More Than Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #2)

by Kelly Oram

  I didn’t look up to see whatever expression was on Ryan’s face. I knew him well enough by now that I could pretty much always read him, and this was one time I didn’t want to have any idea what was running through his head.

  I went back to my Visticorp research, giving Ryan ample time to think. The poor guy probably needed it after the bombs of information I’d just dropped on him.

  I’m not sure how much time passed before Ryan spoke again—one minute, two minutes, ten. It probably felt longer than it was, especially since I’m pretty sure I held my breath the entire time. I wasn’t sure which uncomfortable topic he’d decide to tackle first. He surprised me though, by not bringing any of it up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Using Google Earth to get a look at Visticorp’s buildings. It’s not helpful that they are right in the middle of Las Vegas. Very inconvenient should the building need to—I don’t know—come to its sudden, ‘untimely demise.’”

  “Babe.” Ryan rubbed his head as if I were giving him a headache. “What are you talking about?”

  “Carter was a definite no-go on the researching Visticorp issue, so I’m doing it myself. If I can’t find any dirt on them, then I’ll just have to settle for destroying the place. That I can do.”

  “Jamie, you know you can’t—”

  “It’s strange, though.” I didn’t let him finish his sentence. At some point I was going to have to do something. “I was looking through their employee directory a little bit ago and I didn’t see Murphy or any of Demakis and his team.”

  Ryan didn’t want to play along, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to make up a new theory. “Carter said it was like the guy didn’t exist, right? Maybe they have some secret branch of the company where they do all their illegal stuff. Like how the government has its secret agencies that their spies work for.”

  I groaned. “The Bourne Identity again, Ryan? Really?”

  Ryan grinned. “You know they do that kind of thing for real.”

  “It’s a movie.”

  “It’s a good movie. And you like it, too.”

  “I like Matt Damon.”

  “Please. Matt Damon does it for you?”

  “Consider yourself lucky I met you first.”

  Ryan snorted. “Well, then maybe you should consider yourself lucky that I met you before Emma Watson.”

  “Hermione?” I laughed. “Figures. Schoolgirl uniform, and all.”

  “Mmm,” Ryan agreed appreciatively. He paused, thoughtful, and then smiled wickedly at me. “You know, if you really don’t want to give the Wonder Woman thing a try, you do have other options.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  Laughing, I swung my pillow at Ryan’s head, but he caught it and chucked it on the floor. “Starting pillow fights in class, Miss Baker? I do believe that’s against school rules.”

  With one of his eyebrows raised into a perfect arch, he set my computer on the floor and then crawled toward me on the bed.

  I would have laughed, except the look suddenly in his eyes made my stomach flip. “Better give me detention, then,” I said, using the last bit of air in my lungs.

  “Oh, I think I can get more creative with your punishment than that.”

  I shivered from the desire so thick in his voice, and threw my arms around his neck as he pushed me onto my back.

  Almost as if he’d been listening outside my door, Teddy chose that precise moment to knock. “Jamie! Open up! We have to talk! Now!”

  Ryan growled and captured me in a heated kiss before I could answer Teddy.

  “Jamie!”

  I broke away from Ryan’s lips with a groan. “Nobody here by that name!” I shouted.

  “It’s important!”

  “Sorry! I’m busy pretending to be a naughty schoolgirl for my boyfriend! Call me tomorrow!”

  Teddy tried the door handle then, and since it wasn’t locked he came bursting in my room. Ryan jumped to his feet, ready to pound Teddy into the ground, but Teddy held out a hand and froze Ryan in place with his telekinesis. “You guys can do the nasty later,” he said, looking at me. “You have a stalker.”

  “No kidding,” Ryan grumbled.

  Teddy rolled his eyes. “Not me. I was on my way here because you’ve been avoiding my calls all day.”

  This was true. I had been blowing him off because I knew he would just ask me about being Chelsea’s Angel.

  “I saw four guys hanging out in front of your building,” Teddy continued. “I’m pretty sure one of them was the same guy from the club the other night, and I’m also pretty sure all of them were armed.”

  Ryan and I both went stiff.

  “I snuck around the back of the building and there were more guys guarding the back exit. I had to climb in through the laundry room window to warn you. I think you’re in danger, Angel.” He said the name with bitterness.

  Ryan threw his hands up in the air with a groan, but I wasn’t really that upset. “Fine,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “You caught me. I’m Chelsea’s Angel.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me? Don’t you trust me? Jamie, we’re the same! How could you not tell me after I explained my powers to you?”

  “Do you really want to argue about this right now?” I asked. “With a whole group of psycho evil scientists standing outside ready to kidnap us for experiments?”

  Teddy gasped. “You know who they are?”

  I grabbed both his hand and Ryan’s and headed out the door. “They’re a genetics research company and they’ve known about me since my accident. I was planning to explain all this to you soon since, thanks to that stunt you pulled in the alley, I’m sure they’re after you, too. Which, by the way, I totally could have handled by myself.”

  “That’s gratitude for you,” Teddy grumbled.

  “Fight later, you guys,” Ryan said. “Teddy, you said you came in the laundry room window?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is that?”

  “First floor. Off the lounge.”

  My room is almost exactly halfway down the hall on the third floor of a five-story dormitory. The hall is long and narrow and has only two exits. There is an elevator at the front of the building that empties into the common room and the stairs at the back that lead to the fire exit.

  Demakis, Reynolds, and Lorenz emerged from the elevator just as we stepped into the hall. For a split second my eyes locked with Demakis, and then I crumpled to the floor, experiencing pain I’d never felt before.

  Ryan was suddenly crouched over me, shaking my shoulders lightly. “Jamie? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t you hear it?” I screamed.

  “Hear what?”

  I couldn’t respond except to scream. Somewhere, someone was blowing some kind of supersonic dog whistle or something. The sound was so detrimental to my supersensitive ears that I couldn’t think. The noise was bouncing around in my brain to the point I was going to go insane from it.

  Beside me Teddy cried out in pain and dropped to the ground, grabbing his head. When I glanced over at him, he looked as if he were having a seizure. His eyes had rolled back in his head and blood was dripping from his nose.

  “It works,” Demakis said, then spoke into his watch. “Devices successful. Subjects incapacitated.”

  Reynolds was standing back holding two small black metal boxes, one of which was some kind of Jamie-specific device invented to debilitate me long enough to kidnap me. The dumb thing worked, too. Brutally. I could only assume the other was the same type of weapon, but with a Teddy stamp on it.

  Ryan jumped to his feet only to find a gun pointed at his head, and not the tranquilizer kind.

  “Step back, son,” Demakis said calmly. “Now is not the time to play hero.”

  I tried to gather my energy in my hands, but I had no control over it. It was a struggle just to stay coherent. I could barely think and couldn’t move, and I was pretty sure the tickling sensation in my ears was from blood trickling out o
f them. If they kept their device on much longer I was sure I’d go deaf, and as much as my head hurt, I figured I’d be lucky if I came out of this without brain damage, too.

  Ryan’s hands clenched into fists and Demakis cocked the gun. “Do you think your girlfriend wants to watch you die?”

  My vision blurred into its yellow/green haze as my powers responded to my fear and rage. My necklace wasn’t the only thing that exploded when I flipped into Danger Mode. The lights in the hallway rained down on us in tiny pieces. I’d fried the entire building at the threat against Ryan’s life.

  We were thrust into pitch-black and I heard the sound of a fist hitting flesh. I knew it was Ryan. I knew he’d be the only one in the room unsurprised by the power outage and that there was no way he’d waste the distraction.

  I heard the sounds of a major scuffle, and prayed my boyfriend wasn’t being killed as I tried to crawl across the floor toward the other two men. Demakis was huge and no doubt had received physical training before earning his title as a retrieval expert.

  The emergency lights kicked on and Lorenz smiled down at me in the dim light. “Going somewhere, girlie?”

  Unable to do anything else, I kicked out and made contact with his leg. Judging from his screams and the way he dropped, I’d definitely broken something.

  Reynolds came at me next, making a wide circle to avoid my legs, but the second he grabbed my shoulder he got such a jolt of electricity that he was actually blown backward and crashed against the wall.

  I didn’t have time to wonder whether I’d stopped his heart or not because the sound of a gun went off and Ryan blew back against the wall, sliding to the floor.

  Sirens blared outside. Girls screamed in the rooms around me, a few of them braving a peek into the hallway but then quickly slamming their doors shut. Demakis shouted into his watch for backup. But none of it mattered.

  I’d seen Ryan hurt before when Mr. Edwards had taken him hostage, but even that was not as heart-stopping as watching him get shot. In that moment my entire world came to an end.

  “I’m alive, Jamie,” Ryan grunted. “He only hit my arm.”

  And suddenly I could breathe again. Good for me. Bad for Demakis. So, so bad for Demakis.

  Demakis now stood over me with a giant syringe in his hand.

  “Somebody should have warned you it’s not wise to piss me off,” I croaked.

  My threat sounded ridiculous considering it came out in a strangled whisper, and Demakis laughed. “Looks like you’re all out of tricks, little freak.”

  Freak? Really? Were we five? Was that supposed to hurt my feelings?

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I have one left in me.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to block out the noise and pain, and focused only on the heat beneath the surface of my skin. I drained every last bit of energy I had into my palm until my hand felt as though it were on fire. Then I took aim right at Demakis’s chest. He laughed again at the way my arm trembled.

  “This is for shooting my boyfriend, jerk.”

  When the bolt of lightning hit Demakis, he flew backward all the way down the hall and crashed into the elevator doors before falling in an unconscious heap on the floor.

  Seconds later, the noise was gone and I took what felt like my first breath in hours. Teddy groaned at the same time. He lifted his head up long enough to make eye contact with me, then let it drop back to the floor with a thunk.

  “Here, Jamie,” Ryan said, holding out the two little black devices. “Think you have enough juice left to fry these?”

  “No!” Teddy groaned again. “Don’t destroy them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I want to see if I can figure out what they are—what they did to us. If I can do that, maybe I can come up with something to counteract things like them in the future.”

  “You don’t have a future, 4281.”

  My head snapped toward the raspy voice. I’d forgotten Lorenz was still conscious. He had tears in his eyes from the pain he was in, but when I looked at him he smiled anyway. He lifted his arm and dangled his watch at me. “Backup just got here.”

  Teddy cursed and pulled himself up. He looked entirely too peaked, but he was on his feet.

  “You recharged yet, babe?” Ryan asked me.

  “Just one second.”

  The elevator door chimed at the same time that the door to the stairwell flew open.

  “I don’t think we have a second,” Teddy muttered as a bunch of men with guns swarmed toward us.

  There was no way out from here.

  Unless...

  I didn’t have time to think about it. The men were fanning out, guns drawn, shouting at us all “don’t move and don’t try anything funny.”

  Yeah, okay, sure, scary guys with guns. We’ll just go quietly and peacefully to be your test dummies. Sounds like a plan…

  I pulled Ryan to me and pumped him full of energy with a superkiss.

  Behind me several people laughed and jeered. Teddy sounded particularly appalled as he said, “Honestly, woman, now is not the time for that. Learn to control yourself!”

  “My window,” I whispered to Ryan as I broke the kiss.

  Ryan nodded in understanding, then looked at Teddy and grimaced.

  “I know, babe,” I said. “I’m sorry in advance.”

  “Sorry for what?” Teddy started to ask, but was cut off when I spun around and planted a big, fat superkiss on him, too.

  He gasped, but immediately returned the kiss with startling ferocity. I wanted to smack him when I felt his tongue in my mouth, but I also couldn’t blame him. Superkisses are very overwhelming, especially the first time.

  Much too soon for his liking and not nearly soon enough for mine, I felt his body start to tremble, so I pulled him off me. He gaped at me, wide-eyed and breathless, smiling so big his dimples swallowed his cheeks whole.

  I expected him to ask me what had just happened or why I’d done it, but all he said was, “Dude! Books don’t lie. Kissing is awesome!”

  It was his first kiss? That caught me off guard, but there was no time to respond. I just grabbed a tight hold of his hand, nodded to Ryan that I was ready, and then we took off at superspeed into my bedroom and out my third-story window. We didn’t stop until we were standing in my parents’ living room.

  I was freaked out.

  And pissed.

  I was a supercharged whirlwind of emotions as I came slamming my way through the front door, dragging a bleeding Ryan and a very confused Teddy in tow.

  “Mom! Dad!”

  My parents were already making their way to us. They knew there was a problem because I was charged up enough that I’d tripped the circuit breakers in the house when I’d arrived. That, and the front door had been ripped right off its hinges when I tried to open it, and was now lying in the middle of the street in front of my house. I hadn’t done either of those things since I’d learned my English teacher had kidnapped my boyfriend the year before.

  Everyone was yelling and asking me questions, but my mind was still back at my dorm, and everything that had just happened. “Shut up!” I shouted. “Everybody, be quiet! For just a minute, nobody make a sound! Please!”

  They all obeyed me. I guess it’s just natural to listen to an angry, glowing, lightning girl. I knew they had questions, but I was too amped up to focus on anything besides the mental checklist running through my head.

  I closed my eyes and listened as hard as my supersensitive—and now superdamaged—ears could hear. It took actual minutes for me to be able to focus. I’m not sure how my father managed to keep silent that long, but it paid off. After a few minutes I was able to hear what I was looking for. I ran from room to room collecting every camera and bug that had been planted in my house and crushed them into a nice little ball before I fried them.

  “Okay, it’s safe to talk now,” I told my waiting audience.

  “Good,” Ryan said, then slammed his fist into Teddy’s jaw.

  “Ryan
!”

  I screamed his name because he’d swayed on his feet after hitting Teddy. I had to catch him and help him down to the couch. That’s when my mom noticed the blood and went into hysterics.

  While she dashed into the kitchen to find a towel, Teddy moaned and rubbed his jaw, but really, it couldn’t have hurt that bad. Ryan’s punch hadn’t had a whole lot of force behind it, considering he’d just been shot and all.

  “Hey! What was that for? She kissed me!”

  “You didn’t have to like it so much.”

  I smiled and ran my fingers through Ryan’s now sweat-soaked hair. “Cut him some slack, babe. You know how awesome my superkisses are. Remember how you reacted the first time you got one?”

  “Excuse me,” Ryan balked. “Who straddled who that day, Sunshine? I totally dominated that kiss and you know it.”

  I snorted. “Sure you did. Which is why I started stalking you after that?”

  Ryan frowned at me and then glared again at Teddy for good measure. “Fine. But it’s definitely time for another trip to the cabin for a practice session. We’ve got to figure out a different way for you to transfer your power to people so you never have to do that again. From now on, the only person getting superkisses is me. Got it?”

  I grinned at my boyfriend, then bent down to give him a quick kiss. “Promise.”

  “What happened?” Dad demanded. He paled as he realized Ryan’s injury was a bullet wound.

  “Visticorp came for Teddy and me. It was pretty intense. I had to share my powers with both of them in order to escape.”

  My dad fell into his armchair. I listened to make sure his heart continued to beat regularly while my mom came back and fussed with Ryan’s arm.

  “That’s what happened?” Teddy said, breaking my concentration. “You gave me your powers?”