Edge of Danger (23 page)

 
The old man shook his head. “They canna be together, lass. They cancel each other out.”

 
“Cancel each other out?”

 
“They lose all but their most basic powers when they are within a mile of one another.” His white brows met in the middle as he frowned. “Not that they don’t get together now and then, but in their line of work it’s best not to be without their special skills for long.”

 
“Are you telling me you believe that Gabriel, and I presume his brothers, are really wizards?”

 
“Do ye doubt your own eyes then, lass? He told ye of Nairne’s Curse, did he no’?”

 
“Yes he did.
He
certainly seems to believe it.”

 
“Dinna doubt it, lass. Nairne’s Curse is very real.”

 
Despite the warmth of the sun, Eden rubbed the sudden chill on her arms with both hands. “What has to be given freely? Love?”

 
“Love is always given freely, is it no’? Magnus and Cait loved fiercely and freely, but they couldna ever be together. She wasted away before our very eyes, and when he heard of her death, Magnus couldna take it. No Edge has ever managed to escape Nairne’s Curse, lass. No’ one. And we have yet to discover what it is that must be given.”

 
“Telling her where we hide the silver, old man?”

 
Eden merely blinked when Gabriel suddenly appeared at the table. No. She couldn’t doubt her own eyes. One moment she was enjoying a peaceful view of the gardens and the lake beyond, the next, his large body took all her attention. Slouched back in his chair as though he’d been sitting there the entire time, Gabriel looked mouthwateringly disreputable.

 
He brought with him the fragrance of the outdoors and the pleasant farmy smell of horse. Unaccountably, but not unexpectedly, her heart rate zoomed out of control.

 
“Is there a way for you to warn me when you plan on doing that? Maybe a bell around your neck?” she asked with asperity as MacBain rose and started clearing the table. “Something?” The way he was watching her made her pulse kick. The heat in his eyes made her clothes feel too tight. Every time she thought she had him pigeonholed, he surprised her. Behind those evasive dark eyes was a first-class brain. She’d do well to remember that.

 
“What have you decided?” he demanded.

 
She felt trapped, frightened, God help her,
excited
by him. “My decision hasn’t changed.” Her eyes were steady as she regarded him over her teacup. “I’ll talk to Homeland Security to see if they agree with what you suggested.”

 
She’d talk to them. Confess was more like it. But she had no intention of building a Rex 2. For anyone. The potential for disaster was just too great.

 
“As far as I know, right now one of Verdine Industries’ competitors could be hard at work fabricating Rex. Teams going at it twenty-four seven. With the right amount of qualified people on it, they could probably have it on the market next week.” Impossible, of course. Even with everything they needed, even with the Rex itself, it would probably be a year before the robot could be put into production.

 
“Denial is not just a river in Egypt. And have the Feebs and HS on their asses before they shipped the first unit? For God’s sake, surely you can’t be this naive. What the hell did you expect, working for a company that handles so many government contracts? Verdine has always been ripe for espionage. Either from the inside, secrets sold to foreign governments, or from outside terrorist groups.”

 
She bristled at his accusing tone. “We make highly sophisticated household appliances, advanced robotics for industry. Toys…”

 
“What do you think Rex was for?”

 
“Not
think.
I know
exactly
what it was for. A tireless health care worker. An adjunct to firefighters, to be used in earthquake rescues…”

 
“An indestructible soldier.”

 
Oh, God. Yes.
“No.”

 
“Absolutely. And you know it. A
toy
manufacturer doesn’t require the level of security they have at Verdine.”

 
“People would sell their firstborn for the schematics on our self-propelled vacuum cleaner alone. Not to mention all our other products. Verdine is so far ahead of the pack, industry observers can only speculate what we’re working on. It’s a multibillion-dollar corporation. Of
course
we have high-level security.”

 
He just looked at her.

 
Eden couldn’t hold his gaze a moment longer. “Oh, God.”

 
“Who do you want to talk to at Homeland Security?”

 
She was pale, but resolute. “Special Agent Dixon.”

 
“You trust him?”

 
Eden bit the corner of her lower lip. “Yes.”

 
He watched her for a moment, his eyes on her mouth. Stubborn woman. Cautious and stubborn. In her line of work he suspected she’d had to be both to get where she was today. He’d take what he could get. If Dixon could motivate her, then Dixon it would be. Whatever it took.

 
“I’ll contact him, but it’s going to waste precious time getting him out here.”

 
She shrugged. Clearly not giving a shit. “I’ll catch up if he vouches for you.”

 
Dixon would vouch for him. For T-FLAC. And Gabriel hoped to hell she
could
make up time. She’d have to.

 
Gabriel was surprised she hadn’t immediately launched into a request for an explanation of last night. He’d been prepared to listen to her questions and demands for proof of what she’d witnessed.

 
Every movement she made was unaffected but seductive. His blood heated and his pulse raced. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep his hands off her. Close enough to touch her, he kept his hands in his pockets, and made sure to take shallow breaths. Made no damn difference. He could still smell her skin.

 
She wore jeans, and one of a dozen identical, plain, pocketed T-shirts. Today’s was grass green. The color looked good on her, Gabriel thought absently, acutely aware of her in every cell of his body. He should have sat across from her instead of this close. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. She might be a pain in his ass, but his desire for this woman hadn’t diminished overnight. Unfortunately, it never would.

 
He looked away from the distracting way her hair shone in the sunlight streaming through the windows. She’d crossed her legs while she’d been talking to MacBain, and now he realized he was fixated on her swinging foot. Today’s shoes consisted of three slender apple green straps that crossed her pretty toes, then wound around her instep and ankle. A tiny red ladybug adorned the section where the straps crossed on her high instep, and clashed with the bright pink polish on her toenails. The dark metal of the “lucky” ring made her skin seem more creamy in contrast.

 
“They left you alone for years,” he said flatly, his breathing deliberately shallow. God almighty. She smelled of jasmine. The fragrance, mixed with the familiar scent of her warm skin, was swimming in his bloodstream like a fine wine.

 
“Left you alone,” he repeated harshly, shoving his chair back a foot or two to put a little distance between them. “
Knowing
what you were working on. Waiting for you to perfect the prototype. Then they walked in and took it.”

 
“You believe that the person who killed Dr. Kirchner, and stole Rex, worked for Jason Verdine?”

 
“Don’t you?”

 
Eden nodded. “I do. But only because of the top-level security on the project. Theo and I were separated from the rest of the R and D teams. Given our own lab to work independently on Rx793 six years ago. Besides the team that drew up the noncompete agreement and did the repeat background checks, there were only a handful of people that even knew what we were working on.”

 
“How many is a handful?”

 
“Jason Verdine. His president of marketing, Tom Reece, his president of sales, Steven Absalom, Hector Gonzales, vice president of R and D, and, of course, Marshall Davis, our assistant.”

 
“All of whom had a hell of a lot to gain by stealing your prototype.”

 
“I doubt it. I don’t see any of those men walking in and killing Theo in cold blood. And frankly, whoever has Rex wouldn’t be able to spend the money they made from the sale for twenty years or more, because it would just be too obvious. Not to mention the capital outlay to go into production. It would be prohibitive to the average person. I told you, Rex cost over three hundred million dollars to create. So whoever has him has to have enormous start-up capital to afford to manufacture even one unit, let alone several.

 
“And without my working notes, my data, and schematics…”

 
“Anyone with half a brain looking at your notes and your program would realize like I did that you have a photographic memory, Eden. They tried to take you next.”

 
“Now,
that’s
not true. Honestly. No one came near me.”

 
“They came near you,” he said grimly. “Too damn near you. Or rather, they tried. In the past twenty-eight days, there were two kidnap attempts. The only reason they didn’t succeed was because I put a protective spell on you the night Dr. Kirchner was killed.”

 
“But as it turns out
you
were the lucky winner in the kidnap Dr. Cahill sweepstakes.”

 
“They didn’t want to protect you.”

 
“Right. ‘They’ just wanted to suck information out of my brain. Oh, wait. That’s exactly what you want to do, isn’t it?”

 
Gabriel observed Eden as she completed her third lap walking around the pond. She’d kicked off her shoes by the door, then stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Head up, she kept to the softness of the grass rather than walk barefoot on the gravel path rimming the water’s edge. It was close to midday, and no shade was cast by the thick hedge of natural scrub and twenty-year-old Douglas firs ringing the glade.

 
Gabriel’s mother had been an avid gardener, and in an attempt to make her husband feel at ease here, had the clearing planted, and the small pond chiseled out of the land. The original had sat just as this one did, beyond the doors of the castle’s solarium in Scotland. She’d wanted her husband to feel at home.

 
Magnus Edge had never seen it.