The First Prophet (7 page)

“Josh, we don’t have many advantages in this thing. They’re bigger than we are, faster
to react to a situation. They’re better organized and they may even be smarter than
we are. They’re sure as hell more ruthless. So we need every edge we can get. Being
able to call on you for assistance and information has been invaluable, so never think
you aren’t helping.”

After a moment, Josh sighed and settled his shoulders in the gesture of a man resigned.
“I don’t much care for fighting in the dark, John.”

“We need you in the dark. We need someone with your resources, your power, and your
abilities—and we need you hidden in the dark, where they can’t see you.”

“I know the value of an ace in the hole. But I don’t have to like it.”

“We’re grateful, Josh. We’re all grateful.”

Josh turned away the gratitude with a slight gesture, then fished inside his jacket
for a cigarette and lighter. “Don’t worry about anybody seeing this,” he said absently
as the lighter’s flame illuminated his lean, aristocratic
features and lent his rather hard eyes a fierce glitter. “Zach is watching.”

“I thought he might be,” Brodie said gently.

A faint grin was sent his way before Josh snapped the lighter shut and plunged them
back into darkness. “
My
watchdog. Are you working with Cait again?”

“Yeah. She’s at the hotel. And when I get back there, she’ll pretend she isn’t the
least bit curious about who my mysterious source is—and it’s killing her. Don’t worry,
though. She knows the score. She knows only what she needs to know, just like the
rest of us.”

“So if one falls, only a few more can be taken down at the same time,” Josh murmured.
“Like the Resistance cells in World War Two, protecting those at the core, the few
who know the identity of all the fighters in every cell. The safest way, I know. But
it makes it all the more difficult for you to work effectively as a team.”

“What choice do we have?” It was a rhetorical question, and Brodie didn’t wait for
any attempt to answer it. “Thanks for the data, Josh.”

“Let me know, any hour of the day or night, if you need anything else. And I mean
anything, John.”

“I will.”

They didn’t shake hands or say good-bye, though both knew it might easily be months
before they saw each other again.

If they saw each other again.

Josh slid from the car with hardly a sound, and a few moments later Brodie saw headlights
come on farther back along the street. An exceptionally quiet motor
purred as the dark sedan passed his own car, turned a corner, and vanished into the
night.

After a few minutes, Brodie started his own car and pulled away from the curb, his
eyes automatically seeking any sign that the meeting had been noticed as he left the
quiet neighborhood and headed back to the hotel and his impatiently waiting partner.

Tucker came abruptly out of a deep sleep, his first disoriented thought that Pendragon
wanted out. The cat had mysteriously vanished by the time he had been ready to bunk
down on the couch, and Tucker had been reluctant to knock on Sarah’s closed door to
find out whether he had somehow slipped in there with her.

So the faint scratching sound brought him upright on the couch, filled with the sense
of something left unfinished.
The cat wants out. Damned cat.
He blinked at the morning brightness, automatically checking his watch to find that
it was seven thirty, then pushed the blanket away and swung his feet to the floor.

It wasn’t until then that he looked toward the door and saw the knob turning.

Even as he heard the security system beep a mild warning as the door was opened, Tucker
was on his feet and moving swiftly in that direction. It occurred to him belatedly
that he didn’t have a damned thing handy with which to defend himself, but that didn’t
stop him.

He almost decked her.

Wide blue eyes took him in—fist raised, bare-chested,
beard-stubbled, and wearing only a pair of boxers decorated with cartoon characters—and
she let out a rich chuckle.

“Well, I would say Sarah finally struck gold after way too much brass, but if you’re
sleeping on the couch, handsome, she’s obviously still missing the train!”

Margo James was a redhead like Sarah, but all resemblance stopped there. She was tall
and voluptuous, her gestures and movements were quick and almost birdlike, and she
talked with blunt, brisk cheerfulness, contentedly misusing words and mixing metaphors
right and left.

Tucker had plenty of time to observe all these traits when he had returned from his
quick retreat to shower, shave, and dress, because Margo insisted on fixing breakfast,
telling him that Sarah always slept till nine at least.

“I’m the early bird, and she’s the bat.”

Tucker stopped himself from wincing. “You mean the night owl?”

Margo waved a spatula. “Yeah, right. It’s amazing that we get along so well. We’re
really as different as
afternoon and morning. Take our antiques, for instance. Sarah has a real feeling for
what’s genuine but doesn’t have a clue how things should be priced, whereas I know
the value of a thing down to the penny—but can be fooled by a fake really easily.”

“Sounds like you two are perfect partners,” Tucker commented, cautiously sipping coffee
that was very, very strong and had a shot at holding a spoon upright in the cup.

“Yeah, it’s been great. Hey, I fed that cat she’s adopted and let him out. He seemed
to want out.”

“I was supposed to let him out last night,” Tucker admitted, “but he disappeared on
me.”

Margo shrugged. “Maybe he slept in Sarah’s room. She told me he does that sometimes.”

Tucker wondered when, in that case, Sarah had let the cat out of her room, but it
didn’t seem important enough to worry about.

In a lightning change of mood, Margo said with sudden gravity, “Jeez, I was sorry
to hear about Sarah’s house. She loved that place, poured her heart into restoring
it.”

“How did you hear about it?” he asked casually.

“On TV—the news last night. That’s why I came back ahead of schedule, of course, even
though she didn’t call me. Maybe
especially
because she didn’t call me. I know Sarah. She’s as strong as bronze—”

“Steel,” Tucker murmured, unable to stop himself.

“Yeah, steel. Strong as steel, thinks she can handle anything and everything on her
own—but she’s had a
fairly bad year, and I just don’t know how much more she can take. First that damned
mugging, and then David—” Her gaze cut swiftly to Tucker. “You know about David?”

He nodded without comment.

Margo was obviously still trying to size up the relationship since Tucker had introduced
himself only by name, and was clearly disappointed that he didn’t react in some dramatic
way to mention of the last man in Sarah’s life.

“Yeah, well. First we find out the bastard was not one of your basic in-sickness-and-in-health
guys when she got hurt; he could barely bring himself to visit her every couple of
days, for Christ’s sake, and made it screamingly obvious he wanted to be someplace
else when he did show up. Then, when she finally comes out of the coma…”

“Able to see the future?” Tucker supplied when her voice trailed off.

She grimaced. “Yeah. I didn’t know if you knew.”

Again, he nodded without comment.

Margo flipped a fried egg—the fifth so far, with two more still in the pan—onto a
plate on the counter beside the stove, and Tucker was mildly tempted to ask how many
people she planned to feed. But he didn’t want her to be distracted from the subject
at hand.

“She really can do it,” Margo said, defending her friend staunchly. “It scared the
hell out of her at first—still does, I guess. Well, wouldn’t it you?”

“Definitely.”

Margo nodded. “Yeah, me too. In fact—Well, never
mind that. The point is that Sarah’s life has been hell this year. And now the house…jeez.
The news said the cops suspected arson?”

“So I understand.” He didn’t mention the stranger who might still be outside watching;
he hadn’t been able to casually look out a window without drawing her attention, and
he wasn’t sure how much—if anything—Margo knew.

“That means the insurance won’t pay off for ages,” she said in a practical spirit.
“Damn. She can stay here as long as necessary, of course—this place is half hers—but
it would be a lot better if she could concentrate on rebuilding right away. With everything
at fives and sixes like this, she’ll have way too much time to think about…stuff.”

Tucker didn’t bother to correct her. “About what happened to David…?” he probed, wondering
whether she knew that Sarah’s latest prediction supposedly concerned her own death.

Margo’s exotic face darkened. “That son of a bitch. I know you aren’t supposed to
speak ill of the dead, but if you ask me, he got what he deserved. If he’d treated
Sarah with a modem of respect, things might have been different.”

Tucker cast about in his mind and settled on
modicum
. Yeah—a modicum of respect.

“But he didn’t,” Margo continued, oblivious of having misspoken. “Oh, he was charming
enough—Sarah’s a sucker for charm—but he sure as hell backed off fast enough when
she got hurt. He made a pass at me while
she was in the hospital. Can you believe that?” She shot Tucker a fierce look. “Poor
Sarah, lying there with a head injury and the doctors shaking
their
heads because they don’t know if she’ll ever come out of it, and that bastard’s leering
and pinching me on the ass!”

Tucker just stopped himself from commenting that he could understand that other man’s
urge, base though it had certainly been; as complimentary as he meant the words to
be, he was both old enough and wise enough to know she wouldn’t appreciate them. “But
things really changed when Sarah got out of the hospital?” he asked instead.

“With David, you mean?” Margo nodded. “Oh, yeah. Well, before that, really. When she
predicted the nurse would have her baby. And the hotel fire, she predicted that in
front of a bunch of us, David included. He thought she was crazy when she said it’d
happen. Then, when it did—he
really
thought she was crazy.”

“And it scared him?”

“I’ll say. But before he could come up with a halfway decent excuse to break it off
with her, she saw his future. He lasted about a week with Sarah worrying about railroad
crossings, then bolted for California so fast you’d have thought his ass was on fire.”

“And died out there—at a railroad crossing.”

“I didn’t grieve for him. But Sarah nearly fell apart. For weeks, she wouldn’t even
leave her house, wouldn’t talk to anybody except me—and hardly to me.” Margo frowned
a little as she finished the eighth and final egg and turned the burner off, then
plugged in the toaster
and reached for the loaf of bread on the counter. “I don’t know if she would have
come out of it, except that the visions—I mean the waking nightmares—stopped for a
while. It gave her a chance to get her bearings, I guess.”

“And when the—waking nightmares came back?”

Margo shook her head. “Well, either they didn’t come very often, or she didn’t tell
me about all of them, because I only know about a few. Mostly minor things—except
for that serial killer out in San Francisco. That one really freaked her out.” She
paused for a moment or so, then added soberly, “But she’s been awfully quiet these
last months. Awfully quiet.”

Tucker drew a breath and said, “You’re afraid of her too. Aren’t you?”

She looked at him, those brilliant eyes darkened, and said shakily, “Oh, I’m afraid.
But not of
her
. I’m afraid of what she can see. Because she saw my future. And she won’t tell me
what it is.”