Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(85)

Major Wilks gave me a proud smile as he waved for me to start walking. “Deny it all you want, Angel,” he said as we headed for the holding cells, “but you’re an ACE at heart.”





The stockade on base was nothing fancy—just a few standard jail cells like you’d see on TV with a twin-size bunk and a toilet in the corner of each. Then there was another cell at the end of the hall that was more of a hospital room behind bars. One of the soldiers was in a regular cell—the nastier one, Lorenz—and, the other was handcuffed to a bed in the hospital-looking cell. Dr. Haggerty was outside his cell, monitoring his vitals.

Major Wilks and all of the other ACEs headed toward the doctor first, but when I followed them Lorenz rose from his bed and met me at the front of his cell, draping his arms casually through the bars and leaning his weight on a crossbar. “Well, well, well, gorgeous, I wondered when you’d come to visit me.”

The guy would be nice looking if he didn’t have such an evil, angry gleam in his eyes. I met his hard smirk with a sweet grin. “I would have come sooner, but I heard you weren’t feeling well, and I wanted to make sure you were all better before I came to torture you for information. More fun for me that way.”

The guy scoffed. “You’re all talk, Angel. You may not remember me, but I know you. I watched you for a long time before you were captured.”

I cocked an eyebrow at the guy. “Sounds creepy.”

His smile turned sinister and pervy. “It was definitely one of my more…pleasurable assignments.”

“The psycho stalker bit isn’t really helping your case here, buddy. You do realize that, don’t you?”

He shook his head, chuckling and relaxing as his confidence grew. “You defend yourself when you have to, but you won’t torture me. You’re a hero type. A do-gooder. You’re always so worried about hurting people with your powers.”

I thought about his words and then grabbed his hands. Startled, he tried to pull back and glared when he couldn’t escape my iron grip. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I gave him my own evil smirk. “Guess you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”

His eyes narrowed on mine, then snapped wide open. He glanced at my hands on his again. “You won’t,” he hissed, but his voice wasn’t so confident anymore.

“You’re right that I’m a do-gooder type. But I’m not as angelic as you think. I’m really more concerned with not hurting innocent people. You…eh…” I shrugged. “As long as you live, I’m okay with a little pain since it will get me what I need.”

His face blanched. Guess he figured out I wasn’t bluffing. “What do you mean, give you what you need?”

I didn’t bother answering his question. I might have, if I’d thought it would do me any good, but I knew no amount of interrogation would be effective while he was still under Donovan’s control. “This is for attacking me, jerk.”

Without waiting for an okay, I let my electricity flow, and not the good kind that transfers my powers to other people. My power is nifty like that. I can use it to transfer my energy…or I can use it as a defense mechanism. Lorenz got a lovely jolt of electricity, not energy. Big difference.

When he screamed, several of the ACEs jumped into action with startled cries. They gathered around me, but couldn’t exactly touch me without getting fried, so they settled for shouting at me to stop.

“Why? This was what we came here to do, wasn’t it?”

“While safely monitored, Angel,” Major Wilks said. “We don’t want to overdo it.”

Considering Lorenz was still conscious, I figured he was okay. “Don’t worry; he’ll be fine.” I upped my power to the point where Lorenz stopped screaming. I knew, from a horrible failed attempt to control my powers in my first few weeks with Teddy, that Lorenz wasn’t able to breathe right now. There was so much electricity being pumped into his body that all of his muscles had locked up. Oddly, though he was being electrocuted, he would die of suffocation if I kept this up too long.

“Angel?” Major Wilks questioned.

He sounded wary, but he hadn’t ordered me to stop. He was trusting my judgment. And earning more brownie points with me.

“I’m okay,” I assured him. And I was. I was completely in control. As long as I wasn’t emotionally upset, I had a really great grasp of my electricity and what it was capable of. Knowing what would and wouldn’t kill someone was instinctive.

Obviously I didn’t want to kill the guy, but I wasn’t sure I’d fried his brain enough yet, either. “It took releasing a lightning bolt for my head to finally clear all the way,” I explained. “But I don’t want to use any lightning on him, considering what it did to Tyson. This is as strong as I can go where I’m sure I won’t truly hurt him.”

“He’ll suffocate like that, Angel,” Dr. Haggerty warned.

“I know. I’m listening to his heartbeat. I’ll let go once it starts to slow too much.”

There was murmuring behind me, but I didn’t try to understand it. It took a lot of effort to focus my hearing on something specific. I needed all of my attention locked on the steady thud, thud, thud in the superthug’s chest. It was already starting to slow down a little, but it hadn’t become unsteady yet.