He was the sharpest “handicapped” person she’d ever seen. He paid for breakfast with cash…and she noticed the twenty dollar bills were folded into triangles and the ten was a rectangle. Of course…it made perfect sense. He couldn’t see the denominations, and the bills would all feel the same. Did he get them that way from the bank? Or did he have a helper to fold his money? Maybe she could fold his dough to earn her keep…

But it was just so weird, because he always seemed to know where she was—he caught her before she started to trip on the curb, for God’s sake.

“Why don’t I show you to your room?”

“Yeah,” she said, kicking off her sneakers and following him. “Why don’t you?”

She expected a simple guest room with a utilitarian twin bed and an empty bureau. Instead, he escorted her to paradise. The bed, a mahogany four-poster, was against the window, and sunlight was splashed all over the Shaker quilt. Through the open door on the opposite side of the room she could see a gleaming bathroom with tiles the color of the sea, and the bureau beside her was almost as tall as she was.

“Uh…you sure you don’t have a cot in the basement or something?” she asked nervously. The room was so clean, so beautiful, she was afraid to move lest she destroy it all. “Or maybe a blanket I could spread out on the kitchen floor?”

“Nonsense. This is your room now, for as long as you like. I’ll leave you to get settled.” And abruptly, he was gone.

“Get settled?” she asked the empty room. “How?” She hadn’t wanted him to see the shelter, so she had no extra clothes. Well, she’d sneak out tonight and go get them. And she’d find Moran and his little gang of retards and give them a piece of her mind. Imagine, trying to rob a blind guy.

She wandered back out to the living room and eyed the loft.

Hmmm…

She noiselessly climbed the stairs and had time to notice the loft was actually an office—desk, computer with big-ass speakers, bookshelves—before she clambered up on the railing. This would be even easier—this was only one story. Less, actually. Just a few feet. Piece of cake. If she couldn’t fly here, she couldn’t fly anywhere.

“Something for lunch?” Drake called from the kitchen. Good, he was a couple rooms away.

“I’m still stuffed from breakfast,” she called back and dived off the railing.

She flopped over in mid-air, had time to notice the living room doing a one-eighty around her, and then she fell into Drake’s arms.

“Wow!” she gasped. “How’d you do that? You were, like, fifty feet away!”

“Will you stop that?” he snapped. “Stop climbing things and leaping off of them before you give me a heart attack.”