Edge of Dreams Read Online Free Page A

happened. Who are these kids and how did they end up in the mines?”
    Patti brought me another cup of coffee and topped off Lauren’s. I noticed she gave the other woman decaf. Good idea. Lauren already looked wired to the gills.
    She looked down at her hands, visibly collecting herself. She looked up, meeting my gaze. “I’ve been working on a case involving Sparkle Dust. The Tyet makers and distributers have been using kids as messengers and sometimes couriers. Couple of days ago, five of them vanished. I have reason to believe that this particular group of kids decided to start making their own drugs and went down into the mines to get some of the base mineral for making SD.”
    I leaned against the back of the booth and considered what she’d said. What had they been thinking? First—stealing anything from the Tyet was a ticket to the dead zone, and second, the mountain was a huge warren of passages and caves. Precious few of them were publicly mapped. Unless they knew exactly where they were going and had left themselves a trail of breadcrumbs, they’d probably gotten lost in the first ten minutes. I was betting on lost. The kind of breadcrumbs they needed involved high tech or good magic, and neither were cheap. Teenagers weren’t going to just walk into Best Buy and find what they needed.
    I frowned as questions clicked into my head. “They’ve been gone two days? How come the news doesn’t have a hold of this?” Before the detective could answer, my suspicion doubled. “Why come to me? The cops have tracers.” Not very good ones, admittedly, and after two days, they probably wouldn’t be able to find the trace. But still, cops didn’t go looking for outside help on cases like this unless they had more than a professional interest. From the looks of her, Detective Lauren Morton was deeply interested.
    Lauren’s mouth hardened. “The department isn’t willing to allocate resources to an undermountain search. These kids are drug runners and don’t merit the cost.”
    In other words, nobody important was going to care if they died. My hand tightened around my coffee cup. “Why do you care so much?”
    She hesitated. “One of them is my nephew.”
    My brows went up. “Your nephew? How? You’re a cop.” The moment I said the words, I wanted to reel them back. Talk about a dumb question. Cops and cop families weren’t immune to breaking the law. Hell, most of the Diamond City force was on the Tyet payroll. In a city run by the Tyet and an economy revolving around billions of dollars of diamonds and drugs, that was just the way things were done in Diamond City.
    Lauren gave a weak smile. “We moved here last summer. My brother—Well, let’s just say he couldn’t be a good father and leave it at that. His ex, Trevor’s mom, left years ago. Anyhow, I took a job here. Figured I’d get Trevor somewhere he could make a new start. He’d gotten a little bit wild back in Rock Hill. Hanging out with the wrong crowd. He’d been pinched for vandalizing and petty theft. I thought maybe being in the mountains and isolated, he’d get sorted out in school and straighten up. But then he made friends with this no-good excuse for a boy—Justin Barba. Next thing I know, he was involved in Tyet business.”
    She spun her spoon on the table. “It’s my fault. The job takes up more time than I thought it would, you know?” She smiled again, and just as quickly it faded. “Trevor has no one else but me. I should have been with him more.”
    Even if I’d been leaning in that direction, which I wasn’t, I couldn’t judge her. She was taking care of a kid that didn’t even belong to her. As far as I was concerned, that made her pretty close to a saint. I had some experience with being abandoned to the care of others.
    “How old is he?”
    “Seventeen. Just turned.”
    “He’s not using, is he?” My stomach clenched as I remembered the surgeon and the way I could see the dark threads of his arteries