Out of This World

“Hey, listen up!” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear, including the pirates. “You’re going to send out your two hostages. Nice and easy. No more shooting.”

“And why would we agree to that, mate?” Moe called.

“Because then you get to keep your pretty teeth.”

I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that this tough-talker was Kellan-sweet, kind, gentle, talk-to- dolphins Kellan. Riveted, I stood there and watched him take over, falling even harder for the guy, if that was humanly possible.

“I’ll give you some time to think it over,” he called out.

“How much time?”

“Until the count of three. One!” He lifted his gun and sighted on the front door.

My God. He was serious.

“Two!”

“Wait!” Moe called. “Jesus! Don’t go off half-cocked now. We just want the abilities. Tell us where the laptop is, and we’ll swap, and then you’ll go free. Everyone will go free.”

Sounded good to me.

“Deal?” Curly yelled.

I could feel everyone holding their breath.

“No,” Kellan responded. “No deal.” And he aimed for one of the windows closest to the front door.

“Uh, Kel?”

“Not now, Rach.”

And then he pulled the trigger.

Chapter 24

In that split second that the bullet shot out the window and glass sprayed, time seemed to stop.

Kellan stood there, feet wide, holding the gun, looking fierce and determined and outrageously tough. But even with his new strength, he’d remained true to himself. The old Kel wouldn’t have done anything differently than this Kel.

And now, because of me, we stood here in a no-win situation. Chances were, someone was going to get hurt.

Or killed.

Unless…unless I could face my fears once and for all, and commit, with my whole heart and soul. Commit to getting us out of here, commit to loving Kel for the rest of my life. I’d do both, I decided, and pushing past Kel, I ran out into the spot in front of the porch where everyone could see me.

“Jesus, Rach!” Kel started to run after me, but I whirled back and held up my hand.

“No, wait!” Craning my neck, I looked at the front door, knowing Curly and Moe were hanging on my every action. “This has to stop,” I called out. “We’re all armed. Someone’s going to die.”

Curly’s face appeared in the shattered window, his gun trained right on me. “Hey, hot stuff. We just want the abilities.”

“Then let’s swap,” I said. “Right now. We have the Blackberry. We can do the swap with that.” Or so I hoped.

Moe’s face appeared, and then Serena’s, with Moe’s gun in her face. “No funny stuff!”

“No funny stuff,” I promised, hoping I would be able to keep that promise, because I knew I couldn’t control the variables-meaning Kel, Axel and Marilee. I could only hope. I turned back to them, Moe’s and Curly’s guns making my shoulder blades itch. Axel held a gun in one hand and Marilee’s hand in the other. They were both looking at me as if I were crazy.

And I probably was.

But it was Kellan I wanted to reach.

At the moment, he was further from the San Diego dolphin trainer I’d ever seen, without an ounce of the easygoing, laid-back, slightly self-conscious guy I knew so well visible. He stood there, his dark shirt ripped, the cut on his face bleeding again, his eye swollen, his jaw bruised, every part of him streaked with sweat and dirt from the attic and from the climb down the side of the house. He held that huge, scary-looking gun as if he might use it at any second, his eyes dark and focused, his body tensed and ready for battle.

And I loved him.

The knowledge and epiphany were no longer so shocking. I loved him. I knew it with every fiber of my being.

It wasn’t this place or the “abilities,” as he thought, but the situation that had led us here, the experiences we’d shared. It was watching him be the man he was in shocking and extreme circumstances, all of which had taught me more about myself than I’d learned in my entire lifetime.

He was everything to me, and though he didn’t believe it yet, I knew now how to prove it to him. “Put down your guns. Everyone!”

“No,” Kellan said.

“No,” Curly and Moe said together.

“Fuck no,” Axel said.

“If you don’t,” I said as calmly as I could with panic shrinking my voice, “we’re going to stand here all night at an impasse.”

“What does ‘impasse’ mean?” I heard Moe ask Curly.

“How the fuck should I know?” Curly answered.

“I mean,” I called out, “that we’ll get nowhere. We’ll stand around looking stupidly at each other, and no swap will get made.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true,” Marilee said.

Ah hell. More stuff I didn’t know. I debated with myself, because how much worse could this get? Answer: a lot worse. I glanced at Marilee, and lifted a brow.

“Never mind.” She lifted her hands, waved me on. “It probably won’t matter. You just go ahead.”

Ah hell. “Tell me.”

“Well, when the abilities are taken without permission, it’s dangerous for the person they’re taken from. They can get really sick, even die.”

I stared at her. “Did that happen to you?”

“No.” She looked…guilty? “It didn’t happen to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because at the time,” she said very quietly, “I, um…” She sighed. “I wanted my ability stolen.”

“What?”

“I sold out, okay? I was in debt and having some trouble. When the pirates came, I made a deal. I took cold hard cash. I’d give anything to be able to take it back, but I can’t. It’s done. But the truth is, my ability wasn’t stolen; I sold it.”

I stared at Axel, who was not looking shocked by this revelation. “And you?”

“I gave it willingly to stay here with Marilee.”

Marilee gasped. “You did? Oh, Axel, that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“And dangerous,” I said.

“So dangerous!” Marilee couldn’t take her eyes off Axel. “My cousin’s brother’s best friend’s fiance went into a coma on her wedding day when their abilities were stolen! I can’t believe you did that for me.”

A coma. God. “Your cousin. Did she ever wake up?”

“Four years later, to find out that her best friend had married her fiance. So you want to be real careful here, because believe me-” She squeezed Axel’s hand. “A good fiance is damn hard to find.”

“I’m not paying anyone cold hard cash, even if your ability comes wrapped in pure gold,” Curly yelled, lifting his gun again. “So don’t even think about it. I don’t care who ends up in a coma, as long as I walk away with the