The First Prophet (13 page)

Toward the death she had seen.

“I already checked all the doors and windows,” she told him when he joined her in
the living room. “That is what you were doing, isn’t it?”

He didn’t try to deny it. “All locked. Drapes are drawn.” He paused, then added, “There
were automatic timers on a couple of the upstairs lamps.”

“Yes, Margo always sets them when she goes out of town. The living room lamps have
timers as well.”

Tucker didn’t say why the subject interested him, but he seemed even more preoccupied
after they locked up
Margo’s house and drove back to the apartment over the shop.

“Why don’t you go ahead and pack tonight,” he suggested, almost as soon as they arrived.
“We might decide to leave pretty early.”

Sarah might have asked him why, but she was actually relieved to have something to
do. It was very quiet in the apartment, neither she nor Tucker seemed inclined toward
conversation, and her nerves were very much on edge. Something was going to happen.
Soon. And she didn’t want to think about what it might be. So she packed.

It didn’t take long. Both she and Margo kept a few extra things in the apartment,
including a packed overnight bag in case either had to go out of town for an unexpected
estate auction or something like that, so it was a simple matter to take the bag from
the closet and add in the rest of the clothing she had here. All the clothing she
had left, as a matter of fact.

All the anything she had left.

That realization, late in coming but devastating, made her sit on the bed and cry.
Gone. It was all gone. All her things, from the furniture she had lovingly collected
over the years to the strand of pearls that had been all she had left of her mother.
The few family pictures she had. The pictures of David. The few gifts he’d given her.
Gone.

And the work, all that hard work to restore the house, it was all gone. The hours
spent covered in sawdust and plaster dust and paint spatters, wasted. The bruised
knuckles and fingers sore from using unfamiliar tools,
wasted. The shopping for just the right moldings, the right wallpaper, the right curtains
and rugs and fixtures, wasted.

Her life wasted.

She didn’t make a sound, unable even in that moment of intense grief to forget the
man waiting for her in the next room. She didn’t want him to hear her and come in
here. Whether he offered comfort or bracing common sense (losing a house wasn’t so
much when compared to one’s life, after all), she didn’t think she’d be able to accept
either. And she didn’t want him to see her crumpled on the bed, red-eyed and weepy,
because…

She just didn’t want him to see her like that.

It wasn’t a very satisfying bout of tears and left her weary rather than relieved,
but it did seem to take the edge off her nerves at least.

And it seemed to leave her mind clearer than it had been in days. She sat there on
the bed and stared at the packed bag and suddenly couldn’t believe what she was doing.
What was she doing? Running off to God knew where with a man she didn’t know, abandoning
her business and just bolting without a word to her partner and best friend, when
what she ought to be doing was locking her doors and pulling up the drawbridge, guarding
her own life as she had always done…

She started to rise, bent on going out into the other room and telling Tucker she
couldn’t go with him—and that was when it happened.

The room around her vanished. There was nothing but darkness, so black and impenetrable
it was a solid
mass around her. She couldn’t feel her legs beneath her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t
hear anything. And all she knew was cold fear.

Out of the black silence, gradually, the sound and sensation of air rushing past filled
her senses. She was moving, she knew that, moving through space…and time. Moving into
the future. She didn’t want to go, struggled against it, but she was given no choice.
She had to go.

Had to see.

At first, the vivid images exploded out of the darkness with such bright intensity
that she was blinded and couldn’t see them, in a confusion of sound so loud and garbled
it hurt her ears. But slowly, her eyes and ears or her mind adjusted until what she
saw and heard began to make sense. Or at least, as much sense as a waking nightmare
ever made.

There was a low hum, the sound of many voices murmuring, like a carrier wave permeating
everything. And then a male voice, one she suddenly remembered from that other waking
nightmare, said calmly above the hum, “Even if you run, we’ll find you. We’ll always
find you.”

She tried desperately to see his face, but all she could see was his silhouette, like
a featureless shadow on a wall. Then he was gone.

It was getting colder.

The antiques shop. It was late, very late, and dark. Two cars crept up to the curb,
their lights out. Men got out of the cars in an eerie silence and moved toward the
shop. She couldn’t see who they were. But they carried things, things she knew were
deadly. Not just guns but…other things,
things that made her skin crawl. She wanted to scream out a warning, to alert the
neighborhood and signal those inside the shop that danger approached. Then she realized
that the men were going to the apartment above the shop, and she knew whom they were
after.

“They’re after you, Sarah.”

“No.” She didn’t want to listen to this voice, the insistent one she’d heard in her
head before.

“They’ll get you. You have to leave. You have to run.”

“But where? Where should I go?”

The background hum of many voices whispering grew louder, drowning out the voice the
way electrical interference drowned out a radio signal, and Sarah wasn’t even sure
she heard, “…north…”

“Who are you?” she asked desperately. “What are you?”

This time, there was no answer at all, just the now quieter whispers she couldn’t
quite make out.

It was getting colder.

Blackness swept over her abruptly, and lasted what seemed to Sarah to be forever.
And the background rustle of those wordless whispers became louder and louder until
she wanted to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the awful noise that made her
head ache.

It was so cold.

So cold…

Sarah blinked dazedly and looked around her. She was sitting on the floor by the bed,
her arms wrapped tightly around her upraised knees. Shivering. According to the clock
on the nightstand, no more than a minute or two had elapsed.

It felt like a lifetime.

She sat there for several more minutes, until the shivering gradually stopped as her
body temperature began to return to normal. She didn’t know why it always dropped
when the waking nightmares came, but it always did, leaving her chilled for a long
time afterward. Even her skin was cold to the touch, and she rubbed her hands together
slowly to try to warm them. Her body obeyed when she tried to get up, but it was stiff
and sore, as if she had endured some kind of physical trial.

But for the first time, she came out of it with a sudden, bitter self-awareness. Waking
nightmares. Bullshit. Why did she keep calling them that? Who was she trying to deceive?
Herself. They were visions, and what was the use of calling them something else? A
different definition didn’t make them any less real. Any less frightening.

Visions. I have visions. And let’s not forget the voices in my head, at least two
different ones.

Visions urging her, driving her through fear. One voice insisting she couldn’t escape
even as another one insisted that she run. And over it all, permeating everything,
was her numbing certainty that no matter what she did, no matter where she went, that
yawning grave was waiting for her at journey’s end.

She left the packed bag on the bed and went out into the living room, where Tucker
was watching a news program. He immediately turned off the set and got up when she
came in, his eyes narrowing as they searched her face intently.

Probably look like I’ve seen a ghost. Ha-ha.

“Sarah? Are you all right?”

“Not really, no.”

“Has something happened?”

He didn’t want to ask her whether she’d had a vision, but it was obvious that was
what he meant. Sarah realized she was still rubbing her hands together when he briefly
looked at them, and she started to tell him it was because she was still so cold.
But that would take too long to explain, so instead, she said simply, “We should leave
now.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ll come tonight. Come for me.”

“How do you know that? Did you see it? In one of your waking nightmares?”

He was good, she thought dimly. His voice hardly gave away his disbelief. Hardly at
all.

“I had a vision,” she said starkly. “Just now. They will come tonight, Tucker. And
if we’re here…”

In an abrupt gesture, he nodded. “Then we’d better leave.”

But in the end, he had another idea.

The security system guarding Mackenzie’s house was a good one. It took Murphy almost
three minutes to bypass the alarm and get inside. She didn’t turn on any lights, depending
on the narrow beam of her pencil flashlight to find her way around. She didn’t waste
any time, moving from room to room in a quick, methodical search.

Within ten minutes, she was in his office and had the wall safe behind his desk open.
She ignored some stock certificates, leafed uninterestedly through a couple of contracts
with his publisher, and swore softly when the safe offered nothing else.

She kept searching, paying close attention to what she found on the cluttered desk.
A folded map held her interest the longest; she spent several minutes bent over the
desk studying it, and when she straightened at last, she slipped it into the leather
pouch at her side.

“Not quite as smart as you think you are,” she murmured.

Her cell phone vibrated, and she pulled it out of the leather pouch with a scowl.
“Yeah, what?”

“Find anything?” His voice was, as always, almost preternaturally composed.

“If I do,” she responded with equal calm, “I’ll report. As agreed.”

“We’re running out of time, Murphy.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

There was a brief silence, and then he said somewhat dryly, “You might at least reassure
me that we have the same goal in mind.”

“I might.” She smiled in the darkness of Tucker Mackenzie’s office and did not add
the requested assurances.

He knew her too well to push, though the almost inaudible sound of a sigh reached
her intently listening ears. His voice was carefully matter-of-fact when he said,
“I need information, Murphy.”

“Yes, I know. Give me a chance to do my job.”

“Very well. I’ll wait for your report.”

“Do that.” She turned off the phone decisively without waiting for him to sign off
first. She was willing to bet she was one of very few who would dare to hang up on
him. She liked that. The cell was a burner, intended to be used only once and then
discarded; she’d toss it into the nearest Dumpster before moving on; it was too easy
to track cell phones these days. She’d have another burner in an hour, and he’d have
to wait for her to call him next time. She liked that too.

She stood there in the dark and silent office for several more minutes, thoughtfully
fingering the folded map in her leather pouch. Finally, she left the office and made
her way from the house, pausing only long enough to lock up behind herself and put
the security system back online.

The neighborhood was dark and quiet in the hours past midnight, and Murphy went on
her way without attracting any notice, not even disturbing the few sleeping watchdogs
with her softly whistled rendition of “Stormy Weather.”

In perfect pitch.

“But why?” Sarah asked much later.

“We know they— We know somebody is watching you.” Tucker’s voice was patient. “What
we don’t know is whether the guy in the black jacket is all we have to worry about.
I want to know that, Sarah. I think we need to know that. Before we leave.”