“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
