Reddit reviews THE EDGE OF TRUST: Book ONE (TEAM EDGE 1)

[Novel] The EDGE Of Trust (Romantic Suspense)

Chapter One

January

As two o’clock in the morning approached, night settled in under a round, buxom moon. Former Navy SEAL Commander Dillon Caldwell wouldn’t have picked a night this bright on a bet, but since Sanchez was moving the money tomorrow he didn’t have much choice.

Lucky for him, slipping in and out of shadows was easy. However, slipping unnoticed into a Mexican drug lord’s villa might prove to be a little tricky.

While negotiating past guards, dogs, and high-tech security might be dicey, one thing in Dillon’s favor was the long-ass tunnel sweetly positioned smack in the middle of two hundred acres on Raphael Sanchez’s property, which sprawled just outside the teeming city of Tijuana. Dillon had intel on the place, and he’d bet a month’s salary that the tunnel, because it was so far out, wouldn’t be given more than minimal thought. It was the one weak link in Sanchez’s otherwise stellar security.

The fact that Sanchez ran a shorter crew after midnight helped. A little. He hoped.

Crouched in darkness, just outside a small, private hangar, Dillon released a ready breath as two uniformed security guards, chatting in Spanish, climbed into a golf cart and set off down a dirt airstrip. “Show time. We’ve got one hour before those overpaid goons swing back our way. Thirty minutes to the outer perimeter, thirty minutes back.” He set the timer on his watch. “Let’s get inside.”

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Lieutenant Jake Kincaid, Dillon’s second-in-command, plugged some kind of electronic gizmo into the office door’s keypad. Once the device found the correct numeric sequence, the digital display beeped and Jake opened the door.

Both men hitched up their packs, entered the building, and switched on flashlights.

“So you can impress me with all your super-secret spy stuff.” Dillon moved quietly through the office and into the main hangar. The beam of his flashlight cut across a Cessna four-seater prop hunkered down at the far end.

“I’m pretty sure I had to save up a lot of box-tops to get you in here with said super-secret spy stuff.” Jake moved ahead and to the left. “Storage room and tunnel are over here.”

Jake was an MIT refugee who should have been in prison for hacking, but he’d lucked out and gotten a life sentence in the U.S. Navy instead. Thanks to his CIA father, Jake had also been given the added benefit of working with Dillon at EDGE. Something Dillon absolutely never took for granted.

Jake was the light to Dillon’s dark. Both were California natives, but Jake had the All-American surfer dude theme working—sun-streaked hair, cheek stubble, constantly stoked, cool above all, he was boglius, boss, and totally chill. Except when he wasn’t. When he wasn’t, Jake was scary as hell, even to Dillon.

Genius hacker, SEAL, and beach bum. Dillon liked to think Jake had multiple personality disorder. Maybe some sort of ADD mixed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and a whole lot of Rainman savant. Not that he had any kind of real mental disorder, probably, but it was sure easier to compartmentalize a guy whose IQ made Steven Hawking look like a halfwit.

Jake picked the lock on the storage room door and both men entered. Metal shelves lined one wall. Oil. Rags. Tools. Typical mechanic’s stuff. Cleaning supplies huddled in a corner. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the large circle of gray covering the floor in the far side of the small room.

Dillon lifted off the lightweight polymer cover, set it aside, and frowned at the narrow opening. “Please tell me this thing opens up and that I’m not going to have to crawl half a mile to the villa.” Not that he minded crawling, but he was in a bit of a time crunch here.

Jake’s expression stayed neutral. “If you crawl real fast, you won’t even notice the distance. I brought you kneepads.”

“Kneepad this.” Dillon made a crude gesture. “I’ve got,” he glanced at his watch, “exactly fifty-three minutes to get there, get in, get back, and get us out of here.”

Jake set his pack down and started sorting gear. He handed Dillon night-vision goggles, a throat mike and an earbud. “And here I thought you’d have had the tunnel all scoped out.”

Dillon gave him a look. “That would be your job. Mine, you may remember, is trying not to get killed.”

Jake grunted, pulled out a laptop and started tapping keys. “You sure you don’t want me to come with?”

“Just stay put and run the remotes.”

Jake shrugged. “Okie dokes. Once you’re down the ladder, the tunnel opens up to be seven-by-four. Lights run along the east wall. An air filtration system keeps fresh air circulating. At fifty-foot intervals you’ll see a water drainage system. Don’t want any ground water mucking up Sanchez’s Gucci loafers.”

“Good to know.” Dillon geared up. Stuck the earbud into his left ear.

“So. Once you’re in the villa, what exactly are you looking for?”

“Leverage.”

"Uh huh. What kind of leverage?” Jake shot him a suspicious look, probably wondering if he should stage a prudent retreat.

Dillon kept his answer simple and honest. “No idea.”

Jake nodded, drumming fingers against leg. “You don’t know.” No shock. No fear. Just calm acceptance. “Okay. Well. That’s always fun.”

“I figure I’ll know it when I see it.” He pulled a beanie down over his ears, snapped on a pair of black Nitrile gloves.

“As long as said leverage doesn’t get you dead.”

“As long as you do your job, this should be a piece of cake.”

“Words to live by.” Jake nodded, then stopped abruptly. “Wait a minute. What about the money? I’d say stealing the money would be excellent leverage.”

“Won’t be here. Too risky. You know, wife and kid around, kidnapping, ransom, murder, all that.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I need to spark a little fear. Maybe grab something a little more personal.”

“So lop off his wedding ring. And, you know, the finger he’s wearing it on. That’s personal.”

“And oh so clandestine, too, you deranged psycho.” Dillon sidled toward the entrance. “I’ve studied the blueprints of the house. Give me eyes and ears and I’ll handle the rest.”

Jake passed over a tranq gun for the dogs and a tactical snake camera, the last of the gear Dillon needed. “All set. State-of-the-art and all in matching black. Coordinates nicely with the cat burglar theme you’ve got going.”

Dillon checked his Glock, stuck his flashlight in a side pocket of his cargo pants and climbed down the ladder into blackness. He flipped the NVG’s down over his eyes. After taking a precious few seconds to get oriented, he started off at a brisk clip. All he saw was cement, cement, and more cement. Four walls of nothing but cement for half a freakin’ mile. The sheer arrogance of it appalled and amazed him.

As his boots thudded against the concrete he wondered just how safe this tunnel, surely not built to code, was. “How often they do maintenance down here?”

“Once a week. Tuesdays. It’s now Wednesday, so we’re good. Fifty minutes left.”

“Instead of a panic room, Sanchez has a getaway tunnel. How sensible of him.” He’d secured himself into not just an armed compound, but a DoD’s wet dream. Or nightmare. Depending.

A perturbing thought occurred to Dillon. “I don’t have to scale walls I hope. You absolutely did not mention walls.” Dillon had been scrutinizing the Sanchez Brothers Cartel for almost a year now and two days ago he’d gotten the go-ahead to try to get inside. He’d pulled Jake in for this little recon excursion, but neither one of them had been able to get as many details on the Sanchez estate as Dillon would have liked. At least not yet. If tomorrow was successful, Dillon would get all the intel he could handle. Enough, he hoped, to gain Sanchez’s trusty inner circle. In the meantime, he had zero climbing gear with him other than a nylon rope.

“No walls. Forty-six minutes.”

“Maybe I should exercise my constitutional right to bear arms while I’m here. And Sanchez’s inhuman right to see how much C-4 it would take to level this joint. Imagine the smug satisfaction I’d get.” And someday, he thought, I’ll dance on that soulless bastard’s grave.

Dillon saw a ladder up ahead and slowed to a walk. “Okay, I’m at the drain cover in the courtyard.” If the info he had was accurate, and he was oh-so-screwed if it wasn’t, he should now be standing dead center of the estate.

“Forty-two minutes,” Jake said, then asked, “Eyes on?”

“Give me a sec,” Dillon said, and finessed the camera up through a hole in the metal grate. “Okay, go.”

Dillon felt the tip of the camera rotate as Jake controlled it remotely from his end. “Well, let’s see,” Jake said in his best realtor’s voice, “What we have here is a luxurious oasis with a drug baron fountain-and-flowers motif offering a spectacular resort-style setting perfect for entertaining corrupt politicos and the like. Exceptional features include infrared solutions, black mirror technology, a digital CCTV, and a little pan-tilt-zoom action. Cameras mounted at strategic intervals overlook an expansive lanai, a spacious covered patio and Palapa cabana, as well as a heated pool. Columned archways appear to lead to some kind of garden area and waterfall thing. No guards in sight. Casa Sanchez is very thorough. I wonder if he has a sub-zero fridge.”

Dillon rolled his eyes. “I’ll be sure to look. Loop on main?”

“Affirmative. One minute loop set.”

“Motion sensors?”

“Dead.”

“Okay, I’m going in.”

“Uh, hold up. Very Big Dog approaching your six.”

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