse to acknowledge her very intense awareness of his body so close to hers.

But not looking didn’t make her reactions go away. She wanted to turn to him in the magic night, lose herself in his arms, forget all the pain and misery and doubt that had dogged her path. But she couldn’t. “It’ll do,” she said, her voice low and expressionless.

“I’ll find someplace for us to sleep.” And then he was gone, and she was alone in the garden with only the moonlight and the soft warm breeze. For a moment she shivered, tempted to call him back to her, but one tiny part of her brain remained, warning her. If she called him back he wouldn’t leave, and she wouldn’t want him to.

Quickly, efficiently, she stripped off her clothes. The pool was shallow, cool, and wonderful, and she silently slipped into it, letting the water ripple around her. She ducked her head under, pouring the water over her face, watching it sparkle over her arms in the moonlight. She floated, mindlessly, staring up into the limitless reaches of the starry sky. She could have stayed that way forever; leaving the watery womb would mean reentering a cruel and dangerous life. But she wasn’t alone. Randall had returned from his foray into the decaying ruins of the palace and now stood there silhouetted by the moonlight, watching her.

“Go away.” This time it came out all wrong. The words were a dismissal, but the tone was a husky invitation. But it wouldn’t have mattered how she phrased it. Randall would do what he had decided to do.

He knelt by the edge of the pool a few feet from her still body, and dipped his arms into the water, sluicing it over his chest, his face, running his hands through his thick black hair, the moonlight gilding the drops of water that clung to his body. Then he looked at her and the polite Randall was gone, the one with the immaculate suits, the perfect hair, the banked emotions. The man kneeling there was the man who had fought for her in the past, who had stripped away the veneer of civilization to the savage beneath. He knelt there, waiting. Waiting.

She rose slowly, unconsciously graceful even in her state of tension. The water reached only partway up her long legs, and she stood there in the silvery moonlight, her eyes meeting his, despair and inevitability washing over her in the wake of the water that was quickly drying in the soft breeze.

“Come to me, Maggie,” he said, and his voice was husky with pain and wanting. Husky like someone else’s shattered voice. She moved toward him, mesmerized, hating herself, stopping just out of reach of his long arms.

She looked at him, wanting him so much she felt sick with it. One more step and there’d be no question, no turning back, no room for second thoughts or doubts or distrust. One more step and her betrayal of Mack Pulaski would be complete.

She stopped where she was, and the night breeze was cold and clammy on her skin. “Did you pay Bud Willis twenty thousand dollars to kill my husband?”

Everything stopped. Their heartbeats, their breathing, the wind in the trees overhead, the faint ripple of water. The universe stopped—breathless, shattered—for a long, suffocating moment.

Randall rose to his full height, his lean, wiry body outlined against the moonlight, and she couldn’t see his expression. “That’s what Bud Willis told you when he was dying.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

“Yes.”

“And you believed him.” Still not a question.

At that point she didn’t know what she believed. Everything was so wretched, so horrible that the only way to make it better would be to make it even worse. “Yes,” she said.

He sighed, a soft, despairing sound, and the wind rustled through the leaves in answer. The tension left his shoulders. “Get out of the pool and get your clothes on, Maggie,” he said, turning and walking away from her.

She stood still, unmoving. “Why?”

“We’re going to Damascus.”

“I thought it was too far—”

“Siberia isn’t too far,” he broke in, and his voice shook with a pure, clean rage. “I’m taking you to the nearest airport and dumping you. I’ll find Flynn myself.”

“The hell you will.” She quickly emerged from the water and scooped up the dusty shirt she’d discarded and pulled it around her. “You’re not dumping me anywhere, Randall. You’re going to answer my goddamned question.”

After pulling on his clothes he whirled around, and to Maggie’s disgust she found herself cowering as he stalked her, moving across the tangled garden like an angry jungle cat. “You didn’t ask me a question, Maggie,” he said in a low and furious voice. “You listened to what Bud Willis had to tell you and you passed judgment. No hesitations, no doubts.”

“The man was dying,” she cried. “Why would he lie to me?”

“So he could die the way he lived. Making people miserable. You think he was going to do you favors after you helped him fall sixty feet onto a concrete floor? You think revenge wouldn’t be any part of his motivation? You stupid, pathetic fool.” Disgust warred with the anger that shook him.

“Then tell me the truth,” she said, shivering in the night breeze, the loose shirt flapping around her body. “Did you pay Bud Willis to kill Mack?”

He moved then, coming within inches of her, and his body radiated heat and rage and something that in a less cynical man she would have called disillusionment. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Damn you, try it!” She reached up and caught the loose folds of his damp khaki shirt, but he twisted out of her grip.

“No. I’m not going to tell you a goddamned thing,” he said bitterly. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life wondering. Now get dressed.” He turned away from her, the set of his shoulders radiating contempt, and something finally snapped.

She’d seen too much death that night, too much death in her thirty-four years. She’d lost Mack, her one real chance at happiness, and she’d lost Randall, over and over and over again. She stood there, watching him walk away, a thousand doubts unresolved, a thousand questions unanswered, and she began to shake.

With trembling hands she pulled her jeans back on and buttoned the shirt. She leaned over to pull on her sneakers, but her hands were shaking too much to manage, and she squatted there, unmoving, listening to Randall as he walked back toward her.