Edge of Sanity: An Edge Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

had few options. And those thugs were expendable. There were always more waiting to fill the ranks so long as the money was good.
    “No, thank you. Close the door behind you.”
    He waited until Ruby left the office. He typed a few keystrokes, bringing up the live feed displaying his daughter’s work area at the Edge. She trusted Clay, making it easy for him to install several cameras without her knowledge. Or his. At least he had no memory of the act, making it impossible for his guilt to set off any kind of suspicion in Mira.
    She was far too perceptive—a by-product of the alterations, no doubt.
    Mira wasn’t in her workspace. All of her monitors were black.
    A moment of alarm streaked through him. If she was missing as well as Clay, whatever they were doing could not be good news.
    And then he remembered. It was nearly midnight. She wouldn’t be at the office this late.
    In his windowless facility, Richard had little connection to the flow of time. He often worked until he was no longer able to stay awake, regardless of what time of day it was. Circadian rhythms meant nothing. Only his work mattered.
    He switched over to the cameras hidden in Mira’s home, flipping between feeds until he found the right one.
    There was his little Mira—not so little now—all curled up in a blanket, working at her laptop. The TV was on, casting a flickering blue glow over her face. The deep resonance of a cable news anchor droned on in the background, interspersed with lighter voices of others. Occasionally, she’d look up at the TV, multitasking as usual.
    She looked tired, worried, and so much like her mother, sometimes it was hard for Richard to watch her. She had the same tilted green eyes and softly rounded face. Even the way she sat, curled up like a child, was the same.
    An ache so old it was as much a part of him as his own skin flared to life. Mira’s mother was long gone—a victim of her own small mind. Mira refused to speak to him, leaving him to reach out to her in the only way he knew how. Illegal, but necessary. She was one of his greatest successes.
    One day she would see that everything he’d done had been for her. All the experiments and long hours in the lab. The missed holidays and family dinners. None of that lost time mattered. His work had been a success, and the only thing left was for him to prove it. After almost twenty years of being looked at as a failure, Dr. Richard Sage was finally going to be vindicated.
    All he had to do was find Clay Marshall and make him finish his mission. Once that file was obtained, Norma Stynger—his previous partner turned professional adversarys Te Kdvem fand all the others would see that his way was best. Slower, certainly, but far more effective.
    But unless Clay was located, Richard’s years of effort would be wasted. Clay was close to finding the file now. Richard could feel it.
    Unless the thugs Ms. Rypan contacted failed.
    Clay was too important to leave to chance, so Richard began the protocol for contacting one of the few men capable of capturing Clay alive. Someone Ms. Rypan didn’t even know existed, just in case Richard had to have her eliminated one day. While most of the men in Richard’s employ had been hired for their minds, Mr. Grady was not one of them. For hire to the highest bidder, Mr. Grady charged a fortune, but so far, he’d been worth every penny.
    Richard had to jump through a ridiculous set of security hoops to send Mr. Grady his marching orders, but ten minutes later, he got the confirmation code that Mr. Grady was on the job.
    Clay Marshall was as good as found, and once Richard had him back under his control, he wasn’t letting him go again until he’d proven just how wrong Norma and the others had been.
    *   *   *
     
    Leigh was waiting for Payton when he walked through the door. She’d had several hours to work up a heaping helping of anger, and she was more than ready to let it fly at him.
    She didn’t wait for polite