The First Prophet (14 page)

His car was parked near the shop as before, but in the dense shadows of a spreading
oak tree. There was, he’d explained to Sarah, a clear path of retreat here, with little
chance of the car’s being hemmed in by other cars.

Assuming, of course, that no one realized they were sitting in the car.

They had eaten and then returned to the apartment above the shop as if they intended
to spend the night there. Then they had slipped out and made their way cautiously—and
hopefully unseen—around behind several houses and back to the car. Timers on the lights
inside the apartment made it look as if they had settled down for the night around
eleven thirty. It was now after midnight.

Sarah had realized only gradually that Tucker had had something like this in mind
even before she’d had her vision. For one thing, he had left Margo’s house with two
of her automatic timers in his pocket. For another, he had brought from his own house
a couple of thick blankets and comfortable pillows. Sarah was using the blankets and
pillows now, reclining in the backseat and wrapped snugly against the chill of the
night. Tucker was in the front, sipping hot coffee. And watching.

He’d had the foresight to remove the lightbulbs from the car’s interior lights so
they wouldn’t give away their return, but there was still, he’d told her dispassionately,
at least a fifty percent chance that if the man in the black jacket was watching,
he had seen them.

In the dark quiet of the night, Sarah was wide awake and almost unbearably edgy. It
was horrible, waiting to
see whether someone would come as she had seen. Horrible waiting to find out whether
she was meant to die tonight.
Do they want to kill me? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m afraid of them. Terribly
afraid.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Sarah.” His voice was low.

After a moment, she said, “You’re a touch psychic yourself.”

“No. It doesn’t require psychic abilities to know you’re frightened. Anybody would
be. But I am not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”

“Promises can get you in trouble.”
They have before.

“That one won’t.”

Still edgy, she asked, “Why are you doing this, Tucker? Why are you getting involved
in my problems?”

“We’ve already discussed that, remember?”

“Because you want to keep me alive long enough to find out if I’m for real?”

When he answered, it was slowly. “I know you’re for real, Sarah. I know you’re not…a
charlatan, not faking psychic ability for some reason of your own. I know that you
genuinely believe you can see the future.”

“You just don’t believe I
can
. Which is one reason why we’re out here, right? So you can see if they come the way
I saw them.” She tried not to sound defensive.

Again, he hesitated before responding. “That’s one reason. To see something that hasn’t
happened yet…of all the psychic abilities, that’s the one I find most difficult to
believe. How can you see what doesn’t yet exist? How can the human mind possibly do
that?”

Sarah closed her eyes. “Do you think it’s any easier, any more believable, to see…a
place you’ve never been, even though it exists? To see something that happened long
ago in the past, when you weren’t there? To have someone touch your hand and know
something about them, something so secret they don’t even tell themselves?”

“I don’t know. I suppose not.” He sounded a bit wary.

Doesn’t like the idea that I might know all his secrets.
“You don’t believe in those things either. You always think there must be some logical
explanation, some…deception involved.”

“I know you aren’t trying to deceive anyone.”

“Ah. Then I’m either crazy, or I’m telling the truth.”

“The truth as you believe it to be.”

“Which is just another way of saying I’m crazy. Thanks.”
I hear voices in my head. You’d really think I was crazy if I told you about them.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just…I can’t
blindly accept the party line, Sarah. I can’t tell myself I could see a unicorn if
I only believed they were real. It’s not the way I’m wired.”

Quietly, she said, “And yet I’ve never met anyone who wanted so desperately to believe.”

To that, he said nothing.

Sarah lay there in silence for a while, her eyes closed. She heard his occasional
faint movements, smelled the coffee he drank, and mentally looked at his face.

It was a good face, but it puzzled her a great deal and made her feel more than a
little apprehensive. What made
a man like Tucker? He had achieved unusual success in his chosen field, penning bestseller
after bestseller that enjoyed critical as well as commercial success. She had read
several of his novels, though she hadn’t mentioned that to him. They were clever,
those stories, not only entertaining but intelligent and well researched, peopled
with vividly alive characters, and left a reader satisfied.

He was one of those semifamous authors who had not quite crossed the line into mainstream
celebrity; his name was very well-known, but his face was unlikely to be recognized
on the street. At least two of his novels had been made into films, but Sarah had
read that he wanted nothing to do with that interpretation of his work—he wrote books,
other people made films—and so had taken no part in the process.

So. He was wealthy enough that he probably wouldn’t have to write another word for
the rest of his life if that was his choice. Successful enough to have reached the
peak of a difficult and demanding profession while still in his thirties. He was single.
Did he have family, friends he cared about?

Behind her closed lids another face appeared, clear as if it were a color photograph,
and she studied it for several seconds. A pretty face. A face she didn’t know—and
yet did. She knew the face, the woman. She knew her name. Lydia. She knew what Lydia
was to Tucker. She knew what had happened to her.

It was no vision, no dramatic sequence of images and sounds. It was simply a knowing,
a certainty of facts she should not have known. It had happened to her before
since the mugging, but infrequently, and only with people she had known well.

Never before with a stranger, until Tucker.

Sarah opened her eyes as the face faded into darkness, and for a moment she was tempted
to tell him what she had seen, what she knew. But she didn’t. In the last few months,
she had learned too well the costly lesson that even the people who wanted to hear
the truth all too often hated the truthsayer for telling them. So he was going to
have to ask her. When he was ready, when he stopped doubting her, then he would ask
her. Only then would she tell him what he so desperately needed to know.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, she said, “All this isn’t interrupting your
work, is it?”

“No. I’d only just started a new book, and it wasn’t coming together very well. A
break will do me good.”

“Just a little break to go on the run with a hunted psychic.”

“You never know—maybe I’ll get a book out of it.”

And maybe you’ll get dead.
But she didn’t say it, of course. Instead, she said, “Where will we go?”

“I have a feeling that once we get moving, you’ll know which way to go,” he said with
more confidence than she thought he had any right to feel.

North. I think we have to go north. But I don’t know how far. Or why we have to…

But all she said was, “And until I know that—assuming I do?”

“Away from Richmond is the first priority, I think.
Unless you disagree, our first stop will be a place near Arlington.”

“Why Arlington?”
Heading north. And I didn’t even have to tell him we’re supposed to. Fate again.

“Because a friend owns a cabin near there. A place to rest our weary heads and plan
the next stage of the trip.”

“Plan?”

“We’ll come up with something, Sarah.”

“You just want an adventure. A road trip. That’s it, isn’t it?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s it.”

She was silent for several minutes, then said abruptly, “I should have gone to the
bank. I don’t have any money.” It had just occurred to her that this was likely to
be an expensive trip.

Tucker responded promptly. “I stopped by my bank this afternoon and got some cash.
Enough, I think. We’ll need to avoid plastic, avoid using ATMs because of the cameras,
cell phones because they can be pinged—which is why I left mine at the shop and asked
you not to bring yours—or anything else that might give them a way to track us as
we move. Cash is the way to go.”

“I can’t let you—”

“Sarah, it’s not a problem.”

“Yes, it is. I can’t let you pay my way.”

“Look, if it really bothers you, we’ll settle up later. Until then, don’t worry about
it.”

She was silenced, but not happy. It went against the grain for her to depend on anyone
else, particularly financially. She hadn’t even allowed David to bring in an
occasional bag of groceries, and he’d practically lived at her place. Something Margo
had scolded her for.

“He eats like a goat, Sarah! Why the hell shouldn’t he kick in some for groceries?
He’s got you cooking for him practically every night!”

Sarah frowned, a little startled to realize that the memory had roused resentment
rather than pain. He
had
usually suggested they eat at her house. And he hadn’t been able to cook, so she
always had. Sometimes he’d helped her clean up afterward, but many times he’d had
to “eat and run” because of business calls he needed to make from his own apartment.
Or something like that.

Now that she thought about it, he had bought dinner once or twice a week—when they
ended up having sex.

Jesus, he was paying for it!

“Sarah?”

“Hmm?”
Dinner out—sex. A little quid pro for his quo. Wonderful. Why didn’t I see it before?

“Don’t be upset about the money.”

She wrenched her mind back to the present and drew a breath. “Okay. But I expect you
to keep track. This is my little adventure more than yours, and I’ll be damned if
I’ll let you pay for it.”

“Gotcha.”

“As long as we understand that.”

“We do.”

They fell silent again. Sarah shifted a bit. Mercedes or not, the backseat wasn’t
a terribly comfortable bed. Then again, she was probably too edgy to sleep. Like last
night.
If this kept up, she’d really be a bundle of raw nerve endings. “What time is it?”

“After one.”

It felt like dawn at least, to Sarah. She was so tired.

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” he suggested.

“If you watch all night, you’ll be exhausted.”

“I can lose a night or two without it bothering me too much. Probably comes from a
habit of all-night writing marathons. Try to sleep, Sarah.”

She didn’t think there was a chance in hell of her actually sleeping, but she once
again closed eyes that kept drifting open, and this time she did her best to stop
thinking. Following directions from a relaxation tape she’d listened to, she concentrated
on letting all her muscles go limp and imagined lying peacefully on a beach listening
to soothing ocean waves.

That was the last thing she remembered.

“Sarah.”

She came awake instantly, her scratchy eyes and heavy head telling her she hadn’t
slept more than an hour or two, if that. “Hmm?”

“Look.”

She sat up carefully, fighting her hands free of the covers so she could rub her eyes.
It took her a moment to focus, and to look where Tucker was looking, but as soon as
she did, she saw them.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

The two cars, lights extinguished, were coming down the street toward the shop from
the opposite direction.
In an eerie quiet that didn’t even seem to contain the faint sounds of engines, the
cars pulled into parking places at the shop. Doors opened—no interior lights betrayed
them either—and men got out of the cars.

Sarah numbly counted eight men, four from each car. “So many,” she whispered.

Tucker nodded, silently watching.

The men slipped toward the building, some going around to the sides and back. They
all seemed to be wearing black, or at least dark colors, and Sarah strained to see
whether the tall watcher was among them.

“Do you see him?” she asked Tucker, still whispering.

“No.”

“Neither do—Oh. That isn’t…that can’t be…”

“But it is,” Tucker responded grimly.

One of the men had paused for a moment at the end of the walkway, and the light from
a nearby streetlamp shone full on his face. Then he was moving with two others toward
the stairs that led to the apartment.

“I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “Why would he be here? Why would he be doing this?”

“I don’t think we want to stick around and ask right now.” Tucker released the emergency
brake, and since the car was out of gear and only the brake held it stationary on
the slight incline where he had deliberately parked, it immediately began to roll
forward silently.

They were well down the street when Tucker finally started the engine, but even then
Sarah couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder. Already, the shop was lost to
sight, and no screaming engines followed them as
Tucker turned a corner and headed for the highway. But what Sarah had seen was branded
in her mind.

How could she trust anyone when even cops came sneaking in the middle of the night
to kill her?