The First Prophet

by Kay Hooper

  A doorway led to a short hallway, off which Tucker assumed was a bathroom and one or two bedrooms.

  Sarah went first to the thermostat on the wall near the hallway and adjusted the temperature so that warm air began to chase away the slight chill of the room. Then she went into the kitchen and got coffee out of one cabinet and a small coffeemaker out of an appliance garage to one side of the refrigerator.

  “I stocked the place with groceries just the other day,” she said conversationally as she measured coffee. “And I have spare clothes here. When either Margo or me is out of town, the other one usually spends at least a few nights here. It gives us a chance to catch up on paperwork while we’re keeping an eye on the place.”

  Tucker wondered whether she was talking just to fill the silence, or whether it was her way of keeping reality at bay. The numbness couldn’t last forever; sooner or later, she would have to face the loss of her home and belongings, with all the shock and grief that would entail. But if her choice was later, it was, after all, her choice.

  He sat down on one of the tall bar stools at the breakfast bar, watching her. “Have you had break-ins here?”

  “No. Most burglars are looking for valuables they can put in a sack, or at least carry by themselves; our stock is made up mostly of furniture, with very few easily portable valuables. But Margo is paranoid about theft, which is why we have an excellent security system. And I don’t mind spending time here when she’s out of town.”

  “How long will she be gone this time?”

  “Another week, maybe two.” Sarah got a pet bowl out of the dish drainer beside the sink and filled it with kibble, then set it on the breakfast bar in front of the stool beside Tucker’s. He watched in silence as Pendragon leaped up on the stool, sat down, and began eating delicately from his bowl, then looked at Sarah.

  She met his quizzical gaze and smiled for the first time in genuine amusement. “I found out quickly that Pendragon likes to sit up and eat like people. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. It’s more his house than mine.”

  She nodded, the smile fading, then said, “I think I’ll go change. If the coffee’s ready before I come back, help yourself. Cups are in that cabinet, and the sugar and cream are already out on the counter.”

  “Thanks. Take your time. I’ll be fine.” He watched her leave the room, then absently reached over and scratched Pendragon behind one ear. The cat made a faintly disgusted sound, which Tucker took to mean he disliked being touched while eating. “Excuse me,” he told the cat politely, drawing back his hand.

  Pendragon murmured something in the back of his throat, the sound this time so obviously mollified that Tucker blinked in surprise.

  Peculiar cat.

  The coffee was still dripping down into the pot, beginning to smell good but not quite ready to drink. Restless, Tucker left the bar stool to prowl around the room, studying the decorations and furniture without really seeing them. After only a slight hesitation, he turned on the gas-log fire, which immediately made the room seem more cheerful but didn’t do much for the little ripple of coldness chasing up and down Tucker’s spine.

  That unnerving sensation drove him to one of the two narrow dormers that provided a view out the front side of the building, and he found himself cautiously drawing aside filmy curtains so he could see the street below without calling attention to himself.

  But the caution was wasted, because the tall man in the black leather jacket seemed to have a sixth sense of his own, vanishing into the shadows of an alleyway across the street before Tucker could catch more than a glimpse of him.

  “Shit.” Brodie straightened from the crouch holding a piece of charred wood in his hand, his lean face as grim as the curse. He turned the wood in his hands—it had, once, been a piece of decorative porch railing—then dropped it and rubbed his hands together angrily.

  “We don’t know they did it,” Cait Desmond reminded him.

  “We don’t know they didn’t,” he retorted. “I prefer to err on the side of past experience.”

  His partner looked at him for a moment, then looked back at the ruins of what had been Sarah Gallagher’s home. It was nearly dark now, but the devastation was still obvious. A cold wind whined miserably past the chimney that still reared up in a stark silhouette above the dead house, and Cait shivered as she turned up her collar and thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

  “Did you find out anything?” Brodie asked her, the anger muted now in his brisk tone.

  Cait moved closer to him and kept her voice low even though there seemed to be no one else about and certainly no one within earshot. “Yeah. I talked to one of the neighbors while she was out walking her dog a little while ago. Arson is definitely suspected; a couple of people reported a stranger hanging around today.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me.” It wasn’t a question. Brodie sighed, his breath misting in the cold air. “Well, they didn’t get her, or you would have said so by now. So where is she?”

  “According to the neighbor, Sarah Gallagher left here with a tall blond man who ‘looked vaguely familiar.’ Not another neighbor, and not a cop. He was driving a late-model Mercedes.”

  Brodie whistled in surprise. “That doesn’t sound like our guys. Their wheels tend to be very unobtrusive.”

  Cait nodded. “That’s what I thought. Unfortunately, the neighbor didn’t get a license plate, so that’s no good. She did, however, say that she thought the cop in charge talked to both Sarah and the blond stranger before they left, so there’s a solid chance the locals know where Sarah’s supposed to be. Especially since she probably hasn’t been ruled out as a suspect herself.”

  “Yeah, they will check the obvious first.” Brodie nodded slowly.

  “So we need eyes and ears inside the local police department,” Cait said. “They probably wouldn’t know me, so—”

  Brodie was shaking his head. “I don’t think so, Cait. We need to move too fast; planting someone on the inside takes time. But…I might know someone who already has eyes on the inside.”

  “Someone you can trust?”

  He smiled faintly, as though he found the question amusing. “I don’t deal with people I can’t trust. Come on—we need to get out of here before that squad car makes its next scheduled pass by here. And let’s find a landline; I don’t want to use the cell for this call.”

  When Sarah came out of her bedroom wearing a bulky sweater and jeans, Tucker didn’t mention the watcher outside. It was not out of some outdated—and no doubt unwanted—sense of chivalry that he kept silent, but simply because he was convinced Sarah would not be surprised by the knowledge. She knew she was being watched; he thought she knew why, or had some suspicion why—and it had nothing to do with frightened neighbors.

  It was an answer he wanted.

  Sarah glanced toward the fire without comment as she passed through the living room, then turned on a couple of lamps and went into the kitchen area.

  “I didn’t know how you took yours,” Tucker said, lifting his coffee cup in a slight gesture.

  She poured a cup of coffee for herself, taking it black. “No problem. Look, it’s after six; I have some ready-made stew and bread in the freezer, if you’re planning to stay for supper.”

  Tucker had to smile at the wording. “I’d hate to impose.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, either another shrewd guess or certain knowledge. Whichever, it was accompanied by a slight smile as Sarah began getting out a pot and the frozen stew, and turning on the oven for the bread.

  Tucker reclaimed his stool at the breakfast bar, sitting beside a cat who was neatly washing his paws and face after his own meal. “Okay, so I wouldn’t hate it. I’ve got the nerve of a burglar, according to most of my friends. But I was trained right; if you’re going to do the cooking, I’ll do the dishes.”

  “Suits me.” She put the bagged stew into the microwave to thaw, then leaned back against the counter and sipped her coffee, looki
ng at Tucker across the space separating them. “Are you planning to spend the night?”

  That question would have bothered Tucker, except for the fact that she sounded totally uninterested in the subject. “That depends on you.”

  “I told you I didn’t mind being alone. There are no monsters in the closet or under my bed; I just checked.” She wasn’t smiling.

  Neither was Tucker when he said, “There’s one outside. Watching. Wearing a black leather jacket.”

  Her eyes seemed to flicker slightly. “You saw him?”

  “Yes. A few minutes ago, before it started getting dark. Who is he, Sarah?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is he watching you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tucker shook his head. “And yet you aren’t worried about it? I don’t buy that.”

  “Why worry about something you can’t change?” She shrugged.

  “Then you do know why he’s watching.”

  Sarah hesitated, then shook her head. “No. I—I don’t know the why of any of it. Just the fact of it.”

  Baffled, Tucker frowned and watched her turn to get the stew out of the microwave and put it in a pot on the stove. “So what is the fact of it?” he asked her.

  “He’s watching me. He’s waiting. And sooner or later, he’ll do what he came here to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  After a moment, Tucker drew a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m spending the night,” he said flatly.

  She looked back over her shoulder at him, her eyes flickering again. “To guard the door? To keep the monster out? Don’t bother. You can’t save me from him.”

  Her fatalistic attitude irritated Tucker. “At least I’m willing to try, which is more than I can say for you. Where’s the phone? This is something Sergeant Lewis should know about.”

  “He can’t save me either,” she said softly, returning her attention to the stew.

  “Why the hell not? He’s a cop, isn’t he? It’s his job.”

  Sarah shook her head. “To protect and serve? No. There’s nothing he can do—even if he believed me. Even if he believed you. And he wouldn’t.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  She turned toward him again, leaning back against the counter and picking up her coffee cup. She was smiling. “Can’t I? Then you’ve wasted a trip, haven’t you, Tucker?”

  It silenced him, but only for a moment. “You’re not going to do anything about that guy out there? Not even report to the police?”

  “Not even report to the police. I’ve learned to accept what I can’t change.”

  “You accepted me awfully easily,” he said curiously. “Why? Was our meeting—meant to be?” The question wasn’t nearly as mocking as he had intended it to sound.

  “I recognized you,” she replied with yet another shrug.

  “Recognized me? From where?”

  “I had seen you.” There was an evasive note in her voice, something Tucker was quick to pick up on.

  “Where had you seen me, Sarah?”

  There was a moment of silence. She looked steadily down at her cup, a slight frown between her brows. Then, finally, softly, she said, “I had seen you in my dreams. My…waking nightmares.”

  “You mean you had a vision and I was in it?”

  Sarah almost flinched. “I hate that word. Vision. It makes me sound like some cheap carnival sideshow mystic. Pay your money and come into the tent, and Madam Sarah will look into her crystal ball and tell you your future. All filled with hope and dreams. Except that isn’t what I do. I don’t have a crystal ball. And I can’t get answers on demand.”

  Patient, Tucker brought her back to the point. “All right, then. You had seen me in your—waking nightmares. You had seen me in your future. So you knew you could trust me?”

  Her slight frown returned. “It has nothing to do with trust. I saw you. I knew you’d be there. When it happens. I knew you weren’t involved in it. At least—I don’t believe you are. But you’re there. When it happens.”

  The writer in Tucker was going crazy with her tenses, but he thought he understood her. At least up to a point. “When what happens, Sarah?”

  She looked at him, finally. Her gaze was steady and her voice matter-of-fact when she replied, “When they kill me.”

  TWO

  “You bungled it,” Duran said.

  Varden stiffened, but there was no sign of anger in his voice when he said, “At the time, it seemed the best idea.”

  “A house fire? Guaranteed to draw law enforcement as well as numerous spectators? How did you expect to remove her from that situation without attracting further attention?”

  “Obviously, I intended to remove her before the fire was noticed.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “The fire spread faster than I bargained for.”

  Duran turned his head and looked at the other man. Gently, he said, “It was an old house. They tend to burn quickly.”

  Accepting that rebuke with what grace he could muster, Varden merely nodded without further attempts to defend himself.

  Duran gazed at him a moment longer, then moved away from the window of the cramped hotel room and settled into a chair across from a long couch. “Sit down.” It wasn’t an invitation.

  Taking a place on the couch, Varden said in a carefully explanatory tone, “I was under the impression that the judgment of the Council demanded quick action. Tyrell said—”

  “Tyrell reports to me,” Duran said with an edge to his quiet voice. “The decision is mine.”

  “You thought she could be salvaged?”

  “What I thought is not your concern. You follow orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Duran waited a moment, his gaze boring into Varden. Then, almost casually, he said, “I want Sarah Gallagher.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re going to get her for me, Varden. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Duran said. “That is good.”

  Tucker drew a long, slow breath, trying with calm and logic to keep the chill inside him from spreading. “When who kills you, Sarah?”

  “I don’t know who they are. Whenever I try to concentrate on them, to see them, all I see are shadows. Misshapen, sliding away whenever I try to focus on them, impossible to identify as anything except…shadows.” She shook her head a little, helpless. “This is all new to me, in case you didn’t know that. I was mugged last March, and a head injury put me in a coma. When I came out of it, I started having the waking nightmares.”

  He nodded, familiar with the facts because a newspaper story had reported them—and had brought him here. “I understand that. What I don’t understand is what, exactly, makes you believe that someone is going to kill you. What did you see?”

  The bell on the microwave dinged, and Sarah turned to set her coffee aside and get the stew out. “Haven’t you ever had nightmares, Tucker? The surreal kind, full of frightening images?”

  “Of course I have. They made zero sense. And they sure as hell didn’t predict the future.”

  “My waking nightmares do.” She was clearly unoffended by his skepticism.

  “Okay, then, tell me what you saw. Why are you so convinced you’re going to be killed?”

  Sarah didn’t respond for several minutes as she transferred the thawed stew to the pot on the stove and began stirring it as it heated. All her attention seemed to be fixed on the task. And when she did begin speaking, Tucker thought that her voice was very steady the way someone’s was when they were telling you something that scared the living shit out of them.

  “Because I saw my grave. Waiting for me.”

  “Sarah, that doesn’t have to mean—”

  She nodded jerkily. “There are other things I don’t remember, images that terrified me. But the grave…that was all too clear. It has a tombstone, and the tombstone is already inscribed. It has my name on it
. In the…waking nightmare…I’m falling toward it, into it, so fast I don’t see the date of—of my death. But the month is October, and the year is this year. And just as the darkness of the grave closes over me, I hear them applauding. And I know they’ve won. I know they’ve killed me.”

  “They?”

  “The shadows.”

  “Sarah, shadows can’t hurt you.”

  She looked at him with old eyes. “These can. And will.”

  Tucker watched her as she turned to check on the steaming stew and put the thawing bread in the oven. There was a lot for him to think about. On the face of it, his first inclination was to ascribe her “waking nightmare” to something she’d eaten or a vivid imagination; as badly as he wanted to believe in precognitive abilities, he had yet to find a genuine psychic, and years of frustration had inured him to disillusionment.

  He certainly had no proof that Sarah Gallagher was indeed psychic. The information he had gathered seemed to indicate that she was, and those witnesses who claimed to have heard her predictions prior to later events seemed both reliable and reputable. But there was no way to be sure that her “predictions” had not come from some as-yet-undiscovered means of foreknowledge that had nothing to do with so-called extrasensory perception.

  Each of the “predictions” he knew of could, after all, be rationally explained, given a few reasonable possibilities. Months before, she had been mugged on her way home one night, and the resulting head injury had put her into a coma for sixteen days. She could have overheard information while in that coma, for instance, and—consciously, perhaps—forgotten where it had come from. That could explain her apparent foreknowledge of the early birth of a nurse’s baby, which had been her first recorded prediction. Some doctor with a suspicion of what could happen might have mentioned it within Sarah’s hearing. And though her prediction of a Chicago hotel fire that had killed forty people certainly seemed remarkable, Tucker had discovered that one of the men later arrested for arson had been treated for a minor traffic injury in the same Richmond hospital where Sarah had lain in a coma. It was a coincidence that bothered him.