by Kelly Oram
I don’t necessarily believe in destiny or soul mates or anything like that, but if ever there was a couple that would last forever, it was going to be Ryan and me. After everything we’d been through, we could overcome anything.
“So,” Ryan said, pulling me from my thoughts, “the only thing left standing between you and the world is a good name.”
“Isn’t that something the people usually give you?”
Ryan frowned. “It is, isn’t it? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with.”
Ryan was quiet for a minute longer and then went for the police scanner. “What do you think? Do you want to give it a try?”
My stomach fluttered. Could I really do this? Were we crazy? Would it help anything or just make everything worse?
“May as well turn it on,” I decided. “It’ll probably take us a while to figure out what any of it means, anyway.”
We didn’t need to use the police scanner for my first trial run as a superhero. We decided to try the news first and found what we were looking for on CNN. Seven-year-old Chelsea McIntosh had disappeared from her campsite in Tennessee where her family was holding a reunion. The girl had been missing at least two hours now, and the local authorities were undergoing a massive search and rescue.
“That’s it,” I whispered as I stared at the big brown eyes of an adorable little blonde. My heart leapt in my chest with a sense of hope and determination. “Ryan, I could find her. With my speed, I could cover every inch of that forest in twenty minutes. Plus, I can see and hear things other people can’t.”
“You’re right,” Ryan agreed. “It’s the perfect situation. Police suspect she just wandered off into the woods. That means no bad guys to deal with and the police will be nothing but grateful for your help. You should do it, Jamie.” Ryan sounded as excited as I felt. “You should go find that little girl.”
Ryan and I didn’t say much as he walked me out of his dorm, but the anticipation we were both feeling was conversation enough. When we got to the front door of Ryan’s building he pulled me in for one last kiss. “For luck,” he explained. “Be careful. There are plenty of animals out there.”
“That I can either outrun or zap if they manage to take me by surprise. I’ll have all my senses on high alert. I should be able to hear them coming.”
Ryan nodded. This was a familiar conversation for us since I was always running off traipsing around the North American wilderness. He knew I’d be safe, but still felt it was his duty as Loving Boyfriend to warn me about the dangers of nature.
“Take your phone with you.”
That made me smile. He was worse than my father. For my birthday last year he’d given me a satellite phone so that I’d never be without reception, even at the Grand Canyon or in the middle of Yosemite. The gift had earned him major brownie points with my parents, but Becky had lectured him for ages about how birthday gifts needed to be romantic—no matter how much hiking I liked to do. I wondered if she’d been the one to put the idea of jewelry into Ryan’s head.
“I’ll stop by my dorm before I head east,” I promised.
“Come back and see me after.”
“It could take a while,” I warned. “And if by some chance she was taken and not just lost, I might not find her. I won’t be able to do much if someone threw her in the trunk of a car and drove off.”
Which, now that I’d thought about it, was a possibility. I shuddered and Ryan seemed to share my sense of urgency. He gave me one last parting kiss and then shooed me off to attempt my first act of heroism.
After a quick jog back to my dorm for my satellite phone, jacket, and a flashlight—supersight is not the same thing as night vision—I was on my way to Tennessee to scour the wilderness for a missing girl.
Chaos had erupted in the family’s campsite by the time I got there. There were police everywhere and a lot of angry adults. For a few minutes I just listened, trying to pick out the conversations of anyone who looked like they were in charge.
The search party had found one of the missing girl’s shoes along with some hair and evidence of a struggle. This had gone from a missing persons case to a kidnapping. All civilian volunteers had been forced out of the woods. Only the police could continue looking for the missing girl now, and their numbers were a lot more limited. Chelsea’s family was not happy.
A kidnapping made things more dangerous, but it only strengthened my resolve to find the little girl. From what I could gather, the police believed the kidnapper had set off on foot and was still somewhere within the state park. They’d set up roadblocks at every entrance, but the park was huge—hundreds of miles of wilderness.
I didn’t really have a plan when I shot off in the direction the police had taken the scent hounds, but I felt as desperate as the girl’s family and I knew I had to do something.
The police dogs had tracked the girl’s scent to a wide, lazy river. They had sent teams off in both directions on either side of the river, but so far no trail had been picked up. People suspected the kidnapper had had a boat waiting.
This perked up my mood. I could search the banks of the river a lot faster than those dogs, and how hard could it be to follow a river? I headed the direction the police thought seemed more likely—out of the park and toward civilization.
It only took me minutes to reach the border of the park. I hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary yet. There were police patrolling here, so I turned around and headed back the opposite direction. After a few minutes, I passed up the search party and took off deep into the Great Smoky Mountains.
I ran for miles and miles, moving much slower than I was capable because I was concentrating on everything around me. I was so deep in the forest now that there weren’t any humans for who knows how many miles. If there had been anyone out in those woods anywhere near that river, be they on foot or in a car, I’d have known it.
After about fifteen minutes I finally heard it—the sounds of a motor and the whimpers of a frightened child. I clicked off my flashlight and as carefully and quietly as possible caught up to the boat, doing my best to stay hidden in the tree line.
Once I could see them, my heart skipped a beat in my chest. The boat wasn’t much more than a rowboat with a trolling motor. It moved slowly, guided by the light of a single lantern. I could see terrified little Chelsea curled up in the head of the boat, tied at the hands and feet and gagged. The poor thing shivered—probably from both the cool mountain air and sheer terror.
There were times I’d contemplated zapping Carter for my own amusement because he’d deserved it, and when Mr. Edwards had tortured Ryan I’d nearly killed him. But even that rage didn’t compare to the rush of emotion that hit me when I saw that helpless little girl.
Her kidnapper seemed to fit my idea of what a backwoods sociopath child molester might look like—dirty, smelly, greasy, hairy, overweight, and generally creeptastic. My first thought was that no one would miss this man if he were to suddenly have a freak boating accident.
Some part of me wanted to kill him, and even though I knew I wouldn’t do that, my energy seemed right on par with my feelings. It reacted to my anger and swelled out of control.
Suddenly a tiny light burst from my chest and then went out with a pop. I’d forgotten about my new necklace, and shattered the lightbulb when I’d lost control and flipped into Danger Mode.
That was not the first light I’d exploded, and it suddenly made sense why Ryan had given me a bagful of spare bulbs, but now wasn’t the time to think of such things. The tiny flash had alerted the kidnapper to my presence. He stood up, holding what looked like a shotgun, and scanned the riverbank.
I blinked out of there as fast as I could. I went upstream just a little ways and found a place to hide where I could still watch him motor upriver toward me.
The man didn’t say anything, just continued to watch the shore. He kept his gun trained on the dark woods ahead of him as the boat continued its slow journey.
I tried to think up a plan. I couldn’t just jump from the shore onto the boat and tackle the guy, even though I knew I could make the distance. The man was armed. I knew my body could take a supersized beating if it had to, but I doubted I was bulletproof.
I could zap him, but I didn’t want to risk the gun misfiring and accidentally hitting Chelsea. I just needed to wait until he put the gun down again. Then I could zap him.
He never put the gun back down—not until he was ready to get out of the boat. He motored to the shore on the opposite side of the river from me. The minute he hopped out to pull the boat out of the water I didn’t think; I just took a running jump.
My aim was perfect. I tackled him to the ground before he ever even saw me coming. He let out a jumbled string of curse words in an accent so thick I couldn’t really be sure which swears they were, but I knew they were bad.
“Hey, perv,” I greeted as we both scrambled to our feet. “Tell me something. Do you like to play games with the girls you take, or do you prefer to get straight to the killing?”
He stumbled backward, eyes wide as saucers. Even in the dark I could see the blood drain from his face. I couldn’t blame him for being afraid. I had taken Danger Mode to a whole new level. My eyes were glowing so brightly I was seeing the world through a yellow-green haze.
“Because I’m down for a game, but if you’d rather I just get straight to the killing, I suppose I could manage that.”
Not that I was going to hurt the guy no matter how much he deserved it—but hey, he didn’t know that. I had no problem giving him a taste of the dread he’d caused poor Chelsea.
The man started muttering a bunch of incoherent babble, but I’m pretty sure I heard the term witch. I supposed it was a fair guess. Wrong, but understandable.
“The Wicked Witch ain’t got nothin’ on me, jerk-off,” I said.
The man’s eyes darted to the rowboat where his shotgun was lying on the seat. “Oh, I don’t think so, buddy.”
The second his feet shuffled that direction, I sent a blast of lightning at the ground next to him. The man let out a scream and stumbled back. He tripped and landed on his butt.
Geez, a girl shoots one little bolt of lightning from her hands and he has to wet himself? Seriously?
Apparently, the guy was a giant coward. Part of me wanted to stay there and mess with him, but I figured Chelsea probably wasn’t in the mood to stick around.
“Sorry, Mr. Wrong Turn, this isn’t going to feel very good, but I can’t think of another way to stop you from running off before the cops can come find you.”
Quicker than he could blink, I grabbed the gun from the boat and knocked the man on the head with the back end of it. He went down like a sucker. Apparently it was as easy to knock someone unconscious as Smallville made it seem. Or it was when you had superstrength, anyway. The guy probably had a concussion, but that was going to be the least of his worries once I told the police where to find him.
I had to wait a minute before I was calm enough to turn off my power, but once I was no longer a walking electrical storm I found some rope in the boat and tied the kidnapper to a tree.
After I was sure he wasn’t going anywhere, I slowly approached the seven-year-old still huddled in the boat. I don’t really have any experience with little kids, but I figured it was a safe bet that she was going to be scared of me. Boy, was I ever wrong. As soon as I untied the little girl, she threw herself into my arms so fast she practically used superspeed. “Thank you!” she cried.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Did he hurt you?”
The girl shook her head against my chest. “When I didn’t stop screaming he hit my face, but it doesn’t really hurt anymore. Just my arms and legs where the ropes were.”
The girl sat back, wiped her tearstained face, and showed me her wrists. There were angry red lines where the ropes had rubbed her skin raw. Seeing the marks, I had to once again focus on my energy or I would have lost control.
It was the little girl’s voice that brought me out of my rage. “Where are your wings?” she asked.
When I looked at her she was watching me with a mixture of awe and confusion.
“Wings?” I asked.
She nodded. “I know what you are. Mommy always says I should pray to Jesus when I’m scared, so that’s what I did and he sent you to help me.”
I smiled. “You are a very brave girl, Chelsea.”
Chelsea threw her tiny arms around my neck again. “Because I had my angel here to save me.”
“I’m not an angel.”
“But I saw you come from the sky.”
It took me a second to understand what she was talking about. “Oh! No, I didn’t come from the sky. I ran here, but I was on the other side of the river, so I jumped.”
Chelsea cast her gaze across the river and her eyes went wide. “You jumped all the way over the river?”
I laughed again. “I did.” When Chelsea looked confused again I said, “I’m a very special girl, but I’m not an angel.”
“She’s a witch!”
Chelsea and I both jumped at the sound of her kidnapper’s voice. Chelsea stiffened in my arms and clung to me, but she didn’t cry. She had to be the bravest kid on the planet.
I got to my feet, holding her tightly to me, and glared at the evil man. “I’m not a witch, either,” I told Chelsea, “but that man is very bad and he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. He’s never going to hurt you again, okay?”
Chelsea had her face buried in my neck, and when she nodded I felt the wetness of tears. “Come on, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Let’s get you back to your mommy and daddy. Hold on tight and keep your eyes closed. I’m going to run very fast and I don’t want you to get dizzy.”
Chelsea nodded against me again and her grip tightened.
Before I took off, I glared at the man again and gave him a few parting words.
“I’ll send the police for you. I would say I hope they find you before the bears do, but…” I shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
I didn’t stick around for his reply.
In just a few minutes I heard the sounds of men and dogs crunching through the forest. I stopped in a small clearing, where I was out in the open and started calling for help. I didn’t want to just pop up next to some nervous, trigger-happy cop with a kidnapped girl in my arms.
“Hello?” I called. “Is anybody out there? Help us!”
The police were on us in seconds. They were surprised to see me, but once it was clear I wasn’t a threat they were only concerned. “This is Chelsea,” I said to the guy who seemed to be in charge. “She’s got rope burns on her wrists and ankles, but other than that she’s okay. She’s the bravest girl I’ve ever met.”
Chelsea sat up straighter in my arms at the praise.
“And who are you?” the officer asked.
“She’s my guardian angel,” Chelsea answered.
The guy smiled at her and opened his mouth to ask me again, but I stopped him. “The creep you’re looking for is tied to a tree a long ways up the river. His boat is sitting on the shore. You can’t miss it. I’m sure it’ll have all the evidence you need. I’d bet he’s even got some kind of psycho killer love nest shanty somewhere close by. You might want to hurry before he finds some way to wriggle out of the ropes. I tied the knots pretty tight, but I’m not a boy scout or anything.”
The cop was at a loss for words. “The guy…But how did you…Who…Where…”
I rolled my yellow eyes and gave Chelsea a hug. “I have to go now, okay? But these are the police. They will take you to your parents. You’re safe now.”
Chelsea squeezed me. “Can’t you take me to them? I don’t want you to leave.”
“I’m sorry. I have to. I have to stay a secret, and the police will want to ask me questions. You’re safe now, though. I promise.”
Chelsea nodded and reluctantly climbed out of my arms. “Thank you for saving me.”
“You’re welcome,
Chelsea. You be a good girl now, okay? No more wandering away from your parents.”
Chelsea nodded and stepped back. The police officer recognized that I was about to bolt and tried to stop me, but Chelsea ran to him and grabbed on to his legs. “Can I go to my parents now?”
“Sure, sweetie,” he mumbled, his eyes on me. “What’s your name? What are you doing out here? How did you find the girl? You need to come with us and give your statement.”
“Sorry,” I told the guy. “Can’t really do that. Get Chelsea home, and seriously, hurry and go find that creep. I think there’re bears in these mountains and that guy deserves to rot in prison for a long time, not get eaten. My work here’s done. I gotta go.”
“No, wait!”
I gave Chelsea a wink before I shot out of there so fast I disappeared in the blink of an eye.
By the time I got back to Ryan’s dorm, the news of Chelsea’s recovery was already being reported. Ryan met me at the entrance of his building and didn’t say anything, just pulled me into his arms. I laughed, but there were sobs mixed in with it.
“Are you okay?” Ryan asked quietly.
I sniffled. My laughter died down, leaving only my tears behind. “Oh, Ryan. Thank you for talking me into doing that.”
Ryan squeezed me tighter. “It went well, then?”
“That poor little girl. You should have seen her. She was so scared, but so brave. She was so sweet, and now she’s going to be okay.”
“Because of you,” Ryan said.
I didn’t respond to that right away. I didn’t care that it was because of me. I was just glad that that creep didn’t get the chance to touch her. The thought of whatever his plans were being the last minutes of her life was enough to make me sick. But she was safe now, and that man would never do that to anyone ever again, and that felt good.
I wouldn’t care if anyone ever knew what I’d done. I didn’t need the glory of it all, but Ryan was right. Knowing that I had done something to help someone made a difference.
