The First Prophet Read online

  He was looking around idly much as Sarah was, and for an instant she caught his gaze. His eyes were very pale in that almost coldly handsome face, and though they flickered very briefly with interest when they rested on her, Sarah’s reaction was more ambivalent.

  One of these things is not like the others.

  “Sarah?”

  She looked at Tucker, trying to ride out the fleeting surge of panic. She was not afraid of the stranger, she realized. She didn’t recognize him as an enemy. No, her reaction had been more nebulous than that. He was just…wrong. Out of place somehow.

  “Goddammit, will you talk to me?”

  “About what?” It wasn’t until Tucker sat back and stared across the table at her with a certain amount of frustration that Sarah realized how she was acting. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Really, Tucker. I’m just…unsettled today.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “It’s nothing I can put my finger on.” She glanced back toward the dark stranger to find that an equally handsome female companion had joined him and had his full attention. To Tucker, she added, “Just jumpy, I guess. I didn’t sleep very well.”

  He was silent for a few moments while the waiter returned with their drinks, then frowned and said, “Have you tried to focus on the jumpiness?”

  “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  “Sarah.” He leaned toward her, resting his forearms on the table and holding her gaze steadily. “I read somewhere that using psychic abilities is like listening. Have you tried that?”

  Lightly, she said, “All I hear is a fairly noisy hotel lobby. And somebody just dropped a dish back in the kitchen.”

  Since that crash had been evident to everyone in the restaurant, Tucker barely wasted a nod. “Shut out all the sounds. Listen for what’s underneath.”

  She broke the hold of his gaze and looked down to find that she’d unconsciously crumbled half a bread stick. Brushing the crumbs into a neat pile, she said, “I can’t hear anything.”

  “You aren’t trying.”

  “I told you. I’m tired.”

  “You can’t afford to be tired,” Tucker said, his voice suddenly hard. “If listening will help keep you alive, you have to listen.”

  Sarah refused to look at him. “I’ve told you. It hurts. Can’t you understand that?”

  Very quietly, Tucker said, “I think you have a choice. Hurt a little now to save your life, or avoid the pain now—and die the death you saw for yourself.”

  “Then that’s my choice to make, isn’t it?” She drew a breath and let it out slowly. Destiny. Fate. Is it really my choice?

  Whatever Tucker might have said in response was prevented by the return of their waiter with the meal, but when they were alone again, he said, “I’m in this now too, Sarah. Don’t forget that.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and neither did Sarah. And she didn’t taste the meal she ate, though she ate as much as she could of what was on her plate. The pressure behind her eyes throbbed.

  They didn’t linger in the restaurant, and they both remained silent as they crossed the huge lobby to the bank of elevators. Sarah noted absently that the handsome dark man seemed even more enthralled by his lovely companion, since he was smiling at her in a way that would cause any woman’s heart to stop. She envied them their simple closeness.

  Tucker unlocked the door to their room and went in first, automatically cautious. But it was Sarah who saw what was different.

  On the desk beside the still-humming laptop was a lovely vase of cut flowers.

  Sarah found a card among the blooms and studied it in silence for a moment before handing it to Tucker. The message was simple.

  WELCOME TO CLEVELAND

  TEN

  Duran sent his people on to the next destination, but did not immediately go himself. Nobody questioned him, of course. His methods might be unorthodox and occasionally paradoxical, but he got results. Not even Varden, the most treacherous lieutenant Duran had ever been forced to work with, had been able to undermine his authority—despite several subtle and creative attempts.

  Duran drove himself out of the city of Cleveland and to a remote warehouse being used for storage. The place was locked up and deserted, but the key Duran had been provided got him inside, and once inside he found that the dirty windows allowed in enough light to see by.

  He walked through shoulder-high stacks of boxes with no interest in their contents, working his way gradually toward the center of the building. When he reached his goal, he saw that a skylight directly above his position threw light down around him in a neat circle. He wondered whether she had chosen this spot for that reason.

  “You’re late,” she told him, stepping out of the shadows.

  “No,” he said coolly, “you’re early.”

  She shrugged. “I was brought up right. How about you, Duran? Military training?”

  He ignored the question. “Do you have it?”

  If anything, she seemed amused by his refusal to reply to her seemingly innocent question. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” She took a step toward him and pulled a large manila envelope from inside her jacket, handing it across the space between them.

  He took it but didn’t open it. Instead, looking at her, he said, “Any trouble getting this?”

  “Other than risking everything, you mean?” Her smile was sardonic. “No, no trouble.”

  “How long do I have?”

  She shrugged again, patently unconcerned. “I would say that depends on the current…situation. If everything hits the fan right on schedule, you’ll have a week at the outside. From today. After that, you might as well burn it for all the good it’ll do you.”

  “I need more time.” His tone was measured, his expression carefully neutral.

  “Sorry. It isn’t my fault you’ve set things up this way.”

  “I had no choice,” he reminded her.

  “Maybe. Or maybe you just got too ambitious. In any case, it’s your problem. Not mine.”

  Pleasantly, he said, “You really don’t like me very much, do you?”

  “No,” she replied, equally pleasant. “I really don’t.”

  She didn’t say good-bye. She just backed away until the shadows swallowed her.

  Duran tapped the edge of the envelope against his hand for a moment, then sighed and slid it into his coat pocket, still without opening it. Then he turned and left the warehouse, not forgetting to lock the door behind him.

  And went to join his people.

  Hurry, Sarah.

  No matter how far you run, we’ll find you. We’ll always find you.

  Destiny. Meant to be.

  “If it was them,” Tucker said as the Jeep sped along the interstate highway toward Syracuse, “what the hell are they up to?”

  “Maybe they wanted to remind us—me—that it’s no use running,” Sarah offered quietly, shutting out the whispers in her head.

  Tucker, who had taken a roundabout route from the hotel to the interstate and convinced himself they weren’t being followed, said, “The hotel must have sent the flowers.”

  “They said not.”

  “Yeah, but they couldn’t find any paperwork on the delivery. I bet somebody just screwed up.”

  “And put the flowers in our room despite the DO NOT DISTURB sign? I’ve never heard of a hotel doing that.”

  He sent her a quick look. “They couldn’t possibly have found us so quickly, not after we ditched the car in Chicago.”

  “No. Logically, they couldn’t have. Unless they were much closer than we thought, saw us drive away in this Jeep, and followed us to Cleveland.”

  “You believe that’s what they did?”

  “I believe we’d better assume it’s what they did. That someone is following, and closely.”

  Tucker was silent for some miles, then spoke abruptly. “What are your feelings telling you?”

  Sarah half-turned in the seat to look at him. “Not much. Nothing, really. But…�
��

  “But what?”

  She hesitated, then said, “For days now, I’ve felt a…pressure building inside me. In my head. Behind my eyes, like a sinus headache. The whole time we were at the hotel, it really bothered me. As soon as we left, the pressure eased a bit. I can barely feel it now.”

  “You think you were reacting to their nearness?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I felt.”

  He frowned. “You said you didn’t sleep well. Because of the pressure?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you remember your dreams?”

  “No. But I kept waking up, and whenever I did, I felt restless and uneasy.”

  “Not frightened?”

  Being frightened was such a constant state that Sarah had to think about his question, had to ask herself whether she had awakened with more fear than usual. She thought about it and shook her head. “No, not especially frightened. Just uneasy. Anxious. The way you feel when—oh, when you hear a faint sound you can’t immediately identify. Tense, sort of listening. Then I’d relax and, eventually, go back to sleep. That happened over and over all night.”

  Tucker was silent for a few more miles, then said, “If we suppose they were back there at the hotel, watching us, the question becomes—why didn’t they make a move? Maybe the answer is what I guessed before. Maybe you’re becoming aware of them on some level, even if it’s unconsciously. And maybe they know that.”

  “How would they know, supposing it’s true?”

  “Experience, maybe. Look, from what we’ve been able to find out, these people have been after psychics for years. Decades. Along the way, they must have…oh, hell, learned their trade, for want of a better phrase. Learned what worked for them. Suppose they found out through trial and error that they have only a relatively small window of opportunity during which they can move boldly to grab a psychic?”

  “Until the psychic starts to react to their presence?”

  “Why not? An enemy as large in number as you feel they are must give off a hell of a lot of negative energy. From the research I’ve done about psychics, that seems to be the thing: energy. Psychics tune into it at various…frequencies. React to it when there’s a lot around, like during a storm.”

  Slowly, she said, “Storms have bothered me since I came out of that coma.”

  “It’s not uncommon, or so I’ve been told. Say that’s it, say whatever you can do, the basis of any psychic ability is energy. And in the beginning, whenever a psychic becomes psychic, or wakes up to it—whatever—the energy has to be almost overpowering.”

  Sarah nodded silently.

  “So the mind learns to protect itself. It learns to build walls or some other kind of protection against that overwhelming energy. Maybe it learns to filter through all the static and focus on certain frequencies.”

  “Makes sense,” she said.

  “And it works, to varying degrees. But when these dangerous people are close by, this enemy, they must give off a different kind of energy. Dark, negative. A threat. Even if it’s unconscious, I’m willing to bet that out of sheer self-preservation, any good psychic would catch on pretty quick and be able to start tuning in on them. On that particular frequency. It would naturally make those psychics a lot more wary. It might even cause them to wake up in the night feeling uneasy.”

  “But why would that keep the other side at a distance?” Sarah wondered. “Even if they assume I can feel them near me—so what? They outnumber us, we know that. They burned down my house, and we’re reasonably sure they killed a cop as well as some psychics, so they’re clearly not hesitant to use violence.”

  “No, but maybe they’re afraid of attention. Grabbing somebody in a crowded hotel could be a noisy proposition. It could draw too many innocent bystanders. Too many policemen not on the payroll. That could be another reason they seem to make their moves at night.”

  “So they’re just watching and waiting? Looking for an opportunity to get me when it won’t be noticed? When I can be caught off guard so I’m not likely to make too much noise?”

  “It makes sense. As much as anything in this makes sense.”

  “Then why leave those flowers? Why make it obvious?”

  “A terrorist tactic is my bet,” Tucker said slowly. “Nobody can be wary twenty-four hours a day; if they can keep you rattled, frightened, they stand a better chance of either driving you to make a mistake or just plain exhausting you so you can’t see them coming.”

  It was working, Sarah thought. In spades. She looked at him for a moment longer, then turned her gaze forward. The highway was busy on this Tuesday afternoon, and as she watched the cars ahead of them, she couldn’t help wondering whether they were as innocent as they seemed. Maybe there were watchers in that van up ahead, or that racy-looking Corvette. Maybe the truck that had passed them a mile back had done so only to avoid suspicion, the watcher inside handing the duty off to someone else along the way.

  Or maybe not.

  When an enemy lurked all around, it was easy to become paranoid.

  Uneasily, she said, “Has it occurred to you that an accident staged on the highway would be a dandy way to get us?”

  “Yes, it has.” Tucker’s voice was grim. “If they mean to kill us, that’d be the quickest way to at least try.”

  “If?”

  “I have my doubts about that, Sarah.”

  She returned her attention to his profile. “Why?”

  “So far, virtually everything they’ve done—with the possible exception of burning down your house, and we can’t be absolutely positive that was their doing—could have been an attempt to get their hands on you rather than kill you. Even your own feelings are confused on that point; you know they’re after you, but the major reason you think they want you dead is because of your vision. Right?”

  “Well, what about that? I saw my death.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of things that could easily be symbolic. The bells, the open grave, and the headstone. Even the murmur of many voices. All of them are or could be symbols of death; the trappings of a funeral and burial.”

  “So?”

  “So…maybe that’s what you were really seeing, Sarah. The trappings. The appearance of death—of your death.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “Okay, suppose with me for a minute. Suppose that fire at your house was intended to be a—pardon the pun—smoke screen. Suppose the plan was to get you out before police and firemen arrived, to just take you. Officials arrive, find your house burning, maybe even find a female body in the ruins and, presto, Sarah Gallagher is dead—and nobody’s looking for her.”

  “Then why didn’t it work out that way?”

  “I don’t know. The fire spread too fast, maybe. The neighbors gathered too quickly. The dream—vision—you had before the fire made you too wary to be caught. Whatever the reason, they failed. But maybe what they failed at was taking you rather than killing you.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap,” she said slowly.

  “Yeah, I know. But it bothers me that they haven’t tried to arrange a little car crash for us—especially if they really did send those damned flowers. If they did, they pretty much had to be following us all the way from Chicago; we know damned well they were on us all the way to Chicago. That’s a lot of miles, and faking an accident wouldn’t have been hard. At these speeds, just bumping another car can be a one-way ticket to the morgue. So why haven’t they at least tried?”

  “Unless they don’t want me dead,” she finished.

  Tucker nodded. “Unless they don’t want you dead.”

  Sarah thought about it, then shook her head. “But what about Margo? That little accident was meant to be deadly, and you said they were probably after me.”

  “I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” he admitted. “But that’s just one instance where it appears that death was clearly the intent—all the rest of the evidence is going the other way.”

  She tried
to get her thoughts organized, something that was getting harder to do. Whether it was her interrupted sleep last night, the hasty flight from the hotel, or just stress and exhaustion over the whole frightening business, Sarah was having a difficult time thinking clearly.

  “Are you saying you think some of the psychics who were supposedly killed really weren’t?”

  “When some of the newer information came in this morning, I noticed that in at least a third of those cases, either no body was found or else what was found was…pretty messed up. A lot of burn victims from house fires, car and plane crashes, things like that. Drownings where the body had…been in the water a long time. Identification was sketchy and often depended on the location of the bodies or the fact that nobody asked questions. If a man or woman lives alone and a body is found in their house or car; if that person is missing; if the body is the right sex, roughly the right size and age, wearing the missing person’s clothing or jewelry—in a lot of cases, the assumption is made. And even when identification was made through so-called positive means, as in dental records or even DNA…well, records can be switched. I’d say that would probably be child’s play for people with police officers in their pockets.”

  “You mean…innocent people might have been killed just to provide bodies?” That belated realization hit her hard.

  “If the stakes are high enough, why not?”

  “My God.”

  Tucker looked at her quickly. “I’m sorry.”

  She wondered vaguely what he’d heard in her voice, but all she said was, “Do you think that if we checked the Richmond newspapers for the days after the fire, we might read that the body of a woman was found dumped somewhere? A woman about thirty, five four, a hundred and five pounds, maybe with dark, reddish hair? A woman who might have been mistaken for me in the right circumstances?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can we check?”

  He sent her another quick glance. “Sarah, it isn’t your fault. If some other woman died…blame them, not yourself.”

  “I’d like to know,” she said steadily. “I need to know.”

  “Why? What good would it do?”