At the Edge Read Free Page A

Mayday call had been followed by seven minutes of silence. And then a brief garbled message had gone out. Since then, nothing.
    Seven minutes. Plenty of time for the plane to crash, and yet there had been one last transmission, which likely meant someone had lived through the impact. The question was who.
    â€œMy money’s on the jarhead,” Jake had said after the briefing.
    Ryan’s brother was a former Marine, and that had been his first thought, too. But now his money was on the girl, Emma Wright.
    They’d been shown the passengers’ photos at the briefing, and Emma had caught Ryan’s attention immediately, along with that of every other man on the team. Emma Wright was young—only twenty-six—with pretty dark eyes and shiny brown hair that looked like it belonged in a shampoo ad. And then there was that lush mouth . . . Damn. Ryan knew he wasn’t the only man who’d taken a glance at that mouth and had to fend off some extremely distracting thoughts.
    But what really stuck with him? Her eyes. Emma’s eyes showed spirit. There was a glint in them that seemed to say, Don’t you dare underestimate me . It was that look, even more than her mouth, that had come back to Ryan as they geared up for the mission. It was that look that made him wonder if it was Emma and not the Marine who’d been responsible for the last radio transmission. It was that look that gave Ryan a gut-deep feeling that maybe she stood a chance.
    Which meant exactly nothing.
    Ryan’s gut-deep feeling was worth shit, because no amount of spirit or determination could alter the laws of physics. In all probability, Emma’s survival depended on the plane’s speed of descent and its angle of impact.
    But who the hell knew?
    It wasn’t always about probability, or Ryan never would have made it through BUD/S training. There were guys who’d started out stronger and faster than he was, guys he’d felt sure would make it, but they’d rung out. And meanwhile Ryan had hung in there as his muscles seized and his joints burned and his brain was so scrambled he didn’t even know his own name. Sometimes what mattered most was tenacity, and Ryan had a deep well of it. It had seen him through SEAL training and every harrowing mission since.
    â€œThree minutes,” came the crew chief’s voice over the radio. Ryan watched his CO, Matt Hewitt, as he skimmed his gaze over his men to make sure everyone was ready.
    The crew chief kicked out the rope. Ryan removed his headset and edged closer to the door. He made eye contact with Jake, who gave him a look that said, Fuckin’ tear it up, bro.
    It was go time. Time to focus. Time to put Emma Wright’s pretty brown eyes and her luscious mouth out of his mind so he could think about his mission, which was to find four missing Americans and get them home.
    The helo’s rotors thundered as Ryan stared out at the rain forest, a place he knew from personal experience was teeming with deadly reptiles and plants and insects—not to mention people, the most lethal threat of all. The ambassador’s plane had gone down over an island that was rumored to be controlled by a ragtag group of heavily armed militants who may or may not have had anything to do with the crash. This was no run-of-the-mill search-and-rescue mission—not by a long shot. Depending on what the SEALs found, the mission could have widespread repercussions.
    Hewitt made the signal: two minutes.
    Ryan snugged his gloves on his hands. His fingers tingled with anticipation as he grabbed the rope. They were going in light and quiet, only a four-man element, with Ryan leading the way. It was a balls-out operation over unknown terrain put together on too-short notice, and Ryan felt lucky to be a part of it. Every man on Alpha Crew lived and breathed for moments like these, and whatever fear Ryan felt at all the unknowns awaiting him he kept locked away, deep