“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.