Teddy shut the file drawer.
Stay there. Don’t move.
Why? Teddy asked.
Be quiet. I have to disconnect. I—
Kate ended their communication, and Teddy was alone with her thoughts. She swallowed, wondering how long she would be stuck inside the tiny windowless room. She crept toward the door. She could make out voices but not words. She heard the secretary’s shaky voice and then a man’s.
The door opened wide, and there stood the person she least wanted to see.
Nick folded his arms. “Did you get lost on your way to the auditorium?”
“I, uh . . . Kate and I were just practicing an exercise for Dunn’s class.”
“In a file room?”
“No windows,” she said, pointing to the wall. “Perfect conditions for, um, stretching our telepathic communication.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You know what?” she said as she tried to brush past him. “I don’t care if you believe me. I have to get to assembly.”
He stood in front of the door, blocking her way. “The easy thing would be for me to report you. This is the second time I’ve caught you trespassing.”
“So do it,” she said. “Get me kicked out and ruin my life.”
She hip-checked him and reached for the doorknob. Nick grabbed her arm. She tried to loosen his grasp with her free hand, but he grabbed that one, too. His face was an inch from hers. His gaze moved from her eyes to her lips and back. Teddy couldn’t help but do the same.
“Stop that,” he said.
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
“You stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to kiss me,” she said.
He scoffed. “You’re crazy.”
Teddy smirked.
“You’re a student.”
“I’m old enough for whatever you have in mind.”
Nick released her. “Get out of here,” he said. He shook his head. “You’re supposed to be in assembly.” He reached for the doorknob and swung the door open. The fluorescent light poured into the tiny room.
“I’ll see you in the auditorium in five minutes, Ms. Cannon,” he said, loud enough for the secretary to hear.
“But—”
“Consider this your last warning.”
Kate was down the hall, waiting for her. “That guy chased me out. There was nothing I could do. Are you in trouble?”
“Just a warning.”
Kate let out a relieved breath. “Did you find out anything?”
Teddy nodded. “Jeremy was telling the truth: Molly did attack someone.”
Kate was silent, seeming to try putting together the pieces. “It’s still not adding up for me.”
“Did you get something?” Teddy asked, hoping Kate had gotten one of her rare flashes of claircognizance.
“It’s like that feeling when a word’s on the tip of your tongue. Almost. But not quite. I’ll let you know.”
“You will?” Teddy asked. “Thought we were going back to the whole ‘hating each other’ thing.”
“Oh, we will. But whoever messed with you on that course messed with me, too, and I don’t let people who mess with me walk away that easily,” Kate said. “Let’s go. Assembly started.”
When they returned to the auditorium, the assembly was well under way. It was an awards ceremony of sorts, with Hollis Whitfield honoring third-year recruits who had earned prestigious externships. Teddy sat down next to Jillian and watched as Kate sat down next to Ava. Teddy turned her attention to the podium, where Whitfield was shaking hands with a clairvoyant named Arjun Bahl, who had accepted a place with Homeland Security.
Students and faculty applauded politely. Whitfield continued, “And now, for the final externship, I’d like to congratulate Christine Federico on her placement at the CIA.”
Teddy scanned the crowd for Christine as students and faculty clapped. A low rumble began to make its way around the room. Whitfield repeated her name, but there was no response. Christine Federico had not returned to school. Just like Brett Evans. Teddy swallowed hard as she thought about what else these students had in common. Dead parents. Stolen lab samples. Names on a list.
Just like her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER ASSEMBLY, THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS were told to report to room 203 in Fort McDowell. Teddy was quiet amid the unusually rowdy recruits; their excitement was palpable. Dara rocked back and forth on her heels as they waited to exit the auditorium.
“Did I miss something?” Teddy asked.
“We’re starting a new class,” Dara said. “Whitfield announced it at the start of assembly.”
When Teddy had been in the file room. With Nick. “What class?”
“Something about casework,” Dara said. “We’re actually going to start solving some crimes. I feel like I need to buy a pair of aviators or something.”
Finally, after months of Dunn’s psychic exercises and Boyd’s obstacle course, after forensics lectures and Clint’s conversations about empathy, they were going to work actual cases. But Teddy couldn’t share in the enthusiasm. Her mind was still reeling from the news that Christine hadn’t shown, though others might dismiss her disappearance as coincidence.
“Oh,” Dara said. “You also missed Boyd’s update on last semester’s theft.” She explained that there’d been no further evidence of foul play; though the school had taken the incident seriously, they didn’t believe that a student had been behind it. Instead, they increased security at the lab, replacing the locks with electronic key pads (so long, Internet access). But Teddy didn’t buy Boyd’s explanation. Shouldn’t the school be more worried if someone outside Whitfield had stolen the blood samples?
Teddy followed her classmates up the stairs and down the hall to room 203 for Casework. The professor hadn’t arrived yet, but a large stack of textbooks leaned precariously on the desk at the front of the room. Criminal Profiling: An Introduction, the cover read.
“Does anyone know who’s teaching the class?” Dara asked.
“It’s a profiling class. Probably Corbett,” Zac Rogers said.
Others murmured agreement, but Teddy was pretty sure they were mistaken. There was a new FBI liaison on campus, and she thought it was a fair bet that he would walk into the room at any minute.
When he
