Fate’s Edge (The Edge #3)(32)
Author: Ilona Andrews

Audrey raised her head. "I will help you find where Seamus unloaded the diffusers. That’s all. The moment you know your next target, I am out. Do we understand each other?"

Kaldar smiled, and this time his smile was savage. "Perfectly."

Chapter Six

AUDREY had a conscience. She was good at hiding her motivation, but Kaldar had practiced reading people for way too long to miss the subtle tightness in the corners of her mouth, the eyebrows creeping together, and the glimpse of sadness in her eyes. She felt guilty. Probably even ashamed, although of her own involvement or of her family’s stupidity, he couldn’t tell.

Kaldar pondered it, turning it over in his mind. Conscience was a virtue he tried very hard to avoid. True, there were things that were just not done: injuring a child, forcing a woman, torturing a dog. But beyond those basic rules, everything else was just a cumbersome guideline he strived to ignore. He supposed it made him amoral, and he was fine with that.

His world was clearly divided: on one side was the family. Family was everything. It was a shelter in the storm. A place where he would be welcome no matter what he’d done or would do. On the other side lay the rest of the world, like a ripe plum, ready for plucking. Between them ran the line of demarcation. When he crossed it to the family’s side, he was a devoted brother, cousin, and uncle. When he crossed it to the other side, he became a villain.

The heist was the Callahan family’s responsibility. Audrey was a Callahan, and she had stepped up to take it – that he understood. He would’ve done the same. But considering how much she loathed her family, he would’ve thought self-preservation would be a much stronger motivation for her. He’d misread her, and now it bugged him.

Audrey was a puzzle. He quietly examined the place, cataloging her possessions. A solid fridge, dented but clean. Same with the stove. Worn but plush furniture. The chair under Jack sported a very neatly sewn seam where something had torn the upholstery. He bet on the raccoon.

The three windows he could see were narrow, and each one had a heavy-duty shutter, lockable from the inside. A functional dagger hung on the wall between the kitchen cabinets. A small bow waited unstrung on the shelf above the plates, and below it a pair of yellow work boots, streaked with mud, sat on the floor.

Her three bookcases held an assortment of books, all well handled and shopworn. A dozen plastic horses each about six inches long sat on one of the shelves. A few had wings, and at least one sported a horn. On the top shelves, tucked away from raccoon paws, lived a collection of stuffed animals: a pink kitten, a panda, a frog with a yellow helmet marked with a star, a wolf. Daggers and stuffed frogs.

Her decorations made no sense: a blanket in a bright Southwestern style that clashed with everything, a Star Wars movie poster, some sort of potted flower, a scented candle, and a tomahawk. She was like a little magpie: if it struck her fancy, she brought it home.

He’d seen this before, in Cerise’s husband, William. Kaldar’s cousin Cerise was practically his sister, which made the changeling wolf his brother-in-law. The man was a trained, savage killer. He killed with no doubt or remorse and suffered no pangs of conscience after the deed was done. And then he went home and played with toys. His childhood had been pure shit. William had essentially grown up in a prison, barely disguised as a school. It was the fear of that same prison that had driven Jack to stow away on Kaldar’s wyvern.

This house, with its sturdy walls, weapons, and fluffy pink kittens, didn’t belong to an infantile, child-like woman. It belonged to an adult battered by life. She had survived it all, and now she was trying to recapture the childhood she’d never had.

Someone had hurt Audrey, and it had left lasting scars. Kaldar looked at her again. She was golden, not just pretty, but funny and vivid, like a ray of sunshine in the room. There was something good about Audrey, and at least some of it was real. Most women he’d come across in the Edge families that were down on their luck were like haggard dogs: bitter, vicious, devoid of any joy. But she was like a summer day.

What sort of twisted bastard would hurt her so much that she decided to live alone in the woods, in a house with foot-thick stone walls? This was her haven and her shelter. Pulling her out of this place would be next to impossible. Why, in fact it would be a challenge. And Kaldar loved challenges. They kept his life from being boring.

The way she sat now, leaning forward frowning, biting her pink bottom lip, her shirt dipping to reveal a hint of her cleavage . . . He wondered idly if he could get her to bend over a little farther . . .

"Just what are you staring at, exactly?"

Kaldar snapped back to reality. "You. You’ve been thinking hard for the last five minutes. It’s not good for you to strain your pretty little head like that. I’m waiting for the steam to shoot out of your ears to relieve the pressure on your brain."

"Aha." Audrey glanced at Jack and George. "What you have here is a man who was caught gaping at my breasts, and now he’s trying to cover it up with rudeness."

Kaldar lost it and laughed.

"Don’t get any ideas," Audrey told him. "I’m helping you to get your bracelets back, and that’s it. Most of Seamus’s contacts are back East. He did unload some hot merchandise in the West before, but I have no idea where. He’s a creature of habit. If a deal went well, he’d stick to that buyer like glue."

"He wouldn’t have gone back East," Kaldar said. "Too hot with the Mirror and the Hand both hunting him down, looking for the diffusers." Judging by his actions so far, Seamus Callahan was a man with some talent but many flaws. He planned too much, he hustled too much, he lost both of his children and had chosen to save the wrong one. But even Seamus would know better than to run headfirst into a lion’s maw.

Audrey tapped her nails on her glass. "So the question is, who around here would buy such a thing? It must have been somebody who understood the diffusers’ true worth, because they paid over forty grand in Broken money for it." Audrey frowned. "How long ago did Alex go into rehab?"

"Three days," Kaldar said.

"So Seamus and Alex barely had time to make it to the rehab facility after that craziness with the Hand. Seamus would’ve gone through the Broken for sure, probably by plane. I doubt he could’ve flown in with a caseful of money. Too risky." Audrey rose.

"He would’ve had to fence the merchandise here," Kaldar said.

Audrey rose and headed to the fridge. "I need to see Gnome. He’s the local fence, and he’ll be our best bet."

"Does he live in the fridge?" Jack asked.

Heh. Of course, with Jack there was no way to tell if he was joking or being literal