“Oh, can you?” Megan’s voice was saccharine sweet. “That’s just so—”
“Fine. That’s fine.” Katherine put a hand on Megan’s arm. “We can wait.”
Without another word, Katherine herded Megan back toward the garage office.
“The nerve of that woman,” Megan said through gritted teeth. “Acting as if she’s too good for—”
“We’re here interrupting her day,” Katherine said. “At her work. Just calm down and hopefully we can figure out exactly what is going on with Toni Dusi.”
Megan offered up a harsh laugh. “Doc, first rule of wine and book club: telling a woman to calm down is a surefire way to drive her crazy.”
“That makes zero sense.”
“Give me a little time to research and I’m sure I can find an academic translation you can understand.”
Chapter 8
Twenty minutes later, Toni Dusi walked into the back office where Katherine and Megan were waiting. She came in, wiping her hands on a red rag and glaring at the two women in her office.
“I don’t know why you two are here, but if you think we need some kind of bonding—”
“How did you calm the man down last week?” Katherine didn’t wait for Toni to finish. She’d found throwing a student off-balance with an unexpected question to be an effective way to break through recalcitrance. She was hoping it would work on Toni too.
Toni paused halfway to her desk and stared at Katherine. “What?”
Katherine raised her arm and showed Toni one of the greenish-purple bruises on her bicep. “I have another, equally colorful one on my side. Another one on my hip from where he knocked me over. And the leftovers of a mild concussion.”
Toni looked confused as she finished walking behind her desk and sat down. “Sorry. That sucks.”
“I’m a forty-seven-year-old college professor who tackled a man to the ground and fell off the back of a treadmill,” she said. “My injuries don’t surprise me. Justin McCabe was a young, strong man. What I do find surprising is that the minute you jumped on him and pushed his shoulders to the ground, he went limp. How did you do it?”
Toni was silent for a long time. “He lost his gun.”
“He could have grabbed me,” Megan said. “I’m not any stronger than Katherine. Probably less. He could have tackled me and gotten it back. He just gave up.”
“He must have realized that his plan was useless,” Toni said. “Maybe he had remorse.”
“Or maybe you told him to calm down and he did.”
Two bright red spots flamed on Toni’s cheekbones. “If you’re implying that I knew that kid or was involved in what he was planning—”
“I’m not.” Katherine quickly stopped her. “That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not why we’re here.”
“I told you before,” Megan said. “At the police station. The gun jumped into my hand. I didn’t grab it—I just thought someone needed to grab it, and then it was in my hand.”
Toni smirked. “Like magic?”
Megan lifted her chin. “Yeah. Like magic.”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Professor, I know you can’t be in on the woo-woo stuff, right?”
“I don’t believe in magic. But I do believe there are things we don’t understand yet,” Katherine said. “Parapsychological phenomena—”
“Are you kidding me?” Toni leaned forward and propped her elbows on the messy metal desk decorated with parts catalogs and bumper stickers for Saint Simon’s Elementary School. “I expect this shit from someone like New Age Southern Barbie—”
“If you expect me to sink to the level of your insults, you will be very disappointed,” Megan said.
Toni never took her eyes off Katherine. “Didn’t you say you were some kind of scientist?”
Katherine nodded. “Yes. I’m a biophysicist at the university. I’m currently collaborating on cephalopod neural research.”
“You’re what?”
“Octopus brains,” Megan said. “She’s studying how octopus brains work.”
“Okay.” Toni blinked. “You’re studying octopus brains, but you think we have magic powers?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine said. “Do you?”
Toni’s stare didn’t waver. “Do you?”
Katherine looked over her shoulder, but no one was in the outer office. She turned back to Toni, glancing at Megan, who gave her a confident nod. Okay, Katherine, time to lay all the cards on the table.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m seeing what I would describe as microvisions a few seconds prior to events. That’s how I knew that young man was carrying a gun and was going to shoot up the gym.”
Toni and Megan were both silent.
“I saw him take out that weapon and shoot across the room. He hit three people and broke the front mirrors.” As she recounted her vision, she felt the room around her pressing in. Her hearing muffled. Her senses narrowed into the memory. “There were shards of glass flying everywhere and people screaming. Blood. Someone near me was hit in the neck, and the arterial blood spray—”
“That’s enough.” Toni’s voice was sharp. “You’ve got a sick imagination, Professor.”
“It’s not imagination. It’s what would have happened if I hadn’t tackled him.”
There was something she wasn’t remembering. Something important about that day.
Megan said, “All three of us were close to him. She might have saved our lives.”
Toni had been nearby, but she was distracted. Her attention was on something farther down the line of… Oh.
Katherine blinked. “You knew it was coming too.”
Toni snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You felt him. Or you felt something. His… anger maybe? His rage? I tried to talk to you…” Katherine reconstructed the final moments before the shooting in her mind.
“Are you waiting for this machine?”
“I’m good. I’ve got time.”
“You were waiting at the end of the row. You had your eye on him,” Katherine said. “You felt something.”
Megan crossed her arms over her chest. “Listen, do you think it’s easy for me to admit something weird like this happened to me? I don’t know you, and you clearly don’t like me for some reason. I barely know Katherine, but I can tell she’s not a
