The First Prophet (25 page)

“Goddammit, will you talk to me?”

“About what?” It wasn’t until Tucker sat back and stared across the table at her with
a certain amount of frustration that Sarah realized how she was acting. She shook
her head. “I’m sorry. Really, Tucker. I’m just…unsettled today.”

“Do you know why?”

“It’s nothing I can put my finger on.” She glanced back toward the dark stranger to
find that an equally handsome female companion had joined him and had his full attention.
To Tucker, she added, “Just jumpy, I guess. I didn’t sleep very well.”

He was silent for a few moments while the waiter returned with their drinks, then
frowned and said, “Have you tried to focus on the jumpiness?”

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“Sarah.” He leaned toward her, resting his forearms on the table and holding her gaze
steadily. “I read somewhere that using psychic abilities is like listening. Have you
tried that?”

Lightly, she said, “All I hear is a fairly noisy hotel lobby. And somebody just dropped
a dish back in the kitchen.”

Since that crash had been evident to everyone in the restaurant, Tucker barely wasted
a nod. “Shut out all the sounds. Listen for what’s underneath.”

She broke the hold of his gaze and looked down to find that she’d unconsciously crumbled
half a bread stick. Brushing the crumbs into a neat pile, she said, “I can’t hear
anything.”

“You aren’t trying.”

“I told you. I’m tired.”

“You can’t afford to be tired,” Tucker said, his voice suddenly hard. “If listening
will help keep you alive, you have to listen.”

Sarah refused to look at him. “I’ve told you. It
hurts
. Can’t you understand that?”

Very quietly, Tucker said, “I think you have a choice. Hurt a little now to save your
life, or avoid the pain now—and die the death you saw for yourself.”

“Then that’s my choice to make, isn’t it?” She drew a breath and let it out slowly.
Destiny. Fate. Is it really my choice?

Whatever Tucker might have said in response was prevented by the return of their waiter
with the meal, but when they were alone again, he said, “I’m in this now too, Sarah.
Don’t forget that.”

He didn’t say anything else, and neither did Sarah. And she didn’t taste the meal
she ate, though she ate as much as she could of what was on her plate. The pressure
behind her eyes throbbed.

They didn’t linger in the restaurant, and they both remained silent as they crossed
the huge lobby to the bank of elevators. Sarah noted absently that the handsome dark
man seemed even more enthralled by his lovely companion, since he was smiling at her
in a way that would cause any woman’s heart to stop. She envied them their simple
closeness.

Tucker unlocked the door to their room and went in
first, automatically cautious. But it was Sarah who saw what was different.

On the desk beside the still-humming laptop was a lovely vase of cut flowers.

Sarah found a card among the blooms and studied it in silence for a moment before
handing it to Tucker. The message was simple.

WELCOME TO CLEVELAND

Duran sent his people on to the next destination, but did not immediately go himself.
Nobody questioned him, of course. His methods might be unorthodox and occasionally
paradoxical, but he got results. Not even Varden, the most treacherous lieutenant
Duran had ever been forced to work with, had been able to undermine his authority—despite
several subtle and creative attempts.

Duran drove himself out of the city of Cleveland and to a remote warehouse being used
for storage. The place was locked up and deserted, but the key Duran had been provided
got him inside, and once inside he found that the dirty windows allowed in enough
light to see by.

He walked through shoulder-high stacks of boxes with no interest in their contents,
working his way gradually toward the center of the building. When he reached
his goal, he saw that a skylight directly above his position threw light down around
him in a neat circle. He wondered whether she had chosen this spot for that reason.

“You’re late,” she told him, stepping out of the shadows.

“No,” he said coolly, “you’re early.”

She shrugged. “I was brought up right. How about you, Duran? Military training?”

He ignored the question. “Do you have it?”

If anything, she seemed amused by his refusal to reply to her seemingly innocent question.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” She took a step toward him and pulled a large manila
envelope from inside her jacket, handing it across the space between them.

He took it but didn’t open it. Instead, looking at her, he said, “Any trouble getting
this?”

“Other than risking everything, you mean?” Her smile was sardonic. “No, no trouble.”

“How long do I have?”

She shrugged again, patently unconcerned. “I would say that depends on the current…situation.
If everything hits the fan right on schedule, you’ll have a week at the outside. From
today. After that, you might as well burn it for all the good it’ll do you.”

“I need more time.” His tone was measured, his expression carefully neutral.

“Sorry. It isn’t my fault you’ve set things up this way.”

“I had no choice,” he reminded her.

“Maybe. Or maybe you just got too ambitious. In any case, it’s your problem. Not mine.”

Pleasantly, he said, “You really don’t like me very much, do you?”

“No,” she replied, equally pleasant. “I really don’t.”

She didn’t say good-bye. She just backed away until the shadows swallowed her.

Duran tapped the edge of the envelope against his hand for a moment, then sighed and
slid it into his coat pocket, still without opening it. Then he turned and left the
warehouse, not forgetting to lock the door behind him.

And went to join his people.

Hurry, Sarah.

No matter how far you run, we’ll find you. We’ll always find you.

Destiny. Meant to be.

“If it was them,” Tucker said as the Jeep sped along the interstate highway toward
Syracuse, “what the hell are they up to?”

“Maybe they wanted to remind us—me—that it’s no use running,” Sarah offered quietly,
shutting out the whispers in her head.

Tucker, who had taken a roundabout route from the hotel to the interstate and convinced
himself they weren’t being followed, said, “The hotel must have sent the flowers.”

“They said not.”

“Yeah, but they couldn’t find any paperwork on the delivery. I bet somebody just screwed
up.”

“And put the flowers in our room despite the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign? I’ve never heard of a hotel doing that.”

He sent her a quick look. “They couldn’t possibly have found us so quickly, not after
we ditched the car in Chicago.”

“No. Logically, they couldn’t have. Unless they were much closer than we thought,
saw us drive away in this Jeep, and followed us to Cleveland.”

“You believe that’s what they did?”

“I believe we’d better assume it’s what they did. That someone is following, and closely.”

Tucker was silent for some miles, then spoke abruptly. “What are your feelings telling
you?”

Sarah half-turned in the seat to look at him. “Not much. Nothing, really. But…”

“But what?”

She hesitated, then said, “For days now, I’ve felt a…pressure building inside me.
In my head. Behind my eyes, like a sinus headache. The whole time we were at the hotel,
it really bothered me. As soon as we left, the pressure eased a bit. I can barely
feel it now.”

“You think you were reacting to their nearness?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I felt.”

He frowned. “You said you didn’t sleep well. Because of the pressure?”

“I guess.”

“Do you remember your dreams?”

“No. But I kept waking up, and whenever I did, I felt restless and uneasy.”

“Not frightened?”

Being frightened was such a constant state that Sarah had to think about his question,
had to ask herself whether she had awakened with more fear than usual. She thought
about it and shook her head. “No, not especially frightened. Just uneasy. Anxious.
The way you feel when—oh, when you hear a faint sound you can’t immediately identify.
Tense, sort of listening. Then I’d relax and, eventually, go back to sleep. That happened
over and over all night.”

Tucker was silent for a few more miles, then said, “If we suppose they were back there
at the hotel, watching us, the question becomes—why didn’t they make a move? Maybe
the answer is what I guessed before. Maybe you’re becoming aware of them on some level,
even if it’s unconsciously. And maybe they know that.”

“How would they know, supposing it’s true?”

“Experience, maybe. Look, from what we’ve been able to find out, these people have
been after psychics for years. Decades. Along the way, they must have…oh, hell, learned
their trade, for want of a better phrase. Learned what worked for them. Suppose they
found out through trial and error that they have only a relatively small window of
opportunity during which they can move boldly to grab a psychic?”

“Until the psychic starts to react to their presence?”

“Why not? An enemy as large in number as you feel they are must give off a hell of
a lot of negative energy. From the research I’ve done about psychics, that seems to
be the thing: energy. Psychics tune into it at various…frequencies. React to it when
there’s a lot around, like during a storm.”

Slowly, she said, “Storms have bothered me since I came out of that coma.”

“It’s not uncommon, or so I’ve been told. Say that’s it, say whatever you can do,
the basis of any psychic ability is energy. And in the beginning, whenever a psychic
becomes psychic, or wakes up to it—whatever—the energy has to be almost overpowering.”

Sarah nodded silently.

“So the mind learns to protect itself. It learns to build walls or some other kind
of protection against that overwhelming energy. Maybe it learns to filter through
all the static and focus on certain frequencies.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

“And it works, to varying degrees. But when these dangerous people are close by, this
enemy, they must give off a different kind of energy. Dark, negative. A threat. Even
if it’s unconscious, I’m willing to bet that out of sheer self-preservation, any good
psychic would catch on pretty quick and be able to start tuning in on them. On that
particular frequency. It would naturally make those psychics a lot more wary. It might
even cause them to wake up in the night feeling uneasy.”

“But why would that keep the other side at a distance?” Sarah wondered. “Even if they
assume I can feel them near me—so what? They outnumber us, we know that. They burned
down my house, and we’re reasonably sure they killed a cop as well as some psychics,
so they’re clearly not hesitant to use violence.”

“No, but maybe they’re afraid of attention. Grabbing somebody in a crowded hotel could
be a noisy proposition.
It could draw too many innocent bystanders. Too many policemen not on the payroll.
That could be another reason they seem to make their moves at night.”

“So they’re just watching and waiting? Looking for an opportunity to get me when it
won’t be noticed? When I can be caught off guard so I’m not likely to make too much
noise?”

“It makes sense. As much as anything in this makes sense.”

“Then why leave those flowers? Why make it obvious?”

“A terrorist tactic is my bet,” Tucker said slowly. “Nobody can be wary twenty-four
hours a day; if they can keep you rattled, frightened, they stand a better chance
of either driving you to make a mistake or just plain exhausting you so you can’t
see them coming.”

It was working, Sarah thought. In spades. She looked at him for a moment longer, then
turned her gaze forward. The highway was busy on this Tuesday afternoon, and as she
watched the cars ahead of them, she couldn’t help wondering whether they were as innocent
as they seemed. Maybe there were watchers in that van up ahead, or that racy-looking
Corvette. Maybe the truck that had passed them a mile back had done so only to avoid
suspicion, the watcher inside handing the duty off to someone else along the way.