Текст книги "The First Prophet"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

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“You haven’t eaten anything today,” Leigh said gently, pushing a small plate of cheese and crackers across the coffee table to her guest. “You have to eat, Sarah. The more you use your abilities, the more energy you’ll need.”

Vaguely, Sarah wondered whether that was why her abilities had gotten so much stronger in the last week, because Tucker had made sure she’d eaten on a regular basis; before that, she had been very prone to skipping meals.

“He took care of you by instinct,” Leigh agreed, her tone casual as though part of the conversation had not happened silently. “That’s rare, you know. He values what you can do, even if he’s still adjusting to it. He’ll never ask you to be less than you are. And—he’s a bit psychic himself, though he isn’t aware of it. You couldn’t have chosen a better champion.”

Champion. An old word, used the way Leigh used it, but Sarah knew it fit. She ate a cracker absently and said aloud, “I didn’t choose him. I just…accepted him when he came.”

Leigh smiled. “Is that what you did?”

“It’s what I thought I did. I thought I was just…following the path I had to follow.”

“But that was your choice, wasn’t it? To follow the path?”

“I suppose. Except…I always had the feeling that even if I tried to do just the opposite, I’d still end up on the path somehow.”

“You might have. Fate has a way of being insistent about some things, no matter what we do. In any case, you haven’t followed blindly, Sarah. You’ve struggled and questioned. That’s important. We do control our own destinies, you know. In the end. Often imperfectly, but our lives and our fates are what we make of them.”

Sarah frowned. “Then what I saw, my vision…”

“Was a possible future. But not the only one.”

“Someone told me that there was a difference between prediction and prophecy. That one might come true—but the other always does.”

“An arguable point, I suppose. But it’s been my experience that the future is a series of infinite possibilities. Each step we take toward it, each choice and decision, alters the possibilities. This journey is important for you. We all have at least one in our lives, a path that leads us to a crossroads where we have to make the decisions that will determine our future. It’s a path you have to follow.”

Sarah felt a stab of uneasiness. The other woman was smiling, but there was still that darkness lurking and this talk of destiny…“But you said we controlled our destinies.”

Leigh laughed softly. “Sarah, hasn’t it occurred to you that what you foresaw was your future as you decided it would be?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Think about it. You saw a series of images, of symbols. You saw a journey culminating in—what?”

“Death. My death.”

Leigh didn’t seem surprised. “It’s quite likely that was purely symbolic. In visions, the death of the seer often represents a sudden and drastic change in one’s life. A crossroads where a choice must be made. The end of a way of life, of a way of thinking.”

That didn’t reassure Sarah terribly since she had some idea of what would happen if the other side got their hands on her.

The end of a way of life, indeed.

“All right. But you said—it was my future as I decided it would be?”

“Sarah, even the best and strongest of psychics must see through intensely subjective eyes. You might be objective when seeing someone else’s future but never when it’s your own. You know yourself, know your thoughts and wishes and hopes and dreams, and everything you see is filtered through that knowledge even if only subconsciously. So when your mind leaps through time to peek at the future, it’s with the total awareness of your own nature.”

“I still don’t…”

“All right. Think about Tucker. Do you really believe that you accepted him and his help because destiny insisted you should? Or had your mind looked ahead, seen him, known how it was in your nature to respond to him—and offered you a future possibility in which you did just that?”

Sarah thought about that for a long time, turning it over in her mind. She was hardly aware of Leigh’s steady gaze, or of absently eating two more crackers and finishing her coffee.

Finally, she said slowly, “That’s…a lot more complex than I thought it was. And confusing. How can I trust any of what I see if it’s all so subjective? What’s the good of being able to see the future if there are so many possible interpretations of what I see?”

Leigh smiled faintly. “Did you really think this was a good thing?”

Sarah gazed into those old, old eyes and slowly shook her head. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“It’s neither good nor bad,” Leigh told her. “It’s just another sense, like sight or hearing; your eyes and your ears can be fooled. So can this. You can mistake what you see or hear; you can mistake what this sense tells you as well. You can strain your eyes in bad light or too much light, or hurt your ears listening to loud noises; you can injure this sense too.”

“How?”

“By overworking it. By misusing it. By not allowing it the time and quiet to develop properly.”

Sarah heard a warning and shook her head. “I don’t have time. You know that.”

“You have to find Tucker.”

“Yes.”

“He’s alive,” Leigh said.

“Yes. But they have him.” It was the first time that the other side had been mentioned, and Sarah watched Leigh intently to judge her reaction.

She wasn’t sure what that reaction was. Those old eyes met hers squarely, but the quiet that lay behind them gave nothing away.

“They, Sarah?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

“All right. I won’t. And I won’t pretend that I believe you can confront them on your own. That won’t get Tucker away from them. They’ll just kill him and take you.”

Sarah drew a breath. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?” Tentatively, Sarah tried to reach in past those quiet dark eyes.

Without a word aloud, Leigh let her in.

The pain was nearest the surface and came first, the awful, tearing pain of friends and loved ones lost, of tragedy and failure. It was dark and vast, an emptiness that ached and would never be filled. Then the emotional struggle of being different, the sense of isolation, the shame and loneliness. The battle for understanding, for control. For acceptance.

The years were there, many more years than Sarah had imagined, and they were filled with conflict and secrets and commitment. People coming here briefly with desperate faces and frightened eyes, and then passing on out of her hands. Other people coming here and talking with quiet courage and utter dedication. Plans discussed, arrangements made. Clandestine lines of communication formed and broken and altered.

And finally, deep, deep inside, there were the shadows, lurking like the worst nightmare her mind could conjure. They loomed and flitted and filled all the dark corners. They brought terror with them and left destruction as they passed, and they were many, so many…

Slowly, Sarah opened her eyes. She felt utterly exhausted with the effort of looking inside Leigh’s mind and with the trauma of what she had found there. “My God.”

“That’s all we see,” Leigh said. “Shadows. Even the strongest psychics we know have been unable to learn anything about them, not who they are, or where they’re based, or what’s behind their actions. We don’t know how they’re able to block us, but somehow they can—possibly by using the psychics they’ve already taken. But we can sense that shadowy part of them, and sometimes it helps us identify them; if you come into physical contact with one, you’ll see or sense the shadows. But as you’ve already found out, they also use tools, other psychics and ordinary people, and those are not so easy to identify.

“And touching them is usually not a very good idea.” Leigh’s smile was twisted. “By that point, it tends to be too late to escape them.”

Sarah drew a deep breath. She understood, now, where the darkness inside Leigh Munroe came from. “You keep saying ‘we.’ Who are you talking about?”

“You aren’t alone, Sarah. We aren’t alone. There are people, psychics and nonpsychics, who are trying very hard to find a way to fight and defeat the other side.” She shook her head slightly, and her voice gentled. “We’ll talk about that. But right now, you need to rest.”

“I can’t rest. Tucker—”

“Sarah, you can’t help Tucker if you’re exhausted. You need to sleep, for a few hours at least, and then you need to eat. Then we’ll talk about what to do.”

Bitterly, Sarah said, “I obviously can’t do very much at all if two minutes of effort costs me this much.” She was almost swaying with weariness.

“Those two minutes were rather remarkable, if you only knew.” Leigh came over to take her arm and urge her gently to her feet. “Come on. I have a very comfortable bed upstairs.”

Sarah didn’t want to go to sleep. She needed to find Tucker. But just getting to her feet, even with Leigh’s help, was almost more than she could manage, and the stairs left her weak and shaking.

She was asleep even before Leigh could cover her with a blanket.

Leigh stood gazing down at her sleeping guest for a long moment, then went slowly downstairs, frowning. She gathered the tray from the living room and took it to the kitchen. A glance at the clock made her frown deepen, and she reached for the phone on the breakfast bar. The number she punched in was a familiar one.

“Hello.”

“It’s Leigh. She’s here.”

“At last. Were we right?”

“She looked into my mind as if through an open door, all the way to the center. And she has no idea what she did. She may well be the one we’ve been waiting for.”

“Good. I’ll send them immediately.”

“Tell them to hurry. She won’t sleep long.”

The first thing Tucker was aware of was a pounding headache. Next came the thought that someone had filled his mouth and ears with cotton. He was awake yet couldn’t seem to get his eyes open or hear anything at all, even his own breathing. He thought he was lying on his side on something marginally softer than the floor, and he had the sense of a lot of space around him.

And someone was watching him.

Playing possum seemed like a good idea, at least until his head stopped pounding and he could think clearly. In any case, pretending he couldn’t move wasn’t a problem. He couldn’t move. He didn’t think he was tied up, but his body felt cold and leaden. Pretending he was still asleep was harder; the temptation to try to look around and find out where he was was almost overpowering.

Gradually, as he concentrated on feigning sleep and waited for life to return to his limbs, his ears began working again. He heard his breathing, soft and even. He heard, faintly, a dripping sound. He heard a peculiar low rustling sound, almost as if…as if many people somewhere nearby spoke together in whispers.

“I hear voices, many voices all around me, all talking at once, but almost whispering, so quiet that I can’t tell what they’re saying.”

Because he had to, Tucker allowed his eyes to open just a slit. At first, he thought even those tiny muscles were refusing to obey him, but then he realized the truth. His eyes were open. And he couldn’t see a goddamned thing.

Either it was very, very dark in this place—or he was blind.

And someone was still nearby, watching him.

FOURTEEN

It was cold and dark, and somebody was watching him.

Like a nightmare holding her in its grip, Sarah could feel Tucker’s waking realizations, and they chilled her to the bone. She wanted desperately to be there with him, to offer comfort, and reached out instinctively in the effort to touch him. She thought she managed it, thought he was suddenly aware of her—and then there was a sharp jab in his arm and his awareness faded rapidly, leaving her alone once more.

She swam up out of the depths of sleep, still tired enough that the emergence was slow and gradual, her heart aching because for an instant Tucker had seemed close enough to touch.

She couldn’t seem to get her eyes open, but her ears were working, and she heard, dimly, voices speaking downstairs. Without even deciding to, she listened with that other sense.

“Will she trust us?”

“I think so. What choice does she have?”

“What about Mackenzie?”

“She wants to go after him.”

“When they’re holding him as bait? That’s insane. In another week or two, maybe, but—”

“He’ll probably be dead in another week or two, Brodie. You know that. She came out of the coma in early April; this is the last day of September.”

“I know, I know. Six months, max, and they miss their chance. If we can keep her alive and out of their hands for just a couple more weeks, Duran will back off.”

“Maybe they won’t kill Mackenzie.”

“And maybe the sun won’t rise tomorrow morning. But I wouldn’t bet against the probability.”

“Dammit, Brodie, you’re so—”

“Look, Cait, I know what I know. I’m sorry as hell Duran and his bunch got their hands on Mackenzie. I’m sorry I didn’t do my job and make contact with him and Gallagher days ago. But there’s not a damn thing I can do about that now.”

“We can help her go after Mackenzie.”

“Help her? Help her face down Duran and God knows how many of his goons? I don’t like the odds, Cait.”

“The odds may be better than you think. You heard what Leigh said. Sarah Gallagher is special. She may be the one.”

“In a year or two she may be the one. Maybe even in six months. But right now, she’s a very tired and confused lady with new psychic abilities she doesn’t understand and can’t control worth a damn.”

“Maybe, but—”

“Cait, Brodie’s right. Sarah’s at a very vulnerable stage right now. She needs help to make the transition, and time to make it at her own pace. If she pushes herself too hard, we could lose her. It’s…happened once before. About a year ago, before you joined. Brodie remembers.”

“Christ, yes, I remember. And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it never happens again.”

Sarah opened her eyes, and instantly the clear voices in her head became the distant murmur coming from downstairs. She lay there for a moment or two, staring at the ceiling while questions and thoughts went round and round in her head.

Finally, she threw back the blanket covering her and got out of bed. The clock on the nightstand told her it was after four in the afternoon; she had slept for hours. She washed her face in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and finger-combed her hair, mostly ignoring the reflection in the mirror that told her she was too pale and still hollow-eyed with weariness.

Without pausing or hesitating, she went downstairs and into Leigh Munroe’s living room.

Three people were sitting there, and as soon as Sarah walked in, the man rose to his feet. He was a big man, physically powerful enough to give one pause, and very good looking in a dark, brooding way. He made Sarah think of a soldier; something about the way he stood, about his sharp sentry eyes and spring-coiled stillness, spoke of danger and the readiness for danger.

“I’m John Brodie,” he said to Sarah.

“I know.” She looked at the woman sitting beside Leigh on the couch, a younger woman with dark gold hair and friendly gray eyes in yet another face she had encountered along the way, and said, “You’re Cait.”

“Yes. Cait Desmond.” She looked pleased, but whether it was because Sarah recognized her or just knew her name was hard to say.

Sarah nodded. “I…heard you all talking. When I woke up. So I listened.”

Brodie glanced at Leigh. “Did you—”

Leigh shook her head. “No. I had no idea she was even awake. Remarkable.”

“Who are you?” Sarah asked Brodie.

“If you were listening to us,” he replied, “you must know.”

“I know what I heard. I don’t know what it means.”

“We’re the good guys,” Cait said, in the tone of someone who’d wanted to say that for a long time.

Brodie looked at her and then, dryly, said, “We left our white hats at home this morning.”

Sarah ignored that byplay, still a bit suspicious and too anxious about Tucker to feel much humor. Looking at Brodie, she said, “You—the two of you—have been following us.”

“Until Chicago,” he agreed. “When you traded cars, we lost you.”

“Sit down, Sarah,” Leigh invited, gesturing toward the chair beside Brodie’s.

She did, slowly, trying to think. To Brodie, she said, “The bug. The tracking device. It was yours?”

He nodded, sitting down. In answer to her obvious confusion, he said, “The other side doesn’t use electronic tracking devices, so far anyway. We don’t know why.”

Sarah thought it was interesting that he used the same phrase to describe their enemy that she and Tucker used. It was a fleeting thought, however. “But they were able to track us. They were there in Cleveland. And they got Tucker here in Portland when we’d been here hardly more than twelve hours.”

Grimly, Brodie said, “They’re very, very good. And they seem to be all over the place, certainly in every major city.”

Sarah was still trying to think clearly. “If they were with us all the way, why didn’t they move? Why didn’t they try to get me?”

It was Leigh who asked, “Why do you think they didn’t?”

“Tucker said…he thought it was because I could sense them near me. He said they’d only move against us in the middle of the night, while I was sleeping and unaware of them. And only then if they could do it without attracting attention. That was why we stayed in large hotels and kept moving in the daytime.”

Leigh nodded. “Very wise.”

“And they did move at night, last night while I was asleep. But I don’t understand how they were able to get Tucker. I know they weren’t in the room and I know he wouldn’t have left me alone.”

“Not in his right mind,” Leigh murmured.

Sarah stared at her. “You mean they…did something to him?”

It was Brodie who answered that. “Probably. One of the things we know about them is that they have some psychics under their control who are sometimes able to influence the minds of others.”

“Neil Mason tried to influence my mind,” Sarah said. “But I was able to…keep him out.”

Leigh nodded, unsurprised by the information. “We know of him. One of their tools, or was.”

“Was?”

“Gone,” Brodie said unemotionally. “We checked on him periodically; as of this morning, his house was empty and the neighbors have no idea when he left or where he went.”

“They don’t like failure,” Sarah murmured, chilled.

Leigh nodded. “And he failed. You were getting stronger by then, and when he failed, they knew they had missed their chance to convert you that way.”

“Why didn’t they try earlier? When I was still so confused and didn’t know how to resist them?”

“As nearly as we can figure,” Brodie said, “they use their psychics very sparingly, always trying more…conventional means first. We think it may be because when a psychic touches another psychic’s mind, it’s like opening a corridor between them, leaving both vulnerable. They seem to avoid that whenever possible, though we aren’t sure why. It may be another reason why they decided to tap into Mackenzie’s mind instead of yours.”

“Think. Seem. May.” Sarah heard the frustration in her own voice. “You don’t know much for certain, do you?”

“No, we don’t.” Brodie met her gaze steadily. “Can you tell us more?”

Her eyes fell. “No.”

Gently, Leigh said, “Not yet, anyway. But, Sarah, we believe you may be able to tell us a great deal about them. One day. When your abilities have had the time to develop properly.”

“And until then—what? Hide me away somewhere?”

“No,” Brodie said. “Hiding isn’t the best idea.”

Cait spoke up finally. “And in another week or two, you’ll be much safer from them.”

Sarah remembered the conversation she had overheard. “Six months since I woke up a psychic. Why six months?”

“Another thing we don’t know,” Brodie replied. “But it always holds true for the psychics like you, the ones who aren’t born with it but suffer head injuries or some other kind of trauma later in life.”

Leigh said, “In the life of every psychic, there comes a moment when full potential is realized. Control may be lacking, knowledge almost always is, but the ability is there. For a new psychic, a person who becomes psychic abruptly when all the other faculties are fully mature, the threshold seems to occur around the six-month mark. From the evidence we’ve seen so far, it appears that once that threshold is crossed, the other side finds it difficult—if not impossible—to convert a psychic. Whatever it is they want of us, we apparently become useless to them.”

“You become a threat to them,” Brodie corrected.

“We don’t know that,” Leigh argued. “Not for certain.”

Brodie let out a short laugh and looked at Sarah. “It’s another assumption of ours, based on the fact that we’re sure they continue to keep tabs on psychics long after they seemingly give up trying to take them, and because there have been several disappearances, possibly even deaths, of psychics we thought were safe.”

“Nothing was ever proven,” Leigh said.

“Nothing ever is,” Brodie retorted. “But there are some assumptions we’d damned well better make to keep our people safe.”

“I don’t believe we’re of any use to them once the threshold is crossed,” Leigh argued. “Those disappearances all involved psychics who were having trouble adjusting to their new lives; they probably just wanted to drop out of sight and did just that.”

“It would be nice to think so, Leigh—but I don’t. Whatever these bastards want with psychics, it doesn’t just end when you cross that threshold of yours. They’ve got something else in mind for you, I can feel it in my gut.” He laughed shortly. “I may not be psychic, but I know what I know. Taking new and inexperienced psychics is just step one of their plan. Step two involves the rest of you.”

Leigh seemed unwillingly impressed by his certainty, but shook her head a little. “I don’t feel that. And none of the others has felt it.”

“Maybe all of you are too close. Maybe it takes somebody without psychic abilities to see it.”

“Maybe.”

Sarah probably should have been disturbed by this lack of consensus among people who had fought the other side much longer than she and Tucker had, but instead it gave her an odd feeling of comfort. This entire thing was so bizarre, so inexplicable, that it felt wonderfully normal to watch and listen to people who couldn’t agree on the details—but were very clear on what the problem was.

“What about people like you?” she asked Leigh. “You’ve been psychic from birth, right? Why are you safe from them?”

“She isn’t,” Brodie said. “She just thinks she is.”

Leigh smiled at him briefly, then looked at Sarah. “Like many born psychics, I had nonpsychic parents who tried their best to make me—at least seem—normal. I was always encouraged to hide what I could do, to keep to myself the things I saw. I learned secrecy at a very young age.”

“So the other side wasn’t aware of you?”

“So we believe. When I finally did go public, so to speak, it was with my full potential realized. They never even tried to take me.”

But they had, Sarah knew, taken plenty of her friends through the years. That was why Leigh Munroe was involved in this. Not out of fear for herself, but out of fear for others.

Brodie leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked intently at Sarah. “They outnumber us, Sarah, but we’re growing. In strength and numbers. We’re getting organized, even if it’s loosely, and we’re fighting back.”

“How?”

“Marshaling our own strength. Gathering what few facts and little information we can lay our hands on, so that we may be able to expose them some day. Finding and protecting psychics, keeping them away from Duran and his goons.”

“Duran?”

Brodie nodded. “The head goon.”

Cait murmured, “Well, he isn’t really a goon.”

Brodie glanced at her, then looked back at Sarah with a wry expression. “Crocodile. Shark. Smiling villain. Whatever the hell you want to call him, he’s obviously in charge, at least of their field operations.”

“Field operations? You make it sound…military.”

“Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. Until we get strong enough as an organization, or find a single psychic who’s strong enough, we have no way of knowing. They don’t leave evidence behind them, not so far.”

Sarah thought about it. “So that’s what you meant when you all were talking earlier? That I might be the one?”

Leigh replied to that, this time obviously in agreement with Brodie. “We’re convinced that a strong enough psychic will be able to find a way past their mental shields and give us the information we need to fight them.”

“What makes you believe I might be that one?”

“I can feel it in you. The strength. The potential.” Leigh smiled. “And I gave you a little test, Sarah.”

“What test?”

“Earlier today, when you looked into my mind. Remember?”

“How could I forget. You opened a door and showed me…everything inside you.”

Leigh shook her head slightly. “You opened that door, Sarah. Something not one in a hundred psychics could have done. The door was not only closed, it was locked—and I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to make those locks strong. But they didn’t stop you. You didn’t force your way past them, you didn’t hurt me. You just opened the door as if it were no barrier at all.”

Sarah didn’t know what to say to that.

“You’re the one, Sarah,” Leigh said. “You’re the key to our future.”

“Well?”

“She’s made contact with Munroe.”

“And?”

“Brodie’s there. And the girl.”

“Then we can assume they’re making plans.”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good.”

It was unsettling, to be told she was so important in a cause she hadn’t even been aware of a week before, and Sarah wasn’t sure what she felt about it. All she knew was that a weight of responsibility was settling on her shoulders, and it was heavy.

After a short silence, it was Brodie who spoke, his voice matter-of-fact. “Until we know who they really are and why they’re taking psychics, all we can do is fight a holding action. They don’t win—but neither do we. And all the while, for every psychic we get to in time, we lose half a dozen more.”

Sarah shook her head. “I never realized there were so many people with psychic abilities.” She saw Brodie, Cait, and Leigh exchange glances, and added immediately, “There’s something weird about that, isn’t there?”

With a slight smile, Leigh said, “Never use the word weird in the presence of people with psychic abilities, especially a born psychic; we’ve heard it entirely too many times in our lives.”

“Tell me,” Sarah insisted, ignoring the wry humor. “I’m tired of being in the dark, and I have a right to know.”

“It’s all supposition, Sarah,” Brodie said.

“All of this is supposition, according to you. So? What is this about the number of psychics?”

Brodie leaned back and gestured slightly toward Leigh, who spoke slowly.

“We don’t know what’s causing it or what it means, Sarah. All we know is that the number of people with psychic abilities is increasing, not only generation by generation, but year by year. More are born. And more are, for want of a better word, made. Created. Changed from latent to active. Twenty-five years ago, there might have been one or two people who became psychic in a given year due to a head injury or some other kind of trauma; this year, so far, you are one of fifteen.”

“What?”

Leigh nodded. “Fifteen that we know of.”

“How many did you get to in time?”

“Three. Not counting you.”

“The others…they were taken?”

Leigh nodded again. “One of them was snatched almost under Brodie’s nose. He wasn’t happy.”

With a grunt, Brodie said, “I hate to lose.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Cait told him loyally. “The guy couldn’t bring himself to believe he could be involved in something so bizarre. He just didn’t believe in the threat against him.”

“We lose some because of that,” Brodie agreed. “Psychic abilities vary; sometimes the people we’re trying to help have no way of knowing the truth of what we try to tell them. They don’t know they can trust us. So they run. Right into one of Duran’s traps.” He looked at Sarah. “That’s why we had to be so careful with you, why we held back the couple of times we got close enough to make contact. It was my decision, and I’ve learned never to approach a wary psychic in the dark. Makes a bad first impression.”

Sarah smiled slightly. “Yes, it would have.”

He nodded. “But we’re here now. You do know you can trust us, or at least you’re giving us the benefit of the doubt. And you do know what we’re up against.”

Softly, Cait said, “And you know, now, how valuable you are.”

Sarah drew a deep breath. “If all this was intended to persuade me not to go after Tucker—it failed.”

“Sarah, you can’t fight them.” Brodie’s voice was steady.

“I can try.”

“You’ll lose. They’ll take you and kill Mackenzie. They’re just waiting for you to come after him. You know that. He’s bait.”

She stared at him for a moment, then shifted her gaze to Leigh. “I came here hoping you could tell me some way to fight them. Teach me how to use my abilities against them.”

“I don’t know how, Sarah. I’m sorry. I can help you learn to use your abilities, but that will take time. It’s a matter of concentration, of focus. Of learning how to tap into those places deep inside you—and outside you.”

“The crossroads. I already found it.”

For the first time, Leigh was obviously surprised. “The crossroads?”

A bit impatiently, Sarah said, “That place we all pass through, the—the junction of past, present, and future.”

“You tapped into that?”

“Yes. Tucker needed to know something and…and I just reached out to find it for him.” For the first time, she realized that each time she had found a new use for her abilities, it was because Tucker had asked it of her or needed it of her.

“And you found it? Something…from the past?”

Sarah nodded. “Someone he knew a long time ago. I had to find out what had happened to her.”

Brodie turned his frowning gaze to Leigh. “That doesn’t sound like what I’d expect from a precognitive psychic.”

“No,” Leigh said slowly, still staring at Sarah. “It isn’t. Sarah, can you tap into that place at will?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know how I found it the first time. It was…for Tucker.”

“You’re in love with Tucker.”

It wasn’t a question, but Sarah found herself nodding even as she felt the shock of awareness. Yes. I’m in love with him.

“You two are lovers?”

Cait, a bit uncomfortably, murmured, “Surely that isn’t important?”