“Come on, sweetie,” her mom said almost kindly, but unable to disguise the edge in her voice. “Your father is in pain. We’ve got to go and we can’t leave you here.”
“I’ll go into the casino and talk to Mr. Diamond,” Holly said. The casino was clearly behind this conspiracy. If her parents were out of commission for the moment, she should go straight to the source.
Her mom nodded vigorously. “Yes. Go see Mr. Diamond. He’ll explain everything.” A goon stepped in front of Holly and shut the limo door.
Holly watched the limo speed across the pavement, clunk down the curb into the street, and disappear into traffic on the Strip. The usual noise of Vegas at 11 a.m. settled around her: cars swishing by on the side street, the casino’s enormous air conditioners grinding behind her. The normalcy of the sounds belied the fact that she was surrounded by six black-suited goons who were staring at her, kept at a careful distance by her power, waiting for her next move.
She turned on her high heel and crossed the pavement, toward the casino. She snatched up her purse as she passed her lawn chair, marveling that no one had stolen it—but maybe even pickpockets understood it wasn’t wise to steal from a girl who could inflate plastic palm trees with her mind and break her dad’s hand. She clopped all the way inside the casino and down the corridor to the employee elevator. The portrait of Mr. Diamond stared at her inside. The goons crowded in around her. Too late she realized she should have stopped them from coming with her. Telekinetic power took practice.
“Forty, please,” she said to the goon nearest the elevator buttons. She felt the elevator jerk into movement upward. She turned to the goon on her left. He stared at her, his face not a foot from hers. She mustered the most evil expression in her repertoire, which, granted, probably wasn’t all that threatening. He stared blandly back at her. He was probably reading her mind.
The doors slid open. The goons parted for her. Maybe it was a trap. Molten lava would rush down the hall at her! But that was ridiculous. Mr. Diamond’s office was at the end of the hall, and Kaylee would never allow molten lava around the big man. The penthouse was up here too. Kaylee would not allow lava near the penthouse if it was rented by celebrities.
Holly stepped off the elevator as if she had no misgivings, and she turned for Mr. Diamond’s office. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the elevator doors sliding shut. No goons had stayed with her.
Kaylee walked out of her office next to Mr. Diamond’s, her business suit immaculate as usual, her golden hair shining like an angel’s in the sunlight streaming through the corridor windows. Kaylee’s expression was confident, her stride sure. Holly had met her match.
Bursting into Mr. Diamond’s office to confront him, which had been Holly’s imperative next step, suddenly seemed like the world’s worst idea.
“Oh, yeah?” Holly exclaimed. “Is that all you’ve got? Why didn’t you change my mind and stop me from breaking my dad’s hand?” Her voice started low with defiance and pitched into the shrillness of a little girl caught and guilty. She cringed.
“You’re not my only concern this morning.” Kaylee nodded to her office door, urging Holly inside.
Holly hesitated. There could still be lava. Or piranhas. Normally she would have sworn Kaylee would not do that to her. But the landmarks of Holly’s life had been shaken from their foundations, and her moral compass spun in the air in front of her.
“No tricks.” Kaylee pulled back her silk cuff. “Nothing up my sleeve.”
“Make me,” Holly said petulantly.
Kaylee huffed out her disapproval. “You asked for it.”
Instantly, going into Kaylee’s office seemed like a good idea. Holly skipped past Kaylee into the room, sat in the chair for guests in front of Kaylee’s desk, and crossed her legs primly. She knew Kaylee had changed her mind—she knew it—but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. A good idea was a good idea.
Kaylee closed the door behind them and rounded her desk. “As I was saying—”
With her power, Holly jerked open all of the blinds at once, exposing Kaylee to the dazzling late-morning sunlight.
Kaylee jumped and closed her eyes. “I hate levitators,” she grumbled. Then she opened her blue eyes and looked at Holly. “No offense.”
Holly shrugged. “None taken.”
Kaylee sat down and gestured to the bank of monitors mounted on the wall beside her desk, each displaying a feed from a different security camera. “Elijah’s mom just sensed an intruder, and some of our other mind readers felt it too. It’s the fifth time in the past couple of weeks. I was headed downstairs to stop you from trashing Peter’s show when I was called back to deal with this. And, of course”—she waved her hand out the window—“Elijah’s on the loose.” She pressed her lips together, barely suppressing a smile. “So, you spent the past two nights getting down and dirty with Elijah Brown?”
Holly felt her face light up, and she started to tell Kaylee she wished they’d gotten down and dirty. But then she remembered she’d threatened to hurt Elijah when they parted ways. That probably meant they’d broken up. And then she thought about what Kaylee had just said: Elijah is on the loose.
Like Elijah was a fugitive, and Kaylee intended to capture him.
The Kaylee she would have gushed to about her wild ride with Elijah was gone, replaced by the head of security at the casino, even more powerful and dangerous than Holly had imagined, leaning toward her across a wide and imposing desk. Holly couldn’t reveal anything she knew about Elijah and put him in danger.
“Not the whole two nights,” she fumbled.
“It’s okay.” Kaylee leaned back in her chair. “I understand completely. Elijah is hot. Last winter when we remodeled the bar next to the high-limit slots, we had to put up extra barriers around the construction site because women were staring at him rather than gambling. And, of course, he’s a mind reader. You’ve probably figured that out already.” She turned to watch one of the monitors.
Holly picked up every single object on Kaylee’s desk, every paper and pen, even the computer screen and keyboard, and moved them all with her mind until they crowded in the air just behind Kaylee’s head, seeming as insulted as Holly was that Kaylee didn’t give her full attention to this conversation. “What are you looking for?” Holly asked.
Kaylee glanced over at Holly and jumped again, startled by the computer screen so close to her face. She leaned around it to say, “Somebody I know. Look, Holly, mind readers are dangerous. It’s not just that they read your mind. They use what they find in your mind to manipulate you. As long as they know what you want, they can be your perfect employee or your perfect friend or your perfect boyfriend, until you trust them with your life. And then they can do whatever they want with you.”