Remember Jamie Baker by Kelly Oram

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