Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) by Neal Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

words. He had to force them out. "She's been kidnapped."
    There was silence on the other end as Rankin took in what Edger just told him, then he said, "Christ, Harry."
    "I'm almost at the office. I'll see you shortly."
    Edger put his phone back in his coat pocket and drove faster towards Donegal Square.
     
    John Rankin put the phone down and sat back in his chair in shock. He couldn't believe what he just heard. Poor Kaitlin, was his first thought. He couldn't imagine the trauma she was probably experiencing right now. His second thought was: What the fuck has Harry done to warrant someone kidnapping his daughter?
    Right from the moment he first met Harry Edger, Rankin knew the man was a dark horse, a man with a lot of experience, and possibly with a lot of secrets. When Rankin interviewed Edger a year ago for the job of investigator and security operative, Rankin's first impression was that Edger was a dangerous man. Not just because of his massive size, which was enough to intimidate even the hardest of people, but because of the look in the man's eyes. It was a look that said he had seen the worst of mankind, the horror in the world that few people ever got to see, never mind live to tell about it. Edger had seen it all, and going from some of the stories he told to Rankin in private, Rankin knew Edger should have been killed on more than a dozen different occasions. Yet he wasn't killed. He had managed to survive some truly awful situations, situations that had killed tougher men before him. That alone made Edger a dangerous man, but also a highly capable one, and one who knew how to get the job done and done right. Rankin knew, in that initial interview, that he wanted a man like Edger on his team. Such men were hard to come by, and considering the type of work the job entailed, Rankin hired Edger straight away.
    But there was also something about Edger that bothered Rankin. Edger was hiding something, something he didn't want anyone else to know about. In his initial interview, it transpired that Edger had joined the Foreign Legion when he was just eighteen. Rankin had met more than a few Legionnaire's in his time, and almost without exception, every one of them joined the Legion because they were running from something, or because they wanted to leave their old lives behind them for some reason.
    "So why did you join the Legion?" Rankin asked Edger in his interview.
    Edger answered without hesitation. "I wanted to be a soldier."
    Rankin smiled and nodded. "Come on, Harry. Tell me why you really joined up."
    "I wanted to be a soldier."
    Rankin stared at him a moment, trying to see what lay behind the stock response. Edger was a blank slate, hard to read. "Did you change your name?"
    Edger shook his head. "I kept my own name."
    "Why?"
    "I didn't want to be anyone else," he said after a brief hesitation.
    "That's why a lot of guys join the Legion, though isn't it? To get a new identity. Start over. Why not join the British or Irish army if all you wanted to be was a soldier?"
    "The British army didn't appeal, for obvious reasons. I interviewed for the Irish Defence Forces."
    "What happened?"
    "They turned me down. Not educated enough, apparently."
    "So the Legion was your only choice, is that it?"
    "Something like that."
    "Something like that?"
    "I wanted to join the American Marines, but they only took US citizens. So yeah, the Legion was the only option I had left."
    Rankin nodded, only half satisfied by Edger's answers. Rankin himself had spent nearly thirty years as a cop in the British military. He knew when someone was holding back information, and Edger was definitely holding back something, though Rankin couldn't figure out what. It almost made him turn Edger down for the job. Rankin wanted someone he could trust working for him, not someone with a dark past that made them unstable. But there was a certain honesty to Edger that Rankin appreciated, despite the feeling he had that Edger was hiding something. In the