“Oh good,” a female voice said with a laugh. “You’re here.”
Jamie turned to see Zoe blocking the exit.
His body tensed, alerts and warnings telling him that she could overpower him in a blink. Instead, there was only one route to go. Jamie rubbed his chin, the subtlest way he could think of to get his fingers in position to do their work. His mind reached out, invisible threads locking into her brain, though it needed a good thirty seconds or so. Sometimes more.
Especially under duress.
“I’ve been looking for somebody who knows how to work this stupid coffee maker.” She laughed at her own admission, and then pointed at the giant black-and-brown technological behemoth on the counter. “Here are the packs—” she gestured to the box next to it “—but where do you put it? There are three slots.”
Jamie’s hand dropped, and he let out a sigh that prompted a curious look from her.
“I think this one.” He pointed to the slot on the left. “But then I’m not sure what to do. I use a carafe for pour-over coffee. It tastes better. It’s worth the wait.”
“Mine is so much easier. Put a pod in, push a button, that’s it,” she said.
She tapped through the touch screen menu, going through the options for hot water and espresso and bold. As Jamie watched, curiosity crept in.
What were those powers of hers? And how did she get them?
Did she remember anything?
Once again, Jamie’s mind reached out, plugging in and connecting with hers. His hands stayed at his side—there wouldn’t be any defensive surgery going on here, just reading—while she stared at the coffee machine, scratching the back of her head. A minute later Jamie was sifting through thoughts and memories like randomly sampling files on a laptop.
The strength, the speed, something happened a few years back, but she didn’t recall what or how or why. She just knew that her body went far beyond normal human physicality. The fighting skills, those came from practicing to free “cardio kickboxing for moms” videos on her phone. Which probably didn’t make for technically sound martial arts but being stronger and faster clearly helped.
Beyond that, she couldn’t remember.
Also, there wasn’t a clue regarding how she did the cool hovering thing.
But the colors in her mind’s eye, that gave another advantage: a type of thermal vision that helped her track down her foes at a distance, especially when combined with heightened hearing.
Like a bank robber escaping down the street.
“Yes!” she shouted. The machine whirred and churned, and out poured steaming hot coffee into the paper cup. She turned to high-five Jamie.
Smack. Her palm slapped his, and he stifled a grimace, his hand stinging as if it had smashed into the bumper of a moving car. A single thought entered his head as he noticed a blush come over her cheeks.
She could destroy me without even trying.
Her speed. Her strength. Her ability to track. She could hunt down the Mind Robber—him, Jamie—win the battle in a single move and probably with a brutal swiftness before his probing could even start.
He sighed again, this time with the realization that his only hope against her ever would be to erase her mind before she could strike first. It wasn’t the police or some do-gooder at a bank, someone who could be swatted away with strategic use of his own powers. She was too fast, too powerful for that. She could freaking fly over him and drop him with a swift kick he’d never see coming. This woman, Zoe, who had needed compassion but also nearly crushed him earlier that afternoon, really was the biggest threat to his simple goal of retiring to the Caribbean with his cat.
6
SOMETHING TICKLED THE BACK of Zoe’s head. She scratched at it, an involuntary gesture at first, but soon she realized her fingernails rubbed against scalp—right when she noticed Jamie looking at her with a strange unblinking gaze. Not quite staring, but something was definitely off.
She scanned him up and down despite her fatigue and hangover dulling everything. The longer she did it, the more his heat signature intensified. In that short span, his entire presence changed: shoulders tensed, lips pursed and body temperature rising.
His height—medium stature. His build—slight but not unhealthy. His face—beady, intense eyes, and a wide chin framed by pale skin and gaunt cheekbones.
It couldn’t be.
This man spoke with a gentle British accent but those videos...
The Mind Robber’s voice on the security footage from social media, she thought of the dozens of times she’d watched them, and there was always something slightly off about how he talked. Then she pictured him with a cheesy eye mask and a hood over his head.
Suddenly everything locked into place.
The scratching. It wasn’t an itch or dandruff or an allergy. She felt him breaking in. Was he looking in there now, sifting through her memories? Trying to eradicate her mind for hunting him?
Questions swirled in Zoe’s mind, though they all landed on one thought:
He could destroy me without even trying.
The coffee machine stopped its whirring and beeped to announce that the drink was ready. Neither Zoe nor Jamie moved. Instead, their eyes locked. She didn’t want to look away. She couldn’t, otherwise he might strike first.
Did he worry about the same thing?
They stepped back in unison. Her arms rose to a fighting posture. His hands went up, presumably to do his mind-robbing thing, but maybe just to look cool.
The lights flickered, as they’d done all night. It didn’t distract Jamie; he stayed fully focused on her. She mirrored his intensity.
Should she move now? Use her speed to take him out, drag him to the San Delgado Police Department? Maybe she could do it without anyone noticing, without the police arresting her for being a vigilante.
But why hadn’t he stunned her yet? What was he waiting for?
This time, the room went completely black for a good ten seconds. Zoe checked her feet and clenched fists to check it wasn’t some Mind Robber trick; in her peripheral vision, a burst of bright blue blinded her right before the lights returned. She blinked hard, and the Mind Robber was still right there, the tension between them so thick that it practically smelled like burning.
“We don’t have to do this,” Jamie finally said after several more seconds of staring. His hands were still raised.
“I should take you in right now.” Zoe began to move but stopped when Jamie’s hands tensed up.
Of course. He should be afraid of her.
“Please don’t. I don’t want to do anything to you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”