She’d failed. More, she’d failed Marlena.
Teddy stood, wordlessly allowing herself to be escorted from the room. Her entire body was trembling. Her throat burned. Her limbs felt weak, and her head throbbed. She slowly eased herself onto the bench where Kate had been sitting.
Nick hesitated. It was clear that he wanted to ask her what the hell had just happened, but he had to return to the room to supervise Kate. “You going to be okay out here by yourself?”
Teddy attempted a smile and cut a glance at the two heavily armed correctional officers stationed at either end of the hallway. “It’s Kate’s turn.”
Once the door closed behind them, Teddy drew in another shaky breath and attempted to center her thoughts.
Someone had entered her mind when her walls were down, then proceeded to point out all the flaws in their logic, which now seemed glaringly obvious. But the only two people who’d been in the room were Nick and Corey, neither of whom was psychic.
Her throat felt so dry she couldn’t swallow. She’d left the bottle Nick had given her in the interview room. She stood and approached one of the COs. “Excuse me, is there somewhere I could get water?”
The man ignored her. He stared straight ahead, Buckingham Palace guard–style.
She clenched her fists and tried again. “Look. I’m not going to wander away. I just want—”
She stopped as recognition set in. His eyes were black, pupils wide, as big as his irises. He wasn’t ignoring her. And neither was the guard at the other end of the hallway, whose face bore an identical expression. The same desperately blank expression that Sergei and the Bellagio pit boss had worn the night Clint had mentally influenced them to walk away; the same expression Molly had worn in the warehouse.
Teddy felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Someone inside San Quentin was mentally influencing the guards. She had to tell Nick. Before she could stand and make her way back to the conference room, the door adjacent to Corey McDonald’s drifted open.
A slight, neatly dressed older man stepped out. He gestured in Teddy’s direction.
“Ms. Cannon,” he said, holding open the door for her. “You’re right on time. My client will see you now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“MS. CANNON?” THE LAWYER REPEATED.
Teddy stared at the man as her brain scrambled for a response.
This was San Quentin, home to California’s most hardened violent offenders. And she was supposed to leave a hallway where (at least in theory, even if they were under mental influence) she was protected by two armed guards and enter a private conference room with an unknown inmate? Teddy understood it was a bad idea. And yet she knew that whoever was in the other room had her number.
Teddy closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. The man inside was already in her head. Instead of trying to block his psychic advance, she welcomed it. What do you want from me?
The answer came almost immediately: Wrong question.
“Ms. Cannon?” the lawyer repeated.
Teddy took a step forward. The lawyer ushered her inside and then took her place in the hallway, closing the door behind him.
Teddy’s gaze shot to the man who had summoned her. Just like Corey McDonald, he sat cuffed behind an institutional metal desk. But that was where the similarity ended. This man, whoever he was, was lean and wiry. Narrow nose, sharp cheekbones. A faint pink scar ran along the left side of his jaw. Eyes so dark they looked black. Something about him struck Teddy as vaguely familiar, but if she had met him before, she knew she would have remembered those eyes.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Wrong question again. Don’t you want to ask who killed Marlena Hyden?”
Teddy regarded him warily. “You were in my head.”
“I was.”
“To lead me to discover that the notes weren’t Corey’s. To lead me to think that he’s guilty of murdering Marlena.”
“Yes.” His answer was simple.
“But I still don’t have proof.”
“Well, not yet.”
How wrong the Misfits had been. They had believed McDonald to be innocent—until this man intervened.
“Sometimes the justice system gets it right the first time.” He paused, rattling the chain attached to his handcuffs. “And sometimes it doesn’t.”
Teddy forced her attention to the man before her, understanding that she’d been summoned for a reason. “Who are you?” she asked again.
“My name is Derek Yates.” He watched her for a beat, looking for something—a glimmer of recognition, perhaps—before his expression tightened. “You don’t even know who I am. You know even less than I thought you would.”
“About what?”
“About all of us. Me, your parents—Marysue and Richard Delaney. Clint.”
Marysue and Richard. Her parents. It was the first time she’d heard their names. “You knew my parents?” She slumped into the chair across from him.
“I met you once, too. But you wouldn’t remember.”
“Prove it,” she said.
With his wrists still shackled together, he managed to reach into the pocket of his shirt and produce a worn black-and-white photograph. He set it on the table between them and pushed it toward her. Teddy spared it a quick glance. Then she did a double take. It was the photograph she’d seen in her dream.
She stared at the man before her and understood why he had looked so familiar. She’d seen him in the picture. And what was more, she understood that the picture was real.
“I’m like you, Theodora. And your parents. Fighting for what’s right. Only I stood up to the wrong person, defied orders. And now I’m here—with a life sentence for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“If you’re fighting for what’s right, how did you end up in prison?” she asked.
“Sometimes right and wrong aren’t black and white.” He leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes decisions can’t be so morally . . . easy.”
“Who put you here?”
He tapped his index finger to the photo, chains brushing together with each movement. “Someone who takes his morality very seriously.”
Teddy looked at
