“Teddy, I’d really thought you’d learn to sync your circadian rhythms by now,” Jillian said, letting out a long ohm. “Exam grades should be up. Want to go check after breakfast? Then we can get ready for the graduation ceremony.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Jillian. If you are naked right now, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Teddy pulled a pillow over her head.
“You’re going to miss me,” Jillian said. “You’re going to miss me a whole lot.”
* * *
As Teddy and Jillian walked downstairs for breakfast, they passed a bulletin board that hung in the lobby of Harris Hall, advertising various Reiki healing groups and tarot readings. Pinned in the center was the list of final exam results. Dara stood in front of it, her head low. Teddy immediately thought the worst: that Dara hadn’t passed. And if Dara hadn’t passed . . .
“Hey,” Teddy said. “Everything okay?” She gestured to the bulletin board.
“I passed,” Dara said. “Barely. The Casework final was killer.”
True. Nick’s exam had indeed been torture. Page after page of questions on FBI procedure, interrogation techniques, methods of dealing with cybercrimes, and criminal justice ethics. A final exam so difficult that Teddy couldn’t help but believe it had been made especially difficult in retaliation to the Misfits’ antics at the FBI.
Teddy shook her head. “You had me worried, Dara.”
“What? Oh, sorry. It’s just . . . I can’t get this warning out of my head.”
“Warning? What do you mean?”
“It keeps shifting. I can’t make out what happens and to whom.”
After Dara’s last vision, Teddy promised to take each and every one of her predictions seriously. Particularly in light of the disturbing news Clint had shared the day before. “Maybe I can help,” she said. “What do you see?”
Dara frowned. Closed her eyes and concentrated. “I see the quad. And the white tent. Lots of people there. A crowd. Music playing.”
“That doesn’t sound like a death vision,” Jillian cut in. “That sounds like graduation.”
Teddy shot her roommate a look.
“Then,” Dara continued, “something goes wrong. But I can’t see what it is. I don’t hear gunfire; there’s no bomb. One minute everything looks fine; the next, people start screaming, panicking, running in all directions. There’s someone there, some shifting figure.” She shook her head and chewed her bottom lip. “It doesn’t make sense. I think someone’s going to die, but I don’t know who. Or how. The more I try to pin down exactly what’s happening, the more the image fades.”
Dara stopped speaking, and the three of them stood in silence.
“We need to tell Clint,” Jillian said. “Get him to cancel.”
“He won’t cancel,” Teddy said. “We’ve already got too many people on campus. How would it look if a school that trains students to work with police agencies, FBI, CIA, and every other top-notch security agency in the country can’t provide security for its own event?”
“So,” Jillian said, “what do we do?”
Teddy looked at Dara. “Do you see Yates at the ceremony?”
Dara shook her head.
“Wait a minute,” Jillian said. “Yates? Did you say Yates? Why would Yates be here?”
“He escaped custody yesterday.” Jillian and Dara stared at Teddy in horror as she relayed the information Clint had shared the day before.
“So Clint thinks he might come here?” Dara said, her voice climbing up two octaves.
“I didn’t say that. Clint didn’t say that. But it is a possibility, so let’s not be caught with our guard down, all right?”
Dara and Jillian exchanged an uneasy nod, then their gazes shifted to the thick yew bushes in the Zen garden, as though they expected Yates to jump out from behind them at any second.
Teddy released an exasperated sigh and said, “We’ll let Clint know. Tell him what you saw, even if it’s not definitive. Forewarned is forearmed, right?”
The stomp of boots interrupted their conversation. A stiff palm landed hard against Teddy’s back. “You passed, recruit. Don’t look so glum,” Boyd said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating today. And you more than most. You’re still here.”
Teddy forced a smile. Still here. But for how much longer? Despite what Dara had seen in her vision, Teddy harbored a certain dread that Yates was on his way. To take care of loose ends or make good on his promise, Teddy couldn’t be sure which. Either way, she knew it wouldn’t be good.
* * *
The graduation ceremony began exactly as scheduled, at fourteen hundred hours, two o’clock civilian time. Teddy shuffled into a row of folding chairs next to Jillian, Dara, and Pyro. She craned her head around as she did so, trying to spot Clint. A little over three hours had passed since Dara had shared her death vision, and in that time Teddy had tried to track Clint down, to no avail. He’d been unavailable all morning, in a meeting with campus security. Afterward, it seemed that everywhere she went, she trailed one step behind him—his office, the groundskeepers’ building, the ferry building, even the catering tent. She kept missing him.
A string quartet seated at the foot of the stage lifted their bows and began to softly play, clearly to draw the crowd’s attention to the ceremony. But Teddy took the opportunity to lean across Jillian’s lap and whisper to Pyro, “Dara had a death warning.”
“When? Just now?”
“No. Earlier this morning.”
Dara briefly explained her shifting vision and her supreme frustration that she still couldn’t pin it down.
“Just be sure you stay alert,” Teddy said to the others. “It could be Yates, anyone.”
Pyro’s brows shot skyward at the mention of Yates’s name, but as the ceremony was now under way—Whitfield stood at the podium to make his opening remarks—he let it pass without further comment.
Jillian, however, wasn’t quite as content to stay silent. She leaned toward Teddy and whispered, “I’ve let the seagulls
