“And even if she did die just to give them a body they could use, it isn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent her death.”
Sarah leaned her head back and closed her eyes, a weariness far more emotional than physical washing over her. “You know, when all this started, I thought it just affected me, that I was the target, the only one in danger. It never occurred to me that anyone else might get hurt because of me. But then there was Margo, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now this poor woman, this woman I never even met. This woman who’ll never marry, never have children, never grow old. Because of me. Who else is going to be killed or threatened with death because I got hit on the head and turned into a valuable freak?”
Tucker hesitated for only a moment before leaving the desk and coming to sit beside her on the couch. She was alone again, locked inside herself where it was cold and bleak, and he couldn’t just leave her there.
“Sarah, you are not a freak.” He reached over to cover the restless fingers knotted together in her lap. They were cold and stiff. “And this is not your fault.”
“No?” Her eyes remained closed, her face still. “I keep thinking…there must have been a point somewhere along the way where I could have—should have—made a different choice. A different decision. And that would have changed everything. But then I remember that all this is fate. Destiny.”
She opened her eyes then, raised her head and turned it to look at him. Her eyes were darker than eyes should ever be, the pupils wide and black and empty. And her voice was curiously toneless, dull. “This is where I have to be. Where I’m supposed to be. You’re who I’m supposed to be with. And everything that has happened was meant to happen just as it did. It was all…planned out for me a long time ago. So why don’t I just accept that?”
“I don’t believe our lives are mapped out for us,” he reminded her quietly.
She looked at him a moment longer, those great dark eyes unblinking. “Then maybe I could have saved Jennifer Healy.”
“No. That was a choice they made—not you. There was nothing you could have done, Sarah.”
“All right.” She didn’t sound convinced so much as weary, and turned her head away to look vaguely across the room. “Do you— Have you found any new or useful information about them or what they’ve been doing? Anything helpful?”
For an instant, Tucker considered not letting her change the subject, but in the end he accepted the new one. He could only push so much, insist so often, before she would withdraw into some place where he’d never be able to reach her. He dared not risk that.
Deliberately, he took his hand off hers and leaned back away from her just a bit. “More of the same. Supposedly dead and missing psychics in two more major cities.”
“Then…there’s no safe place?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Not in the major cities. Not in this country anyway.”
Surprised, and more unnerved than she had yet been, she said, “You don’t think this is worldwide?”
Tucker shrugged. “There’s no way to know, really. I can tap into a few data sources worldwide, but nothing specific enough to answer that question, at least not without drawing attention to myself. It’s difficult enough to stay under the radar here; the government is always looking for computer hackers, as threats and as assets. They monitor us a lot more closely than the average citizen realizes.”
“Great. Something else to be paranoid about.”
“We live in dangerous times. And…there were some pretty damned intrusive laws passed after the towers fell.”
It was clear he took exception to at least some of those laws, and Sarah hoped they’d have a chance to sit and discuss it all. She really did hope they’d have that time.
But for now, there were more imperative things to discuss.
“So you don’t know if this thing could be worldwide. If it is…”
“If it is,” he said steadily, “we’ll find out eventually. For now, we’ve got all we can handle.”
“More than we can handle.”
“We’re doing okay. We’re still alive and on the loose.” He tried to sound positive and wasn’t at all sure he’d pulled it off.
“Are we? Or are we just rats in a maze?”
He frowned slightly. “Is that what you feel?”
“Stop asking me what I feel.”
“I can’t do that, Sarah. Your feelings can guide us.” Without giving her a chance to argue with him, he repeated, “Do you feel we’re rats in a maze? Honestly feel that? Or is it frustration talking?”
Sarah got up from the couch and went over to the window, where the partially drawn drapes offered only a narrow piece of the night. She stood there looking out, and for a long time she didn’t say anything.