“All right, Sarah. Don’t force it. You’re exhausted anyway; it’s a miracle you were able to come up with anything at all. Look, I think we could both use some coffee and a couple of breakfast biscuits. I’ll get off at the next exit and find a place.”

She looked down at her hands and rubbed them together because they felt so cold.

“Sarah?”

“I’m okay. But I could use some coffee.” She didn’t want him to know how fragile she felt right now. How unutterably tired. How frightened.

This is my fate. My destiny. All this has to happen.

“You’ll be safe at the cabin, Sarah. You’ll be able to rest.”

“At least for a while?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “At least for a while.”

Staring through the windshield now, she said idly, “They will find us, you know. They’re very, very good at that. They’ve been good at that for a long time. A long time.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.” It was like catching a glimpse of something from the corner of her eye, Sarah realized. There was knowledge there, off to the side, just out of sight. Waiting for her to pay attention. She could see it if she looked.

She didn’t want to look.

After a moment, Tucker said, “A long time. Then maybe you’re not the first psychic they’ve gone after.”

She turned the possibility over in her mind. “Maybe. Maybe there are others. Or were.”

Almost to himself, Tucker muttered, “That might explain a few things in my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“There have been a few psychics I heard about and went looking for, but was unable to find. They just seemed to have…dropped off the face of the earth. I always assumed they changed their names and ducked out of sight because one scam too many had brought the cops sniffing after them. Or disgruntled customers.”

“Maybe it wasn’t that at all.”

Tucker fell silent, frowning a little as he guided the car onto an exit ramp where signs promised several fast-food restaurants. He didn’t speak again until they had collected coffee, orange juice, and several sausage biscuits from a drive-through and were once again on the highway heading north.

“So…what we know or think we know is that there’s someone after you. Possibly because you’re psychic, but we don’t really know that. We think they want to kill you—but we don’t really know that. And we think we should head north, maybe to look for somebody, but we don’t know who or why.”

“We don’t know a hell of a lot, actually.” She bit into a second biscuit with more determination than appetite.

“No, but it ought to be an interesting trip.” He laughed a little.

She looked over at him, more wary than reassured by his humor. “Tucker’s excellent adventure.”

He met her gaze briefly, then returned his to the road as he began unwrapping another biscuit. “Don’t run away with the idea that I think this is just a game, Sarah. In games, you don’t end up dead. In this…well, it’s a definite possibility.”

But you don’t understand what that really means, I think. You don’t know just how brutal real bad guys can be. But all she said was, “Then why are you getting such a damned kick out of it?”

“Not a kick—just a certain amount of…intellectual enjoyment. What can I say? I love puzzles. And I’m good at them.”

Sarah finished her juice and then started on the coffee, brooding. She was too tired to think and she knew it, but it was impossible to turn off her mind. She felt curiously adrift, caught up in a current that was carrying her along in a direction she hadn’t chosen and didn’t want, and since it was not her nature to be so helpless, it bothered her.

But this is my fate. My destiny.

She was here with Tucker because she was supposed to be. Heading north because she was supposed to be, because there was someone waiting for her and because it would end in the north. Running for her life because that, too, was part of the plan. Letting Tucker set the pace and make decisions because she was supposed to.

She wasn’t supposed to think. To question. She was just supposed to accept.

Because it’s my destiny.

Even as that litany echoed in her mind, Sarah frowned. Somewhere in the dim recesses of her consciousness, rebellion stirred, and resistance. Why did that statement rise in answer to so many of her questions? For the first time, she wondered whether that was simply another of the voices in her head, not a beckoning future she couldn’t escape but someone—or something—intent on shaping her destiny to suit some shadowy purpose.

I’m being led somewhere. Pushed. Guided. And how do I know it isn’t them? How do I know they aren’t defining my fate, controlling my destiny? How can I trust even my own mind not to betray me?

She couldn’t. That was the most terrifying thing of all.

Near Arlington, Tucker turned off the highway toward the west, which made Sarah vaguely uneasy. She tried to pay attention, to listen to whatever was tugging at her, but the sensation was just tenuous and uncomfortable, impossible to define, and only faded some time later with another change of direction.

They turned again off the main road and onto a winding secondary road and, quietly, Sarah said, “We’re heading north again.”

He looked at her quickly. “Still not the wrong direction?”

“I think…definitely the right one. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s somewhere to the north.”

Tucker turned onto an even more winding secondary road, and said, “Just a few more miles now. The cabin’s on a small lake, quite isolated. There isn’t much of a town nearby, but there is a small general store. Sort of.”

That last wry comment was explained some ten minutes later, when Sarah found herself sitting in the car and staring bemusedly at a sign cheerfully proclaiming WANDA’S BAIT AND PARTY SHOPPE. It looked like the kind of small gas-station-cum-general-store found in many small towns, selling everything from gas to groceries. And, apparently, bait.

Tucker went in alone to get the groceries, after telling Sarah it might be best if he appeared to be traveling alone. If anyone was searching for them—and they had to expect someone was—then they would be looking for and asking questions about a man and a woman, not a man alone. It was a logical caution.

So Sarah sat in the car and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. Tucker returned in about fifteen minutes, carrying several small plastic bags, which he put in the backseat.

When he slid into the driver’s seat, Sarah asked mildly, “Who’s Wanda?”

“Beats me. Every time I’ve stopped by here—admittedly just a few times over several years—the only one inside has been an old man watching television while one of his relatives runs the cash register. Today it was a nephew.”

His voice had been light, but Sarah heard something else and looked at him intently. “What is it?”

He started the car but paused with his hand on the gearshift and looked at her with grim eyes. “There was a news program on. And a report about something that happened in Richmond.”

“What?”

“They found a man’s body early this morning near an abandoned building. Shot through the head. The city’s up in arms. He was a cop.”

Sarah felt a chill. “Not…Lewis?”

“Lewis. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. There are no suspects, at least as far as the media knows. Just one very dead cop—who must have been killed not long at all after we saw him at the apartment.” He paused, then added, “Unlike the late sergeant, I don’t really believe in coincidence. So I’d say that, for Lewis, failure was not an acceptable option.”

Sarah didn’t say a word.

Inside Wanda’s Bait and Party Shoppe, the old man looked toward the front counter and spoke querulously. “You ain’t supposed to leave the desk!”