Edge of Danger by Cherry Adair

times worse, and then tell me, should we rebuild him?”
     
      His face went blank with disappointment. “Damn. What a waste of brilliant technology.”
     
      “Yes. It is. But that’s the way it has to be.” Once the killer discovered that Dr. Theo Kirchner was merely a figurehead in the lab, and that he’d known very little, that whatever schematics and data they’d stolen from her computer were pretty much useless window dressing, she was positive they’d come looking for her.
     
      In fact, she couldn’t understand why they hadn’t already.
     
      She rubbed a hand absently around the back of her neck. She had the uncomfortable sensation that someone was watching her. Silly of course. Only she and Marshall were in the lab. The problem was she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop for weeks. Everything was creeping her out right now.
     
      “We shouldn’t even be talking about this,” she warned, dropping her hand. The sensation of being watched persisted, but this time she ignored it.
     
      Marshall’s eyes brightened and grew large. “But you could? Right?” He tapped his forefinger to his temple. “You’ve got it all stored in your head, don’t you, Eden? You remember everything down to the smallest detail. We could rebuild Rex. It would be way cool. Give me schematics to work from, and—”
     
      “Forget it,” Eden said harshly, then modulated her tone because it wasn’t Marshall’s fault that she’d done something terminally stupid. “Schematics take time, and most of them were on the hard drives. The computers were wiped clean, remember?” She gave him a pointed look, which he returned with a blank look of his own.
     
      “Oh, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Mr. Verdine was totally pissed that the data was wiped from the hard drives.”
     
      They shared a glance. She didn’t give a damn if she was acting paranoid, and as if the walls had ears. There were anomalies happening that she couldn’t explain. She wasn’t willing to put either her own life, or Marshall’s, in danger by saying anything about… anything.
     
      Marshall knew she and Jason Verdine had shared a few dinners and must be wondering why she’d left out the part that she had total recall of the data. “Of course.”
     
      His brow furrowed and he lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “Are you ever going to tell him that everything wasn’t lost because you have it all in your head? What about that Homeland Security guy? The cops? Any of them?”
     
      “Marshall, my friend,” Eden said just as quietly. “Right now there are only two people I trust in the world. You would be the other one.”
     
      “Who…Oh, you mean you. Yes, of course. Sorry. You’re right. Excellent. Don’t tell anyone. Right. Got it.” But he clearly couldn’t understand why something so incredible was being kept under wraps. He’d never understood why Eden didn’t share with people the fact that she had a photographic memory.
     
      He just didn’t get it.
     
      And that was fine with her. Ignorance, in Marshall’s case, could very well save his life. And hers.
     
      “Don’t freak on me now, Marshall.”
     
      “I don’t want to freak you out, Eden. But I keep telling you. You need more than those four muscleheads as bodyguards. You need—an army maybe. If not, somebody—a bad somebody—could get that information out of you. Easy.”
     
      They probably could. She hated pain. A hangnail required an Advil. Okay, not quite. But close enough. On the other hand, if she knew someone wanted what she had in her head, she would use every fiber of her being to make sure they couldn’t access it. It was a case of mind over matter. She took pride in her willpower. A woman who had lost fifty pounds through sheer determination, and then kept it off for years, could achieve anything.
     
      “Uh-oh! You’ve got that look on your face. I’m not putting money on it!”
     
      “Marshall.