The First Prophet (11 page)

Douglas Knox glanced at his watch for the third time and sighed as he returned his
gaze to the impressive view of San Francisco visible through the hotel window. Dammit,
where was she? It wasn’t like her to be late, especially since she’d asked him to
be early.

He was still a little surprised that she’d wanted him here an hour earlier than usual,
but he certainly hadn’t complained; it was rare that they could spend more than a
couple of hours together without taking too big a risk. If her husband found out,
or even suspected, then Amy would suffer for it—losing her daughter at the very least.

Douglas moved away from the window, frowning a little. He didn’t want her to lose
the kid, but sneaking around like this was getting old. It took too much energy to
do it, for one thing. And he wasn’t one of those guys who got off on taking risks,
not when it came to his love life.

Unfortunately, Amy’s husband was both possessive and a vengeful son of a bitch; he
had
punished
her more than once in the ten years they’d been married. She still had the scars.

“Wonder if I could give the bastard a nice little heart attack,” Douglas murmured
aloud.

No. Probably not. He didn’t know enough about the heart, where to push or…squeeze.

Sitting down in a deep chair beside the desk, he held his hand out and watched dispassionately
as a pen on the desk began to roll across the polished surface toward him. It picked
up speed as it rolled, and when it reached the edge of the desk it seemed to launch
itself through the air to land neatly in Douglas’s palm.

A nice little party trick. He closed his fingers around the pen and swore under his
breath. Amy said if he went to Vegas he could make a fortune, especially at craps.
But Douglas had the superstitious notion that to misuse his ability to move things
would be to lose it. And he liked having it.

He liked being different.

But what use was this ability of his if he couldn’t do anything meaningful with it?
Oh, sure, he could pluck a pen off a desk when he was three feet away, or get a book
off a shelf without getting up, or even move furniture with a lot less sweat and effort
than most people expended. And he could open locked doors by just
thinking
them open. And once, just a week before, he had stopped a car when the idiot driver
had left it parked incorrectly on a hill and it had started to roll.

He’d probably saved at least one life that time, since the car had been rolling toward
an oblivious window-shopper. The newspapers had blathered on about the “inexplicable”
way the car had just stopped right in the middle of the hill like that, and he had
enjoyed being the secret savior.

“Not bad,” he murmured, turning the pen in his fingers briefly and then tossing it
toward the desk. So maybe he had done something useful, after all. And maybe, if he
could get close enough to see the bastard at just the right moment, maybe he could
give Amy’s husband a secret little shove down a long flight of stairs…

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.

Douglas frowned and let his gaze track slowly around the room. Nobody was there, of
course. Still—something wasn’t right. He could feel it. It seemed difficult to breathe
all of a sudden, as if the air had grown heavy. And he could have sworn it was darker
than it had been a moment before, even though the drapes were open and two lamps burned
brightly. It just somehow
felt
darker.

He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes after two. The sun was shining in a cloudless
sky out there. It was the middle of the day. And he hadn’t turned out a light in here.
So why was it getting darker?

“Okay, so maybe I won’t push him down the stairs,” he said aloud, hearing in his own
shaky voice the worry that he might have opened up a box of troubles by even thinking
about using his abilities to do something bad.

It was getting darker. And when he tried to move, terror shot through him, because
he couldn’t. He reached out desperately with his mind, but the door didn’t open. The
little pen on the desk didn’t even move.

It just got darker.

Until he couldn’t see anything at all.

When Amy Richards opened the door of the hotel room, it was two thirty. She was early
for their usual three o’clock meeting, so she wasn’t surprised he wasn’t here yet.
She
was
surprised to find an envelope on the desk with her name on it. From Doug.

She was stunned and heartbroken to read that he had quit his job and moved back east,
that he never wanted to see her again. She didn’t believe it even when she went to
his apartment and found all his things gone. Or when she checked with his boss and
found he’d quit the day before, without even giving notice. But she had to believe
it eventually.

Because she never saw him again.

“I’d just feel much better if you went back to Alexandria and finished the buying
trip,” Sarah said seriously, sitting down on the edge of Margo’s bed as she watched
her friend repacking a suitcase she had unpacked only that
morning. They were at Margo’s house, where Tucker had dropped them off less than an
hour before.

“It’s after three; the afternoon is pretty much shot.” Margo was still protesting,
but she was packing. Her bruised shoulder didn’t appear to be bothering her, though
Sarah didn’t doubt it would ache tomorrow.

It bothered Sarah. It bothered her a lot. If Tucker was right, that so-called accident
had been meant for her, and Margo had simply gotten in the way. Sarah didn’t want
her to get in the way again.

“I know, but…well, humor me.”

Straightening abruptly, Margo directed a sharp look at her friend. “Have you seen
something else? About me?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. Not about you, I swear.”

“About you, then?” When Sarah remained silent and avoided her friend’s gaze, Margo
bent once again to her packing but went on, “You and Tucker were talking pretty intently
when I came out of the restroom and back to our table; you two are planning something,
aren’t you?”

Vaguely, Sarah said, “Nothing unusual about dinner plans.”

“Is that all it was? Fancy that. When he dropped us off here, he said he wouldn’t
be long, so I assumed you had plans for the evening. After you crate me back to Alexandria,
that is.”

“Ship. You need to finish the buying trip, you know that.”

“Uh-huh. And what do you need to finish? And don’t say dinner, because I’m not buying
it. The story, I mean.”

Sarah began to protest, but instead said, “Look, Margo, with everything that’s happened
lately, I just don’t want to worry about a friend if I don’t have to. So, you go to
Alexandria, and finish the buying trip. I’ll be fine. Tucker seems determined to…to
hang around, and the police are going to find out who burned down my house—and I’m
okay.”

Frowning, Margo said bluntly, “You look like a stiff breeze would blow you away.”

Sarah shrugged, but she wasn’t happy at being told she looked that fragile. “I admit,
things have been a strain. The last six months have been a strain. Hey, maybe I’ll
close the shop for a few days and get away, take that vacation you’ve been after me
to take for years now. Maybe I’ll go house hunting and find another fixer-upper instead
of rebuilding. But I’ll be okay, Margo.”

Margo was silent for several minutes while she finished packing and closed her suitcase,
then straightened, still frowning. “I know you’ve seen something. Something bad.”

Steadily, Sarah said, “Whatever I’ve seen, today taught me something very…hopeful.
It taught me that I’m not always right. That there’s…that there may be…room to change
what I see.” She didn’t believe that, but for Margo’s sake she tried to sound convincing.

“That’s what you and Tucker are planning to do, isn’t it? Change some future disaster
you’ve seen.”

“How could we do that?”

“You tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” As she had explained to Tucker earlier, telling Margo of
the bleak fate she had seen for herself would accomplish nothing except to alarm her
friend and quite probably convince Margo that she should stick close and watch over
Sarah.

Neither Sarah nor Tucker thought that would be a good idea; if being mistaken for
Sarah had put Margo in danger today, there was always a chance it could happen again.

“So you’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”

Sarah hesitated, then said, “I have to learn to live with this, Margo. With what I’ve
become.”

“Don’t say
what
as if you’d turned into a monster.” Margo’s voice was irritated.

“Okay. But I do have to learn to live with the changes in my life. I don’t know—yet—how
I can do that, but I have to figure out a way. Tucker thinks he can help me. I think
I should let him try. And that’s all.”

Margo looked as though she wanted to continue pushing but finally swung her suitcase
off the bed with a sound that in anyone less feminine would have been a snort of disgust.
“All right, all right. But I think you’re both full of cold cuts.”

“Baloney. Full of baloney.” Surprising herself, Sarah began to laugh. It felt as good
as her earlier anger had felt.

Margo stared balefully at her for a moment, then joined in.

They had sobered considerably by the time they stood outside Margo’s neatly landscaped
Queen Anne–style
house. She put her suitcase in the backseat of her ten-year-old sedan, then hugged
Sarah hard and said, “I don’t want to hear about the next disaster on the news, pal.
Call me if anything happens. Or even if it doesn’t.”

“I will. And don’t worry—I’ll lock up before we leave.”

“Just remember—don’t hesitate to stay here if you get tired of the shop’s apartment.
Or for any other reason.”

“Thanks. Have a good trip.”

“I will. And you kiss Tucker for me.” Margo winked, then got in her car and backed
it out of the driveway.

Sarah watched her friend drive out of sight, and it was only when the dark car was
gone that she became aware of the chill of the late September afternoon. Feeling abruptly
alone and too vulnerable, she quickly went back up the walkway to the house, conscious
of her heart suddenly pounding. As if a door had opened to allow a chill breeze into
her mind, she knew there were eyes on her. Watching.

Waiting.

Sarah…

She hurried inside and turned to close the front door, and caught a glimpse of a tall
man in a black leather jacket moving away between two houses across the street. Just
a glimpse, and then he was gone.

Colder than before, Sarah closed and locked the door. But she didn’t feel safe. She
didn’t feel safe at all.

“You want what?” Marc Westbrook’s black brows rose, and his gray eyes were suddenly
uncomfortably searching.

“I’d like to borrow your gun. That forty-five you got
from your father.” Tucker kept his voice casual and did his best to meet the level
gaze of his childhood friend with total innocence.

Apparently, innocent wasn’t his best face.

“What’re you up to, Tucker?”

“Look, you know I won’t shoot myself in the foot; I can handle guns as well as you,
if not better. I learned when I wrote the one where the mystery hinged on a marksman—”

“I know you can handle guns.” Marc leaned back in the leather chair behind his big,
cluttered desk, his frown deepening. “I also know you make a damned good living and
can easily afford to buy a gun if you want—or need—one. So why borrow mine?”

“I don’t need a gun to
keep
, just to…use for a while. To have for a while. A few days, maybe a couple of weeks.
You know I don’t approve of guns in the house, so—”

“So why do you need one, even temporarily? Last I heard, you had a dandy security
system and a damn big dog.”

“The security system is fine. The dog belonged to my sister and she came and claimed
him when she got back from England.”

“Tucker, why a gun?”

“Hey, do I ask you nosy questions?”

“Frequently.” Marc smiled, but it was fleeting and left him looking unusually serious.
“Out with it. Why do you need a gun? And why do I have this uneasy feeling that you
came to me simply because you’re in a hurry and don’t want to sit out the waiting
period?”