Brandon had also startled her more than once by carrying on casual conversations with “the people.” The people were not, apparently, connected to this house, since he talked to them on the playground and at his cousins’ house and even at the Atlanta church where she took him to Sunday school. And they didn’t seem to be threatening people, since Brandon displayed no anxiety at all about them.
But the flesh-and-blood people around him were beginning to notice. Her sister had made a remark just the other day about Brandon and his imaginary friends. And some of his little friends were beginning to tease him. Brandon, always a shy child with a mostly solitary nature, was becoming reluctant to get out of sight of his mother.
Adam said she was spoiling him, catering to his “childish fears and overactive imagination” by sticking close to him, but Patty didn’t care. She was worried. Brandon was convinced that the “bad men” were coming to take him away, and it frightened him so much that it frightened her even more.
He could never tell her who these bad men were or even what they looked like, and since Patty’s questions had only upset him further, she had stopped asking. Just bad men, was all he knew or could say. Bad men in the dark.
That thought sent Patty back to the window. And as soon as she looked out, her throat closed up and shards of ice stabbed at her heart.
“Brandon?”
She rushed out the back door, staring at the empty sandbox and then looking wildly around the backyard. The gate was still closed; she could see the lock still fastened. But Brandon was nowhere to be seen.
“Brandon!”
Sarah gazed out the car window and murmured, “A nice, normal little house in a nice, normal little neighborhood. I guess Neil Mason’s neighbors don’t know he’s psychic.”
“Or don’t care,” Tucker said.
“If they know—they care,” Sarah said out of bitter experience.
The Jeep was parked across the street and half a block down, where they could look at the house without attracting undue attention. The neighborhood was quiet on this Wednesday morning, and so far they had seen no sign of life at Neil Mason’s house.
“Anything?” Tucker asked, even more wary after their tense standoff of the night before.
Sarah wanted to snap at him to stop pushing her, but she was all too aware that this time he was right to do so. She studied the rather plain but pleasant two-story house, and hesitantly tried to “listen” to what her senses might attempt to tell her.
She felt…odd. The pressure she had been so conscious of was all but gone, only a whisper of it remaining. And what she heard was only a whisper, so quiet and distant that focusing on it was like straining to hear someone breathing on the other side of a vast room.
…he knows…he knows…he knows you’re coming. He knows what they want of you. He has the answers you need. He knows…
“He knows.” Sarah was hardly aware of speaking aloud.
“Knows what?”
The whisper faded to silence, and Sarah turned her head to meet Tucker’s guarded gaze. “He knows we’re coming.”
“Is he on our side? Or with them?”
“I don’t know.”
After a moment, Tucker nodded. He opened the storage compartment between the Jeep’s bucket seats, took out his automatic, and leaned forward to place it inside his belt at the small of his back. His jacket covered the gun so that its presence was hidden.
“Okay. Let’s go find out.”
Sarah was reluctant to leave the vehicle, where there was at least the illusion of safety, but she knew they had no choice. She got out and walked with Tucker across the street. All the way across and up the walkway, she tried to listen, but heard nothing. She was dimly surprised, when they reached the porch, that Tucker had to ring the bell. It bothered her somehow, though the feeling was no more than vague disturbance.
The man who opened the door was big. That was the first impression. Easily six and a half feet tall with shoulders to match, he had the appearance of a man of immense physical strength, even though approaching middle age had given him a belly that his belt rode beneath and the fleshy look of indulgence around the once-clean jawline of his rugged face.
The second impression Sarah got was that he wasn’t nearly as happy to see them as his smile indicated.
“Hello.” His eyes tracked past Tucker and fixed on Sarah. They were blue and very bright. “Hello, Sarah.”
“Hello, Neil.” Sarah drew a breath, and added, “I recognize you.”
“Yes, of course you do,” he said matter-of-factly. He stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in, come in.”
Tucker caught Sarah’s arm when she would have moved forward. “Recognize him?”
She nodded. “Bits and pieces of my vision keep coming back to me. There were faces. His is one of the faces I saw.”
Without letting go of her arm, Tucker looked narrow-eyed at Mason, who stood patiently, smiling, waiting for them to come in. “Do you trust him, Sarah?”
Her smile reminded him oddly of Mason’s—the tolerant amusement of a parent for a child. He didn’t like it.
“Of course not, Tucker.”
“Then we’ll find someone else.”