Cherry Adair - T-flac 09

ALSO BY CHERRY ADAIR

Hot Ice

On Thin Ice

Out of Sight

In Too Deep

Hide and Seek

Kiss and Tell

Edge of Danger

Read on to catch a sneak peek at

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the final sizzling adventure in the Edge Brothers Trilogy by

MONTANA

Thud!

A flash of orange lightening lit the room, followed by the sudden materialization of a man, dumped
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unceremoniously onto the middle of the conference room table. He was soaking wet. Water funneled on the wood surface around him, then started to pour over the sides.

Duncan Edge merely raised a brow as he shifted his chair out of the way. The other five T-FLAC/psi operatives in the meeting jumped to their feet at the unexpected interruption, grabbing up computers, paper, and assorted items before everything was saturated.

“What the hell…?”

“Hey!”

“Holy shit!”

“Who the f—”

Shaking his head, Duncan focused on the rivulets of water, using his power of telekinesis to prevent the stream from reaching his body or cascading to the floor. He knew the who and the why.

Serena Brightman.

One of her strongest powers was her mastery over water. Clearly she hadn’t changed. She still had a bad temper,
still
couldn’t control it. And still had to have the last damned word.

The woman was a menace.

“This is personal,” he told the others. “Take five.”

“Hell, take ten. Color me intrigued,” Jordan told him affably, closing his computer and setting it on the credenza nearby out of the way. There were general murmurs of agreement from the others.

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Great. He’d never allowed his personal life, such as it was, to infiltrate his professional life. But of course he’d never tried to help Serena before. No good deed goes unpunished. Now he had five freaking witnesses to his folly. Crap.

He waited patiently as his man gasped for air like a beached whale trying to regain use of his lungs.

Understandable, since the guy had hit the solid wood of the table hard and fast. Duncan retrieved the note pinned to Chang’s crumpled shirt while he waited.

“I believe this belongs to you,”he read the curlicue handwriting out loud. Oh, yeah. He knew the who.

Absently he touched the scar bisecting his left eyebrow. Damn woman had lost her temper that time, too.

He’d almost been blinded by a flying pencil. “You gonna make it, buddy?” he asked the young half wizard.

“S-she made me,” Chang managed, gray faced and still spread-eagle in the middle of the highly polished Koa wood table. He’d had the air knocked out of him. His pride, too, if Duncan knew Serena.

“Yeah. Figured that one out for myself,” he said dryly. “Told you she was sharp.”
Too damned sharp,
Duncan thought with a stab of irritation. He’d sent Chang, Jensen, and Prost in to watch her back.

Serena Brightman had been a stubborn pain in Duncan’s ass since wizard grade school. But for some annoying reason he always needed to know where she was and what the hell she was doing.

Apparently, time and maturity hadn’t improved her temper or her stubbornness one iota. He hadn’t seen her in what, five? Six years? Not since some Foundation charity fundraiser he’d been dragged to by a date whose name he now couldn’t remember. Odd, since he remembered with photographic clarity the backless emerald gown Serena had worn that night.

The glittering material had clung to every curvaceous inch of her body, but had left the upper swell of her creamy breasts and one long,
long
leg exposed. The leg men attending the black tie function that night had salivated when they’d looked at her, the breast men had their tongues hanging out, and every straight man with a pulse had wanted her.

That was Serena.

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Help herechoed in his head like a broken record. He recognized Henry Morgan’s voice, weak though it was. His old mentor was not only head of the Wizard Council, but he also worked in some scientific capacity for the Campbell Foundation which Serena now ran. He’d been ‘calling’ Duncan for the past three days.

“Help her.”

The only ‘her’ he and Henry had in common was Serena.

Serena was Henry Morgan’s Goddaughter, and the old man loved and treated her as his own. Which had sometimes made his and Duncan’s friendship difficult.

“Help her. Stop her.”

A running litany with growing telepathic urgency but no clear explanation. Why didn’t the guy just pick up the damned phone? Henry was one of the few people who had Duncan’s private cell number.

Henry’s insistence that he help Serena, and Chang’s untimely return, were indicative of something.
What

, he had no idea. Now he realized it was time to pay both Henry and Serena a visit. If nothing else, it would be amusing to see if he could get a civil answer out of her. Probably not.

He’d contact both of them later that evening when he returned to London, he decided. See what was what. Helping Chang off the table, he noticed that the guy’s stick-straight black hair was covered with sand, as if he’d rolled around on a beach. Interesting.

Albert Chang ran a shaky hand over his jaw, his eyes still a little glassy, his breathing ragged. His triangular face flushed with embarrassment as he saw who else was in the room. “I can t-try again.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Duncan crumpled Serena’s note and lobbed it into the trash can in the corner. He could almost feel her animosity radiating off the orange colored, flowery scented paper. “The others will keep tabs.”

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“Man, I’m sorry, Edg—”

Duncan sent the kid home.

The men picked up their scattered papers and reassumed their seats. “That was interesting,” Jordan said mildly, reaching for his pen. “Are you using halves as minions these days?”

‘Half’ was the term for someone with muted wizard powers. Their claim to fame was that they couldn’t be detected by full-breed wizards which was why Duncan had sent the three to watch over Serena. They had a few powers of their own, but nothing major. They were neither fish nor fowl. Not fully integrated into the wizard world, but not part of the non-wizard world either.

“Just a little side job,” Duncan told them. Prost and Jensen had more experience working side jobs for him than Chang. Serena wasn’t going to know
they
were around.

Satisfied that he still had the Serena problem covered, Duncan glanced around. “Now, where were we?”

Zzzft. Orange lightening fizzled and blinked. “Ah, shit,” he muttered, shimmering all the miscellaneous papers off the table before they got soaked.

A saturated Prost, swearing a blue streak, crashed into the spot in the middle of the table that Chang had just vacated. The coral Post-it note protruding from the top of his shirt pocket was dry, and read:

“And this!”

Duncan got rid of the puddles, and crushed the note in his fist. This was just bullshit, not to mention a serious waste of his time. “Get
anything?
”

“Other than, she’s drop dead gorgeous with a temper to match that bright red hair?” Gingerly Prost swung himself off the table. “No.”

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Duncan rubbed a hand over his jaw. “See anything suspicious? Dangerous? Out of place?”

“Not in the forty-eight hours I was tailing her. Just so you know, they’re having an unseasonably hot January, and it’s one hundred and nine in the Gobi desert right now.”

Duncan was feeling a lot hotter. “Miss Brightman returned Chang as well,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You mean Mrs.
Campbell?
Yeah,” Prost said with a grimace. “She let me know in no uncertain terms that my presence was far from welcome. That woman can yell without raising her voice. Scary, that.

Want me to go back in?”

Campbell. Right. As if he could damn well forget. She’d married. And buried Ian Campbell last year.

“No. Jensen’s still th—”

Zzft

“Goddamn it!”

It was the weakest of lightening flashes. Serena sucked at creating fire. Tom Jensen landed on all fours, just shy of the table, tucked and rolled, then sprayed water in all directions like a dog after a swim. He staggered to his feet and handed Duncan his note. It had been attached to his shirt with what looked like a diaper pin.

“I’m trying to
help
her,” Duncan said more to himself than the others. He glanced at the note.
And this
one as well!
“What the hell is she doing sending you guys
back?
”

“Says, and I quote: She doesn’t need your freaking watchdogs following her around, and not to send any more. She’ll send all of us back to you, and she won’t be nice about it.” Prost caught Jensen’s eye before both men turned back to Duncan. “Think she pretty much means it, boss.”

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“I gotta tell you, Duncan,” Jensen grimaced, tucking his shirt into his shorts and looking both embarrassed and annoyed. “That woman scares the crap outta me.”

Both men had clearly been out in the desert sun. Even in the few days they’d been wherever Serena was—the
Gobi
for Christ’s sake?—their skin was already painfully red and peeling. “Duncan, nobody’s gonna hurt that one,
believe
me,” Jensen muttered. “She’d flay their skin open with that tongue of hers before anyone could draw a weapon.”

Yeah. Duncan knew that only too well. “Thanks for your help, guys. You did good.”
All things
considered.
These half wizards weren’t employed by T-FLAC, they weren’t trained in covert ops.