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federal agent?”
    “I thought you’d be happy. You obviously don’t want to work with me either. I’ve already spoken with Karma. She’s going to get it all straightened out on Monday.” Ciara wrapped the towel around her shoulders. Her clothes had stopped feeling like acid, but she still wanted to get them off her skin as soon as possible. Agent Smith looming over her didn’t give her much hope that as soon as possible would be very soon.
    “You honestly thought I would run off on some wild-goose chase to Atlantic City? How dumb do I look?”
    “I’m not going on looks, Agent Smith, I’m going by your behavior, which, so far, has been pretty damn dumb.” To be honest, she couldn’t blame him for doubting her. She’d probably have doubted too, but she wasn’t feeling terribly forgiving with the memory of her acid-wash jeans still fresh in her mind.
    “You want me to believe the necklace is in Atlantic City, then you’re coming to Atlantic City with me to find it.”
    Ciara laughed. “I can’t.”
    “Yes, you can. And you will.”
    She started shaking her head and found she couldn’t stop. It just kept swinging back and forth in a pendulum of denial. “No, I can’t. You don’t understand. I don’t leave this house. Ever. I can’t.”
    He frowned. “Are you phobic or something?”
    “My skin,” she reminded him. “I can’t touch people without horrible psychic backlash and even just touching foreign objects, being surrounded by them, the static noise is unbearable. I just can’t handle it.”
    “A Psychic Bubble Girl.”
    “Sort of. Yeah. Sure. Exactly.”
    His brows rose high above his deceptively warm chocolate-brown eyes. “Do you have a note from your doctor?”
    “Of course not. It’s not like I’m trying to get out of gym class.”
    “Then I guess you’re coming with me.”
    Ciara’s head started shaking again. No, no, no . “You can’t make me. I’m an American citizen. I have rights.”
    “You certainly do. But you’re also a person of interest in eighty-five different unsolved robberies.”
    “I solved them,” she insisted. “I found the jewels.”
    “But not the jewel thieves. Very convenient, that.”
    “I can only locate the stolen items, not the people who took them.”
    “That’s a real shame. If we’d caught a few more of the actual thieves in the recovery, I wouldn’t have reason to be suspicious of you. You say you aren’t a crook. You say you’re psychic, but you can’t prove it. That’s a real shame. It kind of makes me wonder what else is going on at Karmic Consultants that might be of questionable legality. It’s a very fishy company. So-called psychics and mediums. Who do you think would be most interested in investigating Karmic Consultants? The feds in charge of organized crime or the ones who investigate confidence schemes?”
    Ciara’s heart stopped. Karmic Consultants was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Karma was more than her boss. She was family. Ciara would be lost without them.
    The threat against them was more potent than any he could have leveled against her personally. In her personal life, she had very little to lose, but Karmic was everything.
    She stared across the pool at the adamant federal agent. “This is blackmail.”
    “Nonsense. It’s a choice. As I see it, you have three options.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, you confess. Two, you and your buddies at Karmic Consultants submit to a thorough up-the-ass investigation by the Bureau to ensure you’re operating one hundred percent on the right side of the law. Or three, you come to Atlantic City and show me where that necklace is. Your call.”
    Ciara was trapped, pure and simple. She couldn’t confess, because there was nothing to confess to, and she couldn’t put Karmic Consultants through an up-the-ass federal investigation because she wasn’t entirely sure KC was one hundred percent on the right side of the law—she’d been asked to find