Edge of Danger by Cherry Adair Page B

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— our notes were stolen.”
     
      “But you don’t require 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.
     

  “ You have a photographic memory, Doctor. And I 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 a good 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.”
     
      Very possible, unfortunately, and exactly what she was best at. She was the one in one billion people who actually could 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 your mind 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