Remember Jamie Baker (6 page)

“We need to question him.” Major Wilks sighed. “Your friend has been keeping a lot more than your identity from you, I’m afraid.”

“Teddy betrayed you, Jamie,” Ryan whispered. “He was the one who sent you to the Visticorp lab that day. It was a setup. He was working with Donovan to capture you.”

I hadn’t said a word
since giving up the coordinates to the desert safe house. After telling Major Wilks how to get there, I climbed back in the truck and shut everyone out. I’d been through a lot in this one day, and I had a concussion migraine on top of it all.

The ACEs let me be; they were afraid of me. Whether it was because I was having a hard time controlling my powers or because I was acting like an emotional girl, I wasn’t sure, but none of them dared breathe a word the entire drive. They wouldn’t even look in my direction. Only Ryan would do that, and every time he did I’d accidentally stall the engine of the truck. We were lucky I didn’t fry us all.

I simply couldn’t deal. With the way Tony was so paranoid about Visticorp finding us, I didn’t understand how his betrayal could even be possible, but Ryan’s devastation was too sincere. He was telling the truth. Deep down in my gut, I knew it somehow. Tony had betrayed me. The explosion, my amnesia…it was his fault.

As much as I dreaded seeing Tony after everything I’d learned, I still nearly had a heart attack when we got there and realized something had gone terribly wrong in my absence. Sure, I’d damaged the front door when I’d slammed it on my way out, but now it had been torn off its hinges and the front window had been blown out. Our living room couch lay overturned in the front yard. While Tony was a bit dramatic, he wouldn’t have destroyed the house in some sort of temper tantrum after I left. “They’ve been here.” My heart began to beat in overdrive to match my spike in anxiety. “They got him.”

I stopped and listened for a minute. All was quiet. I took a deep breath, looking for any unfamiliar scents. Nothing. The place was empty. Tony was gone. When I started for the door, Major Wilks threw a hand out to block my path. “Careful, Angel. There could be supersoldiers inside.”

“I’ll do a sweep,” Tyson offered.

The major started to nod, but I shook my head. “If there were people inside, I’d hear them. I’m positive it’s empty.”

I walked in without waiting for permission, ignoring the major’s protests. It was my house, after all, and I wasn’t going to start letting the man think I obeyed his orders. Inside, the house looked as if a tornado had come through and ripped it apart. Windows were broken. Furniture was turned over. Our kitchen had vomited the contents of all its cupboards onto the floor. The place was trashed.

Judging from the mess, Tony had used his telekinesis to put up quite a fight. I hoped he managed to get to the basement bunker somehow, but the tranquilizer darts littered throughout the house gave me little faith.

As I headed toward my bedroom, Ryan fell into step beside me. He kept looking around as if he were trying to solve a very complicated puzzle. “It’s not usually such a mess,” I deadpanned.

Chuckling, Ryan shook his head. “I guess I just expected something more from the place you used to refer to as ‘The Lair.’”

It was such a simple statement, but it caused a flurry of emotion inside me. Right after the explosion I used to ask Tony all kinds of questions, but he never really had any good answers for me. He told me what life was like at the labs and how we lived there together, but his stories always felt hollow because he couldn’t flesh them out with the simple details—like how I would refer to the bunker as “The Lair.” I’d always assumed Tony’s stories felt that way because I didn’t remember them myself, but somehow I doubted Ryan’s memories would feel as empty.

My brain exploded with curiosity, and my heart pounded with excitement and hope. This guy held the keys to my past. There was so much I wanted to know, so much I wished I could ask him. Before I could ask anything, Major Wilks stepped up to us. “Let’s go. The house is clear. He’s not here. Let’s move, before Donovan’s supersoldiers decide to come back.”

Ryan nodded and started to head out.

“Wait. I have to check the office first. I doubt Tony made it, but I still have to check. The walls are thick enough that I can’t hear him when he’s down there.”

Both Ryan and Major Wilks glanced around the bedroom with a frown, looking for the office they’d never find without my help.

“Office?” Major Wilks asked.

“I’ve heard it’s been referred to as ‘The Lair.’”

I finally cracked a smile Ryan’s way. It was the first time I’d let my guard down with him since I’d learned we had a past, and it completely disarmed him. He paused mid-stride to stand there and smile at me like a lovesick fool. His whole face lit up, as if I’d just given him the greatest gift in the universe. His eyes freaking
twinkled
. And that smile… The reaction made my heart melt a little toward the stranger, and that terrified me. “Um.” Clearing my throat, I stepped around Major Wilks and led them to the closet. “It’s this way.”

I pushed aside a wall of clothes hanging on a rack. It looked like any other wall, but when I twisted the pole that the clothes hung on, the wall slid back to reveal a steel door that could only be opened by handprint scan. Ryan’s jaw hit the floor as I scanned my palm. “No. Way. That is
awesome
.”

“Dude!” Tyson echoed.

I was startled to see that most of the ACEs had followed us. “This used to be a bomb shelter,” I explained, feeling like a tour guide as we descended the secret stairs down into Teddy’s office. “The Lair” was actually the perfect name for it. It definitely could have been used as a base of operations for someone looking to take over the world—not that that had been Teddy’s intention. At least, I didn’t think it was, but I guess who really knew what he was doing down here? Obviously not searching databases for missing persons fitting my description, like he said he was doing. Stupid liar. I was going to save him if only so I could kill him.

The door clicked open, releasing a soft
whoosh
of air. The shelter was, of course, airtight with its own filtration system. It always felt a little stale to me, but I usually adjusted quickly. I shoved the door wide and waved everyone through. They all took a moment to gaze around the room. The shelter was about the same size as the house resting on the ground above it. There was one large main room with a bathroom attached and a storage room that held enough supplies to live on lockdown for years.

Half of the main room was basically a geek’s paradise—computers, gadgets, and gigantic monitors galore. The other half felt much like a studio apartment with a kitchenette, living area, and a couple of military-style bunk beds off in the corner. I’d tried to add a little color to it with some throw pillows on the couch and some artwork on the walls, but it still felt very zombie-apocalypse-survival-camp-ish. “It’s like it was built to help you survive a nuclear winter,” Tyson muttered.

“Or a hostile alien takeover,” I corrected. “Tony said the man he bought the place from—the guy who built it—had been one of the soldiers involved with the Roswell Crash of 1947. The guy was paranoid out of his mind. A lot like Tony, actually. That’s probably why the guy agreed to leave the house to Tony. He was dying and would have taken the secret of this place with him to the grave, but Tony somehow tracked him down online and spent months corresponding with him, convincing him we were trapped in a secret lab being used as human test subjects.”

Reminded of Tony’s lies, I choked on a ball of sudden anger in my chest. When Tony’s computer and numerous different monitors clicked on, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I hadn’t been this out of control of my powers in months. I opened my eyes again and found myself staring at the textbox on the computer monitor asking for Tony’s password. I froze. It couldn’t be.

“Angel,” Major Wilks asked, “is something wrong?”

“What’s my last name?”

“Baker,” Ryan said. “Why?”

I sat down at the computer, feeling a sick satisfaction as I shook the mouse and clicked in the textbox. Tony almost never let me touch his computer. I had my own upstairs—the one I’m pretty sure he’d put restrictions on.

“Tony used to tease me that I was somehow the clue to his password. I tried everything I could think of—every word in my personality notebook, and then some—trying to figure it out. Not that I really cared to use his computer; I just wanted to see if I could figure out the big secret.”

Settling my hands on the keys, I glanced over my shoulder at Ryan. “How did I spell
Jamie?
”

“J-A-M-I-E.”

I typed in
Jamie Baker
and was surprisingly disappointed when the screen flashed “incorrect password.” I was sure that would be it.

“Try Jamielynn.”

“Jamie
lynn?
”

“That’s your full name.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

Ryan laughed. “It’s a family name. Your parents only call you
Jamielynn
when you’re in trouble, and Carter calls you that because he knows it annoys you.”

It was amazing how every time Ryan gave me another answer, I came up with a hundred more questions. Trying to focus on one thing at a time, I pushed my curiosity aside and typed
Jamielynn Baker
into the passcode box. Teddy’s desktop flared to life.

My hands fell from the keyboard as I sat back and blinked at the screen. “My real name was his password.” I suddenly wanted to put my fist through the stupid computer. What an unbelievable jerk. “All that time he told me he was looking for my family. He said he searched all the missing persons databases for anyone who fit my age. He held me while I cried about not knowing dumb things like my real name and birthday, and the whole time my name was his freaking
password!
”

The lights and computer blitzed.

“Hey.” Ryan’s soft voice was right behind me. “Look on the bright side, Jamie. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can control your life from here on out.”

He was right, but I still couldn’t pull myself together. I used anger to keep myself from completely falling apart. “Let’s see what else the stupid jerk was keeping from me.”

The desktop background was a selfie of Tony and me at the Grand Canyon that he’d taken on his phone. It was the first time I’d been there. I loved it so much. In the picture, I was smiling as if I were the happiest person on Earth. The picture was salt in the wound now. I didn’t want to see the two of us together like that. Not now that I knew what he’d done to me.

I typed my name into the search box at the upper right corner of the screen. The top hit was a folder. Inside it, there was file after file on me. There were pictures of me at all ages, medical records, newspaper articles, even confidential notes taken by a therapist I used to see after being in a car accident when I was in high school. Tony’s Jamie Baker file was basically a detailed biography on my life before the Visticorp explosion.

When I came across a picture of a younger blonde-haired blue-eyed me wearing a sash and crown being hugged from both sides by a man and woman I assumed were my parents, I finally lost it. “Everything he ever told me was a lie. Every. Single. Thing.”

With a gut-wrenching scream, I directed all of my anger and frustration at that stupid computer and released two lightning bolts from my hands that made the entire system explode. The blast knocked me backward a few feet.

“Jamie!” Ryan shouted from where he and the rest of his team had been blown to the ground. “You might be durable, babe, but we’d rather not die right now.”

I’d forgotten they were even there.

With the rage out of my system, sadness and grief were able to break through my defenses. I finally understood the full extent of Teddy’s deceit, and it made me sick to my stomach. My eyes flooded and I crashed to the small couch, sobbing into my hands.

“Jamie?”

“How could he do that to me?” I screamed at no one in particular.

“Angel, we need to go now,” Major Wilks said.

He was going for the tough love approach of making me ignore the trauma while there were more important things to do. He probably used it on his soldiers all the time. But I wasn’t one of his men, and I didn’t want to ignore the trauma. I’d been through enough today, and I’d reached my coping limits. “So go,” I snapped. I’m sure my eyes were glowing bright yellow as I glowered at the man.

Frowning, he pulled his shoulders back, straightening to his full height. I knew what he was trying to do, but it wasn’t going to work. His dominance would have no effect on me. “Angel, this location is compromised. It’s not safe. Your friend is gone. We need to leave before—”

I rose to my feet and let my energy consume me. Whenever I did that, my eyes took on a scary glow and my hair started whipping around my head as if I were standing in the middle of a raging storm. Saying it made me look intimidating would be the understatement of a lifetime.
“Leave. Me. Alone.”

The entire group gasped and collectively took a few steps back when energy began to crackle along the surface of my skin. They were right to do so. The threat I posed with just my physical presence was real. I wouldn’t have done any true damage on purpose, but one wrong move and someone was going to get hurt whether I meant for it to happen or not. I was unstable and known to have accidents when I lost control. But I couldn’t calm down. I was so upset at the moment that I wouldn’t have even cared. Not then, anyway.

“Major, may I speak with you upstairs, sir?” Ryan asked.

Major Wilks considered Ryan’s request for a long moment before he finally nodded. He looked around the room and jerked his head toward the stairs. “ACEs move out.”

No one questioned the major. As soon as he gave the command, the ACEs vacated the bunker, leaving me alone to have my breakdown privately. I was grateful to Ryan for making them give me space. As soon as they were gone, I sat back down and pulled my knees up to my chest, letting my tears flow but trying to gain control of my sobs. I was emotional, but I hated that about myself.

The soldiers must have left the bunker door open when they went upstairs because I could hear them as they left the house and climbed in the truck, leaving Ryan and the major to their conversation. One of the men made his way into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards.