“You think you were reacting to their nearness?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I felt.”

He frowned. “You said you didn’t sleep well. Because of the pressure?”

“I guess.”

“Do you remember your dreams?”

“No. But I kept waking up, and whenever I did, I felt restless and uneasy.”

“Not frightened?”

Being frightened was such a constant state that Sarah had to think about his question, had to ask herself whether she had awakened with more fear than usual. She thought about it and shook her head. “No, not especially frightened. Just uneasy. Anxious. The way you feel when—oh, when you hear a faint sound you can’t immediately identify. Tense, sort of listening. Then I’d relax and, eventually, go back to sleep. That happened over and over all night.”

Tucker was silent for a few more miles, then said, “If we suppose they were back there at the hotel, watching us, the question becomes—why didn’t they make a move? Maybe the answer is what I guessed before. Maybe you’re becoming aware of them on some level, even if it’s unconsciously. And maybe they know that.”

“How would they know, supposing it’s true?”

“Experience, maybe. Look, from what we’ve been able to find out, these people have been after psychics for years. Decades. Along the way, they must have…oh, hell, learned their trade, for want of a better phrase. Learned what worked for them. Suppose they found out through trial and error that they have only a relatively small window of opportunity during which they can move boldly to grab a psychic?”

“Until the psychic starts to react to their presence?”

“Why not? An enemy as large in number as you feel they are must give off a hell of a lot of negative energy. From the research I’ve done about psychics, that seems to be the thing: energy. Psychics tune into it at various…frequencies. React to it when there’s a lot around, like during a storm.”

Slowly, she said, “Storms have bothered me since I came out of that coma.”

“It’s not uncommon, or so I’ve been told. Say that’s it, say whatever you can do, the basis of any psychic ability is energy. And in the beginning, whenever a psychic becomes psychic, or wakes up to it—whatever—the energy has to be almost overpowering.”

Sarah nodded silently.

“So the mind learns to protect itself. It learns to build walls or some other kind of protection against that overwhelming energy. Maybe it learns to filter through all the static and focus on certain frequencies.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

“And it works, to varying degrees. But when these dangerous people are close by, this enemy, they must give off a different kind of energy. Dark, negative. A threat. Even if it’s unconscious, I’m willing to bet that out of sheer self-preservation, any good psychic would catch on pretty quick and be able to start tuning in on them. On that particular frequency. It would naturally make those psychics a lot more wary. It might even cause them to wake up in the night feeling uneasy.”

“But why would that keep the other side at a distance?” Sarah wondered. “Even if they assume I can feel them near me—so what? They outnumber us, we know that. They burned down my house, and we’re reasonably sure they killed a cop as well as some psychics, so they’re clearly not hesitant to use violence.”

“No, but maybe they’re afraid of attention. Grabbing somebody in a crowded hotel could be a noisy proposition. It could draw too many innocent bystanders. Too many policemen not on the payroll. That could be another reason they seem to make their moves at night.”

“So they’re just watching and waiting? Looking for an opportunity to get me when it won’t be noticed? When I can be caught off guard so I’m not likely to make too much noise?”

“It makes sense. As much as anything in this makes sense.”

“Then why leave those flowers? Why make it obvious?”

“A terrorist tactic is my bet,” Tucker said slowly. “Nobody can be wary twenty-four hours a day; if they can keep you rattled, frightened, they stand a better chance of either driving you to make a mistake or just plain exhausting you so you can’t see them coming.”

It was working, Sarah thought. In spades. She looked at him for a moment longer, then turned her gaze forward. The highway was busy on this Tuesday afternoon, and as she watched the cars ahead of them, she couldn’t help wondering whether they were as innocent as they seemed. Maybe there were watchers in that van up ahead, or that racy-looking Corvette. Maybe the truck that had passed them a mile back had done so only to avoid suspicion, the watcher inside handing the duty off to someone else along the way.

Or maybe not.

When an enemy lurked all around, it was easy to become paranoid.

Uneasily, she said, “Has it occurred to you that an accident staged on the highway would be a dandy way to get us?”

“Yes, it has.” Tucker’s voice was grim. “If they mean to kill us, that’d be the quickest way to at least try.”

“If?”

“I have my doubts about that, Sarah.”

She returned her attention to his profile. “Why?”

“So far, virtually everything they’ve done—with the possible exception of burning down your house, and we can’t be absolutely positive that was their doing—could have been an attempt to get their hands on you rather than kill you. Even your own feelings are confused on that point; you know they’re after you, but the major reason you think they want you dead is because of your vision. Right?”

“Well, what about that? I saw my death.”

“You’ve seen a lot of things that could easily be symbolic. The bells, the open grave, and the headstone. Even the murmur of many voices. All of them are or could be symbols of death; the trappings of a funeral and burial.”

“So?”

“So…maybe that’s what you were really seeing, Sarah. The trappings. The appearance of death—of your death.”

“I still don’t—”

“Okay, suppose with me for a minute. Suppose that fire at your house was intended to be a—pardon the pun—smoke screen. Suppose the plan was to get you out before police and firemen arrived, to just take you. Officials arrive, find your house burning, maybe even find a female body in the ruins and, presto, Sarah Gallagher is dead—and nobody’s looking for her.”

“Then why didn’t it work out that way?”

“I don’t know. The fire spread too fast, maybe. The neighbors gathered too quickly. The dream—vision—you had before the fire made you too wary to be caught. Whatever the reason, they failed. But maybe what they failed at was taking you rather than killing you.”

“That’s a pretty big leap,” she said slowly.

“Yeah, I know. But it bothers me that they haven’t tried to arrange a little car crash for us—especially if they really did send those damned flowers. If they did, they pretty much had to be following us all the way from Chicago; we know damned well they were on us all the way to Chicago. That’s a lot of miles, and faking an accident wouldn’t have been hard. At these speeds, just bumping another car can be a one-way ticket to the morgue. So why haven’t they at least tried?”

“Unless they don’t want me dead,” she finished.

Tucker nodded. “Unless they don’t want you dead.”

Sarah thought about it, then shook her head. “But what about Margo? That little accident was meant to be deadly, and you said they were probably after me.”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” he admitted. “But that’s just one instance where it appears that death was clearly the intent—all the rest of the evidence is going the other way.”

She tried to get her thoughts organized, something that was getting harder to do. Whether it was her interrupted sleep last night, the hasty flight from the hotel, or just stress and exhaustion over the whole frightening business, Sarah was having a difficult time thinking clearly.