I handed it over. She commandeered the plush chair next to the couch. Its position allowing her to watch the three of us as we settled down to eat.

Before I could take a bite, the manners Becca spent years drumming into my

head came to the fore. “Sir, would you like to join us? I won’t be able to eat all

of this. You’re welcome to half of it.”

“No, thank you, I ate earlier.” She stopped straightening the papers in the file

and looked up. Her lips twitched. “I’m no longer your commanding officer, Arden, I think we can dispense with the ‘sir’.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, then proceeded to take a bite of my cheeseburger. My

concern about not being able to eat proved unfounded when my stomach woke

up with a low grumble.

For a few minutes the quiet of the cabin filled with the rustle of paper and hamburger wrappers, broken by the occasional, “Could you pass me that?”

“I suppose you have questions for me?” Delacourt’s voice burrowed past my

preoccupation with my cheeseburger.

I swallowed my latest bite. “A few.” Wiping my face with tissue paper

masquerading as a napkin, I pushed the other half of my dinner away, and then

pulled over my list of questions.

Delacourt’s husky laugh brought my head up. “Nice to see some things never change.” She motioned to the notebook. “Your lists were infamous.”

Seriously? I shot Tag a look and sure enough, the man was grinning like a fool. I squirmed. “What? If I don’t write it down, I might forget what I wanted to

ask.”

Ketchup covered French Fry halfway to his mouth, he said, “And that would

be a tragedy.”

“Bite me.” I turned my attention back to Delacourt and braced. My questions

would serve as a test of sorts, a way to see how much information I could get out

of her before she shut me down. “Okay, I need to go over a couple of things to

make sure I have this straight.” Taking her nod as confirmation, I continued,

“You identify potential psychics by a collection of personality tests given during

recruitment?”

“Not me,” she corrected, pulling me up short.

I blinked. “Not you, what?”

“I don’t give the tests. As a matter of fact, the names of confirmed psychics

are shared on a need-to-know basis with specific commanding officers based on

unit placements. The tests are given to all recruits and is proctored by a joint committee.”

No surprise there, everyone would want a piece of the psychic pie. “Let me

guess, the joint committee is made up of representatives from each military branch?”

She inclined her head. “Plus, a couple of other interested parties.”

I squashed the urge to follow the rabbit hole and held kept my questions on

track. “So, the names of the psychic units are not common knowledge?”

“No.”

“What about who works in your unit?”

Her fingers began a slow rhythm on the chair arm. “That decision falls to me

and my leadership team.”

“And the names of those working for you?” I pressed.

“Need to know basis.”

Even the clear reluctance in her voice couldn’t get me to back down now. As

she pointed out earlier, I no longer answered to a commanding officer. “If that’s the case, it means someone close to you had to leak the names connected with our last mission, correct?”

Her head jerked as if I had physically slapped her. Her eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me?”

“You ran the joint team, correct? Which means Ellery either had the best luck

in the world, or someone in the know gave him a heads up we were coming.

That would lead me to believe someone close to you was compromised.”

Her hazel eyes flashed and the lines around her mouth whitened. “Or Ellery