Charlie shoved the phone in her face.
She turned on the light and then looked at the phone, and as she did, the color faded from her face. That was when he realized she was as startled by the text as he’d been.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She turned around and went to get her phone off the charger, then brought it back to the door, pulled up his number with their message history and handed it to him.
“Look for yourself. The last text I sent to you was yesterday...from the office...telling you what I wanted for lunch.”
Charlie frowned. “But this is plainly from you. So unless someone has hacked you, this doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s impossible to hack me. I need to sit down,” she said, and dropped onto the side of her bed.
Charlie followed, and sat down beside her, waiting in silence.
Finally, she took a deep breath and started talking.
“I can’t believe this happened. I was dreaming this. It was a thought in my dream. Not an awake thought. A dream thought. I am going to have to think about this a bit, but the bottom line is, I think I just bypassed the need to use a phone to send you messages.”
In that moment Charlie felt the world shift beneath his feet. He didn’t know what to say, but he’d long since given up being shocked by her growing abilities.
“Leave it to you to find a way to beat a monthly phone bill,” he muttered. “So is this text true? About the imminent crash?”
She nodded.
“Is there any way we could notify someone to prevent it?”
A muscle jerked in the side of her jaw.
“No. It is what it is,” she said.
“Then we take backstreets to work. Thanks for the heads-up. I’m going to shower.”
“It’s too early to go to work,” Wyrick said.
“Agreed. But sleep is impossible now, so I’m still gonna shower,” Charlie said, and left her sitting.
When he got back to his room, he shut the door between them and headed for the bathroom. Later, as he was rinsing the shampoo from his hair, he kept thinking of her—and of him—and how their lives had changed in the past few months.
Universal Theorem was responsible for all she was. But they’d become so threatened by her existence, that they’d tried to kill her. And after losing his wife, Annie, there was nothing to tie him to his previous lifestyle, which was why he was in residence at the estate where she now lived.
He owed his life to Wyrick. She was a warrior. She backed down from no one. But it appeared she’d just shocked herself. She was still evolving, and this time she’d projected the energy to create a text message and send it, while she was asleep. Freaky weird, but cool as hell. If this was the way this day was going to begin, he could only imagine what the rest of it would be like.
Unfortunately, Wyrick wasn’t as unaffected by this as Charlie seemed to be. She was still sitting on her bed, trying to come to terms with the shock of what she’d just done.
She had stunned herself. The ramifications of being able to send a text message with her mind wasn’t something she would have ever believed possible, and yet, she’d done it.
She scrubbed her face with her hands, as if trying to wipe away the reality of who she was, then got up and walked into her bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror.
I am such a freak. If I had hair, I’d be pulling it. The upside of that is, if I start growing horns, they’ll be easy to see.
Then she turned away from her own reflection and followed Charlie’s lead, stripped, tossed her pajamas in the laundry and got into the shower.
The heat of the pounding water eased the tension in her shoulders, and slowly, she began to relax. What had happened was a little startling, but considering everything else that was evolving within her, it was just one more thing to accept.
The upside of the latest revelation was Charlie. He was unflappable. As soon as she got out, she dressed in sweats and headed downstairs.
Wyrick was, in no way, a domestic goddess, but she was thinking along the lines of “feed a cold, starve a fever,” as she went. She felt weird, like she hadn’t eaten in days, and guessed food would be the first step in taking that away.
She could toast a mean waffle when the need arose, and this morning, in light of the fact that she’d just bypassed text messaging as the world knew and understood it, eating seemed like the thing to do.
By the time Charlie came down, she had coffee made, and a platter of toasted waffles on the table, with butter and syrup in containers beside them.
“Seriously, Martha Stewart?” Charlie said as he walked into the room and smelled the waffles.
She turned toward him, the fork in her hand in a gesture of defense.
“If you ever want another bear claw in your office again, you might want to shut it,” she snapped.
He grinned, but had the good sense not to respond. Instead, he poured himself a cup of coffee, waited for her to sit down and then joined her.
A brief wash of regret moved through Charlie as he thought of all the times he and Annie had sat down to breakfast like this, but because of the early-onset Alzheimer’s she had suffered, he’d lost that life with her a long time before he lost the woman.
They ate in relative silence for a few minutes, until he got up to refill his coffee and carried the carafe to the table and topped off her cup, as well.
“Did we tie up all the loose ends on the missing twins’ case?” Charlie asked.
Wyrick nodded. “The police were given all of the information you got on the guy connected to the human trafficking ring. Last I heard, they’d picked him up, but I have no idea if he turned on his people. All I know is, those girls are lucky you found them when you did. They were bound for Dubai.”
“We found them. Never belittle the online tracking you do,” Charlie said.
Wyrick said nothing, but the praise went deep. She was dedicated to never letting this man down. Even when he made her crazy, his place in her life was ingrained.
Charlie pointed to the last waffle on the plate.
“You gonna eat that?” he asked.
“I can’t,” Wyrick said.
He frowned. “Why?”
“It has your name on it,” Wyrick said.
It took him a second to realize she’d actually made a joke, and then laughed out loud as he forked it onto his plate.
“That’s a good one,” he said, then buttered it up and drowned it in syrup, just the way he liked it.
Wyrick got up and carried her dishes to the sink. No need to sit there and get all comfy-cozy with the boss—even if he was living under her roof for the sole purpose of keeping her alive.