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all the psychic fingerprints in the place had been wiped clean.
    It seriously bothered me, because I didn’t know what it meant. I was in enough of a jam without there being something
weird
about it. The knots in my stomach had knots, and I was only a little ashamed to admit that I really wanted Taylor to show up and handle this. I wouldn’t even have minded Agent Gerard. I was plenty proud, but I was even more worried that I was in way over my head.
    “It will be all right.” I looked up, startled by Carson’s low voice in my ear. He stood close, maybe in case I decided to bolt again. His eyes had gone grayer. A trick of the light, but the color matched the steel in his voice.
    He might believe his words, but I didn’t. “How?” I asked. “It’s already not all right. I have a whammied head and bruises to prove it.”
    A thread of regret laced his tone. “I am really sorry about that.” After a beat, he offered, “If it makes you feel better, I think you cracked my ribs.”
    “It helps.” Not much, but a little.
    The corner of his mouth tightened, either in a flinch or a microscopic smile. It softened his face, and I remembered how when we fell in the hall upstairs, he twisted to hit the ground first, cushioning my fall. I mean, kidnapped was kidnapped, but still … there was that.
    The guard at the door gestured for us to go in, and Carson took my arm, his grip firm. “Just do as the man says,” he told me. “Don’t antagonize him and you’ll be fine.”
    Threat or reassurance? Both, I was thinking, plus a small plea for me not to say anything stupid.
    Gosh, it was like he knew me or something.
    “Let’s do this thing,” I said, and shook off his hand to stroll into Mordor on my own power.
    Easy to say. But as soon as I crossed the threshold, a powerful, undefinable … 
something
hit me in the psychic solar plexus. It zapped the strength from my knees, and a bright, blinding haze washed my vision. Panic came next—there could be a tiger in the room and I wouldn’t even know it.
    Then Carson touched my arm again, and the physical touch grounded me. Still shaking, but only on the inside, I was able to dial back my
other
senses and see the man standing behind the desk.
    There
was the tiger in the room.
    Devlin Maguire was a big man. Big in presence, and tall and broad in an oak tree sort of way. The office was supersized to accommodate him, everything from the ceiling-high bookshelvesto the massive oil painting on the wall (Napoléon Bonaparte in Egypt—very subtle).
    His desk was a mahogany acre of real estate, his leather desk chair a throne. He was on the phone, and I hadn’t even noticed. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said calmly into the receiver. “You’re going to have that information in my in-box in one hour, and I am going to keep your helpfulness to me a secret from your boss at Homeland Security.” And after a pause, “Yes. I thought you might.”
    Yeah. Whatever the poor guy on the other line had promised, I bet I might, too, in his shoes.
    Wait. I
was
in his shoes.
    Finishing the call, Maguire turned with an air of moving on to the next thing. Which was me. “So, this is the FBI psychic.” He came around the desk and looked me up and down. “You are not at all what I expected.”
    I shrugged. “I get that a lot.”
    He smiled slightly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll bet you do.”
    “I’m sorry about your daughter,” I said, because it was true. “You must be very worried.”
    My sincerity seemed to surprise him, but he merely nodded acknowledgment and got down to business. Half sitting on the desk, his fingers laced loosely as they rested on his thigh, he said, “I’m sure you can guess, Alexis is the reason you are here.”
    “Yeah, about that,” I said, with a bravado that made Carsongive my arm a gentle warning squeeze. “You couldn’t have just sent a limo?”
    “Sit down, Miss Goodnight.” Mr. Maguire gestured, very civilly, to