“That man back there? The one in the black jacket?”
“Maybe. I’ve never been close enough to get a good look at him. There could be more than one, for all I know. But always at least one.”
“Why didn’t you mention that to Lewis when he asked if you knew of anyone who might want to hurt you?”
Sarah shrugged again. “He never made a threatening move. Never came close. He just watched me.”
“Stalkers just watch, Sarah, at least in the beginning.”
“He isn’t a stalker.” She didn’t react at all to Tucker’s use of her first name. “He isn’t obsessed. There’s something very…businesslike about him. Something coldly methodical.”
“As if watching you is his job? A private investigator, maybe?”
“Maybe. But I don’t know who would have hired him, or why.”
“You said you’d been getting a lot of unwanted attention lately. People who came to you for help.”
“Yes. So?”
“So maybe you gave somebody the wrong advice and somehow made an enemy. An investigator could have been hired to look for something that could be used against you in court.”
“Like what? That I use imported tea leaves instead of domestic?” Without waiting for a response to that dry question, she went on in the same tone. “I don’t offer advice. I don’t give readings. I don’t take money from anybody unless they’re buying a Regency table or a Colonial chair. I’ve never owned a crystal ball or a deck of tarot cards. I don’t claim to be able to solve problems, or I would have started with my own. So I don’t see how anyone could claim I’d wronged them.”
“All right. But if you’re being watched, and if he’s a pro, then somebody had to hire him. There must be a reason.”
“I suppose.”
As he stopped the car to wait at a traffic light, Tucker turned his head and looked at her. “Any trouble with an ex-husband or lover?”
She seemed almost to flinch, but her answer was steady enough. “No.”
“You’re sure?” he probed.
Sarah looked at him. “I’ve never been married. As for lovers, since you ask, I’ve had only two in my life. One was back in college; we broke up amicably and still send each other Christmas and birthday cards. The other decided back in April, a few weeks after I got out of the hospital, that he didn’t want to live with a woman who freaked out every time he got near a railroad crossing. So he requested a transfer to the West Coast.”
“And?” Tucker kept his gaze on her face, his attention caught by the thread of pain in her otherwise expressionless voice.
“And he was killed two weeks later. At a railroad crossing.” She turned her head to look forward, adding, “The light’s green.”
Tucker tried to pay attention to his driving, but it wasn’t easy. He got the car rolling forward and fixed his gaze on the car ahead of him. “Let me make sure I understand this. You told your lover that railroad crossings were dangerous to him, that he’d be killed at one? Because you’d seen it in his future?”
Softly, she said, “I hadn’t yet learned that warnings were useless, that what I saw would happen no matter what. I thought I could save him. But I couldn’t, of course. I couldn’t change his destiny.”
“Don’t you believe in free will?”
“Not anymore.”
Tucker digested that for several blocks in silence. “According to what I’ve read, even the best psychics don’t claim to get a hundred percent right; haven’t you ever been wrong?”
“No.”
He sent her a quick look. “So what makes you so special?”
“I don’t know.” She took the question seriously, obviously thinking about it. “Maybe it’s because I never go looking for the future. What I see comes to me without any desire on my part.”
“You can’t control it?”
“No.”
“Can’t block it out?”
“No.”
“And you truly believe that what you see is the absolute truth, actual events that haven’t yet taken place. You truly believe that you can see the future before it happens.”
She was silent for a moment, then replied simply, “I truly believe that.”
Tucker made two turns without comment, but then curiosity made him say, “But that isn’t all, is it? I mean, you knew the fire marshal suspected arson. Did his face give away his thoughts, or can you also—pick up information from the people around you?”
He didn’t think she was going to answer at first, but finally she did.
“Sometimes I know things. I look at a person’s face…and I know things.”
“Oh? Do you know anything about me?” He didn’t mean to sound so challenging, but knew he did even as the words emerged. He started to take back the question, knowing from experience that nobody liked being backed into a corner and ordered to perform, particularly a self-proclaimed psychic. But she surprised him.