Free Talons of the Falcon by REBECCA YORK Page A

could have been a small acknowledgment of their past. From this man, it might be everything. Moving her head slightly she kissed his fingertips.
    The gesture seemed to bring him back to the here and now. As though the pads of his fingers had been burned by her lips, he snatched his hand away.
    At the sudden movement, Eden’s eyes snapped open. For a dizzy moment, she found herself trapped in the intensity of Mark Bradley’s midnight gaze, and she had to steady herself with one hand on his knee to keep from falling forward. Need, anguish, confusion and anger all seemed to battle in the ebony depths of his eyes. And then, as on that first day in the hall, those eyes seemed to close her off as though a heavy drapery had been drawn across his emotions.
    * * *
    I F THE INCIDENT had been disturbing to Eden, it was far worse for her patient. That night, after Marshall had finally left him alone, his thoughts went back to what had happened in the therapy session that afternoon. In a way he had been waiting an eternity for somebody to come and tell him whether or not he was Lt. Col. Mark Bradley. And now that someone had arrived who might be able to do that, he was terrified.
    He fought the emotion with the iron will that had kept him going all these months through the physical agony and the interrogations—and the terrible uncertainty. But it wasn’t enough anymore. Before Eden had come to Pine Island, something inside him had been cold and lifeless, as though he were apart from the rest of humanity. A normal man would have felt buried alive. He had simply been relieved that he could cut himself off from the grim reality of his situation. That bastard Downing had brought in all his artillery. But he had held him off. And Marshall’s cunning little tortures? He hadn’t succumbed to them either. He had them all beat. Until some clever SOB had thought to bring in Eden Sommers.
    She had meant something to Mark Bradley. After the initial shock of her arrival, he had tried to tell himself she meant nothing to him. But the very act of denial had been the first chink in his carefully constructed armor. His memories of Eden were too warm, too vivid, too full of longing to be denied.
    He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head violently, as though that would dispel the betraying images from his mind. They were no comfort. Like a rodent circling an exercise wheel, his thoughts kept coming back to a science-fiction movie he had seen called Blade Runner. It was about artificial human beings—androids who had been cheated out of both a past and a future by their makers. But one of them, a beautiful young woman named Rachel, had been given synthetic memories of childhood. They were so tangible and vivid that she had thought they were the truth.
    In a way he was like Rachel. The memories were there. But did he have a right to them? Did they belong to him—or to a dead man?

Chapter Five
    T he day of reckoning had arrived. But judgment would have to wait for Maj. Ross Downing, and he was late.
    Though Eden sat quietly across the table from the rest of the security team—Price, Walker and Yolanski—her mind was anything but calm. She had half expected—dreaded, actually—that Dr. Hubbard would be present for her little performance. But luck was apparently on her side. The man who was best able to see through her trumped-up report was conspicuously absent.
    To keep from thinking about the trial by fire ahead, she reviewed her assessments of the three men who waited with her. Though she’d kept her dealings with them coolly professional, over the past week and a half she had gotten to know them a bit better.
    Lieutenant Price was a yes-man, an extension of his commanding officer. She’d bet that he didn’t have a thought—official or otherwise—that hadn’t been filtered down through the chain of command. Even his knit polo shirts were the same brand as Downing’s. Probably if he’d thought he could get away with dyeing his light