Razor's Edge Read Free

the nose.
    Pain flashed red behind her eyes, making them water like crazy.
    Roxanne grabbed the front of the woman’s dress and flung her to the floor, face-first. Mary’s skin squeaked against the gleaming hardwood floor. Roxanne crashed down on top of her, driving her knee into Mary’s back hard enough to make her cry out in pain. Something along Mary’s back popped, but Roxanne didn’t care what it was. She wrenched Mary’s hands behind her and pinned them there while she fished a set of flex cuffs from her evening bag.
    Mary was secured, moaning, and no longer fighting.
    Time to go after the other thief.
    Roxanne picked up the knife so Mary couldn’t use it to free herself and dropped it into her purse. She took out her cell and dialed Mr. Chord as she raced out of the office and down to the exit nearest to where Mary’s partner had been. “Mary is in your office. She might need an ambulance.”
    â€œWhat the hell did you do to her?”
    â€œNot as much as I would have liked. She had a partner. I’m going after him.”
    Roxanne didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. She raced across the lawn, but the second thief was nowhere to be seen. Behind a screen of manicured bushes, several bars had been recently cut away from one section of the iron fence surrounding Mr. Chord’s property, and on the other side of that, there were dark tire marks on the street.
    Roxanne had failed to catch him, which meant it was only a matter of time before a new Mary showed up to finish what the last one couldn’t.
    Mr. Chord was not going to be pleased.
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    â€œMr. Chord is pissed,” said Roxanne’s boss, Bella Bayne, the next morning.
    Bella was the owner of the Edge—the growing private security company in Dallas where Roxanne worked. They handled all kinds of needs from threat assessment to protective details to US troop support to ridding foreign countries of any number of pesky criminals—for the right price.
    Roxanne’s specialty was stealth security for corporate espionage cases. She made sure the bad guys didn’t know who she was until it was too late and she caught them with their hands in the cookie jar. At least that had been her specialty. Based on Bella’s scowl, she might have been demoted to cleaning the locker room toilets if she wasn’t simply fired.
    Roxanne really didn’t want to walk away from the job she’d come to love. She had to find a way to make things right.
    Bella stood to her full, impressive height. She was easily six feet tall in her combat boots, and every inch of her was sleek, sculpted muscle. Her stormy gray eyes narrowed in fury. “Where shall we start, Razor? With the fact that your client’s information was stolen? Or maybe with the part where the guy who stole it got away?”
    â€œThe data was fake. I planted it. Whoever has it isn’t getting anything of value.”
    â€œAnd now they know that, too. Mr. Chord told me how hard it was to architect that setup. Your chance to catch the thieves is gone, and he still has no idea who Mary works for or with.”
    Roxanne looked down and toyed with her wide cuff bracelet. “Were the police able to get her to talk?”
    â€œNot a word. Not even to a lawyer. And now whoever is doing this knows we’re onto them.”
    What was worse was that the police were now involved—something Mr. Chord had wanted to avoid from the beginning, which was why he hired the Edge to deal with the problem. If word got out that his designs were being stolen, his company’s stock price could plummet. He might lose investors.
    Roxanne had no idea about the specifics of the devices that had been stolen from him. She didn’t need to know any secret information to do her job. But what she did know was that Chord Industries had contributed to several advances in the field of medicine. His machines helped people, saved lives.
    Because