“Too close. Dammit, they have to know where she is.” Murphy wasn’t even conscious of speaking aloud, so accustomed to working alone that talking to herself had become a habit.

The words had barely left her mouth when the very faint sound of a key in the lock of the apartment’s front door brought her head up alertly, and this time the curse that left her lips was a mere whisper.

Just my luck that Ms. Bank Vice President went off this morning and left her damned lunch on the kitchen counter!

Swiftly, unwilling to wait and find out whether the apartment’s legal occupant would choose to come into the bedroom for some reason, she closed the laptop and dropped it into the pouch hanging against her hip. Without a wasted motion, she backed out onto the balcony and slid the door closed.

There was a fire escape, which was good, but leaving the shelter of the greenery meant she was too visible, even in the shadows, for her peace of mind. Still, being seen by the wrong person was infinitely preferable to being arrested for breaking and entering, which was what likely would happen if she remained on the balcony.

She moved quickly and quietly down to street level and, once there, paused only long enough to stow the binoculars in their pocket of the pouch containing the computer.

The pouch was not conspicuous, resembling nothing so much as a large, if bulky, shoulder bag, but someone might well have taken notice of the binoculars.

A quick glance around told her that none of the few people about seemed interested in her. She was just about to relax when a carefully casual glance up at the window across the street brought her to a dead stop just two steps away from the fire escape.

Duran was at the window, and he saw her.

He was too far away for her to recognize his face, but she knew it was him. She knew he was looking at her. And she knew he recognized her. She could feel it. Like some night animal caught unexpectedly in the light, she stood frozen, not breathing, a panicky sensation stirring deep inside her. It was not a feeling she was willing to define to herself, though if asked she would have said angrily that it was hatred. Pure hatred.

If asked, Duran would have said the same thing.

The moment seemed to last forever, and if a car horn had not rudely shattered the quiet of the morning, there was no telling how long she would have stood there staring up at the man in the window. But the horn brought her to her senses, and with a soft little sound more violent than a curse, she hurried to the corner and around it, taking herself out of his field of vision.

He turned away from the window and looked across the room at the other man.

“What is it?” Varden asked, instantly alert.

“We’ve run out of time,” Duran said.

Sarah?

She was struggling up out of the depths of an exhausted sleep, frantic to wake up and get control, to be able to shut out the whisper in her mind.

Sarah, you must—

Her eyes snapped open, and Sarah was awake. Her heart was pounding, and she could hear her own shuddery breathing. As always, once she was awake and aware, the voice fell silent.

That voice. God, that voice.

It had begun only a few days before, creeping into her awareness during both waking and sleeping dreams, during vulnerable or unguarded moments. A whisper without identity, eerily insistent. She didn’t even know whether it came from inside her…or somewhere else. It felt alien to her, yet she couldn’t be sure it was—because all of this felt alien. The dreams. These frightening new abilities. The feelings she couldn’t explain even to herself.

All she really knew was that all of it terrified her.

She pulled herself out of bed and went to take a shower, heavy-eyed after lying awake for most of the night. It wasn’t until she came back into her bedroom and began dressing that she heard a loud laugh and the cheerful notes of Margo’s voice.

Margo. Dear God.

Sarah knew she should have called her, of course. Last night. She should have called her and reassured her that it was okay, that she didn’t have to come charging back home to support her partner and friend. Anything to keep Margo safely away from here. But Sarah’s thoughts last night had been fixed on her own troubles—and on Tucker Mackenzie.

Real. He was real. Not a figment of her imagination. Not a face in a half-remembered nightmare, probably formed out of random features drifting like flotsam in her subconscious. Real. One more indication to her that the prediction of her own future was going to come true. One more sign that it was useless to fight what had to be.

That was what she would have said—had, in fact, said—yesterday. But Tucker hadn’t merely presented himself as a sign or a symbol or an indication. He was a real man, and being a real man, he had his own thoughts and opinions and his own agenda. He wanted to believe.

He wanted to believe in her.

Sarah had seen something similar more times than she could count these last months. People with anxious voices and eager eyes and desperate smiles. Asking her, begging her, for answers. The difference was, those people hadn’t wanted the truth. No, they wanted answers, but only those answers that would make them feel good, or at least better, about their problems, their lives. They wanted reassurance, comfort, hope. They hadn’t been able to find it within their own belief system, whether that be religion or something else. So they had come to her.

Tell me my husband forgave me before he died.

Tell me my runaway daughter isn’t walking the streets somewhere, or lying dead in a gutter.

Tell me I’m right to choose my lover.

Tell me my mother didn’t suffer.

Tell me there’s no hell.

Tell me there is a heaven.

Tell me I have a future.

Tell me life doesn’t just end.

Tell me…please tell me…

Sarah had discovered for herself that hope was a fragile thing, difficult to hold on to in the harsh face of day-to-day living. She blamed no one for trying to hold on to it, or reach for it again after it had been lost or driven away. But she was helpless to offer hope to others when all she saw was bleak and dark and violent—and without promise.

She had expected Tucker to ask her for hope. But that wasn’t what he wanted from her. He wanted the truth. He didn’t care whether it proved to be a dark and bleak truth. He didn’t care whether it caused him pain. He just had to know the truth.

She could have given him most of what he wanted of her within the first hour of knowing him. That she had not was due to several reasons. Though he would doubtless disagree with her assessment, she knew he was not yet ready to hear the truth he needed to hear. Not yet ready to listen and understand. Proof of that had been his shocked reaction to the tiny glimpse of the truth she had shown him just after they said good night.

And then there was his part in the sequence of events that all these new instincts of hers told her had already begun. His arrival told her that the countdown had started. With his truth revealed to him, he would no doubt turn away from her, and she knew it wasn’t yet time for him to do that. There was another reason for him to be here with her. They had…some place to go together. Some place where it was cold and…bleak.

Her rendezvous with death.

And that was the final reason why she had not offered him his truth. Because he had intrigued her with his challenge. With the possibilities of what he saw. He was so sure. So sure that fate could be changed. That destiny was merely the sum of one’s choices.