• Complain

Jeffery Deaver - Edge

Here you can read online Jeffery Deaver - Edge full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2010, publisher: Simon and Schuster, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Jeffery Deaver Edge

Edge: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Edge" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Behind the well-known U.S. security organizations the FBI and CIA among themlies a heavily guarded, anonymous government agency dedicated to intelligence surveillance and to a highly specialized brand of citizen protection. Shock waves of alarm ripple through the clandestine agency when Washington, D.C., police detective Ryan Kessler inexplicably becomes the target of Henry Loving, a seasoned, ruthless lifter hired to obtain information using whatever means necessary. While Loving is deft at torture, his expertise lies in getting an edge on his victimleverageusually by kidnapping or threatening family until the primary caves under pressure. The job of keeping the Kessler family alive falls to a man named Corte, a senior federal protection officer known as a shepherd. Uncompromising, relentlessly devoted to protecting those in his care and a passionate board game aficionado, he applies brilliant gaming strategy to his work. For Corte, the reappearance of Lovingthe man who, six years earlier, had tortured and killed someone close to himis also an opportunity to avenge his friends death. The assignment soon escalates into a fast-paced duel between Corte and Loving, a dangerous volley of wits and calculated risks. As he shepherds the Kesslers to a concealed safe house, Corte must anticipate Lovings every step as the lifter moves in on his prey, and with the help of razor-sharp investigator Claire DuBois and his longtime ally, FBI agent Paul Fredericks, pinpoint which of Kesslers seemingly insignificant cases has triggered Lovings return. As the team digs deeper, each of the Kesslers comes under close scrutiny, and in captivity their family bonds are stretched to the breaking pointas the lifter draws near, Corte must ultimately choose between protecting his charges and exposing them to a killer in the name of long-awaited revenge.

Jeffery Deaver: author's other books


Who wrote Edge? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Edge — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Edge" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Picture 1

A LSO BY J EFFERY D EAVER

The Burning Wire*

Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)

The Watch List ( The Copper Bracelet and

The Chopin Manuscript ) (Contributor)

Roadside Crosses**

The Bodies Left Behind

The Broken Window*

The Sleeping Doll**

More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two

The Cold Moon*/**

The Twelfth Card*

Garden of Beasts

Twisted: Collected Stories

The Vanished Man*

The Stone Monkey*

The Blue Nowhere The Empty Chair*

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil's Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer*

The Bone Collector*

A Maiden's Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Hell's Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor)

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Introduction)

*Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs

**Featuring Kathryn Dance

Simon Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York NY 10020 - photo 2

Picture 3

Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Jeffery Deaver

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2010

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com .

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deaver, Jeffery.
Edge / Jeffery Deaver.
p. cm.
1. Witness--Protection--Fiction. 2. Washington (D.C.)--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.E1755E34 2010
813'.54--dc22
2010026347

ISBN: 978-1-4391-5635-3
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5897-5 (ebook)

For Shea, Sabrina and Brynn

June 2004

THE RULES OF PLAY

THE MAN WHO wanted to kill the young woman sitting beside me was three-quarters - photo 4

THE MAN WHO wanted to kill the young woman sitting beside me was three-quarters of a mile behind us, as we drove through a pastoral setting of tobacco and cotton fields this humid morning.

A glance in the rearview mirror revealed a sliver of car, moving at a comfortable pace with the traffic, piloted by a man who by all appearances seemed hardly different from any one of a hundred drivers on this recently resurfaced divided highway.

"Officer Fallow?" Alissa began. Then, as I'd been urging her for the past week: "Abe?"

"Yes."

"Is he still there?" She'd seen my gaze.

"Yes. And so's our tail," I added for reassurance. My protege was behind the killer, two or three car lengths. He was not the only person from our organization on the job.

"Okay," Alissa whispered. The woman, in her midthirties, was a whistle-blower against a government contractor that did a lot of work for the army. The company was adamant that it had done nothing wrong and claimed it welcomed an investigation. But there'd been an attempt on Alissa's life a week ago and--since I'd been in the army with one of the senior commanders at Bragg--Defense had called me in to guard her. As head of the organization I don't do much fieldwork any longer but I was glad to get out, to tell the truth. My typical day was ten hours at my desk in our Alexandria office. And in the past month it had been closer to twelve or fourteen, as we coordinated the protection of five high-level organized crime informants, before handing them over to Witness Protection for their face-lifts.

It was good to be back in the saddle, if only for a week or so.

I hit a speed dial button, calling my protege.

"It's Abe," I said into my hands-free. "Where is he now?"

"Make it a half mile. Moving up slowly."

The hitter, whose identity we didn't know, was in a nondescript Hyundai sedan, gray.

I was behind an eighteen-foot truck, CAROLINA POULTRY PROCESSING COMPANY painted on the side. It was empty and being driven by one of our transport people. In front of that was a car identical to the one I was driving.

"We've got two miles till the swap," I said.

Four voices acknowledged this over four very encrypted com devices.

I disconnected.

Without looking at her, I said to Alissa, "It's going to be fine."

"I just ..." she said in a whisper. "I don't know." She fell silent and stared into the side-view mirror as if the man who wanted to kill her were right behind us.

"It's all going just like we planned."

When innocent people find themselves in situations that require the presence and protection of people like me, their reaction more often than not is as much bewilderment as fear. Mortality is tough to process.

But keeping people safe, keeping people alive, is a business like any other. I frequently told this to my protege and the others in the office, probably irritating them to no end with both the repetition and the stodgy tone. But I kept on saying it because you can't forget, ever. It's a business, with rigid procedures that we study the way surgeons learn to slice flesh precisely and pilots learn to keep tons of metal safely aloft. These techniques have been honed over the years and they worked.

Business ...

Of course, it was also true that the hitter who was behind us at the moment, intent on killing the woman next to me, treated his job as a business too. I knew this sure as steel. He was just as serious as I was, had studied procedures as diligently as I had, was smart, IQ-wise and streetwise, and he had advantages over me: His rules were unencumbered by my constraints--the Constitution and the laws promulgated thereunder.

Still, I believe there is an advantage in being in the right. In all my years of doing this work I'd never lost a principal. And I wasn't going to lose Alissa.

A business ... which meant remaining calm as a surgeon, calm as a pilot.

Alissa was not calm, of course. She was breathing hard, worrying her cuff as she stared at a sprawling magnolia tree we were passing, an outrider of a or chestnut forest, bordering a huge cotton field, the tufts bursting. She was uneasily spinning a thin diamond bracelet--a treat to herself on a recent birthday. She now glanced at the jewelry and then her palms, which were sweating, and placed her hands on her navy blue skirt. Under my care, Alissa had worn dark clothing exclusively. It was camouflage but not because she was the target of a professional killer; it was about her weight, which she'd wrestled with since adolescence. I knew this because we'd shared meals and I'd seen the battle up close. She'd also talked quite a bit about her struggle with weight. Some principals don't need or want camaraderie. Others, like Alissa, need us to be friends. I don't do well in that role but I try and can generally pull it off.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Edge»

Look at similar books to Edge. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Edge»

Discussion, reviews of the book Edge and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.