Edge Of Danger

by Cherry Adair

  “Can’t, doctor? Or won’t?”

  “The Rx793 can’tbe destroyed. It was made to be indestructible.”

  “Nothing’s indestructible,” he said grimly. “We don’t have all day here, Doctor. What will annihilate your robot?”

  “Nothing.” Nothing but another Rex just like it. But since she was never going to let that happen, it wasn’t worth mentioning.

  “How about a duplicate?” he demanded.

  My God, was he a mind reader?Eden thought, horrified. She debated for a few seconds whether to lie or tell him the truth. “Possibly,” she said reluctantly. “If there was another such bot. There isn’t.”

  “There will be,” he said grimly.

  Eden didn’t bother correcting him.

  “What’s its fuel source?”

  “An extremely inexpensive thirty-two-processor distributed control system. It runs asynchronously with no central locus of control.” No. Worse.Much worse. She’d given Rex an easily renewable hydrogen fuel cell. All he needed to run for three hours was a cup of water.

  “Does the arm need a parallel processor?”

  “No. All computing is done onboard.” She’d thought herself so clever to make Rex almost autonomous. Now she was scared stupid. Oh, God. She should have stopped last year when her gut and conscience told her to. She’d never considered herself vain before. But damn it, she’d wanted to prove to herself that all those accolades, all those prestigious science awards, all the fawning and flattery, were as valid today as they’d been ten years ago.

  Which proved that she wasn’t nearly as evolved as she thought she was.

  No matter what veneer she’d assumed over the years, no matter what she wore, or how many acclaimed papers she wrote, no matter how brilliant her inventions—that fat, geeky, insecure kid still lived inside her. And even though she’d known she could never tell anyone the incredible advances she’d made,she would always know how far ahead of the pack she really was. That vanity was about to bite her in the ass.

  “How big is it?”

  Eden held her hand up over the floor. “He’s the size of a five-year-old.” An almost perfect humanoid robot who could catch a ball and knew his left from his right. Who could consume a glass of water and keep on going like the Energizer Bunny.

  Her hand shook as she picked up the delicate bone china teacup. The tea was cold, but she sipped it anyway. English Breakfast. She looked from one man to the other. “The prototype was stolen. There are no backup files. I don’t see how I can help you.”

  “How long will it take for you to rebuild the robot?”

  Never.“I can’t.”

  “You built it before. You can build it again.”

  She shook her head. “No, I can’t. All m—ournotes were stolen.”

  “But you don’trequire notes, do you, Dr. Cahill?” Gabriel Edge said, his voice cold and hard as he watched her, his hands gripping the high back of the chair. His direct gaze was unnerving. “You have it all up here.” He tapped his hard head with his finger, and Eden felt a chill rush through her body like ice water. He couldn’t know that. He couldn’t possibly know that.

  “Youhave a photographic memory, Doctor. AndI have a fully outfitted computer lab right here. You can reconstruct what was taken.”

  Eden laughed. And she made sure it sounded sincere. “You must be kidding! Photographic memory is fiction. I have agood memory. A very good memory. But reconstruct, from scratch,thousands of man-hours’ worth of intricate and complicated equations and schematics? From memory? Not possible.”

  Verypossible, unfortunately, and exactly what she was best at. She was the one in one billion people who actuallycould retain everything she read. She refrained from fiddling with the delicate cup in her hands, and kept her gaze steady. If she hadn’t already emptied her stomach she’d be throwing up again.

  Destroy everything. Trust no one. Promise me.

  Eden felt like a very small rat in a very complicated maze.

  Gabriel Edge was the extremely large cat lying in wait for her at the other end.

  “Anything’s possible, Doctor,” he told her. “If you put yourmind to it.”

  Eden looked directly into Gabriel’s eyes. Just why had he put so much emphasis on that one word? Another thing he’d said slammed into her head. Teleport. Cold permeated her insides, and sweat dotted her brow. These men were crazy, and she was damned if she would give them what they wanted. She’d given them as much of the truth as she was prepared to give them. The rest would remain a secret.

  She owed Theo that much.

  Dr. Cahill had reluctantly allowed MacBain to escort her upstairs to freshen up. Gabriel was grateful that she was out of his range so that he could draw an unrestricted breath for the first time in what felt like months. Christ. He didn’t need this kind of complication in his life. Who could have anticipated this kind of magnetism?

  His parents, he thought grimly. If they’d been alive they’d have tried everything in their considerable power to prevent so much as the first encounter between himself and Dr. Eden Cahill.

  They, better than anyone else, would have known the ramifications of bringing his Lifemate here. Especially now.

  They would have been appalled—terrifiedfor him. Hadn’t they experienced exactly what he was experiencing now? And look where their great love had ended. Not even together in death, but buried apart for all eternity. His father on a wind-tossed knoll in his beloved Scottish Highlands, his mother here in Montana, in the rose garden she’d planted as a shrine to lost love.

  He was the oldest. Hedid know better than to tempt the Fates this way. If his brothers, Caleb and Duncan, heard about this, they’d be here before he made it to the front door with Sebastian, Gabriel thought grimly. They’d insist on whisking him out of harm’s way. But even they would have to admit that he was out of choices.

  Wouldn’t you just know his damn Lifemate would be the one woman who could help him through this latest T-FLAC crisis?

  “Think she was telling the truth?” Sebastian’s shoes scraped on the worn stone floor.

  The vast entry hall, with its sweeping staircase and unusual and spectacular fan-vaulted, umbrella design ceiling, was hung with thirty-foot-tall tapestries of battles covering the ages. Polished suits of armor lined the walls. The castle was more than Gabriel’s ancestral home. He remembered his parents here. How brief their reunions were. He remembered meals in the dining room, cozy evenings by the fire in the book-lined library. Normally this house, these rooms, the very stones it was built from, gave Gabriel the kind of solace men like him didn’t usually find. But today, the old castle felt like a cage.

  “I think she’s lying through her pretty white teeth,” he told his friend grimly, mentally opening the front door when they were twenty feet away. Sunlight flooded the worn ancient stone floor ahead of them, but he still felt a chill.

  “Neat trick,” Sebastian murmured. “You psi/spec ops guys have all the cool toys.”

  And the burden and responsibilities that camewith those special powers. Gabriel had never questioned who and what he was. Until today. “From what I observed in the lab earlier, Dr. Cahill has a photographic memory like nothing I’ve seen before. Despite her protestations, I believe she’s mentally retained all her notes and files for the bot. She hasn’t forgotten a damn thing.”

  “But the development has taken her years—”

  “Six.”

  “And you think she was able to retain every step?” Sebastian demanded, “Every zig and zag necessary to rebuild the damn thing? Frommemory. ”

  Gabriel nodded “Yeah. I do. Dollars to doughnuts, T-FLAC is going to get a call. And we’re going to have our asses in a sling if we can’t destroy the Rx793 the second we know where the damn thing is.”

  “But will she tell us how to do it?”

  Gabriel thought of her flashing dark eyes, large and expressive, and speaking volumes. He thought of her white teeth biting into her mutinous soft lips. He thought about how de
sperately he wanted her. And he thought about how, stubborn woman that she was, she was fighting him on every front.

  “Yeah.” God help him. “I’ll make sure she does. I also want to know exactly what it was shedidn’t report to the authorities.”

  Sebastian gave a mock shudder. “Give the poor woman a look like that and she’ll tell you anything.”

  “Not this woman.” Gabriel stepped through the open door, walking out into the midmorning sunshine. Sebastian hitched his duffel bag over his shoulder as they stopped next to his car, a low-slung black Lamborghini Murciélago parked in the shadow of the east turret.

  “My way would be faster,” Gabriel pointed out as his friend slung his bag into the backseat, then vaulted the door. Nice car.

  “Maybe,” Sebastian smiled as he put on his sunglasses. “But I’m scared shitless one day I’ll come back looking like something Picasso painted. I’ll pass.”

  “Nothing scares you.” Gabriel stroked the glossy black paint on the door absently. He was going to have to go upstairs and talk to her.

  Scared didn’t begin to cover it.

  The engine started up with an expensive purr. “That brainy woman of yours inside does. What’s coming down the pike does. Yeah. I scare.”

  That woman of yours.

  If I don’t claim her,Gabriel wondered, feeling a familiar race of panic,is she still mine? He was afraid he knew the answer to his own question. “Ditto.” Any man in their line of work would be a fool not to be afraid. Fear kept them sharp. Fear let them know they were alive. But this—this was different. Way different.

  Sebastian put the car in gear. “I’m twenty minutes away. Call if you need me.” T-FLAC headquarters was sixty miles south.

  Gabriel slapped his shoulder, a little harder than necessary. “Make sure the highway patrol doesn’t see you.”

  “Have to catch me first.”

  The sun beat down on his head as Gabriel watched the car until it was nothing more than a speck down the road. He couldn’t delay this any longer. He had to face her again.

  Alone.

  He broke out in a cold sweat.

  As soon as MacBain left the bedroom, Eden dashed into the exquisitely appointed en suite bathroom. Oh, God. She half laughed at her appearance in the well-lit mirror over the sink and vanity. Her face was white. Her hair, as usual, had a life of its own—a cartoon life apparently, as she looked like a woman who’d stuck a finger in an electrical outlet. Once again, she’d only remembered to apply mascara to one eye—her left, by the look of the black half circle beneath it. She washed her face with French-milled, rose-scented soap, dried her face on a handy towel, and appreciated MacBain’s attention to detail when she saw the new toothbrush and her favorite brand of toothpaste next to a row of perfume bottles.

  She cleaned her teeth and drank three glasses of water. Her hair she left to its own devices. Then she went into the bedroom to wait.

  The bedroom was richly appointed with velvets, silks, and brocades in varying shades of gold and sapphire blue. Not her colors, but very pretty all the same. If she could sit still and admire pretty, Eden thought, pacing to the door and back to the window. The portraits on the walls were huge and probably valuable. The canopied, heavily posted, cherry wood bed could sleep the entire population of a third-world country.

  Why had she never heard of this place? Surely, when something ofthis magnitude was being built it would have had a ton of press? She’d never heard of a castle being reproduced in the wilds of Montana. She’d have to Google it. Perhaps it had been built for a movie, or it was a hotel. Although she hadn’t seen anyone other than the three men around since she’d been there. Come to think of it, she also hadn’t seen a phone.

  Either way, she had no intention of remaining here. Wherever herewas exactly. There must be a town reasonably nearby. There was certainly a major highway. Cars. People.

  Jason and Marshall must be frantic by now. It helped that all those lettered agencies had already been on the premises investigating Theo’s death when she disappeared. They’d have started looking for her almost immediately.

  Someonemust have seen Gabriel take her out of the building. There must be an eyewitness at Verdine Industries who’d seensomething, and she had absolutely no intention of hanging around here while they tried to find her. She’d help from her end.

  Eden rubbed her arms, feeling both hot and cold at the same time. And antsy. Anticipatory.

  Standing at the arched, leaded-glass window, she observed Gabriel and Sebastian talking down below on the gravel driveway. She’d love to be a fly on the wall forthat conversation. After a few minutes Sebastian drove away. Other than a long stretch of surprisingly well-maintained road, there was nothing but dense, lush, rolling forest as far as the eye could see.

  The rosy stone of the castle walls soared at least four stories into the clear blue sky, turrets and all. Everything in it looked authentic, although Eden wouldn’t know a genuine antique from Ikea. If the windowsill was any indication, the walls were twelve feet thick. The date 1324 had been carved in the stone lintel above the window.

  Whowas this guy?

  It would be cold at night. She’d just follow the road until she hit civilization. She’d need water. She’d also require proper shoes. She wouldn’t get five feet out there in these high-heeled sandals, much as she loved them. She’d also need sunblock in case she was out there longer than anticipated, and if she could find one, a cell phone.

  Sure. She could do this.

  The size of the castle notwithstanding, Gabriel and his butler had to sleep sometime.

  With at least the start of a plan made, she leaned against the warm stone of the windowsill. Shading her eyes against the sunlight streaming into the room through the open window, she turned her head to look back outside at the lush landscape painted a million shades of green.

  In the distance, the Rocky Mountains were hazed lavender by the heat. Eden inhaled a calming, deep breath of evergreens-scented air—Her breath stopped.

  The road was—gone.

  She blinked.

  She considered what she was and was not seeing. Nothing else had changed. Not the wind nor the angle of the sun. One minute there had been a two-lane blacktop cutting through the trees. Now there was not.

  She knew by the sudden increase in her respiration and heart rate that he was in the room without turning around. She hugged her arms around her body as she stared outside. The sun was still shining, a bird’s sweet song soared overhead.

  She didn’t like the way her body responded to his presence. She hated not understanding what the hell was going on. And she was bewildered by her visceral reaction to her kidnapper.

  Not having answers, and being out of her element, scared the crap out of her.

  She was pretty used to being out of her element in a social setting, not that this was social, but she hated being scared. She rubbed her arms without turning around. “What kind of hallucinogenic did you give me?”

  “No drugs.”

  She turned slowly.

  Heat rapidly spread through her. God. There was no scientific explanation to her reaction to this man. Potently masculine, Gabriel Edge stood beside the bed. Twenty feet away. Yet she could almost feel the heat of his body and smell the sun-washed fragrance of his hair from clear across the room.

  She frowned as she looked at his mouth. With a raw hunger, she wondered what it would feel like touching hers. What his muscular arms would feel like wrapped around her. He was tall, muscular, strong…How would that animal-like strength translate in bed?

  And how freaking illogical that she wanted him to hold her when he was the very man she was half terrified of, and knew she must run from? With an inner groan she jerked her thoughts away from how he would taste and back to the view outside the window.

  Yes, he was good-looking. But she’d encountered dozens of good-looking men over the years. The sense of euphoria when he was near, the racing pulse and elevated breathing, were physical mani
festations associated with falling in love. She felt as giddy as a teenager. But she’d neverbeen a giddy teenager.

  She’d been a brain with legs. A plump, too smart, lonely geek that no one understood, and colleagues mocked behind her back. She’d never fit in anywhere. It was no wonder Adam had been able to sweep her off her feet so easily.

  And she hadn’t felt one particle of the sexual awareness for Adam Burnett she felt for this man.

  Eden’s skin felt as if it were on fire, and feverish shivers danced across her nerve endings. This was insane. Everything in her was responding to him, totally independent of her control.

  She wasn’t a teenager. And this wasn’t the junior prom. This son of a bitch had kidnapped her and was keeping her prisoner. She’d do well to remember that.