So he was careful. Very careful. Not that he never committed an illegal act, but he took pains to make sure to not get caught.

Samuel shifted uneasily in his chair, disturbed as always by the unpleasant memories. Because there had been times, when decent work was impossible to come by and thievery untenable, that he had resorted to using the only commodity he knew he could sell. His body.

Soul-shriveling, those times.

And maybe that was why he had so often paused during his wanderings at this or that church. Sometimes they offered a meal and a cot, but even if they didn't, they were at least warm and dry inside. He would find a dim corner and settle there, sometimes dozing and sometimes listening if there was an especially passionate preacher delivering an interesting sermon.

Somewhere along the way, he was given a Bible, and though his first inclination was to sell it, he tucked it inside the increasingly worn duffel bag instead. He had taught himself to read, and eventually he began to read the Bible.

There was a lot he thought was good.

There was a lot he didn't understand.

But, somehow, it spoke to him, that book. He read it and reread it. He spent hours and hours thinking about it. And he began to spend more time in churches of all denominations, listening to sermons. Watching how the congregation didor did notrespond. Making mental note of what obviously worked and what failed to move people.

Within a few years, he was preaching himself, in small churches and on street corners and in bus stations.

He found God.

Or, more accurately, God found him. On a scorching hot July day when he was thirteen years old, God reached down and touched him.

And his whole life changed.

He was very good at eluding electronic security. Any kind of security, really, but especially the electronic kind. He called it his own personal stealth technology, and as far as he knew it was unique to him.

Part of what made him special.

Getting past the fence and into the Compound would be easy. They did not, after all, want to look like they were an armed camp bristling with weaponry or technology. They did not want to appear threatening or even especially unwelcoming. The surface had to be peaceful and calm.

Simple folk, that's what they were supposed to be.

What most of them were, probably.

At any rate, they didn't electrify the pretty wrought iron and brick fence, they merely set up an electronic detection zone just inside it, so they knew who was coming into the Compound.

Usually.

He made certain he was far enough away from the gatehouse that no guard with infrared binoculars might be able to pick up what the security cameras would never see, but otherwise he didn't worry about being detected. It was late, and he was reasonably sure that most of them were tucked safe and sound in their beds.

It helped that there were no longer any dogs acting as alert and faithful guards in the night. He wondered if they had thought of that. If they might have regretted that. If they had even guessed it might happen.

Ah, well. Hardly his fault if they were unable to think like soldiers.

It was what happened when amateurs tried to make war.

Things got sloppy.

With a shrug, he slipped over the fence and into the Compound. There was virtually no moonlight tonight, with the full moon ten days in the past and overcast skies to boot. He didn't mind. He adapted easily to the night and preferred darkness. He worked his way across the fields and through the woods and the undergrowth that also provided something of a barrier, at least for a casual intruder: big, prickly holly bushes.

Not fun, but also not unbreachable.

Within minutes, he was through the woods and into the clear fields on the other side, in the central area of the Compound.

Where all the homes lay.

Where the church lay.

He had a set pattern in mind, a definite plan, and followed it methodically, moving from house to house in utter silence. At each small, neat cottage, he probed the exterior of the building, pinpointing every piece of electronic security and then tagging it with a very tiny electronic device of his own. An electronics expert would have been hard-pressed to spot it; he didn't expect any of these amateurs to.

No one would discover his handiwork.

He began at the outer edges of the Compound and circled his way in, moving house to house, toward the church itself, keeping an eye to that direction all the way. But the church was still and silent. No one came or went; only a few lights on the upper floors illuminated two or three of the stained-glass windows.

There was an almost eerie quiet out here, he acknowledged.

In January there weren't even crickets, or bullfrogs calling from the river, and without summer sounds or dogs barking, it was silent.

Strange and uncomfortable, that realization. He who enjoyed silence had finally found a place where it screamed at him.

Shaking off the decidedly unpleasant sensation, he went on, keeping to his schedule. By the time he reached the main building, even the few lights on the upper floors had gone out, and the interior was dark and silent. It would have been a peaceful sight, if not for the security lights casting pools of bright, harsh light around each entrance.

He didn't worry about those.

It took him more than half an hour to slowly work his way around the very large church. He was more careful now, efficient, less inclined to assume he was dealing with amateurs.

Because not all of them were.

He found and tagged more than two dozen cameras and an equal number of motion detectors, and by the time he reached that point, he was grimly certain there were experts involved in protecting at least this building. And they were very, very good.

Almost too good.

But he was good himself, and though it required that he'd spend at least two more hours than he planned in the Compound, he was reasonably sure he had found everything of interest. Not absolutely positive but reasonably sure, which was all he had been aiming for on this trip.

He glanced toward the eastern sky and saw the first gray beginnings of dawn but lingered another few minutes to check some of the locked doors. Then he planted just a few more of his own devices and retreated toward the fence, leaving as silently unobserved as he had come.

Or so he thought.

Tessa didn't sleep well, which was hardly surprising. It took a lot out of her to open herself up like that, especially in a place that literally radiated negative energy.

Negative energy in a church.

A giant red warning flag from the universe, that.

She had gone over everything with Hollis but hadn't been able to offer a decent interpretation to the federal agent. Because the truth was, Tessa had never experienced anything quite like that.

"Cases almost always affect our abilities, usually in unexpected and unpredictable ways," Hollis had told her, more resigned than anything else. "Considering what we know about Samuel, that he's probably one of the most powerful psychics we've ever encountered, it stands to reason the energy there is going to be supercharged, for want of a better word."

"You mean not just more but more powerful?"

"Negative energy tends to be."

Tessa frowned. "I can't say I like the sound of that."

"None of us does. The problem is, most of us deal with, positive energyliterallyin our own abilities. We don't know why, but that's what all the science we have to depend on is telling us."

"Good guys equal positive? And bad guys equal negative?"