Edge of Danger (15 page)

 
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 of
this
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 here
was
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.

 
Someone
must have seen Gabriel take her out of the building. There must be an eyewitness at Verdine Industries who’d seen
something,
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 for
that
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.

 
Who
was
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 manifestations associated with falling in love. She felt as giddy as a teenager. But she’d never
been
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.

 
She let her gaze drift over him. Lord, he was potent. His navy T-shirt showed off his chest to perfection, and bared his tanned arms lightly furred with dark hair. Would his chest be hairy or smooth? Eden ached to find out. His long legs were encased in faded jeans and bluntly showed he was male.

 
All
aroused
male, she thought, finding it hard to swallow. She looked down at her short, unpolished nails and pale hands, and wondered if Gabriel liked his women to have long, red fingernails to score his skin when they made love. He probably liked them skinny and lean.
Bastard.
She gave him a hot look.

 
An almost wary expression hardened his features for a moment as their eyes met across the room. Then even that glimpse was gone as he continued to watch her with remote, unreadable eyes.

 
She rubbed her upper arms. “Can you explain what I just saw?”

 
He lifted a brow. “What did you see, Dr. Cahill?” he asked in a lazy and somehow remote tone. The calmness of his voice, when she was feeling rising agitation, annoyed the hell out of her.

 
“The fact that one second there was a road out there,” she said tightly, pointing through the window, “And now—
look,
there isn’t—”

 
A stripe of black again cut a swath through the trees.

 
“You were saying?”

 
She spun away from the window to shoot him a puzzled glance. “Either you’re causing me to hallucinate or I’m losing my mind.”

 
“Come with me. I want you to see the lab so you can let me know if there’s anything else you’ll need before you get started.”

 
Eden frowned at the non sequitur. “Are you going to give me some answers?”

 
“Apparently not. Come on. The bad guys already have a head start.”

 
“That’s right. Six years’ worth.” Jason must have considered this possibility as well. Of course he must have. And while he himself didn’t know
all
of Rex’s skills, he had to have considered the ramifications if the robot fell into the wrong hands. Eden felt a little easing in her stomach. Not much. Just a tiny spurt of hope. She wasn’t alone.

 
If she and Jason went to the FBI and Homeland Security together…

 
“Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

 
She didn’t want to have anything to do with this guy. She didn’t like the swirling emotions she felt whenever he was around. He made her feel like a rabbit faced with a rattler; terrified, but fascinated at the same time.

 
Even though his expression was impassive when he spoke to her, she could read the hunger in his dark eyes. He wanted her, and for some reason it pissed him off that he did.

 
Eden knew exactly how he felt.

 
She was bewildered by the strength of her attraction to a man who had taken her against her will. Her safest bet was to ignore the sensation for the duration. She wouldn’t be here long enough to have to figure it out.

 
Pleased that she’d regained her composure and shored up her defenses, and since she knew she wouldn’t be making her escape down the sheer side of the stone walls, Eden followed him out of the room.

 
Any escape opportunity presenting itself, she would take. If she ended up walking out of here barefoot, so be it.

 
The walls on either side of the wide upper corridor were paneled in mahogany with intricate carved moldings. Arched windows ran down the entire length of the right-hand wall, the wide expanse of glass interspersed with enormous family portraits in ornate gilded wood frames that must have weighed a hundred pounds apiece.

 
Curious about the “lab he’d prepared for her,” Eden glanced about to get her bearings for her escape later. Everything about Edridge Castle was made on a massive scale.

 
Including her host.

 
His long legs and big feet ate up yardage in the black, gold, and red swirls of the carpet as he forged ahead of her.
Way
ahead. That whole contamination thing again.