ON EDGE (Decorah Security) by Rebecca York

really didn’t have much choice about complying. As Leonard had said a couple of days ago, he was in a hospital. And the doctor had reminded him that he only had one leg.
    With a hitch in his breath, he looked down toward the bottom of the bed. He could see one leg under the sheet and the place where the other leg should have been. In Ariel’s alternate reality, he’d had two legs. He hadn’t really expected to come back here and find he’d grown the missing limb again as he’d done there. But the empty place under the sheets triggered a spurt of emotion he worked to suppress.
    “What?” Southwell said.
    “Nothing,” he answered, not wanting to talk about the feeling of being cheated—in more than one way.
    He tried to lie in bed, looking what they would consider normal, while the medical team checked the monitoring equipment before they cleared out of the room.
    When he was finally alone, Frank clenched his fists. Until a few nights ago, he’d been a typical patient in the amputee unit. Then he’d stepped into another plane of existence, where he’d met two women.
    He’d thought one was evil and one was good. But now it looked like they were both evil, only Ariel had hidden it better. She’d bided her time, waiting to strike him when he was most vulnerable.
    He’d been drawn to Ariel—fixated on her after their first meeting in Gordon’s room. He’d longed to see her again, and he’d worked hard to get into the other plane of existence because he’d wanted to be with her. His mistake.
    Now he knew the truth. That first kiss had been a lure to get him into a place where he’d be totally vulnerable. In the other plane, she’d tried to kill him twice—with some sexual stuff designed to distract him between attacks. The first assault outside her house was from what she called her defense mechanisms. The second time she’d sent him back here at the right moment for his heart to stop, but luckily he’d been in a hospital at the time, and the staff had revived him.
    Well, he’d learned his lesson. He was going to stay away from her. She’d come across as sweet and nice, but that was apparently just a pose.
    He gritted his teeth as he remembered the joy of making love with her. She’d told him she was a virgin, and she’d given him the gift of her virginity. But he knew she could manipulate physical reality. She’d given him back his leg—at least while he was in her alternate reality. If she could regenerate a whole leg, why not a little membrane that made her a virgin.
    A cynical laugh bubbled up inside him, but he broke it off before it reached his lips. He was remembering what it had been like making love with her. She’d seemed to want him. The way she’d responded to him had made his heart soar. But now he was pretty sure she was simply a wonderful actress.
    He looked up and saw one of the nurses standing in the doorway. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “Your heart rate’s elevated.”
    He shrugged. “I guess I’m upset about almost dying.”
    “Understandable,” she answered. “Shall I ask the doctor to give you something to help you calm down.”
    “I’m fine,” he said, struggling to sound calm. Jesus, he was grappling with weird stuff he couldn’t discuss with anyone, and the nurses’ station was monitoring his every physiological reaction.
    She watched him for a few more moments before turning and walking away.
    He lay in bed, trying to calm himself down, when he wanted to get up, attach his damn leg and go down the hall to see Roger Gordon. Was the man still going to deny that something was going on?
    But what was it, exactly?
    The nurse returned with some breakfast which he couldn’t eat because it tasted like wet newspaper.
    They wouldn’t even let him walk around. They put him in a wheelchair to take him around to the various labs—where he had everything from an EKG to an MRI.
    Nothing came out abnormal, including the results of the drug tests. He wasn’t taking