The suite turned out to be a nice one, with a spacious sitting room that had a sleeper sofa (which Tucker matter-of-factly claimed for his bed), a couple of good chairs, a desk, and a comfortable bedroom with a king-sized bed.

Sarah barely noticed. Travel-weary and just plain tired, all she wanted was to take a long, hot shower and get ready for bed. Tucker told her to go ahead while he plugged his laptop in to charge the battery while his system continued gathering the information that might help them.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah, but too wound up to sleep just yet. I need to wind down, and I’ll sleep better if I work on this for a while.” He looked at her searchingly. “It’s been hours since we stopped for supper; I think I’ll order some soup and sandwiches from room service. Okay?”

“Fine.” She was surprised to find herself a little hungry. Tucker had been feeding her at regular intervals, and she was beginning to get used to it.

Leaving him in the sitting room, she went and took a luxuriously long and hot shower. It felt wonderful. She washed her hair with shampoo thoughtfully provided by the hotel, and as she stood at the vanity drying it with the dryer also provided, she reflected with a bit of rueful humor that someone really should publish a self-help book on what to pack for an indeterminate journey on the run for one’s life.

Moisturizer, for example, should go into every woman’s survival kit. You couldn’t always count on a hotel to provide it, after all. When you could even stay at a hotel, of course. And a nice bottle of bubble bath for those rare occasions when a few precious minutes could be spent soothing a travel-weary body. And a small makeup bag and a bottle of pleasing perfume would certainly come in handy when you were traveling with a man. A nice man.

A sexy man.

Idiot. Get him out of your head.

The only sleepwear Sarah had brought with her was something styled like a man’s button-up, cuffed-sleeve shirt. It was fairly short, reaching just below the middle of her thighs, and rather sheer.

She looked at her reflection on the back of the bathroom door and sighed. Too pale and still too thin despite Tucker’s regular meals, she looked almost anemic. And the stark white sleep shirt didn’t help.

My kingdom for some blush and lipstick. A touch of foundation. Something.

The faint spurt of self-derisive humor faded. She leaned her forehead against the cool mirror for a moment and closed her eyes. Her head was hurting, throbbing. It was almost like a sinus headache, an aching pressure behind her eyes, but she knew it wasn’t sinus. It was this thing inside her, this thing that had been born in violence six months before.

It was growing.

Tucker hadn’t understood when she’d told him that; she knew he hadn’t. How could he? How could anyone know what it felt like to have something alien inside you, something that was part of you and yet not under your control? Not…normal.

“Go away,” she whispered.

For a moment, she could have sworn the pressure inside her head increased, as if in protest, and far back in her mind she thought she heard the echo of a whisper.

Sarah…

Fate. Destiny.

Sarah lifted her head away from the mirror and opened her eyes. They looked very bright and shiny, and felt hot. But she refused to let the tears fall. She locked them inside her and angrily wished they’d drown that thing that kept growing, that thing that wouldn’t go away and leave her in peace.

Then she squared her shoulders and left the bathroom. Reluctant to let Tucker see her looking so damned ghostlike and…insubstantial, Sarah put on one of the bulky terry-cloth robes also provided by the hotel. It was also white, which hardly lent her any color, but at least it made her look less in need of care and feeding.

Even so, he looked at her for an unnervingly long moment when Sarah went back into the sitting room just a couple of minutes after room service had arrived. But all he said, lightly, was, “Feeling better?”

“Much.”

“Good. Here, I had the waiter leave the cart in the room so we can use it as our table…”

The food occupied them for some time, but finally Sarah nodded toward the laptop set up on the desk and asked, “Find anything yet?”

“More of the same, so far.” He leaned back in his chair and frowned slightly. “I’m still sorting through all the information the computer gathered while we were at the lake. Every news item just seems to confirm what we believe—that someone is abducting young psychics and killing older ones. There are some exceptions, of course. I’ve read articles on at least a couple of very young psychics who seem to be doing fine, and a number of articles about older psychics who’ve been in the news more than once.”

“So what does that tell us?”

“I’m damned if I know. Unless it’s a question of genuine versus phony. Maybe all the ones still alive and kicking just didn’t satisfy whatever criteria the other side is using to determine the real from the fake.”

Sarah thought about it. “Can you set up your computer to look for a pattern? I mean, in case there’s something we’re just not seeing?”

Tucker nodded. “When we have more information, sure. I’ll probably have to write the program, but that won’t take too long. In the meantime, I’m also starting a list of psychics who don’t appear to be under any kind of threat. And I’ll narrow that list to those living in the northeast.”

“You still believe we should approach one?”

“I think we have to try, Sarah. We’ll be as careful as we can in choosing who to approach and how we approach them.”

“How do we know we’re being careful?”

“Good question,” he said ruefully. “The only answer I have is—we do the best we can. Maybe the computer will provide us with something useful. Maybe your senses and instincts will kick in. Or maybe, in the end, we’ll just have to wing it.”

Sarah sipped her decaf for a moment, then said slowly, “We can only gather information about those people who’ve been in the news or some kind of official report. Tucker…don’t you think there are probably people out there who’ve successfully hidden their abilities? I mean, I would have, if it hadn’t hit me so suddenly and so hard at first that I blurted things out without caring who was listening. If I’d had my druthers, nobody would ever have found out about me.”

“I’m sure there are others out there who think that way,” he agreed. “And maybe they’ve escaped notice. But it means the same thing to us as it does to the other side: those psychics will be virtually impossible to find.”

“Unless the other side has ways of finding them besides the media and official reports.”

“Right.”

She nodded. “I can’t help wondering about them, though. The ones that might be hiding out there. What if they’re so quiet because they know what’s going on?”

“That could be.”

She felt a little chill and unconsciously drew the lapels of the robe more closely together. The throbbing behind her eyes intensified. “I just…I just have this unsettling feeling that there are people moving all around us, and that they know what the hell’s going on. That if we only knew who to ask, it would all start to make some kind of sense.”

Tucker smiled slightly, his gaze intent on her face. “I have a lot of faith in your feelings. Maybe…” He hesitated, then said, “Sarah, maybe if you concentrate on those feelings, if you…open yourself to them…you’ll be able to sense some information the computer could never provide.”

Sarah set her cup down on the table and stared at it. Lovely pattern. Roses. Unusual, since most hotels stuck with utilitarian white…

“Sarah?”

“I don’t know how to do that.” Her head throbbed.

“I think you do. Now, I think you do.”

Softly, starkly, she said, “I’m afraid to do that.”