Razor Edge: Razor Trilogy Three (Razor Thriller Romance Novella Book 3)

A Thriller Romance Trilogy

Novella Three

NADINE DOOLITTLE

Copyright 2015 Nadine
Doolittle

Electronic Edition 2015

Writewood
Creations

261 Lac Bernard Road

Alcove, Quebec

Canada J0X 1A0

[email protected]

ISBN 978-0-9938963-8-5

All rights reserved.

This publication remains the copyrighted
property

of
the author and may not be redistributed for commercial

or
non-commercial purposes.

Cover design by
Writewood
Creations

Image provided by
iStock
Photos/
travenian

RAZOR EDGE is the third
novella-length
installment
in a steamy
three-part romance-thriller series. The story contains scenes and language
written for a mature audience.

A 22-year-old violinist and a driven,
enigmatic billionaire butt heads as they try to find an agoraphobic young man
who has gone missing. Charlotte Dawson is drawn into the Razor family secrets,
becoming Daniel Razor’s adversary, as well as his ally, in the hunt to find his
stepbrother. She needs his money and he needs her resourcefulness but that
doesn’t make them friends. As the investigation deepens, Charlotte begins to
wonder if the man she is working for is the man she should be running from.

Set in fog-shrouded San Francisco, The
Razor Serial Trilogy is gothic noir romance in the tradition of Alfred
Hitchcock. Written in three novellas, the final book, RAZOR EDGE wraps up the
mystery but the series will continue in December 2015.

Gatineau
Hills Mystery Trilogy

Iced Under

The Grey Lady

The River Bride

Razor Novella Trilogy

Razor Wire

Razor Blade

Razor Edge

♫

DANIEL RAZOR shaved very carefully; steam
rising up from the sink and fogging the bathroom mirror as he lathered his face
and dragged the blade over his jaw.

He glanced at his reflection and his
stomach clenched. His hand shook but he managed to pull off a close shave
without nicking himself. Nerves, he thought, about seeing her again. Charlotte
Dawson had questions and he didn’t have answers. Carefully formulated responses
were not answers. She was smart and perhaps as amoral as he was; she would see
through any smoke screen he tried to throw up. Charlotte was alive but only by
the skin of her teeth. A few minutes more and he’d have found her body smashed
on the pavement. That was too close. No room for error. Reasonable questions
called for reasonable answers and Daniel couldn’t give her any. There was
nothing reasonable about what happened to her on the roof.

Daniel pulled the blade over his throat. It
struck him as ironic that his past mistakes had come back to bite him in the
ass just when he was finally ready to commit to Anastasia. Even more
ironically, that it was Anastasia doing the biting. After three years of
looking the other way, his fiancée had finally decided to take her revenge.
This is the first one she’s tried to kill, he thought with a grimace.

Daniel didn’t lie to Charlotte; he didn’t
see
a woman when he came up in the
elevator. He
smelled
her. Anastasia’s
perfume was one of a kind, blended exclusively for her. Daniel guessed why she
was there and why she did what she did. She must have found out Charlotte
Dawson had spent the night in the mansion from one of the staff. Marshall
always informed Joyce, Wilma and Jackson when there were overnight guests. Her
jealousy went into overdrive after being suppressed for so long. His fiancée
had been burned before by his infidelity.

What she did to Charlotte was on him. He’d
created that rage in
Tasha
. Charlotte was right about
one thing—someone always gets hurt.

Daniel caught his reflection staring back
at him, wryly accusatory. The man in the mirror was still the bad boy who took
what he wanted. Why did he take his brother’s girlfriend to bed? Why did he
feel the compulsion to throw a grenade into every good part of his life?

First Joel and now
Anastasia.
Charlotte was caught in the middle.

Daniel snatched up a towel and dried his
face on it vigorously, rubbing out the image.
Don’t grow a conscience now, Razor.
There was no proof Anastasia
tried to kill Charlotte. It could have been an accident.
Tasha
was trapped on the roof; she panicked and pushed past Charlotte to make her
escape and Charlotte lost her balance.

Daniel avoided his eyes in the mirror. He
was spinning the truth but he had no choice.
Tasha
could not be charged with attempted murder. She knew too much. Anastasia must’ve
come to the house looking for him and one of the staff told her Charlotte had
spent the night. When he found out who it was, he’d fire their ass. Rule number
one for continued employment in Razor mansion was learn to keep your mouth
shut.

Charlotte said the woman she saw was
wearing a blue raincoat. Anastasia probably has a coat similar in
color
to this mysterious woman in blue. Daniel still didn’t
believe there was any such person, though why Charlotte would make her up was
unclear.

Charlotte worried him. He thought he knew
women, he thought he’d seen it all ... but Charlotte Dawson was an enigma. She
could be bought—but that meant nothing. In business, the guy who writes the
checks is usually confident of getting what he paid for. In Charlotte Dawson’s
convoluted moral order, the guy who writes the checks gets what she decides he
gets. Daniel couldn’t control her and he didn’t know what she would do next.
The violin was her Achilles heel which gave him some measure of power over her
for the time being.

But he was worried. What happened between
her and Joel would take them all down if he didn’t get her firmly under
control. She was keeping a journal of some sort. He had to get his hands on it
before she left for Switzerland and was beyond his reach.

If John Razor was alive, he would advise
his son to withhold the money. Make it impossible for the girl to leave the
mansion until he had possession of that journal. If she didn’t write about the
incident—no harm, no foul—pay her off and send her on her way.

And if she did?

Daniel forced his eyes to the mirror.
Charlotte had made him promise he would never leave her. He warned her she
would regret it one day.

Daniel smoothed his hands over his hair and
examined his reflection. He was beginning to look more like John Razor every
day.
Beginning to think like him too.

Protect the family. Protect the family name
at all costs.

*

“TELL ME about this woman in blue,” said
Detective Lewis.

“What more do you need to know?” I was
getting impatient with the endless questions that were getting us nowhere. “She
was in the house, I chased her and she pushed me off the roof. Daniel Razor
rescued me before I fell. He’ll tell you all about it. We found the cell where
they were holding Joel, and then last night I heard him banging on a pipe. It
was a message. He’s still in the house! I’ve told you the whole story twice
now. Didn’t Daniel show you the journal we found? Joel’s notebook—he said he
was going to show it to you.”

Lewis grunted, frowned and shook his head.
“I haven’t spoken to Mr. Razor today.
But getting back to
this mysterious woman.
So far you’re the only one who claims to have
seen her. No one in the Razor household believes she exists.”

“Joel believes she exists. Joel saw her
too.”

“The missing man saw the woman in blue from
the attic window,” he said with a deadpan look on his face. “Do you hear how
that sounds?”

“It sounds like something you should
investigate!” I pushed away from the desk. “Look, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m
not writing down everything that happens if you’re not going to believe me. And
I’m not coming to you guys with what I find out if you’re not going to follow
up on it.”

“Why were you in the mansion in the first
place?”

“Daniel Razor asked me to help him find
Joel.”

Detective Lewis leaned back in his chair,
bemused. “After firing you with cause, Mr. Razor asks you to do him a
favor
and you drop everything to answer the call.”

“I was already looking for Joel on my own.
I agreed to help out because I wanted to find him too.”

“Are you sure Mr. Razor didn’t offer you
money or some other perk for volunteering your time?”

“He said he’d pay me, yes. Is that a
problem?” I was confused. What was Lewis getting at?

The detective shook his head and grinned
like he knew it all along. “Yeah, it’s a problem because now you have a vested
interest in keeping this case alive. The longer this goes on, the more
lucrative it is for you. How many years of experience in private investigation
have you logged, Miss Dawson?”

My face was red. I could feel the heat in
my hair. I was embarrassed but I was also angry. “I have a vested interest in
finding Joel Razor for personal reasons. His brother’s money isn’t the issue.”

“Well, that would be a first for the Razor
boys, I’m sure.
A girl who isn’t interested in their money.”
Lewis slapped his hands on the table, palms down. “However, the SFPD can’t help
you in your ‘investigation.’ If Daniel Razor calls me, I’ll order a team to
search the mansion with
sniffer
dogs and get a
forensic unit to check out this cell you mentioned. If Joel is still in the
mansion, we’ll find him. But I don’t think he is. You said the tunnel leads to
the redwood forest. Whoever was holding him—
if
someone was
holding him—they likely made
their escape through the tunnels to the forest as soon as they heard you
coming. Joel Razor is long gone by now.”

“But what about the sounds I heard—the
banging on the pipe?”

“It is a very old mansion, Miss Dawson,”
Lewis said wearily. “Old plumbing makes noise.”

I slumped in my chair. “I know what I
heard. It was a rhythm like a metronome. The sound travelled through the
dumbwaiter. I play the violin; I recognized the tune. The composition was one
Joel and I had played together a couple of times. He was sending me a message
that he has forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you for what?”

I looked at my hands. “I told myself I was
doing it for the music. But this deal between the three of us became far more
complicated than I ever imagined. I hurt Joel. The only person he trusted was
Daniel and I screwed that up for him. I just wish we knew what they wanted so
Daniel could give it to them and Joel could come home.”

Lewis seemed to thaw a little. “Joel Razor
is a billionaire.
If
he’s been
abducted, they can get everything they want from Joel. He’s their cash cow.
They’re not going to kill him but they’re not going to give him up either. We’re
tracking his bank accounts, credit cards and financial records. So far, no
money has been withdrawn. Maybe when the pressure is off, we’ll see some
movement on his accounts and we’ll be able to take action. But to be honest, I
don’t believe this is an abduction or hostage-taking situation. We thought it
might me a domestic matter so we tracked down his birth father. Richard Dolman
hasn’t seen his son since Joel was born. Alexandra Dolman wanted it that way in
the divorce and Dolman wasn’t about to argue. It might help you to know we also
spoke with a
behavioral
therapist who was working
with Joel using hypnosis to manage his anxiety. Dr.
Welland
indicated Joel Razor was prone to erratic
behavior
and anything could have triggered his disappearance.”

“Like seeing a woman dressed exactly like
his mother was the day before she died?”

Lewis scratched his balding scalp. “Look, I’m
not going to lie to you, Miss Dawson. This is not your standard missing person
situation. Joel Razor is a mature adult male, twenty-six years old. He doesn’t
appear to be in distress if what you’ve told me about the entry in his notebook
is accurate. Look, he’s worried about his love life—not his
life.
There’s been no ransom demand and
no threat has been made so there’s no crime here. It’s not against the law to
leave home.”

“He hasn’t left home! Joel isn’t like other
twenty-six-year old men. He can’t cope.”

Lewis heaved a sigh. “Until I get something
that says he’s been taken against his will, or that his life is in danger; that
there’s been an extortion demand or a demand for ransom, there’s nothing I can
do. As long as he isn’t a danger to himself or to anyone else, he can do as he
pleases. Look,” Lewis said sympathetically, “you did your best. You’ve gone as
far as you can go to get him back. Don’t let it consume your life. Your friend left
on his own free will. He may come back on his own or he may not. It’ll drive
you crazy trying to control what other people do.”

Good advice, except it wasn’t me who was trying
to control Joel. It was the woman in blue. I remembered the expression on his
face at the window. Joel did not leave home of his free will.