The First Prophet by Kay Hooper Page A

oblivious of having misspoken. “Oh, he was charming
     enough—Sarah’s a sucker for charm—but he sure as hell backed off fast enough when
     she got hurt. He made a pass at me whileshe was in the hospital. Can you believe that?” She shot Tucker a fierce look. “Poor
     Sarah, lying there with a head injury and the doctors shaking
their
heads because they don’t know if she’ll ever come out of it, and that bastard’s leering
     and pinching me on the ass!”
    Tucker just stopped himself from commenting that he could understand that other man’s
     urge, base though it had certainly been; as complimentary as he meant the words to
     be, he was both old enough and wise enough to know she wouldn’t appreciate them. “But
     things really changed when Sarah got out of the hospital?” he asked instead.
    “With David, you mean?” Margo nodded. “Oh, yeah. Well, before that, really. When she
     predicted the nurse would have her baby. And the hotel fire, she predicted that in
     front of a bunch of us, David included. He thought she was crazy when she said it’d
     happen. Then, when it did—he
really
thought she was crazy.”
    “And it scared him?”
    “I’ll say. But before he could come up with a halfway decent excuse to break it off
     with her, she saw his future. He lasted about a week with Sarah worrying about railroad
     crossings, then bolted for California so fast you’d have thought his ass was on fire.”
    “And died out there—at a railroad crossing.”
    “I didn’t grieve for him. But Sarah nearly fell apart. For weeks, she wouldn’t even
     leave her house, wouldn’t talk to anybody except me—and hardly to me.” Margo frowned
     a little as she finished the eighth and final egg and turned the burner off, then
     plugged in the toasterand reached for the loaf of bread on the counter. “I don’t know if she would have
     come out of it, except that the visions—I mean the waking nightmares—stopped for a
     while. It gave her a chance to get her bearings, I guess.”
    “And when the—waking nightmares came back?”
    Margo shook her head. “Well, either they didn’t come very often, or she didn’t tell
     me about all of them, because I only know about a few. Mostly minor things—except
     for that serial killer out in San Francisco. That one really freaked her out.” She
     paused for a moment or so, then added soberly, “But she’s been awfully quiet these
     last months. Awfully quiet.”
    Tucker drew a breath and said, “You’re afraid of her too. Aren’t you?”
    She looked at him, those brilliant eyes darkened, and said shakily, “Oh, I’m afraid.
     But not of
her
. I’m afraid of what she can see. Because she saw my future. And she won’t tell me
     what it is.”

    The morning sun was halfway to its noon position, and long shadows stretched from
     the west side of the building in downtown Richmond. A tall woman with short and rather
     spiky blond hair stood motionless on the balcony, virtually invisible in the shadows
     and among tall potted plants. She cursed absently as a palm frond stirred by the breeze
     waved in front of her binoculars, shifted her weight just a bit, then went still again
     as her field of vision cleared. Her attention was fixed on the rathershabby hotel across the street, and a particular room a floor below her own fifth-floor
     vantage point.
    The drapes at that window had not been drawn, and a generous percentage of the room
     was visible to her.
    Careless. Duran must be losing his touch.
    Two men were in the room. She would have given a lot to know what they discussed as
     they sat so casually across from each other. But there had been no time to plant listening
     devices, and from her angle, it was impossible even to make an attempt at lip-reading—a
     skill she had worked very hard to acquire.
    She lowered the binoculars, lips pressed so tightly together there was no hint of
     softness there, and vivid green eyes furious. “Damn,” she whispered.