“Maybe that cop. Jeez, how many does that make?”

“Too many. At the local and state levels so far. And impossible to guess who’ll show their face next. Be a lot easier on us if they’d just wear a sign. But at least we have one more name to add to the list.”

Cait rested her chin on her hand as she peered across the street and watched silent men getting silently into weirdly silent cars. “Think he’s a major player?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before, but this was our first case in Richmond, so that doesn’t mean much. I’d give a lot to know who called him just now. He didn’t look very happy about it.”

“You think he removed the evidence I couldn’t find from the shop yesterday, don’t you?”

“I’d bet money on it. Nobody’d expect a cop—probably the first at the scene—to pocket a piece of evidence. At least, nobody but a suspicious bastard like me.”

“Think he did the same thing at Sarah Gallagher’s house? The fire marshal suspected arson, but so far he can’t find any proof.”

Brodie nodded, lifting the binoculars to gaze once more across the street. “Makes sense. They do tend to clean up after themselves whenever possible—and suspicious fires make for uncomfortably public headlines.”

“Okay, so what do we do now? Stick with the cop or go after Mackenzie and Gallagher?”

He hesitated only an instant before lowering the binoculars and easing back away from the edge. “I’d love to go after the cop, but we’ll leave that to someone else. We have to get our hands on Sarah Gallagher. And it’ll be a lot harder now. You can bet they saw Lewis just as clearly as we did, and you can bet it scared the hell out of both of them. We’re taught to trust cops, to depend on them for safety. Hell of a thing when we find out that’s a luxury we can no longer afford.”

“Amen,” Cait agreed soberly.

Neither made a sound as they crossed the roof and took an exterior stairway down to the ground. Their car was parked nearby, and neither spoke again until they were in it and moving.

“We don’t know where they’re going. Do we?” Cait asked as Brodie drove toward the highway.

“No. Get on the cell. Call it in.”

Immediately, Cait drew a specially modified cell phone from a bag on the floorboard and punched in a familiar number.

Sarah watched the sun come up from the front seat of Tucker’s Mercedes and wondered idly why it looked no different from the last sunrise she had seen, only a few weeks before. It should look different, she thought. The whole world had changed since then. It had gotten darker. And grimmer. And as terrifying as any nightmare.

She could still feel them. Out there somewhere. Somewhere near. Looming over her like the shadow of something vast and far-reaching. It was like feeling breath on the back of her neck, the cold, fetid breath of an ancient predator.

Where are you? Who are you?

But she was afraid to look too hard, to reach into that place inside herself where the voices—at least one of the voices—might have the answers. She was afraid to willingly open that door.

Afraid of the answers she might get. Afraid they would see her before she could see them.

“We’re about two hours away from the cabin,” Tucker said finally. “We’ll stop for groceries when we get closer; there’s never anything in Pat’s refrigerator but beer, and we might be there a few days.” His voice was matter-of-fact but didn’t quite hide the fact that Lewis’s presence in that hit squad had shaken him almost as much as it had her.

“Does this friend of yours know you’re—we’re—coming?”

“He doesn’t live in the cabin, just spends summers there. I called him from my bank, and he said I was welcome to spend a few days there. Polishing the latest novel. Most people assume that requires peace and quiet.”

Sarah was suddenly uneasy, her instincts jangling. “Will he tell anyone you’re there?” After seeing a police officer coming stealthily by night to get her, paranoia was stronger in her than it had ever been before. Except that it wasn’t paranoia, of course.

“No, he won’t breathe a word. Don’t worry, Sarah.”

“Right.”

He glanced over at her. “I’m sorry. That sounds facile, doesn’t it?”

“A bit.”

“It wasn’t meant to. I’m not kidding myself, and I won’t kid you. What we saw last night makes this a whole new ball game. It means we can’t trust the cops.”

“Any of them? They can’t all be…be in on this? Can they?”

Tucker shook his head. “I can’t imagine some mysterious conspiracy that large. But how can we possibly know who to trust? Unless you find some special insight along the way, I think we’d better not take chances. You trusted Lewis, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Until…”

“Right. Until he showed up outside your apartment in the dead of night, intending to kill you. That is what you believe?”

Sarah hesitated, then nodded. “I know they came for me. I don’t know if they were going to kill me, but I know they wanted to…hurt me.”

Tucker sent her another glance. “But you still don’t know why Lewis—why anyone—would want to hurt you?”

“No. But…it isn’t just him. He wasn’t the man who was watching me. And…” She hesitated, then said slowly, “When I had the vision about them coming for me, I heard a voice—a man’s voice, but not Lewis’s—saying, ‘Even if you run, we will find you. We will always find you.’”

Tucker looked at her sharply. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Those men coming to the apartment were the immediate threat. That’s all I thought about until we got away.”

“But you heard a voice saying they’d find you?”

“Yes. And a low hum of…murmuring and whispering. Tucker…I think there are a lot of them. Like an army. I didn’t see them, but I heard them. Soft murmuring voices all around me. And they weren’t friendly voices.”

Tucker was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “My name is Legion: for we are many.”

“That’s from the Bible.”

He nodded. “As I recall, it refers to the devil and his minions.”

“Evil.” Sarah shivered. “I…feel that about them, in a way. Darkness, shadows. Threatening, always threatening. And all around me. Reaching out for me. They want me, and I don’t know why.”

“But you do know that your life was perfectly normal until you were mugged—and woke up psychic.”

She tried to think, to force her fears to the back of her consciousness. “Yes. So it has to have something to do with that.”

“Somehow,” he mused, “being psychic, having visions, makes you valuable to someone. Or a threat to someone. Why? Did you—have you made a prediction that hasn’t yet come true? I mean, one involving someone else?”

“No. The only threat I saw was aimed at me.”

“That serial killer out in California; you predicted something about him, didn’t you?”

“Just that he’d strike again. Which he has. But he’s still out there killing. And he’s just one man.”

“You don’t feel a threat from him?”

“To myself? No. He doesn’t even know I exist.”

Tucker glanced at her. “Okay, tell me this. Are we heading in the right direction?”

“We aren’t heading in the wrong one,” she said slowly.

He let out a faint sound of humor. “Well, that’s something.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt a bit stiff, very conscious of the things she had not been able to bring herself to tell him. Like those other voices. But he didn’t need to know about them. Not really.

“You’re doing fine. Tell me this. Do you know why we need to head in the right direction? Are we looking for something? Someone? Or is the point simply to get away from Richmond and the threat back there?”

“I…don’t know.” Then, suddenly, she did know, and blurted, “Someone. I think there’s someone we have to find. Someone we have to look for.”

“Who?”

The moment of clarity was gone as abruptly as it had come, and Sarah slumped in the seat. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”