Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(120)

“You told Beck that if he didn’t give you a name, you were moving on to Plan B. What were you going to do to him?”

Sean grimaced. Hard-core intimidation was tense, nasty work. He didn’t really have the stomach for it. “Fucked if I know,” he grumbled. “I don’t even have a Plan A, let alone B. Let’s get gussied up for Parrish.”



Cindy gulped her coffee, and tried again to plow through an article about general plane wave solutions to sound wave equations in Sound Spectrum Journal, an egghead rag if she’d ever saw one. She’d even bought some intellectual horn-rimmed glasses, but she longed for a Marie Claire. An article on the cover had caught her eye. When He Just Can’t Forgive: Real Life Stories of Women Who Commited the Unforgivable Sin. Hah. Bet those real life women had nothing on her.

She was nervous, scared, and buzzed out of her mind on caffeine, but if she bagged now, she’d ruin all of Miles’s careful social engineering for nothing. This stunt might be monstrously stupid, but she wanted it to count for something. Especially if she was risking her life.

Her flop sweat was a clammy strip down her back. She was a pretty good liar, but how long could it take for that guy to figure out that she did not have Miles’s brain in her head?

She thought about how angry Miles would be if he knew where she was. She wished she’d managed to seduce him. At least once, before…well, before whatever was going to happen happened.

Things looked really poignant when a girl was going undercover to hunt down a killer—with no backup, no safety net, nothing in her purse but a cell phone, a deactivated radio transmitter and lip gloss.

A guy walked into the Starbucks, and looked around like he was supposed to meet someone. She gave him a sideways once-over.

Nice looking, in a bland sort of way. His nose was too small and pointy for her tastes. She preferred nice, big, hooked honkers. Same with his brown hair. Too short. He had an OK body, for a nerd.

His face looked nice enough, but then again, so had Ted Bundy’s.

His eyes slid towards her. She redirected her gaze at the magazine. He was coming her way. Oh, shit. It was him. She was on.

She missed Daddy so bad, she could have bawled. Daddy would have stopped her from doing such a stupid, butthead thing. She’d be sulking in her room at home right now, if Daddy hadn’t screwed up and gotten himself incarcerated. She tried to breathe. She felt dizzy.

“Mina?” the guy asked.

She looked up, into guileless hazel eyes. No blaze of festering hatred in them. No skin-creeping vibe. No bloodstains under his fingernails. Just a guy in a buttoned down blue cotton shirt and jeans. He could have been a manager in a stereo store. “Jared?” she asked.

The guy smiled. A nice smile, not a maniacal Green Goblin grin.

He slid into the seat opposite, and peeked at the cover of Sound Spectrum. He chuckled. “Picked up a little light reading, huh? I get that one sometimes, too, just for kicks. It’s good for the bathroom.”

Cindy tried to laugh. Black spots danced in front of her face.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice hollow. “It’s a real hoot.”



Liv leaned over from her cross-legged position on the rug in front of one of Tam’s big windows, stretching sore muscles. Banging her head against a wall, was how Davy had described it. Good metaphor.

She’d never liked puzzles. Her opinion was that communication between human beings was already difficult under the best of circumstances.

Of course, in this case, Kev had had a good reason.

The quiet was oppressive. Tam had gotten bored with “your boyfriend’s tedious little project” long ago and had retreated to her tower workroom, leaving Liv to wring her lonesome, stressed out brain alone and unassisted. Liv could hardly blame her. This was hell.

She wanted to make a significant contribution to this godawful puzzle. To be something other than a dead weight slung around Sean’s neck, or alternately, his sexual plaything. And as far as that went, she still couldn’t get used to herself cast in the role of a sexual plaything.

She wasn’t the type. She was a serious, independent, hardworking woman who favored baggy dresses, cotton leggings and flat shoes. Here she was, legs shaved, made up, dressed up, lotioned and perfumed. Wearing a frilly green bra and underwear set. Getting all hot and bothered imagining what Sean would do if he saw her in it. Whew.

Eyes on the prize, she lectured herself. Concentrate.

She studied the key Sean had scrawled for her. A no-brainer, he’d explained. Kev had used the code they’d cut their teeth on as babbling babes. He’d written out the alphabet, and working back to front starting with Z, had written under it the names of the McCloud family with no letter repetitions. Jeannie, Davy, Connor, Kevin, Sean McCloud. That yielded JEANIDVYCORKSMLU, which left ten unused letters to insert into the key in back to front alphabetical order. Thus, her own name was written KLFIFZ QSTFWKVV. Numbers remained unchanged.

Clear as day. Easy as pie. Go for it. Knock yourself out, babe.

Bwah-hah-hah. Those McClouds could take their damn babbling baby code and stick it where the sun didn’t shine.

Proof on the tapes in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.

Damn those difficult, convoluted McCloud men. EF had to be Endicott Falls, but PV? She didn’t have a clue. The urgency in the faded, coded scrawl made her uneasy and sad.

Count the birds. The first sketch was a lake, with nine wild geese flying over it. Then two eagles, perched on a branch. Then a waterfall, no birds, but she’d decided that the lack of birds signified zero. A mountain crag, no birds. Seven swans. Nine gulls on a beach. Seven ducks in a pond. Nine two zero zero seven nine seven. OK, she’d counted them. So? Anyone? And what the hell was HC? Or B63?