As his eyes roamed her bare face, her confusion of the past night and morning flattened into a gray buzzing static. He’d learned over the last few days living with Shane that this was how the earliest stage of sleep sounded when he was reading someone’s mind. He clicked off the lamp on his bedside table, lowered the TV volume to a whisper, and turned on his side. He watched her for a long time.
“Where is Holly?” Rob barked.
Kaylee stopped her brisk walk across the casino floor and glanced toward the nearest security camera to remind Rob that they were being watched by the goons who’d beaten him up several nights before. Anger snapped in his eyes under lids still red and swollen from the fight.
She could have changed his mind and kept him from approaching her. Clearly he’d been watching her work a cheater at one of the poker tables, and he’d been waiting here among the slot machines for her return to the elevators. She didn’t have time for him this morning, between the usual trouble at the casino and the big trouble Holly and Elijah were trying to find. In fact, she was running late for a meeting with Holly’s dad.
But this confrontation with Rob was useful to her. It told her Rob hadn’t followed Holly to Colorado. She’d worried all night about Holly’s disappearance. But if Rob was here, she was almost glad Holly and Elijah had skipped town.
She closed the step between herself and Rob and looked up at his handsome face marred by bruises. “Holly is away from you,” she said, “and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Now get out of my casino.” She wanted to say a lot more, but Rob had planned this visit and staked her out. He might be wearing a wire so he could taunt her into saying something incriminating to embarrass the Starrs and the casino.
This type of encounter was old hat to her. People often had a beef with a casino employee and tried to drag the casino into their personal business. But this time was different because Holly was involved. And because Rob’s eyes didn’t flicker. He kept staring down at Kaylee, smiling smugly, a cut on his lip turning his confident grin sinister.
She changed his mind—staying in the casino was not a good idea—and resented the delicious prickles that washed over her as she used her power. She didn’t want to associate Rob with the euphoria her power induced in her.
He glanced at her br**sts. Then he turned quickly and headed for the door across the casino floor.
She eyed him for the long minute it took him to transverse the floor packed with slot machines. She didn’t think it was possible for someone without power to resist a mind changer, but Rob’s defiance in the face of the goons and his cheeky peek at her br**sts just now unnerved her. She wanted to make sure he was gone. Finally he pushed through the revolving glass door and into the sunny morning.
Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to her office and nodded to the guards she’d posted outside. In the dark room, flickering with movement from the bank of security camera monitors behind her desk, Peter Starr née Stuckenschneider jumped up from one of the chairs she reserved for guests and suspects. She waited until she’d closed and locked the door behind her before she approached him for a hug. The less people understood about how well they knew each other, the safer she and Peter and their relatives would stay. “Don’t worry,” she said into his shoulder.
He moved her to arm’s length, frowning at her. “Don’t worry!” he exclaimed. “You’ve taken my daughter off Mentafixol and you tell me not to worry?”
Good point. Kaylee gestured to the chair and retreated behind her desk. She tapped on her computer and pretended to be calling up some data. Peter would be soothed if he thought she was tracking Holly in some high-tech manner. “I know where she is.”
“Where?” he asked sharply.
Kaylee tapped on the keyboard, as if she needed to call up that screen before answering, when actually she was opening her music download account. “Icarus.” She knew this because Elijah had used his debit card issued by the casino employee credit union, not because she was tracking him by satellite.
“Colorado?” Peter exclaimed. “Where Mentafixol is made? What the hell is she doing up there?”
Kaylee looked Peter dead in the eye as she told him, “She’s with Elijah.” Kaylee didn’t add that she knew this only because of Holly’s bizarre text message last night. She didn’t have the resources or the manpower to keep better tabs on them. But Peter didn’t need to know that. Nobody did.
“You see?” Peter’s nostrils flared, and he nodded with satisfaction and fury. “I told you not to take Holly and Elijah off Mentafixol at the same time.”
“You put them on Mentafixol at the same time,” Kaylee pointed out. “You had the same guy pose as a doctor to both of them. He called in both their prescriptions to the casino pharmacy. There was no way I could end the Mentafixol shipment for Holly without ending it for Elijah too, or without shifting one of their prescriptions somewhere else and making them suspicious. They’re not fourteen anymore. You can’t fool them like you used to.”
“I didn’t arrange all that in the first place,” Peter said quietly. “Mr. Diamond was responsible. They happened to discover their power within a few hours of each other, and Mr. Diamond thought this was the best way to handle it.”
“There you go.” Kaylee gestured with one hand as if Peter’s comment proved her point. “Mr. Diamond knows best.” People with power worshipped Mr. Diamond for providing them a safe haven, and Kaylee wasn’t above playing that card.
“Kaylee, that’s really what I came here to talk to you about.” Peter made a visible effort to collect himself and have a calm, informative discussion with Kaylee, as if he’d practiced what to say to her beforehand. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “Of all the young people you could take off Mentafixol to help protect us from the Res, why Holly? Why not Skye’s kid, or Alvin’s kid?”
“We discussed this a couple of weeks ago,” Kaylee said. “Those boys are only sixteen. The Res will eat them for breakfast. I need them as strong as I can get them.”
“Then, my God! There are lots of older kids. Both of Paxton’s daughters.”
“They’re mind changers,” Kaylee said patiently. “I don’t need what I’ve already got. If the Res keeps sending scouts in here to scope us out, I’ll withdraw as many people as I have to. But it takes time and care, as you understand, and first I need the best.”