Beyond the Edge Read online

  “Perhaps I’m the man you need to fill your fantasy.” The disembodied voice coming from behind the black faceplate unnerved her. She had yet to see his face and at his personal comment alarm zinged down her spine.

  But when he again blocked her path, speaking in a slightly stilted way as if English was not his native tongue, her breath lodged in her throat. She hadn’t seen him move. He was simply just there, in her way, preventing escape.

  Suddenly, the faceplate in his helmet disappeared. One instant his features were covered and the next his face was bared. He stared at her with eyes as black as a midnight sky shimmering with bright stars. For a moment they held her captive. Then finally she let out her breath, relieved he was…human. And, oh, was he human, with his bold nose and arrogant brows and cheekbones to die for. Though the tension still churned in her gut, she found those human features reassuring. Somehow his enigmatic entrance into her office had caused her to conjure images of aliens and monsters behind the faceplate, not compelling eyes that softened the harsh high cheekbones, thin lips curling into a sexy grin and an expression of curiosity that stimulated her imagination when it should have increased her wariness.

  Reminding herself that bad guys could have pretty faces, she forced her legs into motion, lurched around him and sprinted through the doorway. At the speed he moved, at any moment, she expected him to jerk her to a halt. As she rounded the first corner and headed for the red exit sign above the staircase, she didn’t dare risk a glance back.

  Her heart raced. Her palms dampened with sweat as she shoved against the heavy stairwell door. It swung open, and she lunged into the murky hallway.

  Not too fast.

  Don’t fall.

  As she dashed down the steps, she listened for the creak of the metal door opening behind her and a sign of pursuit. Nothing.

  Good. The Black Marauder must have wanted her wallet after all. Rushing down another flight, she wondered if she dared stop and take the elevator.

  While she debated, inexplicable, unnatural icy chills suddenly washed over her. But she ignored her shivers, obviously an aftershock resulting from her previous adrenaline rush.

  She wasn’t yet safe, she reminded herself. If the intruder took the elevator with the intention of intercepting her somewhere between this floor and the lobby, she should exit the stairwell on one of the lower floors to avoid him. Perhaps she should try to make it to another phone to call 911 but the other offices would likely be locked, and although she could pick a lock, she was way out of practice. As Fallon considered her options, she fled down the third flight.

  Her stomach suddenly cramped with nausea, knocking her to her knees. Fallon had been frightened before. This sensation was intensely different. Dizziness engulfed her in a vortex. Only a fierce grip on the banister kept her from plunging headfirst to the concrete landing.

  Her heart pounded like a jackhammer in her chest, and she fought back the blackness of a faint. Unable to go on, even if her life depended on it, she collapsed to a sitting position on a step, barely maintaining the presence of mind to lower her head between her knees.

  Fallon wasn’t prone to illness or fainting. In fact, she’d barely missed a day of school due to sickness. She’d never experienced anything like this and hoped she never would again.

  “You will feel completely better in a few minutes,” he said with a thread of concern in his tone.

  At his voice, she jerked up her head. He was standing beside her, his gaze sympathetic, as if he cared about her plight. Where had he come from? He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Splitting pain from the sudden motion of turning her head caused her to moan. Damn. She knew better than to reveal weakness. But her head felt like an army was marching through it.

  He extended an arm toward her, a damp paper towel in his hand, almost as if he’d known in advance how ill she’d be feeling. “Put this on your forehead.”

  She dabbed the cool napkin on her heated face and neck, head aching too much to think past his inexplicable behavior, both kind and eerie. How had he known in advance she would require care? What motivated him to try to ease the discomfort? Despite the questions reverberating in her mind, she was grateful when her physical woes eased with the surprising speed he’d predicted. Her stomach settled. If only she could get her spinning thoughts in order.

  Who was this guy? He’d sneaked into her office, eavesdropped on her private conversation and not only did he move faster than her eyes could focus, he’d anticipated her sudden illness and foreseen her seemingly miraculous recovery.

  He spoke gently as if he understood her brain was tender from the strange illness. “For your own good, you must accept that I mean you no harm and—”

  “For my own good?”

  “Every time you leave me, the illness will strike.”

  “Excuse me?” The man was certifiable. A body of steel and a mind of mush. She would have screamed if she’d thought her tender head could take it. Instead, she spoke with care. “I don’t want to stay with you.”

  “You have no choice.” While warmth and regret colored his voice, the gaze that swept over her was nothing short of intensely interested. He shot her a charming smile. “You belong with me now.”

  Oh God! She wasn’t buying into his cute dimples. A crazy man had claimed her for his own. But at least he didn’t sound as if he intended to kill her. And while she lived she had a chance to escape. Or call for help. But how?

  His idea that fleeing his presence could have caused the nausea she’d just suffered was absurd. As the sickening dizziness faded, her thoughts raced. Never before had she endured such disabling queasiness. Perhaps it was the strange almond scent that had sickened her. The few times she’d suffered from sea sickness, the illness had come on gradually and disappeared slowly. What she’d just experienced had hit as fast and hard as a speeding truck. Just as odd was her quick recovery.

  Glancing at the man, she searched for clues to his identity and character. There were no marks of identification to relieve the unremitting blackness of his strange suit, no badges, no lettering, no insignia. And by the way he stretched the limits of the material, he clearly hid nothing in a pocket.

  Despite that his words made no sense, she couldn’t deny the intelligent compassion in his eyes, and she had the feeling he would have liked to take her into his arms to comfort her but sensed his touch would alarm her.

  His sheer size tended to dominate the area around him, but his voice remained gentle, almost soothing. “Fallon, it’s time we leave here.”

  We?

  She looked into his black eyes and wondered why she didn’t feel more threatened. As she listened to the thread of determination in his tone, it seemed prudent to humor him. While she wasn’t certain what would happen if she refused to cooperate, she didn’t think this was a good time to find out. If he knocked her unconscious, she couldn’t fight back. With no one in the building except the guard downstairs, a scream for help was unlikely to be heard. So, she stood, straightening her suit jacket, and gazed into his mesmerizing black eyes. She would try to gain information.

  “How did you know my name?”

  His arm swung out, her purse dangling from his index finger. She grabbed it, but didn’t bother checking the contents for her weapon. She already knew from the weight that he hadn’t returned her gun, but from the expression in his eyes as much as his patient demeanor she’d already decided that petty thievery was beneath him. She figured that after rifling through her wallet he’d learned her name.

  Wariness of his motives gripped her, but she hesitated to run from him again. The memory of that sudden illness was too sharp just yet to try again. Besides, at the speed he moved, he could easily catch her.

  Damn! What did he want? Why did he stand so close, looming over her as if he feared she might collapse and he’d have to catch her. She imagined those big arms scooping her up, gathering her against his chest and wondered what was wrong with her. She should be assessing the danger, gathering intel
, not sizing him up as a man.

  She needed to find out exactly what he was after. Obviously, he didn’t mean to kill her—or he’d already have done so.

  She lifted her chin and rocked back on her heels. “Who are you?”

  He fired a wicked grin at her. “My name is not important.”

  “Then what is?”

  “We don’t have time for explanations right now. I need to watch television. Where is the one in your office?”

  “It’s being serviced.”

  “Do you have one at home?”

  Just when he’d convinced her of his intelligence, he said something so wacko she was back to thinking he’d escaped from the loony bin. While she wanted to leave the stairwell and go down to the ground floor where she might possibly find some help, she didn’t want to bring him to her home.

  Yet lying to him about the television didn’t seem like a good idea, either. “Yes. I have television but the cable is out.”

  He raised his brow as if in disbelief that both her televisions required repairs. But then he shrugged. “I’ll fix it.”

  Before she exhaled, she found herself standing next to her car in the parking garage. How could it be? One moment she’d stood on the stairwell in her office building and the next instant she found herself twenty stories lower, having somehow crossed through tons of steel and concrete. She had no memory of walking down the stairs, taking the elevator or going through the lobby where she’d intended to call out for help.

  Shaken, Fallon faced the unperturbed stranger over the hood of her car. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “How did we get from upstairs to down here,” she snapped her fingers, “like that?”

  2

  “I TOLD YOU that I have no time for explanations.” Seemingly all business, he didn’t hesitate to open her purse, dig out the car keys and toss them to her. “Drive.”

  She wanted to demand answers but didn’t think irritating him would be prudent. Not in her circumstances. Somehow he’d neatly whisked her past the security guard, her last hope for rescue. Her instincts screamed a warning not to go off alone with him, but the deserted parking garage was not the place for another escape attempt. While she’d recovered completely from the nausea, now with her full attention on him, she sensed an urgency within him, indicated by the ticking muscle in his neck, the tightness of his jaw and the occasional fisting of his fingers. And she wondered if he’d turn violent if provoked.

  Yet she didn’t think he meant her harm. Common sense told her if he’d meant to rape or murder her, he’d have already done so. It also seemed odd to her that he’d asked her to drive. He was obviously a man accustomed to taking charge, so for him to ask her to drive seemed out of character. But then nothing made sense right now, not his strange appearance, not her peculiar illness, not the impossible way they’d traveled to the parking garage.

  “Why don’t you just whisk us straight to my home? Why bother to drive?”

  He glanced to the right, then the left. “I need to orient myself.”

  “Orient yourself to what?”

  “Come on.” He ignored her question. “Let’s go.”

  Her hands trembled as she unlocked her car. He ducked his head and folded himself into the passenger seat. As Fallon started the car and shifted into reverse, he opened the glove compartment and unfolded her Tampa map.

  If he were a stranger to the city, perhaps she could drive straight to the police station. She recalled the closest office was on Jackson Street, but she couldn’t remember which one-way street to take. Unwilling to kindle his suspicion by making an accidental wrong turn, she decided to hop on the Crosstown Expressway and head for the Brandon sheriff’s office near her home. It might be farther, but she wouldn’t get lost.

  Using her flashlight, he studied the map, then flipped it over and perused the Brandon side for a minute before refolding it on the creases and neatly replacing the items. He stared straight ahead, his eyes distant and unreadable, appearing to be a man with a lot on his mind.

  But what was going on behind the dark eyes and charming smile? Was he planning criminal acts? Terrorist acts? He’d given her so few clues that she couldn’t begin to make an educated guess and that unnerved her as much as the personal danger. Fallon was accustomed to taking charge to solve problems—but if she couldn’t discern what he was planning, she couldn’t come up with a plan to counter him. Her frustration soared. Patience was not one of her best qualities.

  Despite the lack of traffic on the road at this hour, she drove with uncharacteristic slowness past Harbor Island and Garrison Channel. Driving through the growing city and admiring the changes from seedy warehouses to shiny tourist destinations usually gave Fallon hope. She’d relocated the research institute’s headquarters from New York five years ago, believing the Florida climate would attract the world’s top researchers. And she’d been right. Thanks to her perseverance, a few tax concessions from the county commissioners, the Hanover money and several brilliant technologists, Fallon believed before the end of the decade they would find a cure for cancer.

  Pushing the thought of business away, she concentrated on the passenger beside her, who remained unnaturally still and silent until she glided over a low spot in the road.

  “What is that smell?” he asked.

  Between his need to consult a map and his curiosity over the smell of swamp and sewage, she assumed he was a stranger to the area, but she wanted to be certain before she drove to the sheriff’s office. “You’ve never noticed it before?”

  He shrugged.

  She sighed and wondered why she ever thought squeezing information from him would be possible. The man wasn’t talkative. He hadn’t even told her his name.

  The road to Brandon was a straight shot east and only a few pairs of headlights broke through the darkness. In contrast to the modern highway, abandoned warehouses and rusting fences lurked in the shadows beyond the occasional streetlight.

  She exited from the expressway onto Highway 60, Brandon’s main road. A few more minutes and she’d reach the sheriff’s office. Trying not to fidget or turn her head, she passed the turnoff to her home.

  “You missed your street.” Her passenger swiveled and raised a speculative eyebrow.

  She’d underestimated him. How had he known? She ignored him, driving straight ahead, with a brazenness she didn’t feel. “I did?”

  “Turn around.” His voice cut the air with a steely edge.

  She made a U-turn with a sinking sensation in the pit of her chest. Perhaps she should jump out of the car at the light. Make a run for it. Only the light stayed green, damn it, and she couldn’t work up the courage to deliberately crash into a telephone pole or a ditch. If the car flipped, she’d die along with him.

  As if he read her thoughts, he reached over and locked her door, then strapped the safety belt over her lap.

  “What are you doing?” She couldn’t prevent her voice from rising an octave.

  “Calm yourself. An accident would be inconvenient.”

  “Not to mention we could die.”

  “Dying would be inconvenient,” he agreed in a breezy tone and with an amused smile, as if he hadn’t understood her wry humor. “Turn right, then left.”

  Could he read her mind? Or had he investigated her ahead of time? But if he knew her address, then why had he scanned the map? “How do you know where I live?”

  The helmet covering the rest of his head disappeared, and he raked a hand through his short, dark hair. “Your driver’s license. And the map.”

  He’d barely glanced at the map, never mind plotted a route and memorized the street names, which made her believe he’d planned more than he admitted. And she wasn’t even going to think about where his helmet had disappeared to. She’d always known her wealth made her a target, but the man hadn’t mentioned ransom or extortion. He hadn’t threatened her, hadn’t touched her. Yet sooner or later the matter of her money would come up—it always did. An
d the sooner she knew how much it would cost her to get rid of him, the sooner she’d know where she stood.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Not a damn thing.” He gave her another one of those charming smiles. “But it looks like I’m stuck with you.”

  His assumption that he was stuck with her struck a nerve. He’d invaded her office and had kidnapped her and now he was complaining that he was stuck with her? Irritated, she took a corner fast and the tires squealed, gripping the loose gravel of the side street.

  “Pull the car over.”

  “Why?”

  “Do it.”

  Fallon slowed on the dark, deserted street, wondering if her driving had frightened him—but he didn’t appear to be a man who worried about fast speeds. The crescent moon vanished behind somber clouds. He shifted impatiently in his seat, and when he unlocked his door, the click sent an alarming shiver through her. She had to remind herself that he’d had opportunities to harm her before now and hadn’t taken them.

  After she pulled to a complete stop, she sat frozen behind the wheel, her fingers clenched around the seat belt. He hadn’t asked her to turn off the motor. As he opened his door, she considered whether to throw the car in Drive the moment he stepped out, but he remained in the seat and turned to her.

  “When I exit this vehicle, drive slowly toward your house.”

  Like hell, she’d drive slowly. If he didn’t move out of the way, she’d run him over.

  “Drive slowly,” he repeated, sounding as if he cared about her, “or the sickness will make you so ill you won’t recover until morning.”

  He slipped out of the car and shut the door. Her hand slammed down and locked him out. She pressed her foot on the accelerator. Why he freed her, she had no idea, but she didn’t hesitate to take advantage of her good fortune.

  She had no intention of driving home, where he could jog down the block and recapture her. She’d retrace her route and head straight to the sheriff’s office.

  But recalling her former illness, she didn’t press the pedal to the floor as she would have liked. She kept her velocity to only ten miles over the speed limit. Before she’d driven half a block, nausea smacked her with the force of a head-on collision. Tidal waves of dizziness returned, pummeling her head, squeezing her breath from her lungs, twisting her stomach into knots.