At First Touch by Mattie Dunman

was willing to bet that Carey’s ridiculous good looks, genial manner, and reputation as a local hero made him quite a catch.
    “Are you hungry?” Carey asked and I turned my attention to the laminated menu he was holding out. It sported the usual greasy spoon options and a long list of milkshake flavors.
    “No, not really. Are the milkshakes any good?”
    “Yeah, the best. The ice cream is made locally, and they blend them by hand.” I raised my eyebrows in interest and examined the choices. By the time the waiter attended to us I had selected a vanilla mango shake. Carey ordered chocolate-banana.
    “So do you usually take new girls out for milkshakes on their first day?”
    Carey gave me a teasing smile. “Only the ones that get knocked out. How are you feeling, by the way? It looks like the swelling has gone down.”
    I touched my hand to my temple, surprised to notice that I had forgotten about the blow to my head. It barely hurt, though the skin was still tender.
            “Actually, it feels ok. I think I was just dazed more than anything.”
    A sudden thought struck me and I fished around in my bag for my cell phone. “I gotta call my dad, tell him where I am. I’ll be right back.” Carey nodded and I slid out of the booth and went outside, ignoring the looks thrown my way. Small towns.
    It was crowded and loud outside the diner so I went around the side of the building, out of sight. I speed-dialed Dad’s cell and got his voicemail; he was still at work, so I left him a message saying I was out getting a drink with someone from school and would be home in an hour, not to worry. I hung up and stared at the phone. I’d never left him a message like that before; I wondered what he would make of it.
    I was turning to head back in when I heard a scrape and a shuffle behind me. I swung around just in time to see the hand that covered my mouth and muffled my screams.
     

Chapter 4
    I was momentarily stunned by the download, but recovered quickly. All the different martial arts and self-defense techniques I had stolen from the minds of experts came to my aid as I stomped on the man’s foot, elbowed him in the stomach and then twisted around to give him a blow to the Adam’s apple with the side of my hand. Clutching his throat, he went down like a bag of sand and I roundhouse kicked the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.
    I stood over him panting with the effort of my defense and looked around to see if anyone had noticed the attack. Thankfully we were in the shadows at the back of the building and there was no one around.
    “Hell for breakfast,” I mumbled, quoting my mother’s favorite curse. The familiar words eased my panic a little and I was able to think clearly. The man who had attacked me was named Eddie Fitz and he was a mercenary hired to find and capture me.
    My hands started to shake uncontrollably. They knew. They knew where I was, or they at least suspected.
    With a rising sense of panic, I shifted through the contents of Fitz’s brain, ignoring the irrelevant memories of his childhood, his career in the marines, all the other effluvia that makes up a person’s life. What concerned me was who hired him.
    Dad and I had started running almost three years ago.  There were a variety of reasons to leave, but the most pertinent was the persistence of Dr. Freich and his colleague, a psychiatrist name Dr. Samuelson. Samuelson had shown up on our doorstep in New York one evening, claiming that he wanted to meet Dr. Freich’s little miracle. He asked a lot of questions, some about the trauma I’d endured, how I felt about losing my mother, but mostly he focused on my “intuition” as he called it. He administered several tests and seemed both surprised and pleased by the results. Finally he told us the real reason for his visit. He belonged to an organization called the Coalition, whose sole purpose was scientific advancement for the betterment of the human race. He wanted