The First Prophet (20 page)

“Thanks. Dammit, they’ve routed the call through so many proxy servers, it’d take
me a week to trace it.”

“We don’t have a week.”

He hesitated only an instant, then swore and quickly closed his computer, flipped
it over, and removed the battery, severing whatever connection there was between his
laptop and whoever had contacted it. Sarah was right; they were out of time. It took
only a minute more to pack up the computer in its case, grab it and his other bag,
and kill the lights.

They slipped from the darkened cabin as quietly as possible. The car was parked nearby,
and it took only seconds to stow the luggage and get moving. Tucker didn’t turn on
the car’s lights.

“I know these roads,” he told Sarah as she sat tensely beside him. “They’re like rabbit
trails around here. If I can get far enough back into the woods, we may be able to
slip past them.” He was assuming that, as at the apartment, the enemy would come in
force, possibly from several different directions at once. He thought it was poor
strategy to make any kind of assumption, but knew it would be far safer to overestimate
the enemy rather than underestimate them.

The Mercedes purred quietly through the woods, shocks efficiently absorbing most of
the bumps from a narrow and badly rutted road. But they were forced to go slowly without
headlights as Tucker picked his way cautiously around curves and between looming trees.

And they were no more than half a mile from the cabin when suddenly, ahead of them,
lights stabbed blindingly through the darkness.

Tucker didn’t hesitate. He hit his own lights and turned the wheel hard to the right
in almost the same movement. “Hang on,” he told Sarah.

It was in all reality hardly more than a rabbit trail, an old road so narrow that
brush scraped along the sides of the Mercedes, and so uneven that the shocks didn’t
have a chance—especially since Tucker was driving at a reckless speed. But, somehow,
he was able to keep the heavy
car on the road around one hairpin curve after another, even at this speed and with
the roar of a pursuing car behind them.

Unlike all the car chases in television and the movies, no shots came from the car
behind them. Hardly any sound at all, in fact. There was just that grim, steady pursuit,
unceasing and unrelenting. But there was only one car behind them—as far as they could
tell.

“There have to be more,” Sarah said.

“Bet on it. If I were them, I’d take one or two more cars and circle around, try to
get ahead of us. They have to figure these roads all lead to the main one, where we
have to end up eventually.”

“Are they right?” she asked, hanging on for dear life to keep from being tossed around
inside the hurtling car.

“No. This road goes on for miles, all the way to the highway—and it doesn’t cross
another road along the way.”

Sarah looked back over her shoulder. “I think they’re gaining on us.” Her voice was
remarkably calm, especially considering that she could hardly breathe for the fear
clogging her throat.

“In just a minute,” Tucker said tensely, “I’ll see what I can do about that. If memory
serves—and I hope to God it does—our friends back there are about to get a little
surprise.”

Memory served. It was a very easy turn to miss, because it was sharp and totally unexpected;
a deceptively gentle rise kept even a wary driver from realizing that there were only
two choices once you reached the
top—take a punishingly sharp turn to the right, or do a swan dive into a small pond.

Tucker made the turn.

The car behind them didn’t.

Duran stood behind the cabin looking out over the lake. With the sun up now, it sparkled
invitingly. He thought briefly of swimming or fishing or just drifting on a boat,
but the thoughts didn’t last. They never did.

“Report,” he said as almost silent footsteps approached behind him.

“They didn’t leave anything behind but a half-cooked breakfast. No sign of where they’re
headed next. No sign of their ultimate goal.”

Duran glanced over his shoulder briefly. “I imagine the ultimate goal is to escape.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell the others it’s time we were going.”

“Yes, sir.”

Footsteps retreated.

Duran returned his attention to the lake, but this time his gaze scanned beyond it.
Eventually, he focused on a spot directly across from the cabin. Misty in the early
morning. A couple of fallen trees, thick shrubs. A very peaceful scene. A perfect
place from which to…observe.

He smiled slightly as he studied that perfect place. Then, still smiling, he turned
and went unhurriedly toward the cabin.

“Tell me that bastard didn’t know we were here,” Cait pleaded.

Watching several dark cars leaving the cabin across the lake, Brodie laughed shortly.
“He knew.”

Cait was still visibly upset. “What’s he doing here? Why is
he
leading the hunt for Sarah Gallagher?”

“She must have more potential than we realized.”

“But they tried to kill her.”

Brodie sat back and began stowing the binoculars, frowning. “Maybe not. That fire
could have been an attempt to get her rather than kill her. A house burns down, a
female body is conveniently found inside burned beyond recognition—who’s to say it
isn’t Gallagher?”

Cait looked a little sick. “Kill some poor woman just to provide a body for something
like that?”

“It’s been done before,” Brodie replied without emotion.

After a moment, Cait drew a deep breath. “So you think Duran wants her?”

“I think he wouldn’t be here on the front lines unless he had something more in mind
than Gallagher’s death.”

Cait nodded slowly. “What now?”

“Now,” Brodie said grimly, “we find some way of getting our car out of that fucking
pond.”

“I am guilty of criminal stupidity.”

Sarah turned her head quickly to look at Tucker, startled by the grim anger in his
voice. “Why? You couldn’t know they’d find us back there so quickly—”

“That’s just it. I should have known. I should have
realized
.”

“Realized what?”

“How they could find us. Wasn’t there a sign back there for a rest stop coming up?”

“I think so. But—”

Tucker shook his head. “Let’s see if I’m right about this. Ah…” He took the exit for
the rest stop, and minutes later he was pulling into a parking space slightly apart
from several other cars. “There should be a flashlight in the glove compartment; could
you get it for me, please?”

She did, and handed it across. “Tucker—”

“It’ll just take me a minute to check something. Stay here, Sarah.”

He left the car running, and she watched in puzzlement as he got out and promptly
dropped to the pavement to check underneath the car. He hadn’t been there more than
a couple of minutes when another motorist paused on his way past and called sympathetically,
“Hit something?”

Tucker’s response was cheerful, “Yeah, a hell of a pothole back there. No damage,
though.” He climbed to his feet and brushed at his jeans.

“Your lucky day,” the man responded, and continued on his way.

Tucker slid into the car and closed the door. “No damage at all,” he muttered, his
face grim once more as he reached across Sarah to return the flashlight to the glove
compartment.

“What is it?”

“A bug,” he said bitterly. “A damned electronic device used to track things. In this
case—us. They didn’t have any trouble finding us because they knew exactly where we
were.”

It shouldn’t have surprised Sarah since they had already agreed that their enemy had
to be both smart and organized. But it did surprise her. And it gave her a creepy
feeling, even worse than being watched. Someone knew every place they had been, every
stop they had made. It was as if a ghostly companion had come along
in the backseat, smiling derisively because they’d thought they were alone.

“Did you remove it?” she asked him, trying to keep her voice steady.

“No.” He looked at her intently. “Let’s make it work for us.”

“How?”

“By leading them on a wild-goose chase while we head in another direction. How do
you feel about a quick but roundabout trip to Chicago?”

Her first impulse was to say that was the wrong direction, but she thought she had
some idea of what he had in mind. “Then we’d double back?”

“Later. After we get rid of this car.”

Sarah thought about that, then said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just put the bug somewhere
else—maybe on a bus or something? You shouldn’t have to lose your car because of this.”

He shook his head. “This bug has a magnetic seal, and I’m betting they’d know it if
we tried to switch it to another vehicle. But if
we
switch vehicles, they won’t know. And by the time they find out, we should be well
on our way back…to wherever it is we’re going. And I was about ready to trade this
car in anyway. We need something more rugged, maybe a Jeep or some other four-wheel-drive
utility. Our romp through the woods proved that.”

“We couldn’t just switch vehicles here?”

“We could. But if we want to throw them off the track
for any time at all, we should head in a direction other than north for a while. Besides,
I have a friend in Chicago in the car business who’ll let me trade this car and conveniently
lose the paperwork for at least a few days, which might give us a little more time.”

Paperwork could be traced, Sarah knew. And the DMV could almost certainly be accessed
with a computer and the right codes, so they had to assume the enemy could do just
that. At least that. But she still felt profoundly uneasy. So much time and distance
would be lost. “If you have to wait until Monday to trade the car…”

Tucker started to reach for her hand but stopped himself before he touched her—and
both of them were aware of that reluctance. “Chicago’s only ten or twelve hours from
here, Sarah. We won’t lose much time. We can take a more direct route east as soon
as the trade’s made, and be heading north again by Monday night.”

“With only a few days of September left.”

“It’s a risk, I know. We could just tear the bug off and leave it in the trash can
out there. But if we do that, there’s a good chance they’d still be able to find us.
This car is fairly visible, and they know we’re driving it. They could guess we’d
still be heading north. If they have the right connections in law enforcement or just
the right equipment, they could track this car’s GPS. Or they could even have all
the major highways covered somehow, have people on the lookout for us. But even more,
we can’t be sure they didn’t plant something else in this car. Something I wouldn’t
recognize as dangerous to us. And that’s a chance we
can’t
take.”

Slowly, Sarah nodded. But in her mind was the panicked awareness of delay and time
lost.

It was almost October.