Page 62 of Over the Edge

Hehadto leave her behind.

Of course, he was going to miss her like crazy. He would miss her humor and quick intelligence, her blunt honesty and pithy observations on everything and everyone. Hell, he would miss simply looking at her. He never tired of her face, her smile, or the way her eyes lit up when she looked at him.

She had her whole career—her wholelife—in front of her. Not to mention he actually cared about her, a lot. He’d already put her at risk, forced her to kill, and made her face her family.

Worst of all, he’d given in to his feelings for her and taken her to bed. Which had to have sent her all kinds of unspoken promises.

It had been ahugemistake, even if he couldn’t bring himself to regret a single second of being with her. He would cherish the memory for as long at he had left in this world, even if it was only a few days or weeks.

God, he was a selfish bastard. She surely deserved better than him.

He continued castigating himself for sleeping with her as it seemed to be the state of mind best suited to actually leaving her in a matter of minutes.

No matter how much he wished for time to stop, his watch ticked toward midnight at light speed. A few minutes before midnight, Anna excused herself, murmuring about the restroom. He was so relieved his knees actually felt weak. He wasn’t going to have to say goodbye to her, after all.

Swearing at himself for being a lousy coward, he made his way to the cloak room where he’d bribed an attendant to store his gear. Hoisting the heavy duffel bags, he hurried to the back of the hotel and the loading dock.

It was midnight on the nose when he stepped outside. The rear of the hotel smelled like cooking oil and fresh rain, and his gut roiled in protest.

“You ready to go?” a gruff voice asked in English. Hmm. Not Gohar.

“I am.” Trevor stepped forward and the truck driver stepped down from the cab of the vehicle.

“You’re kidding me,” Trevor blurted. Mansur Mughul, the asshole who’d been sniffing around Anna, came into the dim pool of light on the loading dock.

“You want a ride or not?” Mansur demanded.

With a huff of disgust, Trevor nodded.

“Get out of that fancy suit. You’re my assistant on this delivery.” Mansur, wearing rough work clothes himself, tossed him a once-white, long-tailed shirt, and a grubby vest for over it. Trevor grabbed cargo pants out of his luggage and stripped out of his suit.

He jammed on the slouchy felt cap that Mansur tossed him and lifted his bags into the high-sided flatbed truck. The back of the sturdy vehicle was covered with canvas stretched over curved metal poles. A number of wooden crates and cardboard boxes were stacked inside, already. He didn’t want to know what was in them and didn’t ask. If they were Gohar’s business, he doubted they were entirely legal cargo.

At least Mansur would be highly motivated to get Trevor as far away from here—and Anna—as possible. Particularly since the jerk was planning on marrying her. Of course, Mansur might get the bright idea to kill him and be permanently done with a potential rival.

Good thing he had a bottle of stim-pills in his gear that would allow him to stay awake for several days if necessary. No way was he sleeping while Mansur was close by and able to slit his throat.

The truck rumbled out of the alley behind the hotel and Mansur turned it toward the west. If it had ever had shock absorbers, they were long gone, and the ride was tooth-jarring.

A sharp pang of loss stabbed Trevor in the vicinity of his heart, shocking the hell out of him. For the first time in a solid year, he was leaving Anna’s side. And it felt awful in the extreme. It was as if he’d cut off his right arm and left it back at the hotel.

He’d known it would suck to leave her, but he’d had no idea it would suck this bad. He stared unseeing at the ribbon of road illuminated in the headlights. Just how hardhadhe fallen for her?

The hell of it was that he’d had no idea until this very minute just how attached to her he really was. It figured. It took leaving her to know how much he loved being with her.

Temptation to tell Mansur to turn around and take him back to her hovered on the tip of his tongue. Which was when the devious brilliance of Gohar’s choice of driver became clear. No way would Mansur take the pesky Englishman back to Anna.

Trevor briefly considered jumping out of the truck, but he would break his neck. Nope. He was committed now, like it or not.

He definitely didnotlike it.

It took them about a half-hour to leave behind Karaken altogether. The last houses fell behind, and the road climbed into the foothills west of the capital. The pavement deteriorated as the country became more wild around them, and Mansur slowed the truck to no more than thirty miles per hour.

Clouds scudded across a waning moon, and Trevor caught glimpses of the terrain, rocky and barren. Here and there he spied a farm, but at this time of night, the stone buildings were dark and still.

The hardest part of pretending to be a regular civilian in a situation like this was keeping in check his internal predator, which was clamoring for release. No scanning the horizon for threats, no checking their six o’clock for tails. Instead, he had to sit calmly in the cab of a truck and show none of the hunting instincts screaming through him.

With every passing mile, the relative safety of civilization fell further behind, and the danger around him increased. He felt it in the tightening of the skin across his forehead and the vague tension in the back of his neck.

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