Chuck Atkins' instincts had taken over. Yes, he was completely preoccupied with the fact that his "partner in crime" (they were often referred to this way by their fellows at Channel 5), Melanie Dodd, had a lunatic's gun to her head. But the moment he heard the indefinable noise behind him and physically felt the bright flash of light, he and his camera swiveled flawlessly together, taking the home viewers (an audience which was sure to have gone international by now) right to the scene of the latest twist in this real-life tale of domestic terrorism.
       He brought them both into focus in a heartbeat. Both Windjammer, and...
       Who the...?
       Phoenix's young local hero was facing off with one painfully hot blonde. Chuck immediately felt a little perverse, realizing she couldn't be more than 19 years old (no matter how incredible her body was). The next-to-nothing she was wearing, he surmised after a couple of seconds, was some kind of costume. And her hands were glowing with some kind of unnatural (but strangely beautiful) light. She had powers? Super-powers, like Windjammer? Another one of them, here in Phoenix? Another hero?
       No. Not a hero. He watched Windjammer pick himself up off the floor, and pieced together that the girl had shot him with that light of hers. She was with the terrorists. She was one of the bad guys.
       "They call me Delight," he heard her saying (and thanks to his mic, the rest of the world heard it, too).
       No, not a super-hero. The powers and the costume were there, but she was definitely playing for the other team. A super...villain? And why not? If one of them (or two of them, according the reports from D.C.) could have these abilities and use them for good, was it so hard to imagine another one going the other way? The thought had just never occurred to him. Right now, the thought was chilling him to the bone.
       "You see?!" the gunman screamed to the room, keeping his weapon pressed against Melanie's head. "Greenwar is in control! This day belongs to us! Surrender your weapons now!"
       Melanie tried to keep from hyperventilating. Way too much was happening at once for her heart to take. This was now the second gun today that had been aimed at her, she had been floating above the floor—held aloft by winds created by another human being—and now some teen bimbo was throwing light around the room. She was pretty sure that the public and her peers would be forgiving if she finally just passed out.
       Captain Bonilla took in the situation, still brandishing his .38. Yes, a raise. There was definitely going to be a raise. He kept his gun on the terrorist. Dealing with the mortals was his job. The glowing girl was—had to be—all Windjammer's.
       Windjammer was still feeling a little woozy from the light blast that had floored him (as if he wasn't sore enough from the bullet that had slammed into his light body armor's chest a couple of minutes before), but he tried to ignore that and hold it together. His brain cells were all trying to fire at once, and a hundred thoughts were jockeying for position. The first, as he regarded the absolutely eye-popping girl in front of him, was the word "boing". But more than that, he was just overwhelmed by the fact that he was looking at someone else with powers. Someone else like him. Yeah, there was Porter and the powers he'd once had as Anthem, but let's face it...Porter was old. Here was someone close to his own age, and she had powers. As crappy as the situation he was in the middle of was, this was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him. Who was she? How did she get her powers? Could she somehow shed some light (random pun. Two points…) on where his own came from? There were a million questions he wanted to ask her.
       Seeing as how she was about to start blasting at him again, though, and that there were a dozen cops about to start filling the room with hot lead, the timing was probably kind of sucky.
       Her eyes were locked right on his. Things were about two exits away from ugly, and the pedal was to the freaking floor.
       "Okay, okay, hold up," he said, slowly raising his hands to her, trying to calm things down. "Let's not get nuts here. I don't want to fight you, and I don't think you—"
       She smiled at him. It was pretty evil, but in a really great way.
       He thought about it. "Okay, scratch that. Just—look, uh...'Delight', right?"
       "That's what they call me," she said. And what a great voice she had. Just a barely noticeable hint of cracking in it, giving her this kind of Demi Moore sort of thing—
       Stop it, stop it, stop it!!!
       "Okay. Good. We're talking here." He licked his lips, proceeding carefully. "Now look, there are a whole lot of people around here, and I don't want to see anybody get hurt. You and I start going it at, there's going to be some damage, and maybe some widespread bodily harm. I know we sort of just met and all, but I'm going assume you don't want to see that happen."
       She laughed a little, disbelieving. "You're making a pretty big assumption there. What makes you think I give a shit about any of these people?"
       He shrugged, taking a step toward her (but very slowly). "I read people pretty good. Aside from you shooting me and threatening everyone else, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."
       She looked at him oddly. "You're not very bright, are you?"
       "You don't know the half of it," Bonilla muttered to himself, watching them over his shoulder as he moved toward the bar. He just knew at any moment the girl was going to start blasting them all. He turned his attention back toward the hostage situation with difficulty. As he did, he stopped dead in his tracks, and his eyes widened.
       Oh, he didn't believe this...
       "I hate to burst your bubble, cowboy," Delight said, hands on her hips, seeming amused by him, "but some people are paying me a lot of money to keep you from messing with them. Nothing personal, but I'm trying to establish a rep here. How do you expect me to get another job if I botch this one because some cute surfer-boy has a 'feeling' about my good nature?"
       "A good point," he agreed, nodding and conceding. "Okay. I can see it. But have you taken a look at the floor around here? You're a little late. I kind of already messed with them."
       Delight looked around. It seemed she hadn't thought to do that up to this point. Everywhere were unconscious men in Greenwar fatigues. She looked to her left, out the now-open wall that used to be the entrance to Planet Hollywood. More of the terrorists were sprawled out there in the parking lot, and the ones that were conscious were being cuffed and dragged away.
       "You see what I'm saying?" Windjammer asked, taking another step, going with the moment. "There's not really a job for you to do. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure you would have done a fine job if you'd been here just a little earlier. But the ten-count's done. The only one left is that psycho back there with the gun—"
       A cry of pain came from right where Windjammer motioned with his gloved thumb. He and Delight both jerked their heads in that direction. Chuck's camera had been on them, and in one fluid motion, the videographer twisted around and followed their gaze with his lens, right around to where Melanie was. What he saw what a sight he'd remember for the rest of his life.
       Melanie jumped away from her captor at the sound of his cry, looking back and unable to believe it herself. The crazed photographer's face was twisted in pain, and his gun hand was held high above his head. The hand was held fiercely—and twisted sharply—at the wrist by Terrance Cross. Cross had come up behind him from the kitchen where Windjammer's gusts had blown him to safety. The gusts seemed to have also smashed the chair he'd been tied to, allowing him to work free from his bonds. The gunman writhed and squirmed in agony. Cross was stoic, not looking like he'd even broken a sweat. He was completely calm. And he was very pissed off. A pretty scary combination.
       The photographer turned around as best he could, and looked into the steely eyes of an American movie legend. Cross stared back into the eyes of his betrayer, a photographer his own people had hired for this thing, and donned the patented snarl that audiences the world over knew and adored.
       "Your fired," he said.
       Cross pulled back with his free hand and slammed his fist into the younger man's face. The would-be-hero for the cause hit the bar with his back and tumbled backward over it. He hit the floor with a wince-raising thud, out cold. His gun flew up, spinning in the air. As it dropped, Cross snatched it effortlessly and held it near his chest.
       "Take that to the bank," he said. It was the tagline that had been used in every Mac Knight film ever made. The moment couldn't have been more perfect television if Cross had just decked Tonya Harding. Chuck nearly cried.
       But instead, reflexes guided him again. His camera whipped right back around to Windjammer and Delight.
       "Hmm," Windjammer said. "I stand corrected."
       Delight looked at the fallen man, then at the rest of the restaurant. There were no other Greenwarriors in sight. There were, however, a lot of cops, whose guns were now all trained on her—including Bonilla's.
       "You see what I'm saying here?" Windjammer went on. "If it's just the job you came here to do, well, the job's kind of over. Now if you're one of them, and you believe in their cause and all, then I'll understand if you want to keep this thing going. But if you're not..."
       He let his words trail off, letting her think about. If she was one of them, and just as fanatical, then he was about to have a very, very bad day.
       She stood, considering, for a few seconds, and the tension in the room was strangling. Then she looked at Windjammer again. Windjammer prepared himself for the pain he was about to experience.
       Then she smiled at him. Wasn't quite the pain he was expecting, but ouch!
       "You might just be brighter than you look," she said. Then, of all things, she waved at him with her fingers. "Maybe next time."
       She threw her arms above her, and light exploded upward from her whole body. Half the people in the room were immediately blinded. The ceiling exploded up and out, and debris started avalanching in. Cops forgot about their aim and sought cover instead. Windjammer and Bonilla both shielded their faces and bodies with their arms as a tempest of dust erupted all around them.
       And with an escape route opened into the afternoon sky, Delight's feet left the floor. She flew up through the gaping hole and took to the skies.
       Bonilla coughed and rubbed his eyes. Windjammer stood from the protective crouch he'd spun into and watched the girl flying away.
       "Fat...freakin'...chance," he said. He raised an arm and motioned without looking. A burst of wind caught his board from its resting place twenty feet away, threw it into the air, and sent it twirling toward him.
       "I'm going after her!" he shouted at Bonilla. He grabbed the board just before it struck him, leaping up and mounting it in one deft move. Winds ignited beneath him, catching him before he could touch ground. Flying dust formed swirls and spun around him. With a deafening whoosh, Windjammer rocketed through the ceiling and was gone.



       "You all right, miss?"
       Melanie had ducked down behind the bar when the roof had caved in. She was in the process of realizing she was still in one piece when she heard the voice. The voice belonged to Terrance Cross, a man whose face she'd known all her life. He stood above her, bigger than life, and extended his hand for her. She took it, and he smiled, helping her to her feet. She had almost been killed twice in the same day, and had been saved, first, by a super-hero, second by Terrance Cross. This would officially make her not only the luckiest woman alive, but the envy of all the other women alive, wouldn't it?
       "Yes, I'm fine," she said, standing up, short of breath. "I'm fine, and…and…and thank you so much." She hugged him. She had to. That was what women who got rescued by Terrance Cross always did. She was pretty sure there was some kind of law.
       "My pleasure, miss," he said, both humbly and proudly (a manner only he could pull off, one of the main weapons in the arsenal of his public appeal). "Just old habits, I guess. You put me and a terrorist in front of a camera, somebody's going to spit some teeth."
       Melanie looked up and noticed Chuck. His camera, of course, was on the pair of them. From behind it, Chuck was smiling. Cross looked into the camera, and at the millions of stunned, riveted viewers, and winked. He even added a patented Mac Knight thumbs-up.
       Not being able to imagine a better closing shot then that, Chuck switched off and put his camera on the rubble-covered floor. Yes, the world, and definitely Channel 5, would be expecting him to get outside and get shots of the terrorists being loaded into police vans. They'd get their shots. But after all he'd just been through and had given them, Chuck figured he'd earned a coffee break. The world could wait.
       He ran around the bar, and Melanie met him halfway there. The two partners embraced, and Chuck held her so tightly he was afraid he might break her. He'd easily just become the most famous cameraman in television history, but right now all that mattered was that his best friend—he sometimes felt his only friend—was alive.
       "Got all your fingers and toes, Lone Ranger?" he asked softly into her shoulder.
       "All present and accounted for, Tonto," she whispered back, trembling a little now that it was all starting to sink in.
       At the entrance, where police and emergency crews were swarming in and out, Rich Lawson pressed his way through, desperately looking back and forth until he found the pair.
       "Melanie!" he shouted.
       Melanie and Chuck turned toward him and watched as he rushed over.
       "Jinkies," Chuck said, wryly. "The boss."
       "How do you think he liked his first day on the job?" Melanie asked.
       Chuck thought about it for a moment. He grinned at her. "I think he's going to work out here just fine. That's if we don't give him a heart attack first."
       Rich hurried up to them, stopping just short and shifting on his feet awkwardly, unsure of the proper way to express his emotions to two people he had only just started a working relationship with.
       He finally settled for spitting out, "You're okay!" He followed this with, "You...are okay? You're both...?"
       "We're fine," Melanie told him, exhaling. Chuck just grinned, not offended by knowing that his new producer's real concern was for Melanie. Chuck wasn't blind. At least he knew the guy had good taste.
       Rich nodded, looked for more words, and then just laid his forehead down on the bar. "You two scared the living crap out of me," he said. "My first day on the job and my team almost gets killed by terrorists. What are we doing tomorrow? Going down to the zoo to wrestle alligators, maybe?"
       Melanie put her hand on his shoulder, comforting, and laughed. "We'll worry about tomorrow later. Right now we're still in the middle of the biggest story of the decade, and I think the station would like it if we'd get back on the air."
       He stood up straight, and Chuck was already going back to grab his camera. "You sure you're up to it?" he asked, concerned.
       "I'm a professional, Mr. Lawson," she said, pretending to be offended. "I'm always up to it."
       He smiled and nodded, lost momentarily in her dazzling green eyes. He snapped out of it quickly. "I'll get back to the van and check the feed." He took off, calling over his shoulder as he did. "Forget the exterior shots. Channel 12's already out there. Get me an interview with Cross and let's put the Channel 5 logo on every TV screen on God's green Earth."
       "Rich?" she said.
       He stopped in his tracks and looked back at her. She was smiling. Hearing her finally call him that had been worth the wait.
       "Welcome to Phoenix."

       "Oh, thank God you're all right, Terrance," Chester Fein blubbered, rushing his employer. Cross held his publicist back with a hand at the last moment.
       "Yeah, yeah, I'm swell, Chester. Just don't go gettin' all womanly on me."
       Chester composed himself. "Yes, Terrance, of course. The photographer! I can't believe this! He came so highly recommended. Why was there nothing on his resume about terrorist activity? The agency's going to get a very unpleasant phone call from me, I can tell you that."
       But Cross wasn't listening. He was busy looking at the hole in the ceiling, and his mind was racing. "Who was that kid?"
       "What kid?" Chester asked. "Oh, the flying one? Come on, Terrance, you've heard about this. They call him Windjammer. Phoenix's own high-flying super-hero? There was a whole piece on 'American Journal' last month. To think, I was doubting he existed. Yet, here he came, swooping in and saving all our lives. Dear God, Terrance, if he hadn't shown up..."
       "I want him," Cross said, oblivious any thoughts of his own mortality. "This is the biggest thing this world has ever seen. By tomorrow he's going to be on the front page of newspapers in a hundred languages. There won't be a soul living that doesn't know his name."
       Cross turned to Chester, and there were many things at work behind his eyes. "You're going to find out how to get a hold of him, Chester. First, of course, to extend our thanks. I owe the kid, and Terrance Cross always pays his debts. Second, to offer our services. We're going to have a talk about his future. A long talk."
       Terrance Cross smiled. "Nature may have made him a hero, Chester. But we're going to make him a star."

       Nearby, Captain Edward Bonilla crouched next to the unconscious heap that, minutes before, held control of the room and the situation. Yep. The psycho was going to be out for a while.
       A thought struck him, and he stood, looking over the bar. There it was; the cell phone he'd been talking into. The small light on it told him that the line was still active. He stormed around the bar, replacing his .38 in its holster, gaining speed and anger with each step.
       He grabbed the phone from a mound of broken glass and warm liquor, giving it one violent, cleaning shake before bringing it to his ear.
       "Who is this?" he yelled into it, addressing whoever it was that seemed to be behind this whole affair, the one who had put lives at stake in his city and on his shift.

       A world away, deep in the jungles of South America, his voice was heard in a finely-decorated atrium. The atrium stood in the center of an all-but hidden compound, a place of refuge for the place's ruler, open to the elements and shaded by the canopy of foliage above. Besides the beautiful plants and sculptures and the stream that ran through it, the haven held a large, luxurious chair. In front of it was a large television on a stand, and on the screen was a live shot from Phoenix, Arizona. Next to the chair, resting on a small table, was an elegant white phone.
       Earth Angel held the phone to her ear, comfortable in her chair, watching the epilogue of an unsuccessful mission on the screen before her. The few living beings who had seen her would tell that she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, something too beautiful for this world. Her luxurious hair was a perfect white, long and remarkable. Some said she was no woman at all. Some believed her to be—as her namesake suggested—an angel. And no one who had seen the enormous ivory wings that grew from her back and rose high above her was going to argue.
       "Who is this?" the voice in her ear demanded again.
       She calmly took the receiver and placed it in its cradle, disconnecting the line. She was controlled, not angry. But she was disappointed. This was to be an important mission for the cause, a statement to the world. But the day, it seemed, did not belong to Greenwar. Instead, it belonged to someone called Windjammer.
       There would be another day. She and her followers had many other plans in the works to wake the peoples of Earth from their apathetic slumber and force them to remember the planet that had borne and nursed them. Greenwar's goals would be met. Mother Earth would have her peace.
       Earth Angel watched the video replay of the battle, watching the captivating young man who danced with the winds. Windjammer. She would remember that name. And she would see to it that she and this boy met. He had a great deal to answer for.
       To her, to Greenwar, and to the Earth.

       Windjammer streaked across the Phoenix skies, crouched low on his board to cut down resistance as much as possible. He was gaining on her, and there was no way he was letting her get away.
       A good mile ahead, he could see Delight, and he was pretty sure she hadn't spotted him yet. She was flying...he couldn't get over that. Yeah, of course, he was flying too...more or less. But he needed the wind to get him going. Her powers just seemed to let her do it at will, and that fascinated him. So much about her enchanted him, despite his reminders to himself that he was only trying to nab her because she was one of the bad guys and needed to go to jail.
       As they crossed over Camelback Mountain (he fought the urge to wave down at Porter's house) and into Scottsdale, he had closed the distance to a close quarter mile. He was pouring it on, and he almost had her. His arms behind him, his hair a blond wake, it occurred to him all of a sudden that he hadn't figured out what he was going to do when he caught up with her.
       That's when she spotted him. She looked back over her shoulder, whether from just a feeling or premeditated caution, he didn't know. But she saw him. She twisted around in mid-air, suddenly flying backward, and raised her hands. They exploded in a blinding flash.
       Oh, crap...
       He grabbed the tip of his board and shot straight up, getting totally vertical, as twin light blasts seared the air that he had just occupied. She missed him by inches. He looked down, over his shoulder, expecting to see her coming after him. Instead, she was running. She was flying straight down toward the city. He cut a hard arc with his board, flipping around, and followed her.
       Hard to get. He could deal with that.
       Delight swooped down and whipped around the Bank of America building, checking behind her every few seconds. Oh, he was there all right, he thought to himself as though she could hear his thoughts, and wasn't giving up. She started taking pot-shots at him. Most were wide, but a few almost connected. Windjammer ducked, dipped, dodged, and got upside down to keep from getting creamed by one of them. But he kept after her. He was on this chick like Spandex.
       She flew over Goldwater Boulevard and did the unexpected. Just across it was Fashion Square Mall, the most popular and largest mall in Phoenix. The mall was three stories tall and seemed to go on forever. The roof was one of its more interesting features. It was all windows, made up of what looked like big skylights. During the summer (which it happened to be), the skylights were left open, giving the enormous enclosed structure the feel of an outdoor mall.
       Delight flew right up the side of the building, up and over, and down into the mall.
       Oh, this was bad. Bad with a side of fries. Windjammer crested Dillard's department store and soared in, hot on her tail. He'd just chased her into a mall filled with thousands and thousands of people. It was summer, so eighty percent of the high school kids in town were hanging out down there (like he and his friends had done just a couple of years ago). Once inside, he could see down the mall floor, down to the Food Court, were all the many hundreds of tables were full. To his left and right he could see the railing for each floor of the mall, and mid-day shoppers walked back and forth by all of them.
       Oh, this was bad.
       She dropped down low, flying right above the lunchtime diners, and he followed. He could hear people screaming on every side, and watched as people at the tables spilled their food and scattered in all directions. Mothers grabbed their children and fast-food vendors ducked behind their Formica counters. The winds that carried 'Jammer plucked up food wrappers and paper cups, carrying them along with him. His board wasn't more than a few feet above the crowd's heads. What was he doing?!
       Delight shot upward as she passed the grand glass elevator, and he breathed a sigh of relief. She barely missed the pedestrian bridge that joined the two sides of the mall, and nearly caused him to slam right into it. He swooped up and over, careful to avoid the crouching shoppers.
       "Sorry," he said quickly to a young couple that he'd nearly hit, feeling embarrassed. They just gawked at him in wonder as he kept flying.
       As he shadowed her, it occurred to him that things could be worse. He noticed that, at least so far, she'd stopped shooting at him once they'd gotten inside. He took that as a good sign. But he still had to stop her before somebody got hurt (maybe by him), or at least get her out of the mall.
       She was looking back at him again (and not looking too fond of him), and he saw that she was coming up on an Express store. He knew the store, and he knew the layout. He had spent way too many hours there with Kami, his senior-year girlfriend, while she tried dozens of things on and he tried to pretend he wasn't bored out of his mind. He'd just have to wander the store while she was in the dressing room, looking absently at all the clothes they had displayed all over those tables. Remembering this, and remembering what he'd done (successfully, to boot) in Planet Hollywood, he gambled and gave something a try.
       As Delight reached the store's entrance, she was greeted by a tidal wave of fashionable clothing. Every item on the sales tables was now in the air, pelting and coating her. Drastically reduced skirts and tanks wrapped around her torso and face (he was lucky he'd gotten into his first flying fight during a back-to-school sale), and she grappled with them as she hovered unsteadily just outside the railing. It was a three-story drop to the bottom, and he was afraid that—disoriented as she was—she might fall. He might have created another wind to gently move her to safety—if he hadn't been about to run into her. With no time to think or to spare, he leapt from his board and tackled her, carrying both of them over the rail and onto the walkway.
       He landed mostly on top her, and she landed still yanking at a burgundy blouse that had wrapped itself around her head. She tore it violently off, and her face was deep and mean with color. Windjammer had just pushed himself up, raising his upper body with his arms, his hands on either side of her head. His face was above hers, and was the first thing she saw when the blindfold came off.
       His brain shuffled through things to say. Something heroic? Something charming? Something dramatic?
       "Um...hi," came out, and he smiled in an awkward, crooked way.
       She punched him. This was no girl punch. She flat-out decked him with a totally unexpected right hook that knocked him goofy. His head came back and his expression looked like he was the last man out of a three-kegger over at the Teke house on the ASU campus.
       With the same speed and ferocity, she used both her arms and legs and flipped him over her. His back hit the display window and shattered glass went everywhere. He landed mostly upside-down. A half-dressed mannequin tumbled over and bounced off his head with the pleasing sound of a dropped coconut.
       He struggled to regain his senses and an upright position. As he did, he could see her get to her feet, throw off the rest of the garments, and give him a look that could melt steel. Then she jumped over the railing and flew off the direction they'd come from.
       He stumbled to his feet and toward the rail, tripping over last season's belts, holding his jaw. He spotted her and quickly spun around to find where his board had landed.
       He stopped and looked down next to him. A kid about five years-old was standing there, holding his board up for him with both hands. Shane looked at the kid. Then he looked beyond him. People had emptied the stores along the walk and were all standing there, watching him. But they weren't afraid, weren't terrified as he figured they'd be. They were...
       They were cheering.
       "Go get her, man!" a teen in a baseball cap and loose jeans shouted.
       "It's the 'Jam, baby!" someone else called.
       And the cheering grew. He looked around, and for the first time noticed that every section of rail on every floor was thick with jubilant, excited peoples. He slowly looked over the rail, and down at floor level, crowds were massed together and waving, yelling, jumping. As he came into their view, they exploded with cheers. They were students, housewives, tourists and retirees. The were white, black, Asian, and Native American. They were a cross-section of the city of Phoenix, of the state of Arizona itself.
       And they freaking loved him.
       "Holy...cow..." he whispered. He had the powers. He'd put on the costume. He'd read all his news clippings (Jerry, his roommate, collected each and every one). He'd heard himself discussed and praised on talk radio and even down at Coffee Plantation on the occasional Friday night.
       But until that very moment, he'd really had no idea.
       He suddenly knew what it felt like to be a hero.
       The kid still held his board for him, patiently, as the building roared. Windjammer carefully, respectfully took it from him with one hand. The kid smiled. His hero smiled back.
       "Thanks, kid," Windjammer said. He felt he should remind him to always floss or something, but figured he'd better get back to the business at hand. He gripped his board and, very deliberately, vaulted the rail with the other hand, planting his feet on the board high above his head, arcing down in a perfect twist, and catching a curving wind that dropped him twenty feet before shooting him like a blond-haired missile right over the crowd. The place went absolutely wild. Each section that he passed threw up their hands, perhaps trying to touch him, one after the next. His winds ravaged carefully-sculpted hairstyles all along the way. No one seemed to care. They all felt as so they'd been caressed by the very breath of God.
       Delight's trail wasn't hard to follow, seeing as how people were pointing madly toward the west end of the mall. A crowd was forming outside, but not going near, the entrance to Harkins Fashion Square Theater. Bingo.
       And I'll see you, he thought, kicking into overdrive, at the movies.
       He raced into the theater's lobby and came to a drastic stop at the snack bar, hovering in mid-air. Here, the theater split left and right, going to different screens in each direction.
       A high school girl in a Harkin's uniform stood behind the counter, frozen, staring silently at him. He looked both ways, indecisive, and then looked to her, questioning. The rest of her body stayed exactly the same, but her left hand shot up and pointed, with one finger, to her right.
       He nodded in thanks and smiled, whooshing off in that direction.
       He rode inches above the worn carpet, trying to listen for screams or other kinds of chaos that might tell him which theater she was in. He passed the restrooms, kept going for a few feet, and then stopped. He looked back over his shoulder. He called an opposing wind, and he and his board floated backward and came to halt just outside the Women's Room. He listened intently. Nothing. Complete silence.
       He thought about every group movie date he'd ever been on with his friends. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that their dates always went to the powder room in packs. And they always came back laughing, making every guy there wonder which one of them they'd been talking about.
       It was never quiet in there.
       Wait a minute, he thought, standing in front of the meticulously painted international symbol for 'This is Where the Women Come to Pee'. I can't go in there...
       The door blew open, prompted by a blast of unnatural light, and smacked him right in the forehead. He flew back a few feet and fell on his butt, clenching his frontal lobe with both hands, well and properly dazed.
       Then Delight was standing over him (not all that unpleasant a sight, all things considered). Behind her, he could see the crowd of girls in the restroom, huddling together, that she obviously had talked into keeping quiet. They were anything but quiet, now, creating a choir with their shrill screams. He wondered which guy they'd been talking about before the glowing bikini babe had busted in and ruined the party.
       She leaned down and slipped her fingers between the stiffened fabric of his high-tech costume and his throat, yanking him up toward her face. He wondered if his eyes were actually crossed—like they felt—and thought that it would be pretty embarrassing if that were true.
       "Will you give it up?" she said, angry and exasperated. "You said it yourself. The job's over. I walked away. No harm, no foul. So will you please just get back on your stupid board, fly off into the sunset, and leave me alone?"
       She paused for a moment after she spoke, then dropped him, and he fell back onto his elbows. She stood up and slowly started backing away, down toward the main DTS screen where all the newest flicks played. Their eyes stayed locked until she was almost around the corner, then she turned and walked briskly out of sight.
       Dang. What a walk, too.
       "Get up!" one of the bathroom girls suddenly yelled. "Get up, get up, she's getting away!"
       His jaw hurt, his butt hurt, his head really hurt, and this prom queen that had suddenly decided she was the voice of his conscience was really adding to the latter. If he could just rest for a couple of minutes, maybe just a half hour, he'd be up to snuff. She wouldn't have gotten far by then, right? Maybe just to Apache Junction? Sedona? Flagstaff? Denver?
       "Get up!" another girl pleaded.
       "Come on, Windjammer, you can do it!"
       "You've to stop her! She's dangerous!"
       "And you know she's totally had work done."
       "Get up!!"
       He wobbled to his feet, swatting his hand at them as if to say, Okay, okay! He'd go after God-freaking-zilla if it would get them to shut up. His head was pounding and he was totally off-balance. He wasn't sure if he could even manage flying right now. But he had to get after her, one way or the other. He picked up his board, and, carrying it, started down the hall—on foot—after her.
       "He's so brave!" one of the girls adored from behind him.
       "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he grumbled, still trying to shake off the cobwebs.
       Delight was jogging past a 'coming soon' poster when she heard his voice.
       "You," he said, sternly.
       She spun around. His gaze was locked on her as he rounded the corner, walking after her steadily, relentlessly.
       She started walking backward, annoyed. "Would you like me to look up the word 'quit' for you? I know it's a big one, so I understand if you're having trouble with it."
       "You're under arrest," he said solemnly, still coming, his head unmoving.
       She shuffled quicker, picking up the pace. "Are you, like, one of those guys who keeps calling and calling no matter many times a girl has her roommate tell you she's washing her hair, out of the country, gone off to join a convent..."
       "Stop," he said, seriously, on the verge of breaking into a run now.
       With a few more steps, she spun, turning her back to him, taking large strides.
       "Don't do it," he yelled, now fully running. She did it anyway. She dove into the air and took to flight. Windjammer threw his board ahead of him, leapt onto it, and flew right after her.
       Inside the theater's main auditorium, a full house was riveted to the screen as the climactic final minutes of the film "Twister" were unfolding. A middle-aged woman screamed as farm machinery and barnyard animals barely missed Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. Her husband put his arm around her and pulled her close.
       "Come on, honey," he snickered. "It's only a movie."
       The back door of the theater flew open, and Delight sailed above the crowd. Windjammer was right on her tail, and a virtual tornado followed him. Hats, wrappers, and popcorn flew in every direction amidst the deafening roar that even made DTS sound take a back seat. And the whole theater screamed like the Devil himself had just shown up with a Diet Coke and a box of Goobers.
       Delight slammed the bar on the opposite exit door, not even stopping. The door didn't have time to close before Windjammer was through it. The pair took to the Scottsdale skies, stopping traffic and raising more cheers.
       She flew low over the immaculately trimmed palm trees, dodging in and out of them periodically, trying to shake him. He was having none of that. His feet worked the board like a surgeon's scalpel, and he flew with stunning precision. She wasn't getting away this time. That much he knew for sure.
       She jerked around briefly and took a shot at him. The blinding beam raced right at him, but he flipped up at the last moment, deflecting it with the bottom of his board, did a full 360, and kept right on flying, barely slowed at all. Oh, he was on his game!
       They dipped down to the rooftops of multi-million dollar homes, skimmed the surface of inviting blue swimming pools, and shot back up high in the air, continuing their aerial cat-and-mouse at blinding speeds all over the affluent suburb. Sooner or later one would tire. Someone was going to have to give.
       It turned out to be her. A few hundred feet ahead of him, she suddenly turned and stopped, and her hands burst into living light, filling the air around him with rays of solid brightness. Windjammer didn't yield. He swooped up and down, left and right, riding a roller coaster of gusts and drafts, closing in on her with every near miss.
       Finally it got to be too much. He was dodging so fast he was totally disoriented, and knew he'd be blown out of the sky at any moment. He threw his hands forward, pleading to the winds, pulling up gale meant to blow her high into the sky and far from him, giving him time to recover and regroup.
       Apparently he was more disoriented than he thought. The blast of wind did not come from below her or in front of her. It appeared, from nowhere, behind her, and hurled the surprised girl right at him...and into him.
       They hit each other hard, knocking the wind (two more points. The crowd goes wild) out of them both. Their arms and legs intertwined, and the pair flew off the board and into freefall, spinning to the Earth below.
       Dizzy, motion-drunk, and barely conscious, he tried to get a bead on the situation. They were falling, and in seconds would be dead. She wasn't moving, and wasn't going to be a bit of help. He had to do something or they were both going to do a major Wile E. Coyote and give the searing Scottsdale asphalt a makeover.
       He tried to concentrate, to call the winds, but he was too out of it. The whole world became nothing more than a big tumbling blur. Then he felt it coming, blowing, pushing at them. But what direction, he couldn't tell. Was he just cutting some time off their downward trip?
       He felt the leaves as they smashed into a palm tree, tearing at its fronds and shaking its long trunk. Then they were falling again. He knew now that there wasn't much fall left, so he angled his body as best he could, trying to take the brunt of it when they finally—
       Hit.
       The world slowly came back to him, and it was a foggy, dazed, painful world. Above him (his head was laying back), he could see the palm tree, tattered, but still standing. Whatever was below him had some give to it. His legs were elevated, he could tell that much. He moved his chin down, and there was Delight, on top of him, raising her head and coming back to reality herself, her long blond her all a-tangle around her pretty face. He looked past her and saw his boot. It was resting on vinyl car seat. The windshield and rear-view mirror were beyond it.
       He peered around, focusing. They had landed in the back seat of a convertible. Probably a '67 Cutlass from the look of things. He thanked God that he lived in Arizona. The chances of not hitting a convertible were the lousy bet. He could have been the hero of Chicago, and right now they'd be scraping him off the roof of a rusted Chevy Nova.
       Delight held her head, pinching her eyes shut, and then rubbed her shoulder, all the while moving very slowly. It was a miracle neither of them had broken any bones in the initial impact, much less the fall itself. Shane still wasn't fully convinced he hadn't broken anything. But he couldn't get up and check himself just then. There was kind of a super-villain chick on top of him at the moment.
       "You...moron..." he heard her saying, and her face was so close he could feel her breath. "Are you out of your surf-punk mind? You could have killed us both, you idiot!"
       He heard the words, and saw her lips moving, and could tell she was ticked off. But everything was still kind of dreamy, and his eyes kept going in and out of focus. He tried to sift through everything and concentrate and the important stuff, but for some reason couldn't stop looking into and thinking about her eyes. There were just really killer. This close, he could make out every detail of them, almost see through them. What did they remind him of? Oh, yeah. It was Michelle Pfeiffer, the first time he'd seen her in that "Ladyhawke" flick with Ferris Bueller and that "Hitcher" guy. Hey, wait...wasn't he the guy in "Bladerunner", too? Weird.
       "Are you listening to me?" she asked, still ticked. He watched the lips move some more. Come to think of it, they were kind of Pfeiffer-esque themselves. Red, moist, just full enough so you couldn't ignore them. This girl could be on magazine covers. Doing films. Hosting a show on MTV. And they were just too, too close to his.
       "Will you say something, you brainless meatball? Is that too much to ask after you--"
       He kissed her. He didn't plan to. He didn't mean to. It just happened.
       Her eyes grew wide in the face of the totally unexpected. He'd caught her (and himself, for that matter) completely off-guard. She gasped slightly through her nose.
       And then, slowly, her eyes closed.
       And they were kissing.
       Her hand found its way behind his neck. His arms simply stayed at his side, his head the only part of him moving. Their faces circled together, their lips pressed one's to another's--gently, firmly, gently... It seemed to go on forever, and it was warm, and intimate, and friendly, and comforting, and...
       And then, with slow pull back—her lips from his—it was over.
       Their eyes opened, simultaneously, and searched each other. She blinked a couple of times, looking confused, but still caught up in the electricity between them. She slowly drew away, pulling herself off of him. Then she backed up across the seat, as far as she could from him until her back was up against the window crank. She was suddenly wide awake and sharply on the defensive.
       "Okay," she said, coldly, accusingly. "What did you do?"
       "What?" Windjammer asked, starting to come out of his daze, taking his legs off the back of the front seat and carefully sitting up.
       "What did you do to me? Did you just suck out my powers or something? Is that some weird thing you can do?"
       "Did I what?" he laughed, unable to respond seriously. "What are you talking about?"
       "Why did you do that?" she demanded, cutting his sentence off. A very nice moment had just become very tense. Try about a twelve on the ten-scale.
       "I don't...I just..." he half-shrugged, looking for words. It wasn't a question, in this kind of situation, he'd ever had to answer before. "I guess...I don't, uh--"
       "Why?!"
       "I just--" He threw up his hands, trying to make it come out, but not able to find the words. He motioned with the hands, struggling, looking like he was trying to form the words out of the air. Maybe he was just trying to spell out 'help'.
       He dropped his hands. He exhaled, blowing up from his bottom lip, flipping his bangs out of his face. "Because... Because you're...cute."
       She stared at him, disbelieving. She studied his face, and the more she did, the more his eyes managed to find everything but her gaze. His face felt warm, and he realized that he was totally blushing.
       "I'm...'cute'?" she repeated.
       He studied the car seat. "Yes." He finally risked looking up. "You're cute."
       She kept looking at him, but her guard was dropping. She relaxed in the seat, and this time studied him with interest more than caution.
       "I'm cute?" she asked again, smiling ever so slightly.
       He nodded, sheepishly, brushing some palm tree debris off his arm. "Kind of gorgeous, actually. To be honest, you pretty much fried my eggs at first glance."
       She smiled completely this time, and now she was the one to look away. She looked up at the sky for a few long seconds. Then back at him. He cleared his throat.
       "You know you're blushing?" she asked.
       "I am not," he corrected immediately. He pointed up to the tree. "I just had to break our fall up there to...you know...save our lives and...and...I...landed face-first and those, you know, palm...what, fronds?...things just sssslapped the crap out of me on the way down."
       She burst out laughing, covering her face with her hands, and drew her knees up to her chest. He started smiling himself, trying to cope with his embarrassment.
       She put her hands on her knees and rested her chin on her fingers. She smiled at him, her head at a slight angle.
       "You're...kind of cute, too."
       "Am I?" he asked, his elbow on his knee, his chin resting in his cupped palm. "Isn't that a weird coincidence? Wow, that's a lot we have in common. I mean, there's the cute thing, the flying thing... If you're into Jackie Chan movies, we may just have to call Chuck Woolery."
       She laughed again, and he laughed with her. They sat there, on opposite sides of someone else's back seat in someone else's driveway, and silence followed their chuckling. They just kind of watched each other, occasionally looking away, and then looking back.
       "'You're under arrest'?" she repeated back at him, finally, and giggled. "Where's your badge, Wyatt Earp?"
       He winced and rolled his eyes. "I know, I know. It just seemed like the thing to say at the time. I must have been channeling Robocop or something."
       She got her fit under control. "So," she asked, carefully, "you don't, like, have a badge, or anything like that?"
       "Me?" he asked back. "Are you kidding? No, nothing like that. I'm not a cop. I just kind of work with them."
       "And that pays...how much?" she wondered. "If you don't mind my asking. I'm just curious what the going wage is for, you know, people like us."
       "Pay?" He looked confused. "Doesn't pay anything."
       "Nothing?" She looked as confused as him. "Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me the cops call you for help, and you go in and get shot at and knocked around, and you do this for free?"
       "Yeah," he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Totally."
       "You're not very bright, are you?"
       "Why?" he asked back. "What do you get paid for...you know...what you do?"
       "Me?" She sighed, thoughtful. "Well, to be totally honest, I haven't really been 'doing' this very long at all. I used to date this guy in L.A. whose brother is...kind of a mob guy, you know? So Terry—the guy I dated—told his brother about this stuff I can do, and his brother tells me he has a job for me. He takes me to this big meeting, dresses me up all sexy, and has me just stand there while he lays out his terms, like I'm just some window dressing. Then these guys try to strong-arm him, like he figured. Then I just kind of...did my thing."
       He watched her, waiting for an explanation.
       "I didn't hurt anybody," she clarified, quickly. "I just put on a light show, busted some furniture, flew around a little. I swear to you, these so-called tough guys were wetting their pants. It was hilarious. So, with my help, this guy got exactly the deal he wanted. No questions asked, no one got hurt. And for that, he gave me five thousand dollars."
       "Five grand?" he said, impressed. "Not bad."
       "That's what I thought. That's when I figured out that maybe these powers weren't such a bad thing. Maybe for once in my life I could turn things my way, you know? Get something for me for a change, some of the things I never had."
       He nodded, looking away, feeling the implications of what she way saying. His mind started piecing together what kind of life she must have had before this. There was a story there, and it probably wasn't a pretty one.
       "You don't approve, I know," she said, a little stand-offish.
       "Hey, no," he said quickly, turning back to her, raising a hand. "I didn't say that. I'm not...saying anything." His words hit a roadblock, and there was a brief quiet. "So...what else have you...done?"
       She ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame it again. "A couple of more jobs for him after that, still nothing too serious. Then Terry ended up a jerk and I finally ditched him." She laughed, and there was cruelty in it. "His brother probably killed him when Terry gave him the news. Kiss this blond meal ticket good-bye."
       She shook that memory off and went on. "And that was pretty much it until just recently. The thing was these mob guys got me thinking, and got some rumors started about me, and I put the word out that I was available. Figured there were a lot of people who'd pay top dollar for a girl with tricks like mine up her sleeve."
       Windjammer considered mentioning her ironic lack of sleeves, but kept his mouth shut, figuring it would sound like a come-on.
       "And that's when one of the Greenwar people found me. They took me to this secret meeting, told me they were staging some thing in Phoenix—you know, to help save the planet—and that you, Mr. Windbreaker, might show up and jack things up. If so, I was supposed to keep you busy. And for that, they were going to pay me twenty-five grand."
       "Just for smacking me around? Wow. I think I'm flattered."
       "Hey, you're big news, cowboy. I checked out some of your clippings before I got here. You were the one who gave me the idea to put on the tights and pick a codename."
       "The costume came from me? Really?" Hey, now he was kind of flattered. His eyes wandered down, leaving her face. "Every once in a while, I do something right."
       He didn't realize he was staring until she said, "You're blushing again."
       Hey, great job avoiding the come-on lines. Dork.
       His eyes shot back up, and he changed the subject ever-so-swiftly. "So, um... So they were going to pay you? As in, never did? You didn't get it up front?"
       "Nope," she sighed, leaning back and closing her eyes against the sunlight. "No such luck. Now it looks like I'm not going to. Awful shame."
       "Gee, that sucks," he said sincerely. "It's not like it was your fault. From what I gathered, they just signaled for you too late. You'd figure they'd at least give you half for showing up. Or something."
       She smiled. "Forget about it. Wasn't meant to be."
       "So," he said, leaning forward, "you weren't, like, with those guys. You're not part of their group or anything?"
       "Nope," she said, soaking up the sun.
       "Did you know what they had going? The whole hostage thing?"
       "That's a nope, too," she said. Then she sat up and looked him in the eyes. "You don't have to believe me. I don't expect you to. I'm not saying I'm an angel, but I'm not about hostages, okay? I just busted in there when they signaled for me and didn't really put it all together until you started doing your psychologist thing on me. I never even saw the guy with the gun back there until that other guy punched him. I was just focused on you, trying to do my first big job right."
       She put her chin between her knees. "Guess I screwed it up. Not going to do wonders for my rep."
       "You know," he said, carefully, trying not overstep and offend, "there are other ways to make a living."
       "Yeah, there's the enormous paycheck you bring home..." she joked.
       "Yeah, I know, but I mean..." Sometimes he really hated the art of talking, and wished mankind could go back to simpler communication, like cave drawings or something. He could probably draw a pretty fair woolly mammoth if he had to. "Yeah, I've got this powers things going on. But I'm going to school, too. And I work part-time. I just kind of do this super thing because—"
       "Why?" she asked, raising her head, sincerely interested. "Why do you do it?"
       He thought about it. "I've got this friend. He helped me out a lot during a really confusing time. He taught me a lot about responsibility. About helping people. About...giving and sacrificing in a world that's all take, take, take. It sounds corny, I know, but I feel like I got these powers for a reason. Like, I don't know, like God gave them to me so I could give back to others. At least that's how my friend sees it. And I kind of believe him, I guess."
       She smiled, softly. "Sounds like a pretty good friend."
       He nodded. "The best. But listen, what I was trying to say is that there's other stuff you can do besides make mob guys mess their shorts. You seem really—I know, shoot me for this one—really bright. There got to be a lot of things you could—"
       "Yeah, yeah," she said, suddenly agitated. "It's an old tale I've heard before. 'With your looks, you should be a model'. 'Why not go to college, get a degree, get a career?' Why not spend the rest of my life in some office getting someone else coffee while he grabs my ass all day and lies to his wife about where he spends his weekends?"
       "That's not what I'm—"
       "Have you always had a home?" she asked him suddenly. "Have you? A roof over your head, a family there for you at the end of every day?"
       "Well, yeah," he said, and thought about mentioning his lack of a father, but didn't think it was going to sound too impressive in light of what was probably coming.
       "You grow up here in Phoenix?" She looked at the skyline. "Under the palm trees? Skateboarding with your buddies down to the mall, picking up on the little rich girls with their diamond earrings and their daddy's Mercedes?"
       He found himself looking down again, feeling guilty at exactly how close to home she was hitting.
       "You ever go hungry, Windjammer? You ever been all alone? You ever had to do things you could never imagine doing just to stay alive? Just to survive?"
       She poked the center of her chest as she spoke. "I'm a survivor, air boy. I always have been, because I've had to be. I never had a choice. That's all I've ever done. And then one day, for no reason at all, I start being able to do these amazing things. Me. I can control light. I can fly. I can fly. Can you imagine what's that's like for someone who's never even been able to make it out of L.A.?
       "Your friend thinks God gave you your powers? Well I think he gave me mine, too. I think he said, 'look kid, you've been screwed over your whole life. Here's the payoff. Enjoy yourself'. These things I can do, they're mine, nobody else's. And what I do with them is my own business. And if I want to use them to get ahead, to get a little bit of the good life for myself, then I think I've earned the right. I think I deserve to be rich, even if Boy Scouts like you don't approve, even if it means breaking the so-called 'law' once in a while, even if it means--"
       "Doing things you could never imagine doing," he said softly, "just to get rich?"
       She stopped in mid-sentence, looking like she'd just been slapped across the face, eyeing him in both shock and indignation.
       "Hey," he said quickly, sitting up straight, realizing his mouth had gone off before his brain could catch up. "Woah. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. That was a total jerk thing to say and I can't believe I thought it, much less said it."
       She said nothing, breathing hard, still looking wounded.
       "No, I'm really sorry," he said, still trying to salvage the situation. "I've got no right to judge you and I don't mean to. You're totally right about me. I was a pampered boy from the suburbs and my first girlfriend's father was a CEO and I drive a Jeep that my mother bought me for my high school graduation. There no way I can know what you...how I...that..."
       He gave up and flopped back in the seat, putting his hands over his face. "I'm a jerk," he said into his palms and fingers. "Why am I such a jerk?"
       He stayed like that for a good minute, maybe more, until he felt Delight's foot give his shoulder a soft push.
       "You're not a jerk," she said, evenly.
       "I am a jerk," he protested, still into his hands. "I'm jerkus maximus. I'm beef jerky. I'm Steve Martin."
       She nudged him again, shoving a little harder this time, but in a playful kind of way. "You're not a jerk," she repeated, and her voice sounded friendlier. "You're just one of the good guys. You can't help it. It's in your DNA."
       He separated his fingers, looking between them at her, cautiously. The evil-eye was gone, and she was smiling at him again. He took both as good signs.
       He brought his hands down, and she looked at something on the side of his face and winced. She slid over close to him and examined his jaw.
       "Man, I really clocked you, didn't I?" she asked, sympathetically, looking at the darkening bruise.
       "I deserved it," he said, humbly.
       "Will you stop it?"
       "I did," he insisted. "In some weird, Terminator-like time travel kind of way, I had it coming."
       "Well," she grinned. "Maybe you did. A little. So this makes us even, and all is forgiven. Okay?"
       He looked at her, smiled, and nodded. "Sounds fair."
       "But you have to admit something, mister hero," she said, getting a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "That thing in the mall? The chase? The wrestling? The screaming, adoring fans?"
       She poked his chest this time.
       "You had fun, didn't you?"
       "Fun?" he said, shaking his head. "This is me...not thinking so. We could have hurt people in there. This is exactly the kind of thing Por...my friend is always telling me about. When you can do things like you and I do, you don't go around doing them in large crowds if you can at all avoid it. Bad, bad, bad."
       "You had fun," she said, teasing, "and you're afraid to admit it. You're afraid to admit that there's a little bit of me in you, a little part of you that gets a kick out of knowing you could let loose if you wanted to, knowing you could walk around blowing up women's skirts and they'd never know who did it."
       "I have never," he stated clearly, even raising a finger to add authority, "blown up a woman's skirt on anything other than an accidental basis while pursuing some type of…crime-fighting activity or another."
       "Don't dodge me," she said, putting a finger under his chin. "Admit it. You had fun."
       "I did not."
       "You did. Come on."
       "No."
       "Admit it..."
       "No. That was not fun. That was unnecessary and dangerous and frivolous and—"
       "Admit it!"
       "Okay!" he shouted, finally caving. "In a totally objective sense, in the midst of all the destruction of property and endangering innocent retail consumers, I might have experienced a mild—but misguided—sense of enjoyment."
       She looked at him for a minute and then broke into laughter, dropping her forehead onto his shoulder. He rolled his eyes and sighed.
       She turned her head and looked up at him. "You are wound just way too tight, 'Jammer, you know that?"
       "Yes," he said, nodding and controlled. "Yes I do."
       She took her head off his shoulder and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He turned to her with a surprised little look on his face.
       "And I'm willing to admit," she said, looking upward as she sought the words, "that even though I had a whole lot of fun flying around and putting on a show for a crowd that ate it up and will be telling their grandchildren about it..."
       She looked back down at him and started laughing, and they laughed together for a few seconds before she continued.
       "...that it still might—might—have been poor judgment on my part, and there's a chance that I might think twice before involving myself in such a display in the future."
       "Really?" he asked, genuinely surprised that he'd made some kind of impression on her.
       "Really," she said, putting both arms around his neck.
       "Then," he added, sliding his arms around to the small of her back, "there's a chance you might also think twice before taking jobs from known terrorist groups that everyone but you seems to know are totally nuts?"
       She sighed, trying to look pouty, but just not making it look serious. "I suppose there's a chance."
       "And," he went on, pulling her closer until their noses were almost touching, "there's a chance you might even try staying out of trouble so you don't get yourself or anyone else hurt?"
       She blinked slowly at him smiled. "I think you're just trying to save yourself from any more bathroom doors."
       "Yes I am," he conceded, centimeters from her lips. "and don't dodge me. Is there a chance?"
       She wet her lips and grinned. "Don't push your luck." She leaned into his face.
       And they both heard the siren at the same time.
       She jerked up, looking around, and he did the same. "Oh, shit," she said, her heart rate picking up dramatically. "Shit, shit, shit."
       "Somebody must have spotted us falling," he thought out loud, trying to figure out which direction the police car was coming form.
       "Yeah, or maybe the guy inside this house called the cops because he spotted a couple of kids necking in his car," she offered, sarcastically, and stood up, putting one foot in the hot blue trunk lid as she peered around nervously. "I gotta get out of here."
       "You what?" he reacted, looking up at her, anxious and confused, as the sound of the shrill siren grew fuller, closer.
       "You think I'm going to hang around for Starsky and Hutch to show up and slap the cuffs on me? No way, no how."
       "You can't go," he said, alarmed. Oh, there were many kinds of alarm he was feeling. The la-la land of the big back seat smooch was fading away, and he was remembering, painfully, just what exactly he had set out to do when he flew off after her. It was his job! He was supposed to catch the bad guys, not slobber all over them! What the hell was he thinking?!
       But that was only part of it. She'd dropped into his life, someone with powers like him who could understand him, someone who made him feel like he wasn't all alone in the world, and there was so much he wanted to ask her, to talk with her about, to tell her. And now she was leaving? It wasn't fair! It wasn't right! It sucked!
       "You want to watch me go?" she scoffed down at him, reacting instinctively. Then she looked down and saw his face, and saw the anguish and indecision there.
       She knelt down quickly and put her hands on his shoulders, and the siren kept coming. "Oh come on, 'Jammer," she said pleadingly, sweetly. "You can't turn me in. Not after everything we've been through."
       He heard her words, but kept seeing Porter's face, and Captain Bonilla's, and that kid that held his board at the mall. He felt like he was going to blow donuts.
       "I didn't hurt anybody," she reminded him, trying to convince. "I made a mistake, okay? Can't a girl get a second chance? Huh?"
       He stared off into space behind her, his mind racing, his face making him look constipated. She had kind of said she was sorry, sort of, right? Hadn't she learned something from the day? Suppose she went home, moved by the whole experience, and turned over a whole new leaf?
       Suppose she went right out and robbed a bank as soon as she was out of his sight?
       AAAAHHHH!!!
       She looked back over her shoulder, up the street, and the sound of squealing rubber could now be heard, dancing with the siren. She turned back to him, desperately. Time wasn't running. It was out.
       "Come on, 'Jammer, what do you say? Please? Please?"
       Her eyes seemed to take up the whole world. Those eyes. Those freaking Michelle Pfeiffer eyes.
       "I can't believe I'm doing this," he said, pathetically.
All at once her desperation, her urgency, stopped. She just looked at him, kneeling there on the squeaky vinyl before him, and gave him a look of fond appreciation that melted every internal organ he had. Her hands left his shoulders and slid around the back of his head, and she pressed her lips into his, kissing him sweetly, taking his breath away.
       She drew back very slowly, and he savored every last millisecond of her lips' gentle caress. She brought her hands back to her, sliding them across both sides of his face as she did. And those eyes sparkled in front of him, draining all his strength.
       "You are one of the good guys," she whispered. And she smiled. And she rose. And she finally turned to go.
       "Wait," he blurted out suddenly, and she looked back him as the siren's cry became painful in their ears. Out of the billion sentences he shuffled through, he ended up with, "Am I going to see you again?"
       She grinned over her shoulder. "You're not very bright, are you?"
       "No," he agreed. "No, I'm not."
       She nodded. "Good."
       With that, she flew off into the sky, disappearing into the blinding radiance of the Arizona sunshine.
       He sat up on the back of the seat, holding up his outstretched hand, attempting to block the glare and catch a glimpse of her. She was gone. Just like that. Would he see her again? There was no telling. But he smiled, nonetheless. Something told him there was still a second reel coming on that one. Definitely two thumbs up.
       The squad car jerked to a halt behind his back, leaving black skid marks in front of the Cutlass's driveway. Whoever was driving cut the siren. Windjammer heard one of the doors open and worn leather shoes scrape the smooth cement all the way to him.
       "You all right?" Bonilla asked, standing next to the car, holding up his own hand to follow Shane's sunward gaze.
       "Yep," Windjammer said, dropping his hand.
       "Got away, did she?"
       "Yep." And that's all the Cap needed to know. That's all Porter would know. It just wouldn't work any other way.
       Bonilla nodded and leaned on the car. "Happens to all of us. I've lost a few myself. Don't let it get to you." He pulled out a pack of Marlboros and tapped one smoke out the top, taking it with his lips. He clicked open his Zippo, sparked it, and puffed the cigarette into life. It was a habit he knew his old friend Porter—and his own wife—disapproved of. But after the day he'd just had, he figured he was due.
       Windjammer was lost in thought, and Bonilla single-tapped his shoulder, bringing him back. "Hey," he said.
       Windjammer turned his head toward his official liaison.
       "You did good today," Bonilla said.
       Windjammer raised his brows. "Really?" He was honestly surprised to hear it.
       "You saved a lot of lives in there, kid. I needed you, and you were there. You didn't let me down."
       Shane was taken aback. "Wow," he said, thinking about it. Okay, so he'd let the girl go, which was probably a bonehead thing to do. But he did save all those people in the restaurant. Even the terrorists all got out alive. How about that. He'd done something...heroic.
       Bonilla offered his hand, his Marlboro dangling from his lips. Windjammer took it and shook it. Maybe they weren't going to be such a bad team after all.
       The Captain took a drag and exhaled, starting back down toward the car. "Don't let it go to your head," he said.
       "Not a chance," Windjammer said with great sincerity, hopping off the car and falling into step next to him. "Hey, by the way, how'd you know to look for me in this neighborhood?"
       Bonilla took another drag, sighed smoke, and motioned toward the car. Windjammer looked at it for the first time.
       His board was sticking out of the windshield, half in the car, half out. The safety glass was shattered, having gone almost totally fragmented white. A Phoenix city policeman—Officer Ken Warner—stood next to the car, examining the damage without much humor.
       "Oooh," Windjammer said, suddenly tense.
       "Uh, huh," Bonilla said.
       They stood there for a moment, surveying the car.
       "Now," Windjammer wondered, conversationally, "is your insurance company going to call that 'comprehensive' or 'collision', you think?"
       Bonilla laughed.
       Officer Warner...did not.

The End