The First Prophet (43 page)

Varden dropped like a stone.

“Aw, gee, did that hurt?” Brodie stared down at him pitilessly.

Tucker came through the doorway to stand beside him and said reflectively, “Terrible
waste of thirty-year-old scotch.”

“You wasted the first bottle,” Brodie reminded him.

Sarah threw herself into Tucker’s arms.

“Not wasted,” Tucker said a bit thickly, his arms tight around her. “Hey, let’s get
the hell out of here. This place is on fire.”

Brodie set an unused Molotov cocktail aside with a sigh. “You two go on. I’ll drag
him along. Guess we can’t leave him down here to roast, much as I’d love to.”

Sarah avoided the spreading fire and darted over to grab the kerosene lamp to light
their way back through the tunnel; the two men had infrared goggles hanging around
their necks, but she didn’t feel much like plunging back into the darkness.

There was a crash from above and the floor of the church shuddered beneath the weight
of whatever had fallen, so they didn’t waste any more time. Sarah and Tucker led the
way swiftly, while Brodie followed with an unconscious Varden slung over one shoulder.

“Where’s the other one?” Sarah asked breathlessly as they hurried along the tunnel.
“The one Varden wanted to kill Tucker?”

“I found him long before he heard that order,” Brodie replied. “Knocked him cold and
dragged him to the mouth of the tunnel. Any sign of Duran?”

“No. Varden said this was his game.”

Brodie grunted. “That explains a few things.”

“Like what?” Tucker demanded as they emerged from the tunnel and into bright daylight.

“Like why he baited a trap. Not Duran’s style.” Brodie dumped Varden unceremoniously
just outside the tunnel and looked around with a frown. “Now, where the hell—”

“No need to clean up the mess, Brodie. I’ll do that.”

It was a deep, pleasant voice, cool and oddly resonant, and Sarah knew who he was
even before she jerked around to find him standing only a few feet away.

Duran.

Not an average man.

He was tall, athletic; physical power was obvious even though he wore a dark trench
coat open over a sober business suit. He was dark, his hair the true black of a raven’s
wing, and strikingly pale and almost iridescent greenish eyes looked out of an extraordinarily
handsome face.

Sarah was vaguely aware that both Brodie and Tucker had drawn guns and leveled them
at the man, but he was looking at her. And she recognized him.

“I’ve seen your face,” she said slowly. “I’ve seen you. In my visions.”

He didn’t look surprised, merely nodding, and he stood relaxed and apparently at ease
despite the guns pointed at him.

rodie said, “I’ve been waiting for you to turn up, Duran.”

Those pale eyes flickered toward him, then returned to Sarah’s face. “My apologies,
Miss Gallagher.”

“Why?” she asked blankly.

“This has been badly handled from the beginning. There was no need for so much…trauma.”

“I suppose my dying in the house fire would have been much less traumatic for everybody
involved?”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

She knew it wasn’t wise to try, but she let her senses reach out anyway, very carefully.

Immediately, she felt he was a dangerous man, yet that was only an intuitive judgment
rather than something definite. She sensed no threat from him. In fact, she sensed…nothing.
Not even shadows.

It was as if whatever made him the man he was—his personality, his spirit, his soul—were
encased in something she simply could not penetrate.

Not, at least, without touching him.

Tucker said, “If you think you’re going to get your slimy hands on her now, think
again.”

Duran glanced at him, then shrugged wide shoulders. “With a small army protecting
her, I imagine you’re correct, Mr. Mackenzie.”

Tucker looked a bit surprised, and distinctly unbelieving, but since it wasn’t the
moment to bring him up to date on what they knew and had surmised, Sarah merely said,
“I won’t stop looking back over my shoulder. Just so you know.”

Duran smiled again, and there seemed to be a flicker of honest amusement in his pale
eyes. “Noted.”

They could hear, faintly, the sounds of sirens approaching, and Duran added dryly,
“It seems the local officials have finally taken note of the fire. Your people have
pulled out; I suggest you do the same.”

“And just leave you standing here?” Brodie demanded. “Why the hell shouldn’t I drop
you now and save myself a lot of trouble down the road?”

Duran looked at him and, pleasantly, said, “I have a mess to clean up. And we both
know you aren’t going to shoot me, Brodie. The only man you could kill in cold blood
would be the man who killed your wife—a crime you know I’m not guilty of.”

“What about Cait?” Brodie demanded harshly, not reacting in any visible way to the
mention of a dead wife.

Duran shook his head slightly. “None of my people killed her.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe.” Duran’s voice remained pleasant. “But if I were you,
I’d look inside my own house. For a traitor.”

Brodie’s finger tightened on the trigger for an instant, and his face was stone. But
then he swore and said to Sarah and Tucker, “Let’s get out of here. Now.”

They left Duran standing there, and when Sarah glanced back, it was to see him looking
down at Varden’s unconscious body with a singular lack of expression.

The rendezvous point was about two miles away, and when Sarah, Tucker, and Brodie
arrived at the clearing not far off the road, they found another Jeep waiting for
them.

Murphy was sitting on the hood. A tall and very athletic woman with short, spiky blond
hair and fierce green eyes, she looked like somebody the Navy SEALs might have trained,
especially since she was wearing fatigues.

Sarah had met her only briefly and Tucker hadn’t met her at all, so introductions
were in order. As seemed to be her nature, Murphy was taciturn, merely nodding at
Tucker, but then she said something that stopped them in their tracks.

“We’ve lost Leigh.”

“What are you talking about?” Brodie demanded.

Murphy’s voice was flat, hard. “She started the fire, as planned. And then—I don’t
know what happened. All I know is that I saw her inside the church, just as the roof
started to cave in. Nick and I checked it out, but there was so much heat and smoke…He
stayed back there to lurk in the woods and see what the cops find.”

Brodie stood very still, his body rigid. His face was gray, his eyes hollow. “We have
to look for her,” he said mechanically. “Something else could have happened to her.”
He looked at Sarah. “Tell me something else happened to her.”

She had closed her mind so tightly in order to get into the church that opening it
widely now required an effort. But as soon as Sarah made that effort, she felt an
icy wave
sweep over her, shaking her badly and leaving behind it nothing but an empty ache.

She was holding Tucker’s hand and was grateful for his strength and the solid warmth
of him beside her. He hadn’t known Leigh, but he felt Sarah’s pain and loss, and his
mind reached out instinctively to offer her compassion. It was a light but comforting
touch she needed.

She put her other hand on Brodie’s arm. “I don’t…I don’t think so. She’s gone, Brodie.
I can’t sense her at all.”

He drew a deep breath. “Christ.” He looked suddenly much older than his years. First
Cait and now Leigh. This time, the price had been high indeed.

Tucker asked quietly, “Why would she have gone in there?”

It was Murphy who answered him, her voice still hard but beginning to crack around
the edges. “She might have seen one of them still trapped in there. She would have
gone in.”

“Even for one of them?” Tucker asked.

“Even for one of them.”

It was decided not to return to Leigh’s house. Murphy vanished for a few minutes and
then returned to lead the way to what she called a safe house in Portland. Nick would
meet them there later, and Murphy and Nick would remain with the others for the night,
then go their separate ways in the morning while Brodie took Tucker and Sarah back
to Richmond.

The first part went according to plan, but once they reached the house in Portland,
one last surprise awaited them.

It was Sarah who realized that there was a faint sound coming from Tucker’s computer
case (which she had packed up and brought with her after he’d been taken from the
hotel), but before anyone could panic, she said, “It sounds like e-mail again.”

Brodie and Murphy looked at each other, and it was she who said, “Even if the machine
is on, this shouldn’t be happening. This place is a dead zone for wireless, I made
sure of that.”

Tucker sat down in the living room and got the computer from its case, placing it
on the coffee table. It continued to beep quietly, regularly.

It was not on.

Tucker hesitated before turning it on, looking at the others and saying, “This is
almost as creepy as finding them in my head.”

“Sure it isn’t a low battery?” Murphy asked, but not as if she considered that a possibility.

“When it’s off? No. But it was on battery power when I left it at the hotel the other
night. I’d be surprised if it has any power at all.”

But it had power.

Power enough, anyway, to bring up a blank screen instead of the program manager, a
black screen.

Words appeared on the screen as if they were being written as they watched, bright
white against the black
background, and the voice behind the words was so evident that they could almost hear
it, low, pleasant, incongruously courteous.

Duran.

Brodie sat down heavily in a chair across from Tucker, his face white and his eyes
filled with a terrible awareness. “Jesus Christ. It was Leigh he was after all along.
This whole thing…just to get Leigh.”

“Then she’s alive,” Tucker said.

Sarah, with a good idea of what it would cost Leigh to survive, shook her head numbly.
“She would have preferred to die in the fire. Believe me.”

It was Murphy who said, “I bet when Nick gets here, he’ll tell us the cops found a
body in the church. A woman’s body, burned beyond recognition. If Duran’s been planning
this all along, he would have been prepared.”

Brodie slammed his hand down on the arm of the chair with a force that made them all
jump, then shot to his feet and left the house.

“He needs some time to himself,” Murphy told the others.

“He hates to lose,” Sarah murmured.