The Killing Edge Read Online Free PDF

surf made a pleasant background, and the breeze was almost dainty, carrying in a cooling note from the water.
    How far could they have made it so quickly?
    Chloe stopped running. They could have gone anywhere. Their footprints had gotten mingled with all those left over from the day.
    She caught her breath as she looked around. They could have gone in a half-dozen different directions. Not only were their footprints impossible to distinguish anymore, she had passed at least five hotels, restaurants and clubs as sheran, and the pair could have ducked into any one of them. Not to mention that a block ahead, the hotels and restaurants shifted, and were all on the other side of the street, providing another range of possible hiding places.
    What if this man had something to do with Colleen Rodriguez’s disappearance? Was Rene in danger now, too?
    She closed her eyes, fighting a wave of panic.
    Every once in a while, hitting so briefly that no one else even noticed, it came. That sensation of absolute terror. A memory of the colors of death that had bathed the world in red and black that night ten years ago.
    This had nothing to do with the past, she told herself. Nothing at all.
    She fought the panic, and as quickly as it had come, it was gone. Fighting back had become her way of coping on a day-to-day basis with what had happened a decade before. Her uncle had told her that she could curl up and hide for the rest of her life, or she could learn to live again.
    She had chosen to live. And she had taken classes in every form of defensive—and even offensive—fighting that she could. She had also become a crack shot.
    She could even string a crossbow.
    But all the training in the world couldn’t help if you couldn’t find the person you were trying to protect.
    It was time to go back. To admit defeat. To live to fight another day.
    Except that this was what she was fighting for. To discover the truth about the Bryson Agency and the disappearance of a young woman who’d had everything to live for.
    She turned around to head back and was stunned to find herself staring at Jack Smith.
    “Where’s Rene?” she asked, immediately going on the offensive.
    “You tell me. And thanks for confirming that that was Rene. At least we know she’s alive at the moment, and presumably well.”
    Chloe frowned, watching him. “What is your concern with Rene?”
    He shrugged.
    He was an interesting man, she decided. Tall and lean, but with broad shoulders and hard-muscled arms, and an abdomen that was probably like steel. And his eyes. They seemed to cut right through her. His face had too much of a hard, rugged edge to be termed handsome, but somehow the conglomeration of all his features made him more attractive than any of the perfect models back at the party. He was undeniably compelling. She was extremely suspicious of him, and yet…being close to him seemed to make the night warmer. She had the sense that touching him now would be like trying to hold on to an electric shock. He’d been courteous when they’d been introduced before…but there was something in his eyes. Something hard. And it made him all the more suspicious—and, somehow, physically appealing.
    “She’ll make a great swimsuit model,” he said.
    “So great that you were wandering around upstairs—hunting her down?” Chloe demanded.
    “You have to break a few rules to get ahead in this world,” he told her. “So, your turn. Why were you chasing me?”
    “Because you were chasing Rene.”
    “Why wasn’t Rene at the party when she was at the house?” he demanded. “You girls are tight—I assume. Or are you?”
    She was a fake, of course.
    But the others were the real thing.
    “I don’t know,” Chloe said. “Maybe she was afraid that some strange new designer would be looking for her. Some guy who’d gone a little off the deep end, enough to chase her down a trellis and all along the beach.”
    He grinned at that. She was surprised to see how that