The First Prophet Read online

  Sarah couldn’t tell him that. She only knew that it was a question she had to have answered. But all she said was, “It would be another piece of information, wouldn’t it? Another bit of evidence that—that we’re guessing right. You said yourself we need to know all we can.”

  “I don’t think that’s your reason.”

  “It’s reason enough.” She waited through several moments of silence, then prompted, “Tucker?”

  “All right. When we get to Syracuse, I’ll see what I can find out. Just remember that Richmond is a big city. People die there. None of those deaths has to be connected to you.”

  She didn’t respond to that, but said instead, “If the other side really is taking some of the psychics reported dead as well as those reported missing, what are they doing with them? What do they want with me?”

  “If the object was to kill you, then you might pose a threat to them. If getting their hands on you and other psychics is the object, then obviously you have some kind of value to them. They want or need to use you somehow.”

  “How? To buy lottery tickets? To predict how the stock market’s going to go in the months and years ahead?”

  “Maybe. But among the supposedly dead and definitely missing psychics I’ve listed so far are those who can’t predict the future any more than I can. Psychics whose gifts are along other lines. People with telepathy, telekinesis, the ability to supposedly channel the dead or sense spirits or start fires, or take pictures with the mind. It really runs the gamut.”

  “Then I can’t see how there could be a single answer to this.” Sarah rubbed her forehead fretfully. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  He was watching her more closely than she had realized. “Is the pressure building again?”

  She thought about it, then shook her head. “No, not really. I’m just…having a little trouble thinking clearly.” And, of course, I’m scared half out of my mind.

  Tucker frowned, but said, “They must think they can gain something. I can think of a dozen scams where a medium or fire starter would come in handy.”

  She was surprised. “Scams?”

  “Sure. A good medium can do a pretty brisk business, and arson can be immensely profitable.”

  “Yes, but…A fake medium could probably do okay, especially given the apparent resources of the other side. And as for fire starters, all it takes to start a fire is a match.”

  “A match can also leave evidence of arson. Even so, to be honest, this doesn’t feel like a for-profit thing to me. It’s just too damned big, too complicated. And too costly. The payoff has to be big, maybe bigger than we can imagine. I just don’t see that coming from sideshow mediums or burning buildings.”

  “So we still don’t know what’s going on.”

  He glanced at her. “We know what. Or part of what. We just don’t know why.”

  “And all we can do is talk in circles.” Sarah resisted the urge to rub her forehead again. You must think you’re going to get a pretty good book out of all this, Tucker, to stick with me this long.

  “We’re putting the pieces together, Sarah. You have to admit, we know—or think we know—a lot more than we did a week ago.”

  “For all the good it does us.”

  “You’re tired.” His voice gentled. “It’s hard for you to see that we are making progress. But we are. And we’ll do even better once we make contact with another psychic.”

  I can’t afford to be tired. You said it yourself. But all she said aloud was, “Assuming we pick the right psychic, and not one who belongs to the other side.”

  “You’ll know if we’re right.”

  “Will I?”

  “I believe you will.”

  “Suppose I don’t. Suppose I can’t tell an enemy from a friend. What then?” As hard as she tried, she couldn’t steady her shaking voice.

  “Then we’ll think of something else.” His voice was calm, but there was an underlying note of tension.

  “And keep running.”

  “We can run as long as it takes.”

  Sarah rubbed her cold hands together. They always seemed to be cold now. Nerves, she supposed. “How long are you prepared to put your life on hold, Tucker?”

  “I told you. As long as it takes.”

  Only until October. One way or another, we’ll stop running then.

  But all she said was, “Whether they want me dead or not, we know they can kill; if you get in their way…”

  “I intend to get in their way. And I’m betting you’re stronger than they suspect you are. I’m betting on you.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on me?”

  Without looking at her, Tucker replied flatly, “I already have, Sarah.”

  There was really nothing she could say to that.

  Beyond the window where he stood, Duran could see most of downtown Syracuse. He didn’t think much of it. Not that he considered the matter with any undue interest. His attention was directed toward a specific building barely a block away, another hotel. It was almost nine o’clock on Tuesday night, and the hotel was flooded with light.

  The footsteps behind him were inaudible, but he heard them. “Well? Have they checked in?”

  “Yes, sir. Same as before, a junior suite. The door opens into the parlor, where Mackenzie will be.”

  “Where we assume Mackenzie will be,” Duran corrected gently.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Duran turned away from the window. “What does Astrid say?”

  “That Gallagher is blocking—probably unconsciously.”

  “I wonder if she’s telling the truth,” Duran mused, not a question so much as thoughtful speculation.

  Varden did not venture a response, though a faint frown pulled at his brows.

  Duran saw it. “You think she wouldn’t lie to us?”

  “She was brought over ten years ago. If we can’t trust her…”

  “Yes. If we can’t trust her.” Duran smiled, something ironic in the expression.

  Varden waited a moment, then said, “It is Astrid’s opinion that Gallagher is on the edge of understanding at least some of what she’s capable of.”

  “I can see that for myself without benefit of a psychic’s abilities,” Duran said, dry now.

  “Yes, sir.” This time, Varden waited patiently in silence.

  Duran looked absently back toward the window for a moment, his pale eyes distant. When he returned his attention to his lieutenant, his voice became brisk. “Is Mason ready for them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He understands what I want him to do?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Duran made a slight gesture of dismissal. “See that he follows his instructions precisely.”

  Varden nodded a reply and left the room.

  Duran returned to the window. This time, his gaze roved, studying the lights of various buildings as if searching for a particular one. Following the neatly laid-out streets, scanning the dark patches of parks and woods. Softly, as if to someone he expected to hear his voice, he said, “I feel you out there. Nearby. You think you can save her. You think you can save them all. Sometimes…you even think you can save me.”

  After a moment, he laughed very quietly, a sound that held little amusement.

  Sarah came awake suddenly, heart pounding. She was sitting up in bed, her hands reaching out for…something. Someone. She tried to recall her dreams, but all she remembered was the uneasy sensation of something missing. Something wrong.

  A glance at the bright display of the clock radio on her nightstand told her it was just after midnight, which meant she had been asleep only a couple of hours. The pressure inside her head was…different. And she didn’t have a clue what that meant.

  The almost-closed connecting door to the parlor showed a sliver of light, so Tucker was obviously still up. Feeling too restless to attempt sleep again so soon after waking, Sarah slid out of the big bed. She turned on the lamp and blinked a moment in the light, the
n found and shrugged into the thick robe provided by the hotel.

  When she went into the parlor, it was to find Tucker seated at the small desk frowning at his laptop. But he looked up alertly as soon as she came in.

  “What is it?”

  Sarah shook her head and sat down on the couch. “Nothing. I just can’t sleep. Have you found anything?”

  He hesitated and then, reluctantly, said, “There was a woman’s body found in Richmond a couple of days after the fire.”

  Sarah felt her throat tighten up, but said steadily, “A body that could have been mistaken for me?”

  “The police description is of a white female, age thirty, five foot four, about a hundred and five pounds, dark hair, brown eyes. The ME thinks she died sometime last Wednesday. The day of the fire.”

  “How was she killed?”

  Again, Tucker hesitated. “Sarah—”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Smoke inhalation—though there were no burns on her body and she was found in a shallow grave in an empty lot. Some kids playing baseball found her there.”

  Sarah swallowed to fight the queasy sensation rising in her throat. “Kids. Great. What do the police think?”

  “Reading between the lines of the reports, they don’t know what to think. The woman lived alone; her neighbors claim nothing unusual happened around the time she must have died. The man she was dating has a solid alibi, and nobody thinks he did it anyway; he was, according to everyone who knew them, devoted to her. So far, they haven’t found any enemies. She was not sexually assaulted, and was apparently laid out in the grave with some care, identification by her side. No sign that she fought or even struggled; the ME thinks she may have been asleep when the smoke got her; he found slight traces of a sedative in her body.”

  If Tucker thought Sarah found that last a comfort, he was wrong.

  “What was her name?”

  “Sarah, let it go.”

  She drew a breath. “What was her name?”

  “Jennifer Healy.”

  Sarah repeated the name in a whisper, committing it to memory. She was reasonably sure the police would never solve the murder of Jennifer Healy. Reasonably sure that the media would accord the crime scant attention. Reasonably sure that in time the boyfriend would get on with his life and the friends would think of her less and less. Reasonably sure that the people responsible for her death had already wiped her from their minds.

  But Sarah was certain that she, at least, would never forget.

  “There’s no way to be sure they intended to use her body,” Tucker pointed out reasonably. “She could have been the victim of a garden-variety killer who was motivated by reasons we’ll never know and wouldn’t understand if we did.”

  “Right.”

  “And even if she did die just to give them a body they could use, it isn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent her death.”

  Sarah leaned her head back and closed her eyes, a weariness far more emotional than physical washing over her. “You know, when all this started, I thought it just affected me, that I was the target, the only one in danger. It never occurred to me that anyone else might get hurt because of me. But then there was Margo, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now this poor woman, this woman I never even met. This woman who’ll never marry, never have children, never grow old. Because of me. Who else is going to be killed or threatened with death because I got hit on the head and turned into a valuable freak?”

  Tucker hesitated for only a moment before leaving the desk and coming to sit beside her on the couch. She was alone again, locked inside herself where it was cold and bleak, and he couldn’t just leave her there.

  “Sarah, you are not a freak.” He reached over to cover the restless fingers knotted together in her lap. They were cold and stiff. “And this is not your fault.”

  “No?” Her eyes remained closed, her face still. “I keep thinking…there must have been a point somewhere along the way where I could have—should have—made a different choice. A different decision. And that would have changed everything. But then I remember that all this is fate. Destiny.”

  She opened her eyes then, raised her head and turned it to look at him. Her eyes were darker than eyes should ever be, the pupils wide and black and empty. And her voice was curiously toneless, dull. “This is where I have to be. Where I’m supposed to be. You’re who I’m supposed to be with. And everything that has happened was meant to happen just as it did. It was all…planned out for me a long time ago. So why don’t I just accept that?”

  “I don’t believe our lives are mapped out for us,” he reminded her quietly.

  She looked at him a moment longer, those great dark eyes unblinking. “Then maybe I could have saved Jennifer Healy.”

  “No. That was a choice they made—not you. There was nothing you could have done, Sarah.”

  “All right.” She didn’t sound convinced so much as weary, and turned her head away to look vaguely across the room. “Do you— Have you found any new or useful information about them or what they’ve been doing? Anything helpful?”

  For an instant, Tucker considered not letting her change the subject, but in the end he accepted the new one. He could only push so much, insist so often, before she would withdraw into some place where he’d never be able to reach her. He dared not risk that.

  Deliberately, he took his hand off hers and leaned back away from her just a bit. “More of the same. Supposedly dead and missing psychics in two more major cities.”

  “Then…there’s no safe place?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. Not in the major cities. Not in this country anyway.”

  Surprised, and more unnerved than she had yet been, she said, “You don’t think this is worldwide?”

  Tucker shrugged. “There’s no way to know, really. I can tap into a few data sources worldwide, but nothing specific enough to answer that question, at least not without drawing attention to myself. It’s difficult enough to stay under the radar here; the government is always looking for computer hackers, as threats and as assets. They monitor us a lot more closely than the average citizen realizes.”

  “Great. Something else to be paranoid about.”

  “We live in dangerous times. And…there were some pretty damned intrusive laws passed after the towers fell.”

  It was clear he took exception to at least some of those laws, and Sarah hoped they’d have a chance to sit and discuss it all. She really did hope they’d have that time.

  But for now, there were more imperative things to discuss.

  “So you don’t know if this thing could be worldwide. If it is…”

  “If it is,” he said steadily, “we’ll find out eventually. For now, we’ve got all we can handle.”

  “More than we can handle.”

  “We’re doing okay. We’re still alive and on the loose.” He tried to sound positive and wasn’t at all sure he’d pulled it off.

  “Are we? Or are we just rats in a maze?”

  He frowned slightly. “Is that what you feel?”

  “Stop asking me what I feel.”

  “I can’t do that, Sarah. Your feelings can guide us.” Without giving her a chance to argue with him, he repeated, “Do you feel we’re rats in a maze? Honestly feel that? Or is it frustration talking?”

  Sarah got up from the couch and went over to the window, where the partially drawn drapes offered only a narrow piece of the night. She stood there looking out, and for a long time she didn’t say anything.

  Tucker waited patiently.

  Finally, tensely, she said, “What you don’t seem to understand is that sometimes…usually…I can’t tell the difference. A vision is a very clear-cut thing, no matter how you choose to interpret it. But impulses, hunches, feelings…these damned voices in my head…how do I know what they mean? How can I tell? Is it just my fears talking to me? My imagination working overtime? Or is there a truer voice I should be listening to?”
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br />   “You won’t know unless you listen.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “I’m not the one who has to sort through all the background noise you’ll hear. But I’ll help all I can, Sarah. Just tell me how to do that.”

  “I don’t know how. I don’t even know that.”

  After a moment, Tucker got up and joined her at the window. “Maybe we’re both demanding too much too fast from you. Sarah, I would never do anything to hurt you. I hope you know that.”

  “I know you have only the best of intentions,” she murmured.

  There was no particular emotion in her voice, but Tucker nevertheless felt there was something ironic in her remark, and it made him defensive. “No matter what they say about the road to hell, we’re not moving in that direction, Sarah, I promise you.”

  “You should stop making promises.” She turned her head suddenly to look at him out of those too-dark eyes. “Your track record with them isn’t very good.”

  He stiffened. “No?”

  “No. Lydia would know that, wouldn’t she?”

  He felt a chill that went clear down to his bones, and gazing into her eyes he had the abrupt and incredibly unsettling sense of something alien. Something…unnatural.

  She knew. She knew it all.

  ELEVEN

  Sarah’s mouth curved in a faint, curiously mocking smile. “So we’re not moving toward hell, huh? Then why do you look at me as though I might have been spawned there?”

  “Sarah—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Tucker. I’m not evil. I’m just not normal.”

  He knew—he knew—she had deliberately reached into his head and his nightmares in order to keep him at a distance. As coolly as any surgeon, she had slipped her scalpel into him with full knowledge of the effect it would cause, and now she studied him with calm assessment, her eyes distant.

  This was what he got for pushing her. Sarah was pushing back. And she was a lot stronger than either of them had given her credit for.

  “I don’t believe you’re evil. And normal is what you get used to,” he managed.