Remember Jamie Baker (7 page)

“What is it, Romeo?”

There was some more rustling and the clank of a cup, and then the faucet turned on. “Sir, I think you should take the team back to Las Vegas and let me stay behind with Jamie for a little while.”

I was as shocked by the request as Major Wilks was. “Absolutely not. This location is compromised, and she is the most important asset our agency has ever come across. She’s too valuable to leave unprotected like that. I want you both on that truck as quickly as possible.”

His statement made me see red, but before I had time to barge upstairs and give him a piece of my mind, Ryan said, “With all due respect, sir, she’s not an asset, and treating her as if she were one would be a huge mistake.”

I could have kissed him. Not that I was ready to even consider the possibility of getting into a relationship with him, but I had to hand it to my pre-amnesiac self. I had excellent taste in guys. I waited for the major to blow a gasket at the defiance, but he didn’t. “Explain.”

Ryan let out a loud puff of air that somehow sounded tired. “Jamie is…delicate.”

I wanted to scoff. I was hardly a fragile little girl in need of a big, strong man to take care of me. But, then again, I
had
just fallen apart in front of them all, so maybe he had a point—a
small
one—as much as I hated to admit it.

“She’s emotional. She’s so tough, but she needs a lot of TLC at the same time. She needs a while to freak out over everything she’s been through today, and she should be able to do that without the guys seeing it. Not to mention she’s still a civilian, sir. She’s independent, untrusting, and has always had a problem with authority. She won’t like it if you try to force any rules on her, even if it’s for her own safety. Offer her protection and she’ll come to you, but try to force it on her, and you’ll lose her.”

Who needed a personality notebook when I had a living Jamie Baker encyclopedia? Man, he was scarily accurate with his assessment of me. Dead on.

There was silence for a minute, and then the major grumbled. “That is…inconvenient.”

Ryan chuckled. “Jamie is anything but convenient. But she’s worth the trouble, sir, I promise. Trust me, if you want her to work with you, you’ll have to give her plenty of freedom, and time to be a girl when she needs it. Right now, she needs it.”

The major paused again and then reluctantly said, “What do you propose?”

“Leave, and give her the option to follow you. Prove to her that you really aren’t trying to simply take her. Respect her freedom. Give her time to settle down and process everything privately. She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”

The microwave beeped again, informing the world that its contents were nice and hot. “And if she doesn’t?”

I held my breath for Ryan’s answer. “Then that’s her choice. No one can force Jamie to do anything she doesn’t want to do. You’d only make an enemy of her if you tried.”

“And you?” Major Wilks asked. “What would you do in that case? If she takes off, do I lose you as well?”

“That would be up to Jamie. She’s got a strong head on her shoulders. She’s temperamental, but she always thinks long and hard about her decisions. If she tells me she needs time away, then I’ll trust that. If she asks me to leave, I’ll give her my number and pray she calls. But if she lets me stay with her… Sir, you’ve always known my position there. I respect your organization very much, but Jamie comes first. Always.”

His loyalty and devotion confused me. It was flattering, but it was so intense that it was scary. He was a complete stranger. Granted, a very kind and good-looking stranger, but a stranger all the same. This was exactly how it had all started with Tony. He knew everything, had all the answers, and flattered me with his feelings. But with all of that support came expectations. Ryan would be the same. Sure, he’d be patient, understanding Mr. Incredible right now, but when I didn’t fall for him? When I needed a friend and nothing more? What happened then? I couldn’t go through that twice.

The sound of someone taking whatever it was out of the microwave pulled me from my thoughts just in time to hear Ryan say, “I’ll try. She’s always wanted to help people. It’s why she became Chelsea’s Angel. But she’s also always feared and mistrusted the government. She’s got to be feeling extremely vulnerable right now, and she
hates
that. She needs to regain control over her life, and feeling like she’s being caged in or manipulated by the ACEs will have the opposite effect. Unless she comes to you on her terms, she won’t feel protected; she’ll feel threatened.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Positive, sir. Giving her freedom and trusting her decisions is the only chance you have.”

Major Wilks sighed heavily. “All right. But be safe, Romeo. Stay down in that bunker and lock that door while you’re here. I doubt even the supersoldiers could rip that thing off its hinges. And get out of here as quickly as you can; even if Angel doesn’t want to come with us, I’d hate to see either of you hurt or fall into Donovan’s hands. And keep me posted.”

“I will. Thank you, sir.”

They actually left
. I was stunned. The U.S. military found me and then they left. They didn’t even say good-bye. It was obvious that the major really didn’t like the idea, but he trusted Ryan and gave me my freedom. And I
was
free. I had several identities that they didn’t know about and more money attached to each than I could ever spend. I could take off right now and disappear forever.

I was so surprised by their conversation and the major’s departure that I’d completely calmed down by the time Ryan rejoined me in the basement. He shut and secured the hatch door at the top of the stairs as he’d promised the major, and then entered the room wearing a smile much too confident considering the awkwardness of this situation. He moved across the room to me with so much ease that it was as if he didn’t have a care in the world. How did he do that?

“Hey,” he said as he sat down next to me on the couch. I still had my knees tucked up under my chin, so he couldn’t sit exactly right next to me, but he did sit just inches away from my feet. The guy didn’t seem to need a lot of personal space.

I didn’t return the greeting, but my eyes tracked his every movement. Something about him unsettled me and gave me hope all at once.

He’d come back, carrying a small teacup on a saucer. It was odd to see such a masculine guy holding a delicate cup with tiny little rosebuds painted on it. As he offered me the cup, I couldn’t help giving him a hard time instead of thanking him properly, as I should have. I’m capable of being polite, but it’s not very high up on my personalities list in my notebook. “Do you bust out the good china for all your tea parties, or am I just special?”

I don’t know what it was about my comment that changed Ryan’s countenance, but he suddenly got that head-over-heels lovesick look in his eyes again. “It’s your cup, funny girl,” he said, “and Magic Tea is your favorite. I was lucky I found some stashed away in your cupboards. Drink it. It should help soothe your nerves.”

The dark-gold liquid smelled wonderful. I tentatively took a sip and was pleasantly surprised. Ryan was right; I did like it. He let me sip the tea in silence, and after a few minutes the bitter liquid warmed me from the inside out, relaxing every part of me. Even the pounding in my head faded into a dull ache.

“I bought us a little time,” Ryan said.

“I heard. Thank you.”

Ryan was momentarily startled, but he quickly pulled the corner of his mouth up into a half smile. “I keep forgetting. It’s been a while since I had to deal with the queen of eavesdropping. Sorry about the emotional girl comments.”

My injured pride wanted me to defend myself. Impossible to do with my face wet, eyes swollen, and nose running. I shrugged. “It seems to be true.”

“Yes, but you hardly like to admit it.”

I cracked a smile and took another sip of my tea.

Ryan watched me with his intense gaze, as if he simply couldn’t tear his eyes off of me, so I asked a question in order to break the tension. “How did you join up with the ACEs? There’s no way you were a part of the team before the explosion, if we were together. Superman was an idiot for dating Lois Lane, you know. I don’t think I’d be dumb enough to date a soldier and play superhero at the same time, especially not if I had a problem with authority.”

A small smile played across Ryan’s lips. “You’re right. I had nothing to do with the ACEs before the explosion. I was just a regular guy—a college football player with an undecided major. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life besides spend it with you.”

Ignoring that last statement, I re-asked my original question. “So how’d you end up with the ACEs?”

I’m not sure what made him smirk, but he obviously found something amusing. His voice was dry when he answered. “Carter wrote a story about you.”

There was that name again: Carter. “He was the reporter who’d written that story about Chelsea’s Angel and Visticorp, right?”

Ryan nodded. “The two of you have a strange relationship, but somehow it works. He blew the whistle on Visticorp’s human testing and explained how you died trying to free him. After his story broke, a couple of things happened. First, you’d freed four other Visticorp test subjects that day, and told them that you had a friend who could help them. When you didn’t find them after the explosion, they saw the story and assumed Carter was the friend you meant.”

“Was he?”

Ryan shrugged. “You could have meant him, but most likely you meant me or Teddy. It was the two of us who could have helped them hide from Visticorp. Carter didn’t really know what to do with them, so he called me. I let them stay at my stepdad’s cabin for a few days and was planning on helping them get new identities and all that, but then the ACEs showed up on my doorstep.”

“Why? How did they connect you with the explosion?”

Ryan smirked again. “I told you, you and Carter have a history. He wrote that story about Chelsea’s Angel rescuing him, but he’d also written quite a few other stories about you as Jamie Baker over the years. The ACEs put two and two together that you were Chelsea’s Angel. After getting all the info they could out of Carter, they came to question your parents and me. I joined up the second they told me what they were about. When they left my house that day, I left with them.”

“Why?”

“Because Carter didn’t know for sure that you were dead. He assumed you were, but he didn’t actually
see
you die. He didn’t
know
. You could have gotten away, or Visticorp could have still had you. The ACEs were my only chance at finding you.”

I blushed. Everything he said or did came back as a compliment to me, or a declaration of his feelings for me. He was either determined to show me how much he loved me, or he simply did love me that much and acted subconsciously. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was aware of what he was doing or not.

Unsure how to react to him, I cleared my throat and wiped at the salty crust on my cheeks left behind by my sob fest. “You mean you walked away from your family, friends, home, and a college football career so that you could run off to look for a girl who was probably dead?”

I didn’t mean to sound skeptical, but come on. Ryan shrugged, as if the answer were a given. “What if I
had
been dead?” I asked. “What if you never found me?”

“But you
weren’t
dead, and I
did
find you.”

And he was grinning again. Ugh. He was impossible. “But if I was?” I insisted. “If you never found me? That thought had to have crossed your mind.”

The playful smile finally fell from his face and he nodded slowly. “It did. More times than I’d like to admit.”

“Then why’d you leave?”

“Honestly?” I stayed silent, and it took Ryan a minute to answer. “I was running.” His eyes slipped out of focus as he drifted into a memory. “After you disappeared, I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t go on with life pretending like you never existed.”

I was touched by his candidness, but it saddened me, too. He hadn’t exactly said so, but it was clear that my disappearance had devastated him. He’d lost the girl he loved and it hurt him so badly that it drove him to leave his family and home in order to chase after a ghost.

It was hard to imagine what this situation must feel like for him. He’d been through something every bit as horrible as I had. Different, but equally awful. Though I knew I shouldn’t be, I was overcome with guilt thinking about how he must feel right now. But I wasn’t ready to get into the relationship discussion yet, so I moved the conversation on. “And what about the others?” Ryan shook himself from his daze and frowned at me. “The four people you said I rescued from Visticorp,” I clarified.

“Oh. You’ve met two of them—Tyson and Abiodun.”

“Okay, the kid is easy, but which one was Abiodun?”

“The really big black guy with the thick African accent. He’s older than everyone except Major Wilks.”

I nodded. He’d been the soft-spoken one who kept my temper calm when Ryan had freaked out about Tony earlier. He seemed like a nice man.

“And Tyson would be crushed if he ever heard you call him a kid, by the way,” Ryan added. “He idolizes you.”

I smiled behind my cup of tea. Tyson was cute. “And the other two?”

Ryan’s face fell. “An eight-year-old girl and a seventy-nine-year-old woman. Visticorp has them again. After the explosion, the four of them had no place to go. You said you’d find them, but of course you never did. Abiodun found an abandoned building to hide in, and then he and Tyson went out searching for you. Visticorp found the girls before they got back.

“Donovan knew they had escaped before the explosion, and combed the city like mad. Betty is a telepath. She was able to tell Abiodun they’d been found, but Abiodun and Tyson couldn’t get back to them in time. They must have knocked Betty out, because she stopped communicating right after she sent the warning. Now she must be out of range to reach us.”

My stomach churned. Visticorp was holding an eight-year-old girl and a seventy-nine-year-old woman hostage and running tests on them? It was horrific.

Ryan saw the loathing in my expression, and his own became fierce. “That’s the other reason I joined the ACEs. It’s why Tyson and Abiodun risked exposing themselves to join, too. We weren’t sure about you, but Betty and Natalia are still out there somewhere, and we need to get them back.”

I was sold. In fact, I was ready to leave. Maybe Major Wilks was right with his tough-love approach. My personal drama could wait. Donovan had done enough damage, and it was time to make him pay for it. Whether I trusted the ACEs or not, I needed their help and they needed mine. I finished the last of my tea and rose to my feet with a sigh. “I guess we should get going, then.”

As if he’d known all along that I’d go with him, Ryan smiled up at me and made himself more comfortable on the sofa. “There’s no need to rush, Jamie. They still have a long drive through the desert. We can meet them at the base in an hour. Sit down and relax for a while.”

He patted the spot next to him, inviting me to join him again, and when I narrowed my eyes, his smile turned wicked. “Wanna get reacquainted?”

Unbelievable. “Are you seriously asking me to make out with you for a hour?”

“What?” His brows rose in surprise, but his face was too innocent. “You thought I was—no, of course not.” He couldn’t keep up the ruse and cracked a smile. “I was just teasing.”

Yeah, sure, he was teasing. Big, fat liar. Big, fat, charming, incredibly sexy liar. With an irresistible smile.

“Unless you want to…?”

I so didn’t want him to see my amusement, but how could I not laugh at that? When my lips quirked up, Ryan’s grin turned movie worthy. “Pass,” I told him.

Ryan’s smile never faltered. “Another time, then.”

I rolled my eyes and crossed the room to the wall safe Tony and I kept hidden behind a bookshelf. “What are you doing?” Ryan came to stand behind me as I held my eye up to the retinal scanner. “That is so cool.”

Guys and gadgets. I personally didn’t get it, but Tony loved his tech equipment, too. “I have something that I think might help find Donovan.” I opened the safe and pulled out a small bag. Inside were a couple of different alias passports, driver’s licenses, banking information for Tony and myself, and some emergency cash. I took all those, but what I was really interested in was the tiny pouch that contained a handful of microchips. “Tony has some encrypted information on Donovan and Visticorp. He backed up Visticorp’s entire mainframe before the explosion, when he was preparing to escape. He used to call it his insurance policy. If we could figure out a way to crack it—and that’s a very big if—this could give us clues to where he would go to disappear, or the people he might be working with now.”

Ryan nodded. “We have a guy that could probably do it.”

I had my doubts. “I hope he’s good. Tony is a straight-up supergenius when it comes to computers. But it’s worth a shot anyway.”

I shouldered the bag and looked to Ryan. “So where are we supposed to meet them?”

Ryan chuckled. “Seriously, Sunshine. Relax. We’ve got time. Go soak in a bath or something. You took on three superthugs today. You’ve earned a rest.”

He had a point. The Magic Tea had done wonders, but I’d still taken a severe physical beating today. Letting my sore muscles and pounding head loosen up in the hot water sounded like heaven. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. A hot shower and a change of clothes does sound nice.”

As I shut the safe and made my way to the stairs, Ryan followed me up and said, “Hey, just in case you didn’t already pack it in your other suitcase and you can’t decide what to wear, I really love the jeans skirt with the sparkly things on the back pockets, and your tall black boots.”

My jaw fell open, and he winked before laughing his way out into the living room to wait for me.

After my shower, I searched through what was left of my wardrobe and kept thinking about the skirt Ryan mentioned. I knew which one he meant, and for some reason it irked me that I’d already packed it. It was one of my favorites, but it was short. Very short. Of course he liked it. Rolling my eyes, I dressed in a pair of jeans and a Punisher T-shirt. Not exactly flirty, but most of my cute clothes were in the truck with the ACEs.

And why was I worried about looking flirty, anyway? How was this Ryan guy already getting under my skin? Super annoying.

Once I was finally ready to leave, I found Ryan outside. My couch was still out in front of the house from where I assume Tony had thrown it trying to fight off the supersoldiers. Ryan had flipped it back upright and was lying on it, staring up at the sky. The sun had just sunk below the horizon, but the sky was still full of color. It made me smile that Ryan had come outside to watch the sun go down. There was nothing greater than a desert sunset.

He looked so content lying there, probably trying to process everything that had happened today, the way I still needed to. I hated to interrupt him, but I was exhausted and just wanted to get someplace where I could sleep off the last of my headache. It was only about seven o’clock, but it felt like three in the morning after the day I’d had.