Clearly, he has no idea I was kicked out of Stanford for starting that gambling ring.
“I’m not talking about Stanford,” he said. “I’m with the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development. I’m offering you a chance out of this mess.”
“Law enforcement?” She gave a choked laugh. The idea was so absurd that a measure of relief poured through her. So much for reading her mind. “You obviously have no idea who you’re talking to.”
“Theodora Delaney Cannon, I know exactly who I’m talking to.”
“Hey, look, thanks for your help with those thugs, and for the offer”—she made a vague gesture—“at the Whitfern Institute, but you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t like cops. Cops don’t like me. It’s a relationship built on mutual disdain.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why you’re so good at guessing your opponents’ hands? Predicting their next moves? Haven’t you wondered why you can do things other people can’t?”
Of course she had. Every day of her life. Rationalization had been her default. Believing otherwise meant confronting something inexplicable.
“There’s no simple way to put this,” he continued, “so I’ll just say it: we train psychics.”
Teddy stared at him. Psychics? She wasn’t psychic. She just had good instincts, that was all. And right now her instincts were telling her to run. She returned her attention to the casino floor. If she bolted, she might able to get away clean.
Clint stepped in front of her, his massive frame blocking her exit. “You, Teddy Cannon, are psychic.”
She shook her head. “If you had any idea how—”
“How screwed up your life is? I know, Teddy. It’s because you’ve never learned how to handle your power.”
He didn’t move. After everything she’d been through, now she was trapped in a service bar with an enormous, crazy—
“Why do you think you win so consistently at poker?” he said. “Because you get lucky? No. You win because you read the other players at the table, and I’m not talking about tells. You know who’s bluffing. You know. Every time, all the time.”
“Not all the time. Seems to me I just lost pretty big back there.” But even as she said it, she was uncomfortably aware that she had been winning, just like she always did, until he turned up.
“What do you think I did back there?” Clint said.
At that moment, it started—the familiar trembling. She felt the old pins and needles in her hands and feet, the chills. A seizure wouldn’t be far behind. Emotional stress always did this to her. She reached up to drag her fingers through her hair, encountering the sticky glue and bobby pins from the wig.
“I need to get out of here,” she said, digging in her purse for her pills.
“You’re not epileptic, Teddy. You’re psychic. Like me. This is just how your body reacts to sensory—and extrasensory—overload when you don’t know how to channel the energy.”
“You’re crazy,” Teddy said.
He tilted his head to one side, studying her the way her teachers always had. The way her parents did. (And her parents’ friends and her friends’ parents and basically every adult who had known her for longer than twenty minutes.) The look that conveyed how much potential she might have had if only she hadn’t, well, been herself. “You’re out of moves, Teddy. Sergei will come after your parents next. You do understand that? You lost tonight. Someone’s got to pay.”
Of course she understood. And no, she could not, would not, put her parents in danger. She’d already put them through enough.
“Teddy,” Clint said, pulling her attention back to him, “listen carefully. At the Whitfield Institute, we work with psychics like you from all around the country. We train them in law enforcement techniques and teach them how to channel their gifts to make the world a better place. If you accept, I’ll make sure that your record is wiped clean and that Sergei will never bother you or your parents again. I’m giving you another move—not Sergei, not jail, but school.”
“I already told you,” she said, “I’m not psychic.”
He looked at her. “You can stay and face Sergei and casino security, or you can follow me out. I’m parked under the main entrance awning. Dark blue Taurus sedan, California plates. I hope you make the right choice.”
Since when is getting into a car with a stranger the right choice?
Teddy watched Clint leave the casino. If she defaulted to rationalization now, she’d have to admit that epilepsy had never accounted for all her symptoms; her medication had never worked like it was supposed to.
Psychic.
Teddy tried to dismiss what he’d said. And she might have succeeded if she hadn’t felt something coursing through her body—not anxiety, not the signs of a seizure, but something different, something new. Hope.
CHAPTER THREE
“WAIT UP!” TEDDY RAN TO catch up with Clint, scanning the crowd for the dark blue Taurus by the curb. She rapped her knuckles on the driver’s-side window. Rapped so hard she hoped to startle Clint, but he simply pushed the button to lower the glass. “Let me see it,” she said.
“See what?”
“You said you were a cop. I assume you’ve got ID to prove it.” She would have checked to see if he was lying, but she still couldn’t get a read on Clint.
Clint pulled a small leather case from his pocket and flipped it open. His Metropolitan Police badge filled the left side of the case; his police ID, stamped Retired, filled the right. He also had a CCW—a permit to carry concealed weapons. Teddy grabbed her phone and snapped a photo. She typed a message, hit send, then trotted around the car and got in.
“Care to explain what that was about?” he asked.
Teddy held up her phone to show him the text message—leaving Bellagio with this asshole—along with a photo of Clint’s badge and ID. “I sent that to two of my friends. You’re also on the casino’s surveillance cameras. So good luck trying
