“Diet Coke with lime, please.” I must admit, it was a little strange to order in English. I didn’t know what Saldana would want, but the skins sounded good. “And potato skins to start. We’ll order after he gets here.”
She made a few notes and wove through the crowd, looking like every other server in her Logan’s shirt and jeans. I wished I could have a something with tequila in it but I was my own designated driver, dammit. One plus about such a noisy place: nobody would overhear us. The waitress brought my Diet Coke and, later, the potato skins. Still no cop, though.
“You sure you don’t want to order?”
I shook my head. Betsy just thought I didn’t notice the pitying look she slid my way as she headed back to the kitchen.
Nerves jangling, I fiddled with the pail of peanuts until Saldana arrived, a full half hour after the appointed time. He slid into the booth opposite me, offering a smile. “Sorry I’m late. Work stuff.”
“It’s all right.” But I’d begun to wonder if he would show.
“Jesse,” the waitress said with evident delight. “Don’t you know it’s not nice to keep a lady waiting?” She flirted shamelessly.
If he really was my date, I’d be pissed. Since he wasn’t, I sat back with a smirk and let him deal with Betsy. I helped myself to another potato skin while he ordered an iced tea.
Then and there I decided my next boyfriend would be a big, cuddly teddy bear type. No more watching other women devour my men with their eyes. But I enjoyed the kind way he managed to dismiss Betsy without hurting her feelings.
“Sorry,” he said again when he’d gotten rid of her.
“It’s not a problem.” My smirk became a grin.
Saldana arched a brow. “You think this is funny?”
“I do, actually. Serves you right.”
“What does?” He took the last potato skin.
“Being both cute and sensitive. You deserve to beat women off with a stick.”
“You think I’m cute?” At that Saldana paused, a half smile playing at the corners of his well-made mouth.
I sighed. “Please. You know you are. It doesn’t matter what I think.”
His mama would be so proud of his ability to turn the charm off and on like that. “Of course it does.” Saldana gave me a sorghum smile. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I gave up hot guys for Lent.”
He laughed. “It’s November, Corine.”
“See how well I’m doing?”
“Hmm,” he said, eating the potato skin. “Sadly it’s not my place to question that decision. We may as well get down to business if you won’t flirt back, even a little bit.”
I didn’t know how much more I could take. “Isn’t that against the rules, Obi-Wan?”
“Yes. Gifts tend to run in family lines, so . . .” He made a face, encapsulating his opinion of swimming in your own gene pool. “It’s pretty rare for somebody gifted to grow up without a mentor.”
My spine stiffened. I didn’t want to talk about how I came to be on my own, with no parental figure to explain about special powers, secret societies, and little blue sparks. Then again, if my mother were still around, I probably wouldn’t have a gift.
I muttered, “I’m weird. I get it. What’s the deal with the underground?”
Before he could reply, Betsy came back with his iced tea and took our orders. We both chose a New York strip, but he got a giant baked potato in addition to the skins. I opted for a salad out of respect for the size of my ass, although if I really cared, I wouldn’t eat potato skins.
He waited until she walked away with a last wistful look over one shoulder, but Saldana was all business now. “Like I said, we have a quiet support network. I’ll give you the log-in information for the Web site, and I know of a few gathering spots. The closest is a club in San Antonio called Twilight.”
“Web site?” I blinked at that.
“Good place to get specialized help. We pretend to be a conspiracy theory group: aliens, men in black, all that. The site’s called Area Fifty-one.”
“Cute.”
“Mostly it makes us feel less alone,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard being surrounded by people who have no idea what you can do, and if they do find out, sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes it means you have to—”
“Move in the middle of the night?” I offered a wry smile at his startled look.
“Yeah. Well, not me personally. My talent is pretty low-key. But I dated a pyro girl for a while.” His mouth twisted. “She was hunted coast-to-coast.”
Pyro. Firestarter? I couldn’t imagine a positive outlet for that gift, but then I was biased. I shouldn’t let myself get distracted.
“What happened?”
To my surprise, he shut down. “We’re not here to talk about my romantic history.”
Since he didn’t want to talk about it, of course I couldn’t let it go. That aspect of my psyche explained a great deal about my relationship with Chance.
“White knight complex,” I realized aloud. “You go for the bad girl, the one with problems who blows up your car, trashes your house, and steals your wallet. It’s not her fault, of course. If she only had someone to love and understand her, that shit wouldn’t happen.”
“Shit.” He regarded me with narrowed eyes as Betsy served two sizzling steaks. “I thought I was the empath.”
“You are. That’s why this makes perfect sense. You want to save everyone because you know what they’re going through. Must make it hell on dating.”
“Tell me about it. Try arguing with someone, even if you know they’re wrong, when you can feel the hurt rolling off them in waves.”
“You just want to wrap her up in your arms and tell her everything’s going to be okay,” I said softly.
Saldana studied me with bitter chocolate eyes, and to my surprise, his gaze dropped first. He attended to cutting his steak with a care that said I’d stepped too close to something private. We’d just met, after all.
For a while we just ate, didn’t talk. I thought maybe I’d crossed the line. The white noise of other voices covered the fact that nobody spoke at our table.
Finally he said, “Yeah, well. I can’t make everything better, but I can put you on the path to meeting more people like us. You already know you can recognize them from the shock. Let’s see, what else? Oh, I’ll write down the Web site address and log-in.” He pulled a pen from his pocket, scrawled something on a napkin, and passed it to me.
“Thanks.” I tucked it into my handbag, a gorgeous beaded creation I’d bought at Mundo E.
“On those boards you can find witches, warlocks, psychics, far-seers, pyros, empaths—pretty much the whole gamut of talents, though I don’t think I’ve ever run across another handler on there. I don’t vouch for character, though, Corine. Just because they’re gifted, it doesn’t make them trustworthy. So if you decide to see someone off-line, use the same care you would under normal circumstances.”
Was I the only person in the world who didn’t get on Match.com for a date? “I’ve never done that.”
“That means don’t tell the person where you live. Meet in a public place. Common sense stuff. But the board is great for finding someone who can help you with specialized research or answer questions about another type of gift. I used it quite a bit to try to understand Heather.”
“The pyro girl?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t elaborate, though, and I didn’t press. “If you want, I’ll take you to Twilight. We could be there by eleven and they’re open until three. We’d need to spend the night in San Antonio, though.”
I didn’t know how to take that invitation. “Don’t you have work tomorrow?”
Saldana shook his head. “Day off. We can hit Twilight tonight, find a place to stay, and then drive back in the morning. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
I hesitated. “If I go, you get me an unofficial look at the purse.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help you here, and you’re asking for more favors?”
At that I pushed my plate away. I’d eaten maybe half the steak and nibbled at the salad. “Look, I have only your word you want to help me. I’m supposed to accept there’s a gifted underground just on your say-so? I’m supposed to drive two hours to a club because you want me to? Sorry, Saldana, but it doesn’t work like that. You might be a cop, but you haven’t proven yourself to me. Something bad could still happen if I go off with you, so you need to sweeten the deal. Give me a reason to take the risk.”
For a minute I thought I’d pushed him too far. His mouth tightened and he threw his napkin on the table like he meant to leave. Well, fine. I had the log-in. I could check things out on my own.
“Deal,” he said, throwing down some twenties for the bill. “You come with me tonight, and I get you a look at the purse tomorrow. Let’s get going.”
Traveling Blues
Talk about surreal.
Before we left, I called Chuch and asked him if he minded picking up the Camry. This served several purposes. The car wouldn’t sit all night outside Logan’s Roadhouse, Chance would have it if he needed it, and I didn’t have to tell him that I was going to San Antonio with a guy I’d just met. I didn’t envy Chuch that job.
It also served as personal security. Chuch knew where I was going and with whom. I didn’t think Saldana chopped women up and strewed their body parts along the highway to make them harder to identify, but—
Well. I knew too much about killers for my own peace of mind, but last I heard, Kel Ferguson was still in prison. And he’d never chopped up his victims as far as I knew. Quite the contrary, Ferguson had killed with a clean, cold precision that made him seem soulless. Ironic that he’d first been arrested on a kidnapping charge, but once he was in the system, his DNA tied him to a whole string of unsolved crimes.