Free Red Alert by Jessica Andersen Page B

friends, if you get my meaning.”
    Erik scowled harder. “And Otto would be…?”
    The older man jerked his head toward the chiseled male-model type spotting Meg. “He owns the place.”
    “Which still doesn’t explain why you’re talking to me. I’m not much for idle conversation.”
    “I hadn’t noticed.” Cannon’s lips twitched. “I came over to see if you wanted to have a go.” He gestured to the roped climbers. “It’s not as good as outside, but it’s better than sitting at a desk.”
    Erik turned his back on the climbing wall and the faint surge of wistfulness, and focused his attention into the other room, where Meg was halfway up the UFO. As he watched, she swung from her fingertips in an arc that brought her to a bright yellow handhold and a new point of purchase. He grimaced. “Not interested. Like I said, I’m just waiting for a friend.”
    And even that was an overstatement. He and Meg were hardly friends.
    “Fair enough.” There was a rustle of cloth as Cannon dug into the back pocket of his warm-up pants and withdrew a nylon wallet. He pulled out a business card. “This is neither a come-on or a request for money, but if you ever change your mind, give me a call.”
    “I won’t.” But Erik took the card and glanced at it as Cannon walked away with an awkward, rolling gait. The simple cream-colored stock was embossed “Luke Cannon, Pentium Pharmaceuticals.”
    Pharma, eh? It might have been a simple coincidence. The gym was located in the center of the hospital district. It was a good bet that more than half of the climbers were hospital or research types.
    But that didn’t explain why Cannon had come over to him.
    Erik tucked the card into the back pocket of his slacks and turned toward the rope wall just in time to see Cannon strip off his warm-up pants. Metal glinted where Cannon’s right leg should have been, and suddenly his overture and the rolling gait made too much sense.
    He was an amputee.
    A hard, hurting fist clutched in Erik’s gut, bringing with it the smell of antiseptic and the fear he’d felt in the hospital as he’d lain there, powerless to do anything but let the IV seep into his veins, one drop at a time, keeping him alive whether he liked it or not.
    We may have to take the leg, they’d told his boss, thinking him unconscious when really he lacked the strength to open his eyes and respond. It might be the best thing for him.
    In the end they hadn’t, taking only the dying muscle, the pieces that wouldn’t reattach no matter how hard the arthroscopic surgeons worked. They had patched him up and taught him how to walk again, all the while reminding him how lucky he’d been to keep the leg.
    But now, as he watched Cannon strap into the climbing gear and begin his ascent, hopping nimblyfrom one purchase to the next, deftly inserting a specially designed artificial foot into cracks too small to admit flesh and blood, Erik cursed himself for being weak, for being too broken to heal.
    Why else did the one-legged man seem like less of a cripple than he did?
    He turned away, hating the smell of sweat and activity, which served only to drive home the point that he didn’t belong here, didn’t belong anywhere.
    With a half-formed plan of grabbing Meg and hustling her out on some pretext or another, he stepped into the bouldering room. Two things happened simultaneously.
    His cell phone rang.
    And he saw that Meg was gone.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    Meg had just negotiated a tricky part of the course Otto had set up for her, one that sent her around the backside of the wall, when she heard Erik bellow, “Megan!”
    She didn’t stop to question how she immediately knew it was him amid the dozen or so other men in the climbing area that knew her name. She didn’t want to consider how quickly the timbre of his voice had engraved itself on her consciousness, for good or ill. Instead, she fixed on the fear in his tone.
    Something had happened. Something bad.
    She