Because she didn’t see any reason for tension; it looked to her like a perfectly normal Tuesday morning in early October. There were quite a few tourists about, she noted, wearing the slightly harried but pleased look of people who were not at home but were bent on enjoyment of their surroundings.
This far south the leaves hadn’t turned yet, so that wave of visitors was still some weeks away, but the season so far had been nicely busy since spring. And now that the kids had gone back to school, Katie hadn’t had to tell even one teenager that the downtown sidewalks weren’t to be used for skateboarding, they knew that, and what was wrong with the half pipe and surrounding skateboarding area in the very nice park on the west end of town?
A normal Tuesday.
Katie said hi to a few people she knew, nodded politely to visitors she didn’t, and tried to hide her own increasing tension behind a pleasant smile as she strolled along the sidewalk.
What was bugging her? It was an uneasiness inside her, but even more it was something outside her, something she . . . sensed. She caught herself looking back over her shoulder more than once, for some reason always surprised that there was nobody following her, even watching her as far as she could see, and the part of Main Street behind her looked just as normal as what lay ahead. But the feeling had been with her too long to ignore, and it was growing stronger.
It felt like something was about to happen.
Something bad.
And what was going on with her skin? Something else that had begun days ago and had intensified. It was tingling, an unpleasant sort of pins-and-needles sensation as if she had a pinched nerve somewhere. Somewhere that it would affect her whole body. Was that even possible? What—
Get off the street.
The commanding voice in her head was something she had experienced enough times in her life to obey without question. She glanced around quickly, knowing she was too far from the station and her office, too far from her Jeep, her apartment.
And there were people everywhere.
Without many options, Katie slipped through one of the few narrow alleyways to be found downtown, this one far too narrow to do anything creative with; it was just a musty-smelling passage between brick buildings, out of the sunlight and so growing mold or algae or something on the walls and the concrete floor. At the back, behind each of the buildings on either side, tall wooden fences enclosed small areas where the trash was discreetly hidden from the businesses and homes behind Main Street.
Quickly, Katie stepped inside one of the areas, knowing she wouldn’t be visible unless someone on a rooftop was peering down at her. She wrinkled her nose at the faint rancid smell of garbage even though it was further hidden from sight by the big rolling trash containers, their lids closed.
She barely had time to sort of brace herself in one corner, the tall wooden fence support on two sides, before she was hit with something so powerful it literally stole her breath.
She dimly felt herself sliding down the wood, trying to do that rather than fall over the garbage cans.
Then everything went black.
* * *
? ? ?
TWO WEEKS PREVIOUSLY
Sam Bowers found a bottle of OTC pain relievers in his desk drawer and swallowed several with a sip of cold coffee, grimacing. He hadn’t noticed that the coffee had grown cold while he’d sat there staring at the computer screen without really seeing the information it offered.
He also hadn’t noticed that the bottle of pills was more than half empty.
The headache was getting worse, dammit.
It had started just a few days before, mild enough in the beginning to be no more than a minor irritant. He’d taken a few pills, and it had gone away, or so he had thought. But by the time he’d driven home after work it was back, stronger, a throbbing behind his eyes that was unusual for him.
“Maybe a migraine?” his wife, Stacey, had suggested, her expression and tone worried.
“I don’t get migraines,” he said, smiling at her.
“Just because you never have before doesn’t mean you’re immune,” she reminded him. “People often develop them later in life. Sam—”
“Probably a storm system up in the mountains or something,” he’d said dismissively, soothing her worry. “You know how the weather affects me.”
“We usually don’t get storms in October,” she reminded him.
“Well, tension, then. I’ve been staring at a computer screen all day. Probably just eye strain. It’s nothing to worry about.”
She might have said something else, but he kissed her then, effectively distracting her.
“The kids,” she murmured. “Supper—”
He reached to turn off two burners without even noticing what was in the pots, then took her hand and led her out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. “The kids are next door; I saw them when I pulled into the driveway. They’re very, very occupied. And, besides, the bedroom door has a lock.”
“Sam!” But she was laughing, and stopped protesting.
His headache had gone away that evening, only to reappear late the next morning. And it had remained with him during the following days, held at bay usually by pain meds, but never quite gone. It sort of surged and ebbed, pushing as though against some barrier in his own head, and the surges were more painful every time.
He was still convinced it wasn’t a migraine, because none of the other symptoms he’d read about (having finally broken down and Googled migraines) accompanied the pain. It was just pain, that’s all. Just a sort of throbbing pain that made him feel irritable.
Except that day by day the pain grew stronger. Day by day the pain meds were less effective. Barely taking the edge off and not even that for very long. And by Monday he was waking several times in the night, trying not to disturb Stacey as he fumbled in his nightstand for the pain meds he’d stashed there.
By Tuesday afternoon, he was beginning to get worried about it. Because the pain was worse, because his irriration was edging into an uncharacteristic anger, and because sometimes when he looked around, there seemed to be a faint, red mist just at the periphery of his vision. And there was a whispery sound in his head. Not words, not that. Just a whispery sound.
Not words. He couldn’t hear words.
But he swallowed the pills and waited for them to take effect, promising himself that if his headache wasn’t really better by tomorrow, he’d go see the doctor. Just to put Stacey’s mind at rest that nothing bad was wrong.
That was what Sam Bowers told himself.
* * *
? ? ?
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
Galen hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair to look at the others in the conference room. Along with Bishop, Miranda, and Tony, he’d been taking calls from SCU agents all over the country as well as a few currently working in other countries, and the legal pad on the desk in front of him was filled with his neat printing.
He noted the lull in what had been a very busy afternoon, with Bishop and Tony looking over notes they’d made on the calls they had taken (and, in Bishop’s case, at least a few calls he’d placed), and Miranda seated across from Galen at the other desk working intently on a laptop.
“So,” he said, “does anybody know what the hell’s going on?” He was a big man, dark, extremely powerful, with a hard but curiously impassive expression that rarely changed. “I’ve talked to a dozen agents with pounding headaches who also experienced a skin-crawling sensation and saw some kind of color effect they mostly described as ‘not normal.’ So far, none I’ve talked to has felt any compulsion to leave their current assignments or vacations, and nobody mentioned Prosperity.”
Absently, Tony said, “Maggie reported in from Haven that, so far, none of their operatives has been summoned. But most felt what the majority of our agents did, all the physical . . . symptoms.”