Текст книги "The First Prophet"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

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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?

“Son of a bitch.” Sergeant Lewis stood at the foot of the stairs and watched his breath mist with the curse. He was vaguely aware of one of the men coolly disabling the shop’s security system and going inside, but he didn’t bother to follow.

They wouldn’t be there. They were long gone.

And he was anxious to get out of here. If one of the neighbors happened to wake up and look out a window, he’d have to answer some very uncomfortable questions in the morning.

His cell phone rang just then, and he swiftly drew it out of an inner pocket and answered before it could ring again. “Yeah?” Of course, he knew who it would be. Who else would it be at four o’clock in the fucking morning?

“Well?”

“We missed them.”

“I know that.”

Lewis looked around at darkness and shadows and felt his heart thud a bit faster. You bastard—where are you?

“What I want to know,” the cool voice continued, “is how you intend to find them now that you’ve lost them.”

Lewis gritted his teeth and spoke between them. “I’m sure you have a suggestion.”

“I have several. You won’t like any of them.”

So what else is new.

“Meet me in one hour. The usual place.”

Lewis opened his mouth to object, but the line went dead. Slowly, he closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. He had a hollow feeling about the coming meeting.

A very hollow feeling.

SIX

“Very clever, our Mr. Mackenzie.” Brodie lowered the infrared binoculars and glanced aside to meet Cait’s gaze. “He kept Gallagher out of harm’s way and still managed to take a look at the presumed enemy.”

Cait sniffed and then rubbed her nose. It was cold on the roof of the building across from the antiques shop, and they had been up here for hours. Her nose was beginning to run. “He was too close, if you ask me. If he knew they were coming, why not just take her and run?”

“Maybe he didn’t know they were coming, just thought they might. Or maybe she knew and he wasn’t sure.”

“Even so, they could have been seen sneaking back to the car. We saw them.”

“Umm. But the others didn’t, did they.” Brodie frowned. “Odd, that. They’re usually Johnny-on-the-spot whenever something like this goes down. Wonder who fell asleep at the switch.”

“Maybe that cop. Jeez, how many does that make?”

“Too many. At the local and state levels so far. And impossible to guess who’ll show their face next. Be a lot easier on us if they’d just wear a sign. But at least we have one more name to add to the list.”

Cait rested her chin on her hand as she peered across the street and watched silent men getting silently into weirdly silent cars. “Think he’s a major player?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before, but this was our first case in Richmond, so that doesn’t mean much. I’d give a lot to know who called him just now. He didn’t look very happy about it.”

“You think he removed the evidence I couldn’t find from the shop yesterday, don’t you?”

“I’d bet money on it. Nobody’d expect a cop—probably the first at the scene—to pocket a piece of evidence. At least, nobody but a suspicious bastard like me.”

“Think he did the same thing at Sarah Gallagher’s house? The fire marshal suspected arson, but so far he can’t find any proof.”

Brodie nodded, lifting the binoculars to gaze once more across the street. “Makes sense. They do tend to clean up after themselves whenever possible—and suspicious fires make for uncomfortably public headlines.”

“Okay, so what do we do now? Stick with the cop or go after Mackenzie and Gallagher?”

He hesitated only an instant before lowering the binoculars and easing back away from the edge. “I’d love to go after the cop, but we’ll leave that to someone else. We have to get our hands on Sarah Gallagher. And it’ll be a lot harder now. You can bet they saw Lewis just as clearly as we did, and you can bet it scared the hell out of both of them. We’re taught to trust cops, to depend on them for safety. Hell of a thing when we find out that’s a luxury we can no longer afford.”

“Amen,” Cait agreed soberly.

Neither made a sound as they crossed the roof and took an exterior stairway down to the ground. Their car was parked nearby, and neither spoke again until they were in it and moving.

“We don’t know where they’re going. Do we?” Cait asked as Brodie drove toward the highway.

“No. Get on the cell. Call it in.”

Immediately, Cait drew a specially modified cell phone from a bag on the floorboard and punched in a familiar number.

Sarah watched the sun come up from the front seat of Tucker’s Mercedes and wondered idly why it looked no different from the last sunrise she had seen, only a few weeks before. It should look different, she thought. The whole world had changed since then. It had gotten darker. And grimmer. And as terrifying as any nightmare.

She could still feel them. Out there somewhere. Somewhere near. Looming over her like the shadow of something vast and far-reaching. It was like feeling breath on the back of her neck, the cold, fetid breath of an ancient predator.

Where are you? Who are you?

But she was afraid to look too hard, to reach into that place inside herself where the voices—at least one of the voices—might have the answers. She was afraid to willingly open that door.

Afraid of the answers she might get. Afraid they would see her before she could see them.

“We’re about two hours away from the cabin,” Tucker said finally. “We’ll stop for groceries when we get closer; there’s never anything in Pat’s refrigerator but beer, and we might be there a few days.” His voice was matter-of-fact but didn’t quite hide the fact that Lewis’s presence in that hit squad had shaken him almost as much as it had her.

“Does this friend of yours know you’re—we’re—coming?”

“He doesn’t live in the cabin, just spends summers there. I called him from my bank, and he said I was welcome to spend a few days there. Polishing the latest novel. Most people assume that requires peace and quiet.”

Sarah was suddenly uneasy, her instincts jangling. “Will he tell anyone you’re there?” After seeing a police officer coming stealthily by night to get her, paranoia was stronger in her than it had ever been before. Except that it wasn’t paranoia, of course.

“No, he won’t breathe a word. Don’t worry, Sarah.”

“Right.”

He glanced over at her. “I’m sorry. That sounds facile, doesn’t it?”

“A bit.”

“It wasn’t meant to. I’m not kidding myself, and I won’t kid you. What we saw last night makes this a whole new ball game. It means we can’t trust the cops.”

“Any of them? They can’t all be…be in on this? Can they?”

Tucker shook his head. “I can’t imagine some mysterious conspiracy that large. But how can we possibly know who to trust? Unless you find some special insight along the way, I think we’d better not take chances. You trusted Lewis, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Until…”

“Right. Until he showed up outside your apartment in the dead of night, intending to kill you. That is what you believe?”

Sarah hesitated, then nodded. “I know they came for me. I don’t know if they were going to kill me, but I know they wanted to…hurt me.”

Tucker sent her another glance. “But you still don’t know why Lewis—why anyone—would want to hurt you?”

“No. But…it isn’t just him. He wasn’t the man who was watching me. And…” She hesitated, then said slowly, “When I had the vision about them coming for me, I heard a voice—a man’s voice, but not Lewis’s—saying, ‘Even if you run, we will find you. We will always find you.’”

Tucker looked at her sharply. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Those men coming to the apartment were the immediate threat. That’s all I thought about until we got away.”

“But you heard a voice saying they’d find you?”

“Yes. And a low hum of…murmuring and whispering. Tucker…I think there are a lot of them. Like an army. I didn’t see them, but I heard them. Soft murmuring voices all around me. And they weren’t friendly voices.”

Tucker was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “My name is Legion: for we are many.”

“That’s from the Bible.”

He nodded. “As I recall, it refers to the devil and his minions.”

“Evil.” Sarah shivered. “I…feel that about them, in a way. Darkness, shadows. Threatening, always threatening. And all around me. Reaching out for me. They want me, and I don’t know why.”

“But you do know that your life was perfectly normal until you were mugged—and woke up psychic.”

She tried to think, to force her fears to the back of her consciousness. “Yes. So it has to have something to do with that.”

“Somehow,” he mused, “being psychic, having visions, makes you valuable to someone. Or a threat to someone. Why? Did you—have you made a prediction that hasn’t yet come true? I mean, one involving someone else?”

“No. The only threat I saw was aimed at me.”

“That serial killer out in California; you predicted something about him, didn’t you?”

“Just that he’d strike again. Which he has. But he’s still out there killing. And he’s just one man.”

“You don’t feel a threat from him?”

“To myself? No. He doesn’t even know I exist.”

Tucker glanced at her. “Okay, tell me this. Are we heading in the right direction?”

“We aren’t heading in the wrong one,” she said slowly.

He let out a faint sound of humor. “Well, that’s something.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt a bit stiff, very conscious of the things she had not been able to bring herself to tell him. Like those other voices. But he didn’t need to know about them. Not really.

“You’re doing fine. Tell me this. Do you know why we need to head in the right direction? Are we looking for something? Someone? Or is the point simply to get away from Richmond and the threat back there?”

“I…don’t know.” Then, suddenly, she did know, and blurted, “Someone. I think there’s someone we have to find. Someone we have to look for.”

“Who?”

The moment of clarity was gone as abruptly as it had come, and Sarah slumped in the seat. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“All right, Sarah. Don’t force it. You’re exhausted anyway; it’s a miracle you were able to come up with anything at all. Look, I think we could both use some coffee and a couple of breakfast biscuits. I’ll get off at the next exit and find a place.”

She looked down at her hands and rubbed them together because they felt so cold.

“Sarah?”

“I’m okay. But I could use some coffee.” She didn’t want him to know how fragile she felt right now. How unutterably tired. How frightened.

This is my fate. My destiny. All this has to happen.

“You’ll be safe at the cabin, Sarah. You’ll be able to rest.”

“At least for a while?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “At least for a while.”

Staring through the windshield now, she said idly, “They will find us, you know. They’re very, very good at that. They’ve been good at that for a long time. A long time.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.” It was like catching a glimpse of something from the corner of her eye, Sarah realized. There was knowledge there, off to the side, just out of sight. Waiting for her to pay attention. She could see it if she looked.

She didn’t want to look.

After a moment, Tucker said, “A long time. Then maybe you’re not the first psychic they’ve gone after.”

She turned the possibility over in her mind. “Maybe. Maybe there are others. Or were.”

Almost to himself, Tucker muttered, “That might explain a few things in my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“There have been a few psychics I heard about and went looking for, but was unable to find. They just seemed to have…dropped off the face of the earth. I always assumed they changed their names and ducked out of sight because one scam too many had brought the cops sniffing after them. Or disgruntled customers.”

“Maybe it wasn’t that at all.”

Tucker fell silent, frowning a little as he guided the car onto an exit ramp where signs promised several fast-food restaurants. He didn’t speak again until they had collected coffee, orange juice, and several sausage biscuits from a drive-through and were once again on the highway heading north.

“So…what we know or think we know is that there’s someone after you. Possibly because you’re psychic, but we don’t really know that. We think they want to kill you—but we don’t really know that. And we think we should head north, maybe to look for somebody, but we don’t know who or why.”

“We don’t know a hell of a lot, actually.” She bit into a second biscuit with more determination than appetite.

“No, but it ought to be an interesting trip.” He laughed a little.

She looked over at him, more wary than reassured by his humor. “Tucker’s excellent adventure.”

He met her gaze briefly, then returned his to the road as he began unwrapping another biscuit. “Don’t run away with the idea that I think this is just a game, Sarah. In games, you don’t end up dead. In this…well, it’s a definite possibility.”

But you don’t understand what that really means, I think. You don’t know just how brutal real bad guys can be. But all she said was, “Then why are you getting such a damned kick out of it?”

“Not a kick—just a certain amount of…intellectual enjoyment. What can I say? I love puzzles. And I’m good at them.”

Sarah finished her juice and then started on the coffee, brooding. She was too tired to think and she knew it, but it was impossible to turn off her mind. She felt curiously adrift, caught up in a current that was carrying her along in a direction she hadn’t chosen and didn’t want, and since it was not her nature to be so helpless, it bothered her.

But this is my fate. My destiny.

She was here with Tucker because she was supposed to be. Heading north because she was supposed to be, because there was someone waiting for her and because it would end in the north. Running for her life because that, too, was part of the plan. Letting Tucker set the pace and make decisions because she was supposed to.

She wasn’t supposed to think. To question. She was just supposed to accept.

Because it’s my destiny.

Even as that litany echoed in her mind, Sarah frowned. Somewhere in the dim recesses of her consciousness, rebellion stirred, and resistance. Why did that statement rise in answer to so many of her questions? For the first time, she wondered whether that was simply another of the voices in her head, not a beckoning future she couldn’t escape but someone—or something—intent on shaping her destiny to suit some shadowy purpose.

I’m being led somewhere. Pushed. Guided. And how do I know it isn’t them? How do I know they aren’t defining my fate, controlling my destiny? How can I trust even my own mind not to betray me?

She couldn’t. That was the most terrifying thing of all.

Near Arlington, Tucker turned off the highway toward the west, which made Sarah vaguely uneasy. She tried to pay attention, to listen to whatever was tugging at her, but the sensation was just tenuous and uncomfortable, impossible to define, and only faded some time later with another change of direction.

They turned again off the main road and onto a winding secondary road and, quietly, Sarah said, “We’re heading north again.”

He looked at her quickly. “Still not the wrong direction?”

“I think…definitely the right one. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s somewhere to the north.”

Tucker turned onto an even more winding secondary road, and said, “Just a few more miles now. The cabin’s on a small lake, quite isolated. There isn’t much of a town nearby, but there is a small general store. Sort of.”

That last wry comment was explained some ten minutes later, when Sarah found herself sitting in the car and staring bemusedly at a sign cheerfully proclaiming WANDA’S BAIT AND PARTY SHOPPE. It looked like the kind of small gas-station-cum-general-store found in many small towns, selling everything from gas to groceries. And, apparently, bait.

Tucker went in alone to get the groceries, after telling Sarah it might be best if he appeared to be traveling alone. If anyone was searching for them—and they had to expect someone was—then they would be looking for and asking questions about a man and a woman, not a man alone. It was a logical caution.

So Sarah sat in the car and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. Tucker returned in about fifteen minutes, carrying several small plastic bags, which he put in the backseat.

When he slid into the driver’s seat, Sarah asked mildly, “Who’s Wanda?”

“Beats me. Every time I’ve stopped by here—admittedly just a few times over several years—the only one inside has been an old man watching television while one of his relatives runs the cash register. Today it was a nephew.”

His voice had been light, but Sarah heard something else and looked at him intently. “What is it?”

He started the car but paused with his hand on the gearshift and looked at her with grim eyes. “There was a news program on. And a report about something that happened in Richmond.”

“What?”

“They found a man’s body early this morning near an abandoned building. Shot through the head. The city’s up in arms. He was a cop.”

Sarah felt a chill. “Not…Lewis?”

“Lewis. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. There are no suspects, at least as far as the media knows. Just one very dead cop—who must have been killed not long at all after we saw him at the apartment.” He paused, then added, “Unlike the late sergeant, I don’t really believe in coincidence. So I’d say that, for Lewis, failure was not an acceptable option.”

Sarah didn’t say a word.

Inside Wanda’s Bait and Party Shoppe, the old man looked toward the front counter and spoke querulously. “You ain’t supposed to leave the desk!”