More Than Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #2) (11 page)

Ryan is the most thoughtful, romantic person on the planet. Even though he has money—his uber-rich stepdad set up a bank account for him so that he wouldn’t have to work on anything but football and homework while at school—he’s the kind of guy who likes to give meaningful gifts rather than expensive ones. That’s why I was shocked to find a box boasting custom jewelry designs beneath the gift wrap.

“We’re a little too young to get engaged, aren’t we?” I joked nervously.

Ryan just beamed in response.

At first I didn’t know exactly what I was looking at, but I knew it was gorgeous. “Ryan, it’s beautiful,” I whispered, taking a moment to examine the necklace.

It was a simple chain with a small pendant on it about the size of a penny. In fact, it reminded me of a penny because it was the same color.

“Is this made of copper?” I asked, carefully removing the necklace from the tiny cushion it rested on.

Ryan nodded proudly. “The guy thought I was crazy when I asked him to make a necklace out of copper, but it’s such a great conductor of electricity.”

That made me look closer at the medallion. It was about a quarter of an inch thick, cut in the shape of a sun. The center had been cut out of it and, curiously, there was ribbing on the inside edges of the hole. “Is something supposed to screw into this?”

“That’s the best part,” Ryan said, handing me a small bag.

I opened the bag to find a handful of tiny lightbulbs. Normally I would have laughed—Ryan has quite a history with lightbulbs—but I’d figured out what my necklace does and I was too moved to ruin the moment.

“Does it work?” I asked, carefully screwing one of the mini lightbulbs into the center of the sun pendant. The bulb fit perfectly inside the medallion.

Ryan shrugged. “It should. In theory. I hope it does. I’ve been dying to let you try it.”

Ryan marched me in front of the mirror again and stood behind me. I lifted my hair and waited for him to clasp the necklace on me. The chain was short and the pendant rested comfortably on my skin just above the neckline of my T-shirt. As I adjusted it, Ryan slipped his arms around my waist and dropped his lips to my neck. The delicate touch and tickle of his breath made me shiver.

As my body responded to Ryan’s kiss, I let my energy seep to the surface of my skin. The tiny bulb in my necklace began to glow.

I gasped.

Ryan stopped kissing me and met my eyes in the mirror. He was glowing almost as brightly as my necklace.

My eyes glossed over and Ryan’s grip on me tightened.

“I love it, Ryan. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, and I love you.”

As I stood there marveling over the fact that this guy—who was almost too perfect to exist—had chosen to love me over every other girl he’d ever met, he pulled the side of his mouth up into a crooked smile.

“What?”

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” he sang suddenly.

Gorgeous, romantic, and darn-near perfect Ryan Miller may be, but a singer he is not. I burst into laughter.

“You make me hap-py, when skies are gray!”

Ryan squeezed me to him even tighter and began to tickle me as he continued his serenade. “You’ll never know, dear! How much I love you!”

“Stop!” I shrieked.

“The singing or the tickling?”

“Both!”

“Please don’t take my sunshine away!” Ryan stopped tickling me and turned me around in his arms. “You and I have never had a song before.”

“‘You Are My Sunshine’? Are you kidding me?”

Ryan laughed. “Would you prefer ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’?”

I groaned. “I would prefer we not set cheesy theme music to our relationship. Especially not songs that create horrible puns based on my freakishness and that tarnish the amazing gift you just gave me.”

“Sorry, Sunshine. It’s already done.”

“You did
not
just call me ‘Sunshine.’”

Ryan grinned. “Yup. I’m thinking we need pet names to go with our song. Yours is Sunshine. What’s mine?”

I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him. “I’m not sure you want me to answer that right now.”

My threat made Ryan laugh. “Okay,” he said, still annoyingly cheerful. “You have my permission to take your time and think about it. It has to be something good.”

I rolled my eyes and Ryan turned me back to face the mirror again. We stood there a minute, just looking at each other. I fit so perfectly in his arms the way he was holding me now.

Not that I was even going to entertain the idea of pet names, but I tried to think of words that described him. Optimistic. Playful. Charming. Beautiful. Loving. Caring. Considerate. Nice. Perfect. Ryan’s always on my case about seeing the negative, but when I look at him it’s easy to forget that anything negative exists. And he loves me just as much as I love him.

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.