Miranda sat in the car watching the power boat disappear on the horizon, taking Sibby wherever she was going. You have no time to relax, she reminded herself. Deputy Reynolds might be headed for prison, but he can still talk, and you know he lied about how he found you, which means someone at Chatsworth knows something, and then there's the question of who put the bounty on your head and-
Her cell phone rang. She reached across the seat to grab her suit jacket and tried to jam her hand into the pocket to get the phone, but the handcuff bracelet kept getting caught. She turned the jacket over and dumped everything onto her lap.
She caught it on the last ring. "Hello."
"Miranda? It's Will."
Her heart stopped. "Hi." Suddenly feeling shy. "Did you, um, have fun at prom?"
"Parts of it. You?"
"Me too. Parts of it."
"I looked for you after the bomb threat, but I didn't see you."
"Yeah, it got kind of hectic."
There was a pause and they both started talking at once. He said, "You first," and she said, "No, you," and they both cracked up and he started, "Listen, I don't know if you were planning to come to Sean's place for the after-party. Everyone is here. It's fun and all. But-"
"But?"
"I was wondering if maybe you'd want to get breakfast instead. At the Waffle House? Just the two of us?"
Miranda forgot to breathe. She said, "That would be completely fantastic." And remembering she wasn't supposed to be too eager, added, "I mean, that would be okay, I guess."
Will laughed, his warm-butter-melting-on-break-fast-treats laugh, and said, "I think it would be completely fantastic, too."
She hung up and saw that her hands were shaking. She was having breakfast with a guy. Not just a guy. With Will. A guy who wore space pants. And thought she was hot.
And possibly crazy. Which, p.s., accessorizing with handcuffs is not exactly going to help.
She tried again to snap the bracelets with her hand but she couldn't. Either these weren't normal cuffs or knocking out ten people in one night-actually eight, since she'd done two of them twice-was the limit of her strength. Which was interesting, her strength having limits. She had a lot to learn about her powers. Later.
Right now, she had half an hour to find some other way to get the cuffs off. She started shoving things from her lap back into the pocket of her suit jacket so she could drive, then stopped when she saw an unfamiliar box.
It was the one Sibby had given her when they met-could it seriously be only eight hours ago? What had she said, something odd. Miranda remembered it now, Sibby handing her the name sign and the box and saying, "This must be yours." But with the emphasis different. "This must be yours."
Miranda opened the box. Inside, nestled in black velvet, was a handcuff key.
Are you ready to own your future?
It was worth a try.
