Brodie stood very still, his body rigid. His face was gray, his eyes hollow. “We have to look for her,” he said mechanically. “Something else could have happened to her.” He looked at Sarah. “Tell me something else happened to her.”
She had closed her mind so tightly in order to get into the church that opening it widely now required an effort. But as soon as Sarah made that effort, she felt an icy wave sweep over her, shaking her badly and leaving behind it nothing but an empty ache.
She was holding Tucker’s hand and was grateful for his strength and the solid warmth of him beside her. He hadn’t known Leigh, but he felt Sarah’s pain and loss, and his mind reached out instinctively to offer her compassion. It was a light but comforting touch she needed.
She put her other hand on Brodie’s arm. “I don’t…I don’t think so. She’s gone, Brodie. I can’t sense her at all.”
He drew a deep breath. “Christ.” He looked suddenly much older than his years. First Cait and now Leigh. This time, the price had been high indeed.
Tucker asked quietly, “Why would she have gone in there?”
It was Murphy who answered him, her voice still hard but beginning to crack around the edges. “She might have seen one of them still trapped in there. She would have gone in.”
“Even for one of them?” Tucker asked.
“Even for one of them.”
It was decided not to return to Leigh’s house. Murphy vanished for a few minutes and then returned to lead the way to what she called a safe house in Portland. Nick would meet them there later, and Murphy and Nick would remain with the others for the night, then go their separate ways in the morning while Brodie took Tucker and Sarah back to Richmond.
The first part went according to plan, but once they reached the house in Portland, one last surprise awaited them.
It was Sarah who realized that there was a faint sound coming from Tucker’s computer case (which she had packed up and brought with her after he’d been taken from the hotel), but before anyone could panic, she said, “It sounds like e-mail again.”
Brodie and Murphy looked at each other, and it was she who said, “Even if the machine is on, this shouldn’t be happening. This place is a dead zone for wireless, I made sure of that.”
Tucker sat down in the living room and got the computer from its case, placing it on the coffee table. It continued to beep quietly, regularly.
It was not on.
Tucker hesitated before turning it on, looking at the others and saying, “This is almost as creepy as finding them in my head.”
“Sure it isn’t a low battery?” Murphy asked, but not as if she considered that a possibility.
“When it’s off? No. But it was on battery power when I left it at the hotel the other night. I’d be surprised if it has any power at all.”
But it had power.
Power enough, anyway, to bring up a blank screen instead of the program manager, a black screen.
Words appeared on the screen as if they were being written as they watched, bright white against the black background, and the voice behind the words was so evident that they could almost hear it, low, pleasant, incongruously courteous.
Duran.
You disappointed me, Brodie.
I was rather hoping you would finish off Varden
in the cellar and save me the trouble.
But…what will be, will be.
Isn’t that right, Sarah?
Until next time.
Oh, and by the way—
Leigh says hello.
Brodie sat down heavily in a chair across from Tucker, his face white and his eyes filled with a terrible awareness. “Jesus Christ. It was Leigh he was after all along. This whole thing…just to get Leigh.”
“Then she’s alive,” Tucker said.
Sarah, with a good idea of what it would cost Leigh to survive, shook her head numbly. “She would have preferred to die in the fire. Believe me.”
It was Murphy who said, “I bet when Nick gets here, he’ll tell us the cops found a body in the church. A woman’s body, burned beyond recognition. If Duran’s been planning this all along, he would have been prepared.”
Brodie slammed his hand down on the arm of the chair with a force that made them all jump, then shot to his feet and left the house.
“He needs some time to himself,” Murphy told the others.
“He hates to lose,” Sarah murmured.
It was much later that evening when Tucker had a chance to sit down and really talk to Brodie. The other man had returned to the house nearly an hour after his departure with a calm face and little to say, but when he and Tucker were alone—Sarah was in the shower, while Murphy stood guard outside the house and waited for Nick to join them—he was entirely willing to fill Tucker in on the details he had missed.