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minute before.
    He was in danger. I couldn’t ignore it. And I was the only one who could help him.
    Helplessly, I fixated on the car as an image appeared in my head. A second later, both front tires blew out with a sound like a shotgun. The car began fishtailing wildly. There was a sickening sound of screeching tires and then crashing steel as the sedan slammed into a huge red pickup parked on the side of the road.
    I sucked in a deep breath, spun around, and sprinted toward the car, my heart beating so fast I couldn’t hear where one heartbeat stopped and the next began.
    A huge lump stuck in my throat.
    I hadn’t thought he would crash like that.
    Please, let him be okay. Please don’t let me have hurt him.
    A woman in a bathrobe ran out of the house behind the pickup with a phone in her hand. I got close enough to look over her shoulder as she peered into the car window.
    Thank you, oh thank you.
    He must have hit the steering wheel, because a crack ran down one lens of his sunglasses, and a thin line of blood connected his eyebrows. But he was alive. He swore loudly and pulled the glasses from his face. The seat belt I noticed earlier held him pinned to the seat, and he jerked it loose.
    The woman with the phone began asking him questions. “Are you all right? Can you hear me? Do you know what day it is?”
    The man barked something at her, but I couldn’t hear what he said. The rushing still clogged my ears, though it sounded muted now, like the distant roar of the ocean. He grabbed a cell phone and held it up, glaring at the woman until she backed away from the car. As soon as she gave him room, he leaned over his cell as if wanting privacy, and began to speak in a low voice. A few seconds later he flipped his phone closed and pushed against the car door. It didn’t budge, and he swore again.
    I eased my way toward the sidewalk when I saw a couple of other people coming out of their houses. Clearly the situation was under control. The lady in the bathrobe started calling the police or a hospital while the man with the sunglasses pulled himself out of the car window, Dukes of Hazzard style. He paced back and forth, muttering nasty phrases and looking furious. Once again I started running—nice and slow so it didn’t look like I was running away.
    Relief rolled off my shoulders in waves, along with a strange, unfamiliar sense of triumph.
    Usually after something triggers my power, I feel horrible. I tell myself I shouldn’t have gotten involved, that I should have fought the instinct to throw my power at someone like a ten-ton truck. Invariably, I seem to end up hurting someone, and I worry about the person I hurt—if I did the right thing or not, and if I had the right to be making that decision at all. And this time I could have seriously hurt that guy. If he hadn’t had his seat belt on…Well, the very thought of it made me cringe.
    Despite that, I had the oddest sensation of wanting to laugh in Sunglasses Guy’s face. All because he’d been following a tough-looking kid with a tattoo who I didn’t even know.
    This was precisely why I needed to keep myself separate from normal human beings. Clearly I was deranged. I should have been feeling guilty, and here I was enjoying the memory of that guy pulling himself out through the window of his car.
    I turned the corner and headed toward the open space, following the kid’s path without even thinking. Of course he was gone. When I got about three-quarters of the way down the block, the noise of the accident began to fade, and the quiet of early morning resumed. I glanced at my watch: barely six a.m. It always amazes me that so much can happen in such a short period of time.
    That’s when I heard the sound of footsteps.
    I slowed down. I tried to breathe shallowly so I could hear better, but my heart was beating too fast. A few blocks away, the open meadow stood empty and quiet.
    Had Sunglasses Guy