David Morrell - The naked edge

Miller didn't like the shadowy corridor he faced-or the roar at the end of it. He entered a large area that consisted of several blazing furnaces, their hatches open. Men wearing fire-retardant aprons and gloves held metal poles into the flames, turning them, softening the large pieces of glass suspended from their tips. At a precisely judged moment, one of the workers removed the pole and applied various tools to the molten glass, cutting, twisting, and shaping it, sometimes blowing through a tube to expand it into a globe.

Keeping his attention on the corridor through which they'd entered, Miller heard a conversation behind him, the two owners using English to explain to the client and his wife how time-intensive a hand-crafted piece of glass was, how it could take all day to make one perfect vase and certainly much longer to fashion a glass peacock, its fanned-out tail as multi-colored as that of an actual bird. The most ambitious pieces, the most complexly contoured and layered, required centuries of glass-making experience. The techniques were handed down from generation to generation.

Miller straightened as a man and woman came along the corridor. In their mid-thirties, pleasant looking, they wore shorts and sandals. The man's shirt was tucked in. So was the woman's blouse. No outline of a gun or a knife. No fanny packs. Nothing to cause concern. The man had a camera around his neck. He nodded to Miller, a little puzzled that Miller wasn't watching the activity around the ovens. Miller nodded in return.

Behind him, the two owners were telling the tycoon and his wife that the almost finished vases they saw on a table required one more procedure and then would be ready for exhibition.

"Twenty of them. How much will their total value be?" the tycoon asked.

The answer was a very long number in lira.

More tourists entered.

Miller scanned them. Nothing threatening.

"How much in dollars?" the tycoon asked.

Miller heard fingers tapping a calculator. "Four hundred thousand."

The tycoon said, "I assume they can be safely packaged and sent by air."

"Of course."

"Signore," one of the executives said, presumably to a tourist who'd entered, "photographs are not permitted."

The man answered in French that he didn't understand.

The executive switched to French and repeated that photographs were not allowed.

The room became more crowded.

"No, don't touch that," the other executive said in Italian.

Glass shattered.

The startle reflex cannot be eliminated. It's hardwired into the human nervous system. Knees bend. Shoulders hunch forward. Hands rise to the chest, palms outward. These movements provide an instinctive defense against an attack. His reaction unwilled and automatic, Miller swung his gaze from the corridor toward the scene behind him, where the two executives and Miller's clients gaped at an almost finished vase that the man with the camera had knocked over. Chunks of colored glass lay at their feet.

"I'm so sorry, so sorry," the man kept saying in French.

Miller suddenly felt light-headed. His leg was wet. He peered down, gasping when he discovered that his right pant leg was cascading crimson, that he was standing in a pool of swiftly spreading blood.

Femoral artery was all he could think. Somebody cut my-

A knife slash with a sharp blade almost never caused pain unless delivered with force. As the skin parted, there was only a stinging sensation. Spinning, Miller saw the woman who'd followed the group into the factory. Shorts. Sandals. She walked along the murky corridor toward the bright sunlight that formed the exit, looking once over her shoulder.

Abruptly, Miller's vision turned gray. Groping to find something to keep him from falling, he stumbled toward his client's wife, who jerked away in horror. Somebody screamed, but Miller barely heard. The roar of the furnaces became muted. Their blazes dimmed. Despite the heat radiating from them, he felt cold. Reaching, falling, he struck the table, upended it, and sent the remainder of the vases crashing onto the floor.

With his head sideways on the concrete floor, he stared at colored chunks of now-worthless glass shimmering around him. Their luster faded, as did his vision. The last he saw were the chunks being covered by his blood.

Sunlight glinting off its bullet-resistant windows, the helicopter landed in the meadow in front of the cabin, the wind from its rotor blades bending the grass.

"But when will I be able to come back and see my family?" The noise from the chopper's engines forced Mrs. Patterson to strain her voice.

"When we're sure you're out of danger," Jamie explained.

"Which is the same as saying 'when Aaron's out of danger.'" Mrs. Patterson nodded toward Cavanaugh.

Jamie had gotten so used to his assumed name that she felt a sense of unreality when people referred to him as Aaron.

"It's for your family's protection as much as yours," Jamie told her. "Believe me, you'll be well-cared for."

"New York?"

"Yes. Manhattan."

Mrs. Patterson thought a moment. "Is Radio City Music Hall there?"

Jamie almost smiled. "Ten blocks from where you'll be staying. We've got some nice-looking young men who'll be pleased to escort you."

Behind her, Cavanaugh told Garth, "William phoned Judge Canfield and got permission for us to leave the state until the grand jury convenes."

"He certainly has the power to get things done in a hurry." Garth didn't sound happy that influence achieved results. "We're checking every hotel and motel in the area. We're especially interested in the cabins at Moose Junction where you saw the assault team. We're also checking the airlines and the local rental car agencies."

"The car that blew up. You're sure the bomb was under it?"

"The crime scene investigators confirmed that."

"What the hell is going on?" But even as Cavanaugh asked the question, the answer was obvious. "Whoever hired those men was afraid of what they might say if they were captured and interrogated. Ditto the sniper."

In the helicopter, the pilot motioned for everybody to get aboard.

"Thanks for your help, Garth."

"I'm just glad you got out of this alive."

Except for Angelo, Cavanaugh thought, anger burning inside him.

I'll find who did this.

The chopper lifted off, gaining altitude to clear the bluffs. Its destination was eastward. But as it flew from the Teton valley, Cavanaugh did something he'd promised himself that he wouldn't-he asked the pilot to fly north first. He wanted to see his ranch. Above his canyon, he surveyed the scattered wreckage of his home, the charred timbers, the craters where the propane tank and the helicopter had exploded, the flattened lodge, the burned meadow.

He and Jamie looked at one another.

Yes, I'll find who did this, he thought.

Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The newly constructed jail was on the outskirts of the city. The state's hottest time was from the middle of June to the middle of September. But this had been a drought year, the heat lingering into the fall. Even now, in the middle of October, at mid-morning, the temperature was 85. Although Bowie's car windows were open, the absence of a breeze made the interior feel hotter than the air outside, his brow beading with sweat, his wet shirt sticking to the back of the seat. But he had trained himself to ignore inconvenient sensations and focused all his attention on the glass doors at the front of the jail.

Fifteen minutes later, a lanky Hispanic stepped out. His hair was cut so short that his scalp showed. He wore sneakers, jeans, and a white T-shirt, whose short sleeves revealed tattooed gang symbols on his arms. Bowie knew that the man, whose name was Raoul Ramirez, was twenty-three. Raoul had been a member of an east-side gang called the Blades, the name of which Bowie approved, although he wondered if Raoul had the awareness to know that blade didn't mean only knife. Raoul's blade had certainly gotten him into trouble. He spent five years in prison for forcibly restraining a woman in a motel room and raping her. In addition, his police record listed arrests for assault, theft, shooting at an occupied building, and torching a car that belonged to a member of another gang. Except for the rape, every arrest had resulted in probation.