Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(27)

When I squeezed back, he put his hand back on the wheel to pull the car up to the valet. My fingers were left alone to make their own sense of him.



* * *



The hostess led us through the cavernous space. Pillars of changing light held up the thirty-foot ceiling, and the sounds of conversations and music were muffled by careful acoustics. Caden put his hand on my lower back to guide me through, and I kept pace in six-inch heels.

Ronin had finished basic and been stationed in Maryland. He wouldn’t say where, but I knew it was the Aberdeen Proving Ground. He knew I knew and neither confirmed nor denied what he did for a living.

He was alone at a table in the corner, reading a magazine. In the folds, I saw half of President Bush’s face. He stood when we approached.

“Colonel,” Caden said.

“St. John,” he replied, shaking Caden’s hand first.

I envied the public touch, then I gave my own handshake and let Caden pull my seat out for me. We ordered drinks. Wine for me. Whiskey for Ronin. Water for Caden.

Ronin had been a handsome man in basic training, but his eyes had matured from simply piercing to devastating, and his conceit had ripened into confidence.

“We haven’t seen you since the fundraiser,” I said. “Are you still with that girl?”

He leaned back to let the waitress place the glass of whiskey in front of him. “Nah.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Not a big deal. It takes a certain type to deal with me.” His eyes met mine, then Caden’s, and he smirked. He asked about Caden’s residency, my feelings about private practice. Usually we wouldn’t ask about his job, but this time was different.

“I mentioned we wanted to talk to you about something specific,” I started.

“You had me at ‘secret.’”

The waitress came and took our order. It took forever to hear the specials. I didn’t have much of an appetite, even though I hadn’t eaten all day. I needed the feeling of being at a peak of tolerance.

“To old friends,” Ronin held up his drink, and we clicked.

Caden looked as if he’d rather be cut into small pieces than sit at that table.

“So,” I said, “I’ll get right to the point.”

“Please,” Caden said.

I leaned toward Ronin. “I hear Aberdeen was working on a heightened sensory perception protocol?”

Ronin made no sign he was surprised. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“To increase the accuracy of scopaesthesia. The feeling you’re being watched.”

“He knows what scopaesthesia is.”

I ignored my husband. “For troops on the front line. If they can perceive when they’re being watched, they can kill first.”

Ronin leaned back, crossing his legs while he fingered his glass. “And this is interesting to you because?”

I looked at Caden, and he looked at me. This was the moment we broke the shell we’d grown around ourselves. For me. For us.

“Caden has a persistent condition.”

Back to Caden. He wasn’t looking at me. He was touching his water glass with his left hand, and that ring, those fingers, the way the index finger tapped once.

“He thinks someone’s watching him.”

“Not watching,” Caden cuts in. “It’s not malicious.”

“It’s trying to get inside him.”

Ronin uncrossed his legs. “That sounds pretty malicious.”

“It’s—”

Caden put his cold fingers on my arm, and I stopped. “It wants to join with me. I don’t have a feeling it wants to hurt me. It is, just so you know, crazy. It’s not normal. It’s fucking insane crazy talk and I’m embarrassed to be sitting here telling you about it.”

“Having a wife will do that to you.”

They shared a male moment and I let it slide.

“So,” Ronin continued, “you’ve checked environmental causes?”

“Had the house checked for carbon monoxide,” he said.

“And you’ve considered PTSD? I mean, your wife’s a card-carrying expert.”

“It’s not PTSD,” I interjected.

“Really? You were in Fallujah. Anyone who didn’t go crazy already was.”

We sat in a triangle of silence with our own memories of the blood, the screaming, the smell of gunpowder and meat. The food came. I was sure it smelled great to a person who was interested in eating. None of us were. When the waitress asked if we wanted anything else, no one answered.

I broke the silence. “It’s not PTSD. No flashbacks. No disrupted sleep. No emotional outbursts.”

No emotion at all. I didn’t say that. It wasn’t relevant, and it wasn’t one hundred percent true.

“It’s a nascent dissociative disorder,” I continued.

“Wait, wait, wait…” Ronin threw up his hands.

“It’s not—” Caden tried to get a word in.

“Have you tried antipsychotics even?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ve tried everything. But every few weeks, the feeling comes back. We get it under control, but it’s been every week, and now it’s every five days or so. It used to be every few months, but last time, we had a four-day spread.”