There was a low hum, the sound of many voices murmuring, like a carrier wave permeating everything. And then a male voice, one she suddenly remembered from that other waking nightmare, said calmly above the hum, “Even if you run, we’ll find you. We’ll always find you.”

She tried desperately to see his face, but all she could see was his silhouette, like a featureless shadow on a wall. Then he was gone.

It was getting colder.

The antiques shop. It was late, very late, and dark. Two cars crept up to the curb, their lights out. Men got out of the cars in an eerie silence and moved toward the shop. She couldn’t see who they were. But they carried things, things she knew were deadly. Not just guns but…other things, things that made her skin crawl. She wanted to scream out a warning, to alert the neighborhood and signal those inside the shop that danger approached. Then she realized that the men were going to the apartment above the shop, and she knew whom they were after.

“They’re after you, Sarah.”

“No.” She didn’t want to listen to this voice, the insistent one she’d heard in her head before.

“They’ll get you. You have to leave. You have to run.”

“But where? Where should I go?”

The background hum of many voices whispering grew louder, drowning out the voice the way electrical interference drowned out a radio signal, and Sarah wasn’t even sure she heard, “…north…”

“Who are you?” she asked desperately. “What are you?”

This time, there was no answer at all, just the now quieter whispers she couldn’t quite make out.

It was getting colder.

Blackness swept over her abruptly, and lasted what seemed to Sarah to be forever. And the background rustle of those wordless whispers became louder and louder until she wanted to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the awful noise that made her head ache.

It was so cold.

So cold…

Sarah blinked dazedly and looked around her. She was sitting on the floor by the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her upraised knees. Shivering. According to the clock on the nightstand, no more than a minute or two had elapsed.

It felt like a lifetime.

She sat there for several more minutes, until the shivering gradually stopped as her body temperature began to return to normal. She didn’t know why it always dropped when the waking nightmares came, but it always did, leaving her chilled for a long time afterward. Even her skin was cold to the touch, and she rubbed her hands together slowly to try to warm them. Her body obeyed when she tried to get up, but it was stiff and sore, as if she had endured some kind of physical trial.

But for the first time, she came out of it with a sudden, bitter self-awareness. Waking nightmares. Bullshit. Why did she keep calling them that? Who was she trying to deceive? Herself. They were visions, and what was the use of calling them something else? A different definition didn’t make them any less real. Any less frightening.

Visions. I have visions. And let’s not forget the voices in my head, at least two different ones.

Visions urging her, driving her through fear. One voice insisting she couldn’t escape even as another one insisted that she run. And over it all, permeating everything, was her numbing certainty that no matter what she did, no matter where she went, that yawning grave was waiting for her at journey’s end.

She left the packed bag on the bed and went out into the living room, where Tucker was watching a news program. He immediately turned off the set and got up when she came in, his eyes narrowing as they searched her face intently.

Probably look like I’ve seen a ghost. Ha-ha.

“Sarah? Are you all right?”

“Not really, no.”

“Has something happened?”

He didn’t want to ask her whether she’d had a vision, but it was obvious that was what he meant. Sarah realized she was still rubbing her hands together when he briefly looked at them, and she started to tell him it was because she was still so cold. But that would take too long to explain, so instead, she said simply, “We should leave now.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ll come tonight. Come for me.”

“How do you know that? Did you see it? In one of your waking nightmares?”

He was good, she thought dimly. His voice hardly gave away his disbelief. Hardly at all.

“I had a vision,” she said starkly. “Just now. They will come tonight, Tucker. And if we’re here…”

In an abrupt gesture, he nodded. “Then we’d better leave.”

But in the end, he had another idea.

The security system guarding Mackenzie’s house was a good one. It took Murphy almost three minutes to bypass the alarm and get inside. She didn’t turn on any lights, depending on the narrow beam of her pencil flashlight to find her way around. She didn’t waste any time, moving from room to room in a quick, methodical search.

Within ten minutes, she was in his office and had the wall safe behind his desk open. She ignored some stock certificates, leafed uninterestedly through a couple of contracts with his publisher, and swore softly when the safe offered nothing else.

She kept searching, paying close attention to what she found on the cluttered desk. A folded map held her interest the longest; she spent several minutes bent over the desk studying it, and when she straightened at last, she slipped it into the leather pouch at her side.

“Not quite as smart as you think you are,” she murmured.

Her cell phone vibrated, and she pulled it out of the leather pouch with a scowl. “Yeah, what?”

“Find anything?” His voice was, as always, almost preternaturally composed.

“If I do,” she responded with equal calm, “I’ll report. As agreed.”

“We’re running out of time, Murphy.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

There was a brief silence, and then he said somewhat dryly, “You might at least reassure me that we have the same goal in mind.”

“I might.” She smiled in the darkness of Tucker Mackenzie’s office and did not add the requested assurances.

He knew her too well to push, though the almost inaudible sound of a sigh reached her intently listening ears. His voice was carefully matter-of-fact when he said, “I need information, Murphy.”

“Yes, I know. Give me a chance to do my job.”

“Very well. I’ll wait for your report.”

“Do that.” She turned off the phone decisively without waiting for him to sign off first. She was willing to bet she was one of very few who would dare to hang up on him. She liked that. The cell was a burner, intended to be used only once and then discarded; she’d toss it into the nearest Dumpster before moving on; it was too easy to track cell phones these days. She’d have another burner in an hour, and he’d have to wait for her to call him next time. She liked that too.

She stood there in the dark and silent office for several more minutes, thoughtfully fingering the folded map in her leather pouch. Finally, she left the office and made her way from the house, pausing only long enough to lock up behind herself and put the security system back online.

The neighborhood was dark and quiet in the hours past midnight, and Murphy went on her way without attracting any notice, not even disturbing the few sleeping watchdogs with her softly whistled rendition of “Stormy Weather.”

In perfect pitch.

“But why?” Sarah asked much later.

“We know they— We know somebody is watching you.” Tucker’s voice was patient. “What we don’t know is whether the guy in the black jacket is all we have to worry about. I want to know that, Sarah. I think we need to know that. Before we leave.”