The Edge Read Free Page A

Jilly’s face slammed back into my mind.
    “You’ve got to face it, Mac,” I said very quietly to myself in the still night, looking toward the window that gave onto the nearly empty parking lot. “All right. Let’s just say it out loud. Was that a dream or some kind of prophecy? Is Jilly in some sort of trouble?”
    No, that was bullshit. I knew bullshit.
    I didn’t go back to sleep. Truth was I was too scared. I wished I had another beer. Midge dropped by at four A . M ., frowned at me, and shoved a sleeping pill down my throat.
    At least I didn’t dream for the three hours they gave me before the guy with the blood cart came by, shook my bruised shoulder to wake me up, and shoved a needle in my vein. He never paused in his talk—I think it was about the Redskins—slapped down a Band-Aid hard over the hole in my arm, and whistled as he pushed his torture cart out of my room. His name was Ted and he was, I thought, what the shrinks call a situational sadist.
    At ten o’clock that morning, I simply couldn’t wait any longer. I had to know. I dialed Jilly’s number in Edgerton, Oregon. Her husband, Paul, answered the phone on the second ring.
    “Jilly,” I said, and knew my voice wasn’t steady. “Paul, how’s Jilly?”
    Silence.
    “Paul?”
    I heard a shuddering breath, then, “She’s in a coma, Mac.”
    I felt an odd settling deep inside me, the slow unwrapping of the package whose contents I already knew. I hadn’t wanted this, but it hadn’t really surprised me at all. I prayed as I asked, “Will she live?”
    I could hear Paul fiddling with the phone cord, probably twisting it over and over his hand. Finally he said in a dead voice, “Nobody wants to even take a guess, Mac. The doctors did a CAT scan and an MRI. They say there’s hardly any damage to her brain, just some tiny hemorrhages and some swelling, but nothing to account for the coma. They just don’t know. They hope she’ll come out of it really soon. Bottom line, we have to wait and see. First you getting blown up in some godforsaken place, and now Jilly in this ridiculous accident.”
    “What happened?” But I knew, yeah, I knew.
    “Her car went over a cliff on the coast road last night, just after midnight. She was driving the new Porsche that I gave her for Christmas. She’d be dead if a highway patrolman hadn’t been passing by. He saw the whole thing, said she just seemed to let the car drift, then speeded up through the railing. He said the Porsche made a perfect nosedive into the water. The water isn’t more than fifteen to twenty feet where she went over. The Porsche headlights were still on, thank God, and the driver’s side window was open. He got her out on his first try, a pure miracle, he said. No one can believe he managed it, that she’s still alive. I’ll call you as soon as something changes—either way. I’m sorry, Mac, real sorry. Are you feeling better?”
    “Yes, much better,” I said. “Thank you, Paul. I’ll be intouch.” I laid the receiver gently back into its cradle. Paul had evidently been too upset even to wonder why I’d called him specifically about Jilly, at seven o’clock in the morning, West Coast time, the very morning after the accident. I wondered when Paul would think of it, wondered when he’d call me, asking about it.
    At that moment, I didn’t have a clue what I’d tell him.

CHAPTER TWO
    M ac, for God’s sake, what are you doing out of bed? No way the doctors said you could leave. Just look at you. You don’t look so hot. Your face is as gray as dingy old curtains.”
    Lacy Savich, known to everyone in the Bureau as “Sherlock,” began shoving my chest lightly, pushing me back toward the bed. I’d managed to get my legs into a pair of jeans and had been in the middle of fighting with a long-sleeved shirt when she came in.
    “Back into bed, Mac. You’re not going anywhere. How’d you get those jeans on?” Sherlock tucked herself under my armpit, trying to turn me