Where had the warning come from? A friend? Another psychic? How had it been sent to Tucker’s computer when he, a computer expert, insisted that was next to impossible?

Their car bugged, their every action apparently monitored by the enemy, and now it was beginning to look like there was someone else out there watching them, someone who might be on their side…

And Sarah had no idea who they could trust.

She wasn’t able to brood about it for too long, because Tucker turned the car toward the west about fifteen minutes later. And it required all her self-control to keep from reaching over and jerking the wheel to turn them north once more.

It was an actual physical sensation, a tugging deep inside her that almost hurt. This was the wrong way. The wrong way! She had to close her eyes and consciously argue with whatever was tugging at her. We’ll go the right way. We will. In a day or two, we will.

It has to be north.

I know.

The answer is north.

What answer is that?

North.

Right. We’ll go north. Soon.

After a few minutes of the continued silence between her and Tucker, she reached and turned on the radio, needing to listen to something besides the faint, anxious echo in her head.

“So she’s just a friend, huh?” Keith Hayden grinned at Tucker as they sat in his office at the car lot. “How come all your friends look like her and all my friends look like you?”

“Because there is a God.” Tucker was signing his name on a multitude of papers and didn’t look up.

Keith snorted. “Listen, Tuck—”

“Please don’t call me that,” Tucker interrupted. “It doesn’t sound any better now than it did in college. And it especially sounds bad when I’ve just let you rob me blind.”

“Who, me?” Keith was deeply injured. “Can I help it if you’re in too big a hurry to insist on a better price for that tank of yours? By the way, you didn’t tell me why you were in such a hurry.”

“Because we have places to go and people to see.” Tucker hesitated and looked at his old friend. “You won’t get into any trouble misfiling the papers on the Jeep for a few days, right?”

Keith shrugged. “It’s my business, I can do what I like. And I’m lousy at filing things promptly. Just remember, you’re still using your own tag, and it’ll be listed in the DMV as belonging on a Mercedes. If you get stopped or pulled over, they might ask questions. But you’ll have your copies of the papers, so it should be all right, at least for a few days. I still say you ought to switch the insurance, though.”

“I have a special policy that covers me no matter what I’m driving. It’ll have to do.” Changing his insurance would reveal the make and model of the Jeep in all the necessary records, and Tucker wasn’t prepared to risk that.

“Then for God’s sake, drive carefully.”

“I intend to.” Tucker nodded. “So we’ve taken care of my end. But on your end…Keith, if anybody shows up asking questions about Sarah and me, tell them you sold me a Corvette or something and don’t have a clue where we’re headed.”

“Is somebody likely to show up?”

Shrugging, Tucker finished signing and pushed the papers back across Keith’s desk.

“In trouble, old buddy?”

“Sarah’s ex isn’t too happy about us,” Tucker said lightly, ever inventive. “Let’s just say he knows some pretty ugly customers and we’ll both be better off if the trail ends here.”

“No problem.” Keith looked through the glass half wall of his office where he could see Sarah standing outside in the showroom apparently watching traffic pass the car lot. “I thought she looked a little ragged. You too, buddy. And now coming all the way to Chicago to trade your car in is starting to make a little more sense.”

“I want Sarah to have some peace finally, that’s all,” Tucker said in one of the few utterly truthful statements he’d made today.

“Yeah, I imagine you’d do most anything for a pretty lady like her.” Keith grinned, then added, “My guys are switching your stuff from the Mercedes to the Jeep, including the tag. While they’re doing that, I’ll have our bank transfer the balance I owe you to a branch of your bank here in Chicago.”

“Tell them I’ll be by for the cash within an hour,” Tucker said.

Keith raised his brows. “Is the ex that close? I was hoping I could buy you two lunch.”

“We need to be on our way, Keith, but thanks.” Tucker glanced back over his shoulder, and added, “I’ll wait with Sarah while you finish up in here, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tucker came up behind Sarah as she stood looking out at traffic, approaching her warily. He couldn’t help wondering how on earth Keith had mistaken them for lovers; two more guarded and isolated people would be hard to imagine.

She had withdrawn from him almost completely during the journey to Chicago. They had gotten motel rooms both Saturday night and last night but had spent less than six hours in them each night. Tucker, for one, had barely closed his eyes since they had left the cabin on the lake, and on Sunday morning Sarah had come to breakfast hollow-eyed and strained, saying in answer to his insistent questions that she’d had another vision. The yawning grave again, and the whisper of voice she couldn’t quite understand, but this time accompanied by the sounds of bells—“like church bells”—and the sight of a Celtic cross.

Neither of them had said much after that.

“Sarah?”

She looked at him, unsurprised by his approach but with distant eyes, as if she returned from someplace else.

“Keith’s taking care of the final details, so we’ll be out of here in just a few minutes.”

She nodded, but said only, “Did you notice it?”

“Notice what?”

“That.” She pointed toward the passing traffic.

He looked in the direction she indicated, but it took him several moments to realize what she meant. Across the street, at a slight angle to the car lot where they stood, was one of those places that sold stonework. There were all kinds of things outside the building advertising the business: birdbaths, statuary, columns, benches and tables—even tombstones. Off to one side, curiously isolated and leaning a bit, was a Celtic cross. A big one.

“I saw a Celtic cross, canted to one side.”

“Is that—?”

“It’s the one I saw in the vision.” She turned her head to look up at him again, her expression still. “A part of the journey. We were meant to come here all along. Do you still believe it was all your idea?”

“Sarah, there must be other crosses like that one, especially in the northeast where so many Irish settled. We’ll probably see dozens of them once we head north again.” He questioned her certainty not because he doubted her, but because he didn’t like to think that his decision to come here had been less his own idea than the dictate of fate.

“There may be thousands of crosses for all I know. But that one is the one I saw.”

He gazed into pale brown eyes that were distant and wary and very sure, and sighed. “Okay. But it still doesn’t mean your life will end the way the vision did. That is not going to happen.”

Slowly, she said, “Switching cars like this…it’ll give us a head start maybe. A few days’ grace, if we’re lucky. But they will find us eventually. They want me too badly to just give up.”

“We’re going to use the time we have,” Tucker told her. “I’ll disable the GPS in the Jeep so nobody can track us that way. Hopefully they’ll believe the trail ends here, at least for a while. In the meantime, while we’re heading north toward whatever it is you feel is so important, we’ll use the computer every chance we get and keep gathering information until the pieces start to come together.”

“Couldn’t they trace that? If we connect to the Internet even wirelessly?”