“Then tell me what I can do to help you.”

“I told you the day we met. You can’t help me.”

“Sarah, I thought we had gotten past that.”

“Then you were wrong.” She turned her head once more to look at him, and something hard and bright glittered in her eyes. “You think we’re safe here? We’re not. They’re everywhere. All around us. All the time. We’re never going to be safe until it’s over. And it won’t be over until they get me. That’s one of the things I know now. One of the things I can’t explain knowing.”

“You were wrong about Margo,” he reminded her, still holding on to that evidence of fallibility.

“Strike one. Do I get three before I’m out?” Her voice was tight and brittle.

Tucker frowned suddenly as his own instincts and senses stirred and began talking to him. Flatly, he said, “I’m not going anywhere, Sarah.”

She sent him a quick glance, then returned her gaze to the lake. Her profile was immobile, unrevealing.

“I’m not going to run away from this,” he went on steadily. “From you. I don’t believe you’re some kind of freak. I’m not afraid of you, or of anything you might see.”

“You’re lying,” she whispered. “You are afraid of what I might see. If I look inside you.”

He had never really been faced with a genuine psychic before, not one like Sarah, so Tucker had not realized, in all the years of his search, that he would in fact be wary of one. But he was. And the only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t lie to her about it.

“This is new to me too,” he reminded her quietly. “Give me a little time to get used to it.”

“Time is something we don’t have a lot of.”

“Maybe. But you might at least stop trying to scare me off. I don’t scare so easily.”

Almost inaudibly, she said, “What I know would scare you. What I’ve seen.”

Tucker reached out and turned her to face him, keeping his hands on her shoulders. She felt very slight to him, and there was a tremor running through her tense body.

Is she strong enough to make it through this?

“Sarah, we’re going to survive this. Both of us.”

“Are we?” She refused to meet his eyes, keeping her gaze fixed on his chest. She sounded very tired all of a sudden, and there was something hollow in her tone that told him she was alone once more.

He wondered whether she had finished grieving for her David, the dead lover Margo had been so scornful of. Had she? Was he just a memory now, or would she torment herself for the rest of her life because she hadn’t been able to save him?

Are we both haunted by what we didn’t do?

That thought almost made him obey the urge to protect himself and pull away from her, but instead, giving in to some compulsion he didn’t question, he pulled her into his arms and held her.

Sarah was stiff for only a moment before she relaxed and leaned into him. Her head tucked perfectly into the curve of his neck, and her warm breath against his skin sparked a tiny flare of heat deep inside him. She felt good in his arms. Almost terrifyingly delicate, but very good.

Her arms slid inside the flannel shirt and around his waist, and he knew the moment when she touched the gun.

She didn’t react at all except to say, “You have a gun.”

Belatedly, he remembered she was an army brat; guns undoubtedly were familiar to her. “I thought it might come in handy,” he said.

“You’re probably right.”

One of his hands lifted to touch her hair, winding the silky strands around his fingers. “Can you handle guns?”

“Yes. But I never liked them much.”

“It’s just another precaution, Sarah.”

“I know.” She drew back just enough to look up at him.

He hadn’t intended this to go any further than comfort, but the next thing Tucker knew, her warm, soft lips were beneath his.

It was a careful, tentative kiss, without force and yet tense with a hunger he could feel growing stronger and stronger inside him. A hunger he felt in her as well. It was held rigidly under control in both of them, something he was very aware of, and that restraint made the kiss curiously more erotic.

He raised his head finally, reluctant but all too aware of both her vulnerability and a bad situation that was only going to get worse. “Sarah…”

She reached up and touched his mouth lightly, her fingers gently stopping whatever he would have said. “I don’t think either of us is going back to sleep. Why don’t I go get the coffee started?” Her voice was a little husky and nakedly defenseless.

After a moment, he nodded and let her go. He wanted to say something, to reassure now in a different way, but the words wouldn’t come.

Left alone on the deck, he stood for a few more minutes gazing out over the lake. It was quiet and calm and peaceful. He wished he could say the same about himself. Finally, he turned and went into the cabin, where Sarah had turned on the lights and was making coffee.

“You’re so cautious,” Cait said with a sigh.

“When you’ve been at this a little longer, you will be too,” Brodie told her as he peered through the infrared binoculars.

“You’re also made of iron,” she grumbled. “What, you only sleep on odd Thursdays? I’m beat.”

Brodie smiled slightly but kept the glasses trained on the small cabin on the other side of the lake.

She shifted, trying to find some comfortable position on a hard and chilly ground, and sighed. “Look, we’ve got to approach them sooner or later, or Gallagher’s going to slip right through our fingers again.”

“Not in the dark,” Brodie said flatly. “Never trust anybody who comes to you in the dark, Cait.”

She glanced at him curiously, but said only, “Lesson number one thousand and one?”

“If you like.” He met her gaze, his own a little impatient. “Dammit, I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“I realize that,” she said with some dignity. “Just stop treating me like a child.”

He looked at her a moment longer, then shook his head and returned his gaze to the cabin. “It’ll be light soon.”

“What’re we going to do about Mackenzie?”

Brodie’s mouth tightened. “Not much we can do.”

“He won’t let us get at her without a fight.”

“I know that.”

“So? If she’s made him part of the package—”

“Then he’s part of the package. I doubt the world would notice the disappearance of one writer more or less.”

Cait opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, Brodie spoke again. “Pack up.”

“Yes, sir,” she muttered with a small salute.

Brodie didn’t notice.

Tucker came into the great room after showering and shaving, feeling better physically but still more than a little rattled emotionally. He didn’t really know what to say to Sarah, except to follow her lead and just not mention those unsettling few minutes on the deck.

They had both retreated, quickly and cautiously, as if from the edge of a precipice.

She was frying bacon in the kitchen, and as he came to fix a cup of coffee, she said, “Tucker?”

“Hmm?”

“What we found on your computer last night…all those dead and missing people…Who could be doing it? I mean, the whole thing is so huge. Do you think…it might be the government?”

He understood her wary suggestion. “I know it’s a pet theory of the people who believe there’s a conspiracy under every bush.”

“I know. But…”

Tucker nodded. “Yeah. But. It’s hard not to wonder. The kind of manpower this has to involve, the cost, the sheer scope of the thing—how many organizations could handle it? Not many, I’d guess.”

“But the government could.”

He smiled faintly as she turned her head to look at him. “I’m one of those people who believe our beloved government couldn’t keep a secret for more than ten minutes no matter what it involved. However…I also believe that’s the Our Government entity—the entire unwieldy mass of bureaucrats stabbing each other in the back while they try to run the country. Or not, as the case may be. Within that mess, there could well be considerably smaller groups a bit better organized and a lot better at keeping secrets. The CIA’s supposed to be dandy, and the FBI not half bad. And we can’t discount the various branches of the military.”