Tekgrrl

  Seeing me, Luke flashed me a smile. “Mindy! Good morning.”

  “Morning,” I mumbled, never the picture of grace or sweetness in the a.m., especially not until after I’ve had my caffeine fix.

  “Good morning,” Selena added, cheery. “All set?” She was dressed in one of those expensive matching zip-up sweatshirts and pants that are cropped to be like a second skin. They usually have some sort of phrase written on the butt, but I didn’t want to stare at her perfect ass to find out what hers said.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  She laughed. “I hear that.”

  “So do I,” Luke said. “You both volunteered to do this.”

  “I like to keep in shape,” Selena said, giving him a dazzling smile. I grunted something affirmative.

  “Best to keep up an even pace,” Luke instructed us. “I’m assuming you already did some warm-up stretches, Mindy?”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” I lied, like I hadn’t just rolled out of bed. Was stretching what they called what they’d been doing?

  “All right, let’s go,” Luke said. “If we get separated, we’ll meet back here.” And we began our slow descent into hell, aka our morning jog.

  It wasn’t so bad at first. I kept a decent pace, managing to stay even with Luke, the crazy fitness nut, and Selena, who didn’t look winded or break a sweat. By the time we had gone a few blocks, however, I was starting to feel sweaty and my calves stung, and Luke was ahead of me. (At least that made the view nice. Here was an ass I didn’t mind staring at.) Selena was just a bit behind him, safely between us. I didn’t bother to feel jealous.

  We went a few more blocks, and I began getting a pain in my side. My calves felt like they were on fire and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And Luke? He was out of sight.

  Cursing my out-of-shape body, I slowed to a walk, breathing hard and holding my side. I hadn’t gone too far at this new pace when I ran into Selena, who was leaning against the side of a wall, hands on her knees, staring at the sidewalk. I guess being super strong didn’t always translate into having super stamina.

  Hearing my approach, she looked up and smiled. “Boy’s got stamina, huh?”

  I nodded. “You could say that.”

  She brushed back a few strands of sweaty hair from her face, which somehow made her look artfully mussed, whereas I probably looked like a wet mop. “The things we do for hot guys, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I need to get into shape. Obviously.” I motioned to my sweaty clothes.

  “Lainey told me that you had a thing for Luke.”

  Nice. How kind of Lainey to blab about my pathetic crush to this woman who probably had men flocking to her by the droves, and who now had Luke in particular wrapped around her little finger. “Had. As in, past tense. We’re just friends,” I said.

  She studied me. “I don’t want to get in the way of anything.”

  In the way? I wondered if nothing had happened between them yet. That seemed unlikely. “Trust me, Selena, there’s nothing for you to get in the way of.”

  There was a bit of regret in my voice, and she must have noticed. She said, “That was the best thing about my last team, The Fives: It was all women, so there were no strained relationships or competitions over guys.”

  I snorted. “I’m no competition to you.”

  “Please, Miss Smarter than the Whole Planet, I’d love to have just an eighth of your brains. Ask Lainey. She had to tutor me all through school. I was a total brick—which isn’t just a remark about my powers.”

  “Like guys care if a woman is smart or not,” I grumbled.

  She frowned. “What kind of guys have you been dating, girl? Do you know how many times I’ve been made to feel like the pretty, dumb girl who should just stand in the back of the room and shut up because I don’t completely understand what a black hole is or know the exact trajectory of the sun? Both of which I’m sure you could explain in your sleep.”

  I tried to allow myself to feel a bit better.

  “Look, Mindy, I asked Luke if I could tag along with you guys this morning,” she said, standing straight.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I asked him to ask you last night, to make it sound like his idea. It’s not what you’re thinking, that I wanted to horn in on your time with your friend. I really wanted to get to know you a bit better.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You all seem to be a tight-knit group, and that’s nice. I’d like to be a part of it. Lainey’s my friend from way back, and she knows I didn’t exactly have a large number of friends in school. Something about me just puts people off.”

  “Maybe because you’re perfect?” The words slipped out before I could do anything to stop them.

  Selena looked startled. “Perfect? Me?” She let out a sharp laugh. “Please. Everyone expects me to be, but I’m not. Much to my dad’s chagrin.” Then, as if she’d said too much, she shook her head. “Never mind, no one wants to hear my parent issues, especially when I’m too old to still be holding on to them.”

  “That might be the one thing we have in common, other than Lainey,” I argued, mentally adding: and Luke.

  “Oh? You too?”

  I nodded. “Scientists hailed by everyone, including the government, for their contributions to humanity. But they didn’t really know what to do with a supersmart kid.”

  “My mother’s a former model turned district attorney. Dad’s a geneticist. I was cared for by the nanny.”

  “I had tutors, so they could drag me everywhere they went.”

  “I went to boarding schools, and they would only come and get me for Christmases and summers, though I either stayed with the nanny or was shipped off to some camp.”

  “I was never allowed to play with toys that weren’t educational, or to read kids’ books because they were ‘beneath my intellect,’ whatever that means.”

  Selena laughed, clearly enjoying this game of one-upmanship, too. “I was never allowed to eat junk food because my mother wanted me to be a model and was worried I’d gain weight.”

  “I was never allowed to eat junk food because my parents knew all of the side effects from processed food.”

  “I was never allowed to wear shorts or pants as a child, only dresses that I couldn’t get dirty.”

  “My parents gave me long, complicated, after-the-fact explanations of the consequences of my actions, instead of saying, ‘Don’t put that fork in the light socket.’”

  Selena shook her head, surprised. “When I found out about my powers, my parents started sending out applications for me to join teams, and they said I’d join whichever was the most prestigious.”

  “My parents sent me to live with aliens who experimented on my brain.”

  Selena stared at me, openmouthed. “I can’t top that. Seriously, that’s what happened?”

  I shrugged. “They didn’t know exactly what was going to happen.”

  “But still.”

  I nodded. “But still.”

  She nudged me. “This kind of shared pain deserves a mocha.”

  I smiled and agreed, “A venti, at least.”

  “And extra whipped cream.”

  “With chocolate shavings and a drizzle on top.”

  “Girl, you read my mind!” she said, giving a look around. “Think Luke will notice if we skip the rest of the run?”

  “He said if we get separated to meet him back at home. We’ll meet him there. In the café.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Selena laughed, and we turned around, chatting all the way home.

  I couldn’t hate Selena anymore. She was a decent person. Drat.

  Back at the EHJ building, we skipped the line in front of the barista—owning the place has its perks—and, after collecting our coffees to the accompaniment of clicking camera phones taking pictures I so didn’t want to see on Page Twelve, we found a seat in the small café. A television was tuned to one of the all-day news channels, and a few corporate types were sitting nearby, pro
bably waiting to check the stock report.

  After taking a sip of my mocha, I steeled myself to do what I knew I had to do. To be a grown-up.

  “Selena,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I think you should ask Luke out. If you haven’t already.”

  She lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “You do?”

  I nodded. “He hasn’t dated in I don’t know how long, and he needs to again, to get out there and stop being all about his job.”

  “But, what about you?” she asked, toying with her coffee. “I mean, I know you like him…”

  “He’s my friend. I want him to be happy.” I realized that was true. “And you seem like a nice person, and you two seem to have a connection. So, why not?”

  “I don’t know, Mindy.”

  “You’re the type of person he should be dating; not a model or a starlet.” Nor me, I silently added. “You’re the type of woman he should be with.”

  Selena took a sip of her coffee. “If you’re sure…?”

  I wasn’t, but I knew I had to be. “I am.”

  She looked over at me, smiling. “Then, I will. I’m not going to lie; he just about took my breath away when I met him at Lainey’s reception the other night. And I thought there might be some chemistry there…”

  “Great,” I said, my voice a bit weak. I guess they hadn’t actually hooked up. But I supposed it was only a matter of time.

  As I glanced out the window, I saw Luke approaching the building. “Speak of the devil.”

  He pushed open the door and looked around, saw us. Moving with purpose, his long, heavily muscled body glistening with sweat, he approached. Selena and I stared, trying not to drool.

  “What happened to you guys?” he asked.

  “We met you back here, just like you said,” I replied.

  “Yeah, but I was ahead of you. There’s no way you made it all the way around and back before me!”

  “Maybe it’s our new powers,” I teased.

  “Maybe you two chickened out,” Luke argued, crossing his arms and giving us a hard look.

  I maintained innocence. “No way!”

  “We cut down some side streets,” Selena said. She stood and stretched, showing off her own gorgeous and lean body. This time, Luke was the one staring. “Want a green tea? I’m buying.”

  As she took his arm and led him to the barista, I felt a gnawing in the pit of my stomach. She was going to ask him out now. I had done it; I had practically gift wrapped him for her. Not that she needed it, but I had helped her. Why, I’m not certain. Being a mature person sucked.

  I glanced over at the television screen and saw a familiar face. Doing a double take, I looked again. Was that…?

  I got up and walked to the screen, edging past a businessman who gave me a sharp look that I ignored. Sure enough, there he was: Simon Leasure. My former teammate. The last time I saw him, he’d been saving me from being devoured by a creature that looked like it was spawned at the gates of hell, and almost dying in the process. That wasn’t something I forgot easily.

  Nor were other circumstances we’d shared. The second to last time I saw him, Simon was being dragged off by Luke to explain to the authorities just why he had betrayed the Elite Hands of Justice to get some extra publicity for himself.

  Decked out now in the best suit money could buy, in a serious but calming tie that matched his dark blue eyes, he looked less like a movie star and more like a politician. His face was sober as he spoke, and I edged forward and hit the volume button.

  “…will do the job to the best of my ability. I think my previous experiences will give me the understanding needed to act in this capacity,” he was saying. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the press.”

  Simon stood behind the podium and kept his hands folded in front of him as reporters shouted out questions and flashbulbs popped. Was it my imagination, or did I see a hint of a smirk on his face?

  “That was Simon Leasure, the son of Senator Jackson Leasure,” the announcer was saying, “and the new Presidential Secretary of Heroes…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “What the hell?” Paul spat, looking around the table at us. “There’s a Presidential Secretary of Heroes now? And it’s none other than that asshole Simon Leasure?”

  We were all in shock.

  “What does that mean, exactly, Presidential Secretary of Heroes?” Lainey asked. “He’s going to do what, act as a liaison between us and the government?”

  “Or monitor and police us,” Wesley grumbled, fingers steepled in front of his mouth.

  “It doesn’t mean that necessarily,” Luke said.

  “Oh, who the hell knows,” Paul blustered. “Of all the people in the world, it would have to be that self-righteous little prick.”

  We all stared, surprised by the language he was using. And then I remembered why Paul might have a problem: Simon was one of Kate’s former flings.

  “Toby, didn’t you meet with someone about a committee yesterday?” Kate asked, unruffled by Paul’s unnatural behavior.

  “Yes. Forrest Ward,” Toby said, ruffling his hair with his hands. “He’s the liaison assigned to the Elite Hands of Justice. But he said the committee was being formed in an effort to improve communications between the hero teams and the government, kind of like Homeland Security. In the event of a natural disaster, the government will communicate with us through the liaisons.”

  “What, it was too easy just calling us on the phone?” Kate laughed.

  “Bureaucrats love reorganizing things to make them think they’re doing something important,” Paul remarked, shaking his head. “Toby, why don’t see if you can contact this Forrest, have him straighten this out for us.”

  Toby nodded. “I’ll give him a call.” He whipped out his cell and punched in a number, stepping out to make the call, I suppose to hear better without us in the background. It was just like him to have already programmed the liaison’s number into his phone, in order not to lose it. Good thing, too. I couldn’t count the number of times he’d misplaced his security card and I’d had to give him a new clearance.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Wesley said. “Whenever the government steps in, that usually leads to trouble.”

  We all felt the weight of his words and experience.

  “We don’t know enough yet to have a bad feeling about anything,” Paul spoke up.

  “We know that Simon Leasure’s in charge, which ought to tell you something,” Wesley said.

  Kate gave a soft laugh. “It’s going to be poorly run and highly publicized?”

  “It can’t be trusted,” Wesley corrected.

  “Simon wasn’t all bad,” I put in, feeling like I should defend him. “He did save my life.”

  “Mindy’s right,” Luke spoke up. “Let’s not judge someone by one mistake they made.”

  Wesley snorted. “One?”

  “Let’s just wait until we know more about the situation before jumping to conclusions,” Paul said. “Though I do have to agree that if Simon’s in charge, I worry.”

  I glanced at Lainey, who gave me a knowing look. If Paul was agreeing with Wesley, this was the apocalypse.

  Toby walked back into the room. “He’s in an executive meeting right now, probably with Simon, but his secretary said he could be available to speak with us right after.”

  “Great, set it up,” Paul said, and Toby nodded and spoke into his cell phone again, walking back out of the room. “We’ll reconvene later.”

  “Are all of your meetings like this?” Selena asked as she, Lainey and I exited the room.

  “Well, sometimes we know things,” I joked.

  “And sometimes we actually have criminals to fight,” Lainey added.

  Having time to kill before the next meeting, I decided to do the one thing that would make me happy: go work in my lab. Grabbing a bottle of water out of the kitchen and downing another migraine pill—my head was better but still not 100 percent—I headed for the elevator and scanned my ID
badge into the reader that would allow me access. In a moment, the elevator dinged, and I entered my lab, donning a clean lab coat as I walked, my boot heels clicking in the silence.

  To say my laboratory was state of the art is an understatement. I had things in there that would make the top technology specialists in the country weep with joy at just being able to touch them. Things that my own hands had created, things that followed me back from my off-planet travels, both as a child and again with the EHJ, were littered everywhere.

  I stepped up to the gray table in the center of the room that held my latest project, a transporter that would hopefully work like a gun: point and shoot. Instead of ending up dead, a criminal would end up in a cell in a maximum-security prison, unharmed. At least, it would if calibrated right. I had been testing it on plants, trying to transport them from one side of the room to the other, but something was making the transporter go wonky, and the plants were ending up on the other side of the room with their planters shattered and their buds ripped off. Not exactly unharmed.

  I sighed as I got a similar result—the poor geranium—and got out some tools to work on the gun.

  Before my first space travel (which I don’t like to dwell on, as you know) I was a precocious child, maybe even a prodigy, but I wasn’t this smart. I might have grown up to be a scientist like my parents and worked with a team to create something like this after months of planning and testing; but after my time with the aliens, suddenly I could just dream it up and start building on any Saturday night when nothing was on television and I was dateless. It happened all the time.

  Something changes when I start working, however. It’s like I go into a trance: My fingers and hands seem to move of their own accord, and my mind processes things of which not even I am aware. Hours will pass without me realizing, I’ll skip meals and forget about bathroom breaks until whatever I’m working on is done. I always come to with an aching bladder, a rumbling stomach, and the realization that it’s now night.

  A similar experience came over me as I started work on my transporter. Tweaking this, recalibrating that, I worked furiously, in my own little world, my aching head eventually forgotten. The air conditioner turned off and on without me really realizing, and the tick and hum of the machinery around me was nothing but a background. I was alone.