The First Prophet

by Kay Hooper

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

  Not, at least, without touching him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Do you expect me to believe that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “We’ve lost Leigh.”

  “What are you talking about?” Brodie demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Even for one of them?” Tucker asked.

  “Even for one of them.”

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

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

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

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

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

  It was not on.

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

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

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

  But it had power.

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

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

  Duran.

  You disappointed me, Brodie.

  I was rather hoping you would finish off Varden

  in the cellar and save me the trouble.

  But…what will be, will be.

  Isn’t that right, Sarah?

  Until next time.

  Oh, and by the way—

  Leigh says hello.

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

  “Then she’s alive,” Tucker said.

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

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

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

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

  “He hates to lose,” Sarah murmured.

  It was much later that evening when Tucker had a chance to sit down and really talk to Brodie. The other man had returned to the house nearly an hour after his departure with a calm face and little to say, but when he and Tucker were alone—Sarah was in the shower, while Murphy stood guard outside the house and waited for Nick to join them—he was entirely willing to fill Tucker in on the details he had missed.

  “Why can’t we go public with this story?” Tucker asked
after he heard it. “Break it wide open.” He had his own opinions on the subject but wanted to hear Brodie’s.

  “Think about it. Conspiracy theories run amok in our society these days. If it isn’t about Kennedy’s assassination or Watergate, it’s aliens or the space program or Vietnam or the mess in the Middle East—or just the government trying to pull something over on us. The very mention of a conspiracy theory makes people shake their heads and smile—and the idea isn’t taken seriously. And that’s at best. At worst, we’re labeled nuts. So, we wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Hard evidence. Proof. Enough proof to go public. Enough proof to convince even people who don’t believe in psychic phenomena or conspiracy theories that the threat is real. And growing.” He shook his head. “We wait, and we watch, and we listen. Look for evidence. Try to get to and protect the people we know are in immediate danger. And build our network of people who do believe—and want to fight.”

  “In case you never find enough proof?”

  “It’s a possibility.” His smile was both faintly amused and more than a little weary. “When the shit finally hits the fan, we may be the only thing standing between the bad guys and the future.”

  “I’ve never thought of myself as a revolutionary,” Tucker said slowly.

  “Maybe you’d better start. You have a personal stake in the fight now. And we need all the help we can get.”

  “What can I do? I’m a writer, not a soldier.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Brodie said dryly. “Cait was…was a waitress putting herself through school. Nick’s a builder. I couldn’t tell you what Murphy is or was, except hard as nails. Among the others I know personally in this thing, there’s a truck driver, an architect, an engineer, two doctors, several nurses, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist, a very young student, a country-western star, and a billionaire. They aren’t psychics. They aren’t soldiers either. We don’t need soldiers, Tucker. We just need people who believe in the fight and want to help.”

  After a moment, Tucker silently held out his hand, and the two men shook firmly.

  “What about this ‘traitor in your own house’ business? Or do you think Duran was lying?”

  Brodie frowned. “As much as I hate to admit it, I’m afraid he might have been telling the truth. It’s not his style to kill without reason, and Cait’s murder was utterly senseless. And even though we’re reasonably sure it was Varden’s plan to set a trap for Sarah—whether he was a red herring in Duran’s plan to get Leigh or not—killing Cait doesn’t seem to figure into that either. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless it was done by somebody bent on weakening your group? Taking out a link of the chain and, worse, spreading suspicion and mistrust among you?”

  “That could be it. We’re still so scattered, so dependent on one another for information and support, that taking out a single link throws all the rest into confusion. Losing both Cait and Leigh means we’ll be cutting and rerouting lines of communication for weeks. Maybe months. And we’ll have to move some people, some of Leigh’s contacts.”

  “Because you don’t know what she’ll tell the other side?”

  Grim, Brodie nodded. “Exactly. That’s why we’re so careful, why so few of us know the complete setup of the group. The more who know it all, the greater the risk of the other side getting the information.”

  “What would they do with the information?”

  “What they’ve done in the past. Destroy some of our outposts or safe houses—and infiltrate the group. Our psychics can spot most of them, but they use tools—like that cop back in Richmond—and the tools aren’t always so easy to spot, even for psychics.”

  “But that’s someone from the other side. What if Duran was telling the truth? Have you ever had to fight a traitor among you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure there’s never been one?”

  “As sure as we can be. But if Duran was telling the truth…then we’re all going to have to be a lot more careful.”

  After a moment, Tucker nodded. “What’s next for Sarah and me?”

  “First,” Brodie replied, emphasizing the word only slightly, “we find the safest place possible for Sarah. Richmond is okay for the time being; they’ll avoid the place for a while after the fire, that cop’s murder, and all the publicity. But we’ll have to get another psychic in the picture to help Sarah learn how to use her abilities.” He looked steadily at Tucker. “She’s pretty incredible already, as I told you. Until we learn the limits of her abilities, we don’t know how she’ll be able to use them—but you can bet they’re the best weapons she can have against the other side.”

  “She’ll always be a target, won’t she?”

  Brodie didn’t sugarcoat it. “Yes. Leigh was left untouched for years, but when Duran saw his chance, he took it. And her.” He shook that off with an obvious effort. “But the news isn’t all bad. We’ve found through trial and error—costly error—that total secrecy is the worst possible tactic we can use to protect our psychics. The answer isn’t to hide Sarah away. It’s to make her as visible as possible. The more people who are aware of her existence and abilities, the less likely she is to…disappear. Or have an accident.”

  Tucker’s jaw tightened. Grimly, he said, “I know one way of alerting a few million people to her existence and abilities. I’ll write a book about her.”

  Brodie smiled. “Already thinking like a soldier, I see. Good. Just don’t mention our nutty conspiracy theory, okay? Not until we’re ready to go public.”

  “No problem.”

  “In the meantime, we’ll work up a plan of where and how best to…position her.”

  “She’s going to hate this,” Tucker said.

  Brodie nodded sympathetically. “Most of them do, at first. The instinct is to hide, to pretend not to have dangerous abilities, certainly not to stand in a spotlight. But it’s the only way. As far as Sarah’s concerned, I think she’ll find out she’s more of a fighter than she ever suspected. I think she already has.”

  “I think you’re right,” Tucker said.

  “I nearly decked him when he spoke to me suddenly out of the dark,” Tucker said much later as he and Sarah lay in bed together catching up. “But since he had the goggles and I couldn’t see a damned thing, he was able to dodge me until he could convince me he wasn’t one of them.”

  Sarah didn’t ask how Brodie had managed to do that. “I was very glad to see the two of you appear behind Varden, I can tell you that. He wasn’t behaving as I’d expected. Most people have the sense to try to escape a burning building—especially if they believe there’s only one way out.”

  Tucker’s arms tightened around her. “He was too obsessed with getting his hands on you.”

  “And unless Duran was lying in that message to us, it probably got Varden killed.”

  “Brodie said he was pretty sure Duran had been running the show, at least as far as the lake, because he saw him there. But somewhere between there and Portland, whether in a setup Duran planned or on his own, Varden must have set his plans in motion.”

  “And grabbed you.” Sarah moved a bit closer.

  “I had no idea they could get inside my mind like that. I didn’t even realize what was happening until it was too late.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Tucker. Um…you do realize, don’t you, that we sort of have a thing between us?”

  “A thing? Well, I guess that’s one word for it.”

  “I’m serious. This connection.”

  “Yes, I noticed it.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Dammit, I’m trying to be courteous and not pry into your thoughts.”

  He chuckled. “I appreciate the effort.”

  “Well?”

  “No, it doesn’t bother me. You don’t believe that yet, of course, but you will. Eventually.”

  She lifted her head from his shoulder to stare at him. “Brodie told you
some of the stuff I’ve been doing the last day or so, right?”

  “He did.”

  “And none of that bothers you? Not the telepathy, or the out-of-body thing, or the lockpick I was able to send to you?”

  “No. Although I’d like to try the out-of-body thing when I’m not drugged. Brodie said the consensus seems to be that you can only do it through our connection—to wander around where I am if we’re separated, or wander around near your own body.”

  She eyed him in fascination. “That was the consensus, yes. Because I tried to go somewhere on my own and couldn’t. I had to—to use you as a doorway.”

  “We’ll have to experiment.”

  “Tucker, this really doesn’t bother you?”

  “Well, no. I love you, you know. That would probably account for it.”

  Slowly, she began to smile. “This is very sudden.”

  “Yes, it was. At first sight, I think.”

  “You know I love you too.”

  “This connection is a wonderful thing.”

  “I guess we’ll never be able to say we don’t understand each other, huh?”

  “Not with a straight face.”

  Sarah’s smile widened as he pulled her over on top of him. “It’s going to be interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tucker said. “That’s one word for it.”

  The plan to leave for Richmond in the morning was delayed somewhat when Sarah announced at breakfast that they had to go to Holcomb first.

  Tucker had more or less forgotten about that, so he was surprised. And since Sarah was staying very quiet and still on her side of their connection, he had no idea why it was so important to her.

  Brodie was distinctly unhappy.

  “What’s in Holcomb?” he demanded.

  Vaguely, Sarah said, “Something I have to do. It won’t take long. And it’s important, Brodie.”

  “We’ve been heading toward Holcomb since we left Richmond,” Tucker said, and shrugged when Brodie frowned at him. “It was always her goal.”

  “Have you two checked out the weather? It’s getting very cold out there, and it looks like we may be in for early snow. Heading farther north, even for a little while, is probably not a good idea.”