Lewis drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his patience. “As I keep telling you, Mr. Mackenzie—as I keep telling all of you—there is no sign the wardrobe was tampered with. And since none of you claim this customer was standing behind it pushing, I fail to see how she could have had anything to do with the accident.”

“And you’re so sure that’s what it was. Even though Sarah’s house burned down yesterday, probably due to arson. Even though she was supposed to be alone in the shop today. Even though there’s no logical reason why that wardrobe would have fallen on its own. You don’t find that to be at all suspicious.”

“Surprising, maybe. Coincidence, certainly.”

Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Every cop I’ve ever met in my life believes there’s no such thing as coincidence. Funny that you do.”

“Not funny at all.” Lewis was visibly stiff now. “The world is full of strange things, Mr. Mackenzie. This is just one more strange thing.”

After a moment, Tucker looked silently at Sarah, and she said immediately, “Then we won’t keep you any longer, Sergeant Lewis. Thank you for listening.” She neither rose nor offered to shake hands.

He hesitated, his notebook still open, then closed it with a snap. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Gallagher. About your house. We’re still investigating that, of course.” He gestured briefly to his men, and all three left the shop.

Margo got up, went to the front door and locked it, and turned over the sign so that it read CLOSED. Then she returned to her chair. “Okay. You two want to let me in on this? What’s happening here?”

Tucker said nothing.

Sighing, Sarah turned a bit in her chair so that she faced the other two more squarely. “I knew there was going to be an accident—a bizarre accident—here in the shop today,” she told Margo. “But I thought it would happen later today, in the afternoon. And…it was supposed to be fatal.”

Margo blinked. “I was supposed to be…dead?”

Mildly, Tucker said, “As a writer always in search of the right words, I take issue with the phrase ‘supposed to be.’ Let’s just say that Sarah saw a future event that didn’t turn out quite as she expected it to.” He was looking at her steadily.

Sarah met his gaze, her own startled.

He smiled. “Somehow, you managed to change Margo’s destiny.”

She wasn’t at all sure he was right, because she had an unnerving feeling that everything today had happened just as it was supposed to, despite the headline she had seen. But all she said was, “Not me. You. You pulled her away from the wardrobe.”

“I wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t allowed me to be. And I wouldn’t have been wary, watching for anything unusual, if you hadn’t told me about your prediction.” He shrugged. “In any case, the point is that what should have happened—didn’t. At least, not the way you saw it happen. Fate was averted.”

Somewhat uneasily, Margo said, “The afternoon isn’t over yet. Maybe we’d better leave.”

Tucker immediately rose. “I agree. Not that I expect another bizarre accident to take place, but better to be safe. If you ladies will allow me, I’ll buy you a late lunch.”

“And then maybe a movie?” Margo suggested as she got up. “I don’t think I want to come back here until the afternoon is definitely past.”

Douglas Knox glanced at his watch for the third time and sighed as he returned his gaze to the impressive view of San Francisco visible through the hotel window. Dammit, where was she? It wasn’t like her to be late, especially since she’d asked him to be early.

He was still a little surprised that she’d wanted him here an hour earlier than usual, but he certainly hadn’t complained; it was rare that they could spend more than a couple of hours together without taking too big a risk. If her husband found out, or even suspected, then Amy would suffer for it—losing her daughter at the very least.

Douglas moved away from the window, frowning a little. He didn’t want her to lose the kid, but sneaking around like this was getting old. It took too much energy to do it, for one thing. And he wasn’t one of those guys who got off on taking risks, not when it came to his love life.

Unfortunately, Amy’s husband was both possessive and a vengeful son of a bitch; he had punished her more than once in the ten years they’d been married. She still had the scars.

“Wonder if I could give the bastard a nice little heart attack,” Douglas murmured aloud.

No. Probably not. He didn’t know enough about the heart, where to push or…squeeze.

Sitting down in a deep chair beside the desk, he held his hand out and watched dispassionately as a pen on the desk began to roll across the polished surface toward him. It picked up speed as it rolled, and when it reached the edge of the desk it seemed to launch itself through the air to land neatly in Douglas’s palm.

A nice little party trick. He closed his fingers around the pen and swore under his breath. Amy said if he went to Vegas he could make a fortune, especially at craps. But Douglas had the superstitious notion that to misuse his ability to move things would be to lose it. And he liked having it.

He liked being different.

But what use was this ability of his if he couldn’t do anything meaningful with it? Oh, sure, he could pluck a pen off a desk when he was three feet away, or get a book off a shelf without getting up, or even move furniture with a lot less sweat and effort than most people expended. And he could open locked doors by just thinking them open. And once, just a week before, he had stopped a car when the idiot driver had left it parked incorrectly on a hill and it had started to roll.

He’d probably saved at least one life that time, since the car had been rolling toward an oblivious window-shopper. The newspapers had blathered on about the “inexplicable” way the car had just stopped right in the middle of the hill like that, and he had enjoyed being the secret savior.

“Not bad,” he murmured, turning the pen in his fingers briefly and then tossing it toward the desk. So maybe he had done something useful, after all. And maybe, if he could get close enough to see the bastard at just the right moment, maybe he could give Amy’s husband a secret little shove down a long flight of stairs…

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.

Douglas frowned and let his gaze track slowly around the room. Nobody was there, of course. Still—something wasn’t right. He could feel it. It seemed difficult to breathe all of a sudden, as if the air had grown heavy. And he could have sworn it was darker than it had been a moment before, even though the drapes were open and two lamps burned brightly. It just somehow felt darker.

He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes after two. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky out there. It was the middle of the day. And he hadn’t turned out a light in here. So why was it getting darker?

“Okay, so maybe I won’t push him down the stairs,” he said aloud, hearing in his own shaky voice the worry that he might have opened up a box of troubles by even thinking about using his abilities to do something bad.

It was getting darker. And when he tried to move, terror shot through him, because he couldn’t. He reached out desperately with his mind, but the door didn’t open. The little pen on the desk didn’t even move.

It just got darker.

Until he couldn’t see anything at all.

When Amy Richards opened the door of the hotel room, it was two thirty. She was early for their usual three o’clock meeting, so she wasn’t surprised he wasn’t here yet. She was surprised to find an envelope on the desk with her name on it. From Doug.

She was stunned and heartbroken to read that he had quit his job and moved back east, that he never wanted to see her again. She didn’t believe it even when she went to his apartment and found all his things gone. Or when she checked with his boss and found he’d quit the day before, without even giving notice. But she had to believe it eventually.