I decide to do nothing until after the NCAA finals. If she does badly there, I tell myself, she doesn’t deserve to make the team. Of course, I lie to myself better than most people.
Teri fails to win the race. Indeed, she’s lucky to finish third against the best college students in the country. Since she’s just a freshman, her coach is happy with her performance, and we all congratulate her as we gather around and admire her medal. But I can see the look of disappointment in her eyes. Later, that night, she comes to my hotel room to talk. She comes alone. She says Matt is asleep.
“You should be sleeping after such a hard race,” I say.
She plops down on my bed and sighs. “I suck.”
“You ran your best time under enormous pressure. How can you say you suck?”
She rubs her weary legs. “Because even the winner of today’s race, Nell Sharp, isn’t going to make the Olympic team. At the trials there’s going to be half a dozen women who can beat her. Along with yours truly.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“The clock doesn’t lie. I ran as hard as I could and didn’t break 4:25. It’ll probably take 4:12 to win the Olympics.”
“That fast?”
“Yeah. It’s going to take a world record.”
Teri wants the gold medal. I see that now. Making the team isn’t good enough for her. Unfortunately, right now making the team’s a pretty stiff proposition. I cross the room and sit beside her on the bed. At moments like this, I feel so close to her it’s difficult not to hug her. Running a hand through her lovely blond hair—which looks and feels so much like my own—I stare deep into her blue eyes.
“How much do you want it?” I ask.
“What?”
“You know.”
“The gold medal? I’d give anything to win.”
“But you wouldn’t cheat?”
“Are you talking about steroids?”
“Something else. Something secret.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know. A medal would mean nothing to me if I knew I’d cheated to get it.”
I admire her integrity. But it’s ironic—as she swears she’ll never cheat, it makes me more determined than ever that she win. Adding power to my gaze, I speak in a soothing tone.
“You’re exhausted. Let’s talk in the morning. Right now, you need to rest.” Her eyes suddenly grow heavy—she struggles to keep them open. “Just close your eyes and lie down. Sleep.”
Teri is asleep before her head hits the mattress.
Using my nails, I open the vein on my left wrist and do likewise with her wrist. Pressing the veins together, I let my blood pump into her. I give her thirty seconds’ worth, no more, before I return her vein to her wrist. I close the incision with a few drops of my blood carefully spread over the wound. The operation doesn’t leave a scar.
I let her sleep an hour before carrying her back to her room. I’m reluctant to wake her. I can feel my blood strengthening her system and know it’s best she sleep through the change.
Outside her door, I listen and hear Matt snoring softly. I’m able to slip inside—using her key—and deposit Teri on the bed without waking either of them. I kiss her good night. I almost kiss Matt, but I figure I’ve played with fate enough for one night.
The Olympic trials for track and field are two weeks later, in Eugene, Oregon. The school year ends for Teri, and once more, as an oddball family of five, we fly to the west coast to see if our budding star can compete at the next level. On the IIC front, all remains calm, and my source in the FBI who has flown off to Switzerland has yet to uncover any new leads on Claudious Ember.
I’m too old, though, too experienced, to be lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of activity. My enemies are still out there, biding their time. The fact—and to me it is a fact and not a guess—adds to my guilt at having Teri and Matt in my life.
Shanti and Lisa are different; they are already involved with IIC. They are safer with me than without me. But my daughter—I cannot help but call Teri that—and Matt would be more secure if they had never met me. Yet when I contemplate moving to another state and walking out of their lives, never seeing them again, I feel a terrible sadness. Plus—and I know it goes against all reason—I feel it would be a mistake. My intuition keeps telling me that I’ve met them for a purpose.
Teri has to go through two preliminary races before she can compete for a place on the U.S. team. In those races something miraculous happens. She twice runs under 4:20. Afterward, excited, she gushes about how strong she feels. The press shares her enthusiasm. Her success in the opening rounds makes her the favorite to win the trials.
But Matt is cautious. Indeed, his concern borders on suspicion.
“She shouldn’t be running this fast,” he says when we’re alone the night before the final. “She’s burning herself out.”
“She says she felt strong at the end of each race.”
He shakes his head. “She shouldn’t have won the races. I told her to just take third and advance to the final.”
“You know how tricky the fifteen-hundred-meter is, especially at the end. If she hung back, she might have gotten boxed in. Look at what happened to Sharp, the woman who beat her at the NCAA championships. She didn’t even make the final.”
“Sharp had an off day. That can happen to anyone.”
“Coach Tranton told Teri to stay near the front.”
Matt looks doubtful. “Yeah, but he didn’t want her to go to the front and stay there the whole race.”
“I’m surprised at your reaction. I would have thought you’d be more excited about her times.”
He stares at me. “You don’t know her body like I do. Push her too far and it’ll backfire.”
“She pushes herself, Matt. I have nothing to do with it.”
“Sure,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
Matt’s reaction puzzles me, and I’m tempted to peep inside his mind and see if there’s something else bothering him. But it goes against a vow of mine not to eavesdrop on the thoughts of those I care about. My attitude is somewhat superstitious, I know, but I see my telepathic ability as a gift that Krishna bestowed on me to keep me safe. The last thing I want to do is abuse it.