The First Prophet

by Kay Hooper

Sarah might have asked him why, but she was actually relieved to have something to do. It was very quiet in the apartment, neither she nor Tucker seemed inclined toward conversation, and her nerves were very much on edge. Something was going to happen. Soon. And she didn’t want to think about what it might be. So she packed.

  It didn’t take long. Both she and Margo kept a few extra things in the apartment, including a packed overnight bag in case either had to go out of town for an unexpected estate auction or something like that, so it was a simple matter to take the bag from the closet and add in the rest of the clothing she had here. All the clothing she had left, as a matter of fact.

  All the anything she had left.

  That realization, late in coming but devastating, made her sit on the bed and cry. Gone. It was all gone. All her things, from the furniture she had lovingly collected over the years to the strand of pearls that had been all she had left of her mother. The few family pictures she had. The pictures of David. The few gifts he’d given her. Gone.

  And the work, all that hard work to restore the house, it was all gone. The hours spent covered in sawdust and plaster dust and paint spatters, wasted. The bruised knuckles and fingers sore from using unfamiliar tools, wasted. The shopping for just the right moldings, the right wallpaper, the right curtains and rugs and fixtures, wasted.

  Her life wasted.

  She didn’t make a sound, unable even in that moment of intense grief to forget the man waiting for her in the next room. She didn’t want him to hear her and come in here. Whether he offered comfort or bracing common sense (losing a house wasn’t so much when compared to one’s life, after all), she didn’t think she’d be able to accept either. And she didn’t want him to see her crumpled on the bed, red-eyed and weepy, because…

  She just didn’t want him to see her like that.

  It wasn’t a very satisfying bout of tears and left her weary rather than relieved, but it did seem to take the edge off her nerves at least.

  And it seemed to leave her mind clearer than it had been in days. She sat there on the bed and stared at the packed bag and suddenly couldn’t believe what she was doing. What was she doing? Running off to God knew where with a man she didn’t know, abandoning her business and just bolting without a word to her partner and best friend, when what she ought to be doing was locking her doors and pulling up the drawbridge, guarding her own life as she had always done…

  She started to rise, bent on going out into the other room and telling Tucker she couldn’t go with him—and that was when it happened.

  The room around her vanished. There was nothing but darkness, so black and impenetrable it was a solid mass around her. She couldn’t feel her legs beneath her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t hear anything. And all she knew was cold fear.

  Out of the black silence, gradually, the sound and sensation of air rushing past filled her senses. She was moving, she knew that, moving through space…and time. Moving into the future. She didn’t want to go, struggled against it, but she was given no choice. She had to go.

  Had to see.

  At first, the vivid images exploded out of the darkness with such bright intensity that she was blinded and couldn’t see them, in a confusion of sound so loud and garbled it hurt her ears. But slowly, her eyes and ears or her mind adjusted until what she saw and heard began to make sense. Or at least, as much sense as a waking nightmare ever made.

  There was a low hum, the sound of many voices murmuring, like a carrier wave permeating everything. And then a male voice, one she suddenly remembered from that other waking nightmare, said calmly above the hum, “Even if you run, we’ll find you. We’ll always find you.”

  She tried desperately to see his face, but all she could see was his silhouette, like a featureless shadow on a wall. Then he was gone.

  It was getting colder.

  The antiques shop. It was late, very late, and dark. Two cars crept up to the curb, their lights out. Men got out of the cars in an eerie silence and moved toward the shop. She couldn’t see who they were. But they carried things, things she knew were deadly. Not just guns but…other things, things that made her skin crawl. She wanted to scream out a warning, to alert the neighborhood and signal those inside the shop that danger approached. Then she realized that the men were going to the apartment above the shop, and she knew whom they were after.

  “They’re after you, Sarah.”

  “No.” She didn’t want to listen to this voice, the insistent one she’d heard in her head before.

  “They’ll get you. You have to leave. You have to run.”

  “But where? Where should I go?”

  The background hum of many voices whispering grew louder, drowning out the voice the way electrical interference drowned out a radio signal, and Sarah wasn’t even sure she heard, “…north…”

  “Who are you?” she asked desperately. “What are you?”

  This time, there was no answer at all, just the now quieter whispers she couldn’t quite make out.

  It was getting colder.

  Blackness swept over her abruptly, and lasted what seemed to Sarah to be forever. And the background rustle of those wordless whispers became louder and louder until she wanted to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the awful noise that made her head ache.

  It was so cold.

  So cold…

  Sarah blinked dazedly and looked around her. She was sitting on the floor by the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her upraised knees. Shivering. According to the clock on the nightstand, no more than a minute or two had elapsed.

  It felt like a lifetime.

  She sat there for several more minutes, until the shivering gradually stopped as her body temperature began to return to normal. She didn’t know why it always dropped when the waking nightmares came, but it always did, leaving her chilled for a long time afterward. Even her skin was cold to the touch, and she rubbed her hands together slowly to try to warm them. Her body obeyed when she tried to get up, but it was stiff and sore, as if she had endured some kind of physical trial.

  But for the first time, she came out of it with a sudden, bitter self-awareness. Waking nightmares. Bullshit. Why did she keep calling them that? Who was she trying to deceive? Herself. They were visions, and what was the use of calling them something else? A different definition didn’t make them any less real. Any less frightening.

  Visions. I have visions. And let’s not forget the voices in my head, at least two different ones.

  Visions urging her, driving her through fear. One voice insisting she couldn’t escape even as another one insisted that she run. And over it all, permeating everything, was her numbing certainty that no matter what she did, no matter where she went, that yawning grave was waiting for her at journey’s end.

  She left the packed bag on the bed and went out into the living room, where Tucker was watching a news program. He immediately turned off the set and got up when she came in, his eyes narrowing as they searched her face intently.

  Probably look like I’ve seen a ghost. Ha-ha.

  “Sarah? Are you all right?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Has something happened?”

  He didn’t want to ask her whether she’d had a vision, but it was obvious that was what he meant. Sarah realized she was still rubbing her hands together when he briefly looked at them, and she started to tell him it was because she was still so cold. But that would take too long to explain, so instead, she said simply, “We should leave now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’ll come tonight. Come for me.”

  “How do you know that? Did you see it? In one of your waking nightmares?”

  He was good, she thought dimly. His voice hardly gave away his disbelief. Hardly at all.

  “I had a vision,” she said starkly. “Just now. They will come tonight, Tucker. And if we’re here…”

  In an abrupt gesture, he nodded. “Then we’d better leave.”

  But
in the end, he had another idea.

  The security system guarding Mackenzie’s house was a good one. It took Murphy almost three minutes to bypass the alarm and get inside. She didn’t turn on any lights, depending on the narrow beam of her pencil flashlight to find her way around. She didn’t waste any time, moving from room to room in a quick, methodical search.

  Within ten minutes, she was in his office and had the wall safe behind his desk open. She ignored some stock certificates, leafed uninterestedly through a couple of contracts with his publisher, and swore softly when the safe offered nothing else.

  She kept searching, paying close attention to what she found on the cluttered desk. A folded map held her interest the longest; she spent several minutes bent over the desk studying it, and when she straightened at last, she slipped it into the leather pouch at her side.

  “Not quite as smart as you think you are,” she murmured.

  Her cell phone vibrated, and she pulled it out of the leather pouch with a scowl. “Yeah, what?”

  “Find anything?” His voice was, as always, almost preternaturally composed.

  “If I do,” she responded with equal calm, “I’ll report. As agreed.”

  “We’re running out of time, Murphy.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  There was a brief silence, and then he said somewhat dryly, “You might at least reassure me that we have the same goal in mind.”

  “I might.” She smiled in the darkness of Tucker Mackenzie’s office and did not add the requested assurances.

  He knew her too well to push, though the almost inaudible sound of a sigh reached her intently listening ears. His voice was carefully matter-of-fact when he said, “I need information, Murphy.”

  “Yes, I know. Give me a chance to do my job.”

  “Very well. I’ll wait for your report.”

  “Do that.” She turned off the phone decisively without waiting for him to sign off first. She was willing to bet she was one of very few who would dare to hang up on him. She liked that. The cell was a burner, intended to be used only once and then discarded; she’d toss it into the nearest Dumpster before moving on; it was too easy to track cell phones these days. She’d have another burner in an hour, and he’d have to wait for her to call him next time. She liked that too.

  She stood there in the dark and silent office for several more minutes, thoughtfully fingering the folded map in her leather pouch. Finally, she left the office and made her way from the house, pausing only long enough to lock up behind herself and put the security system back online.

  The neighborhood was dark and quiet in the hours past midnight, and Murphy went on her way without attracting any notice, not even disturbing the few sleeping watchdogs with her softly whistled rendition of “Stormy Weather.”

  In perfect pitch.

  “But why?” Sarah asked much later.

  “We know they— We know somebody is watching you.” Tucker’s voice was patient. “What we don’t know is whether the guy in the black jacket is all we have to worry about. I want to know that, Sarah. I think we need to know that. Before we leave.”

  His car was parked near the shop as before, but in the dense shadows of a spreading oak tree. There was, he’d explained to Sarah, a clear path of retreat here, with little chance of the car’s being hemmed in by other cars.

  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 r
esearched, 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.”