THREE
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
Chief Deputy Katie Cole had lived in Prosperity for less than a year but had settled in to the town and her job quickly and without fuss. She had an easy manner and the knack of both talking to people and listening when they needed to talk, so even though she wasn’t a native, she had been accepted completely.
As far as she could tell, anyway.
Even though it was a smallish town, and fairly isolated, Prosperity was not entirely off the beaten path; no major highway was close, but the town was located in a section of the Appalachian Mountains considered particularly scenic, so it was the rule rather than the exception that plenty of sightseers and other tourists drove through pretty steadily from spring right up to winter.
Some of them even stopped for a few days or at least a long weekend, enjoying one of the two very nice hotels in the main part of town, good food, the scenery, and local crafts sold for reasonable prices in small shops staffed by smiling, friendly people.
Crime was practically nonexistent, in part because Sheriff Jackson Archer was a good cop and a highly respected, homegrown citizen of the town, and in part because Prosperity was . . . well, a prosperous small town. So there were enough jobs to go around and good schools that not only educated the kids but offered plenty of after-school and summer activities. On the whole the citizens were happy.
Which was maybe, Katie thought, why it struck her as so odd to feel a very unusual tension as she strolled along Main Street, stretching her legs and having a look around. She’d been vaguely conscious of an uneasiness she couldn’t pinpoint for more than a week, but now there was nothing vague about what she felt.
Except a good reason for it.
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.”
Haven was the unofficial civilian counterpart to the SCU, a private organization that had originally been the brainchild of Agent Quentin Hayes, one of the first group of psychics Bishop had recruited, after an incredible case in Seattle that had involved Quentin’s longtime billionaire friend John Garrett. Not a psychic himself, Garrett had married a rather amazing empath-healer involved in the same case, Maggie Barnes.
Haven had officially been co-founded by Bishop and the Garretts, the organization meant both to complement the SCU and to serve as a place where psychics unable or unwilling to cope with the rigors of being full-time FBI agents trained and functioned as private investigators. It was, by design, a calmer, more peaceful, and more laid-back organization than the FBI could ever be, offering highly flexible hours and jobs, to say nothing of a warm and welcoming home where many psychics, for the first time in their lives, didn’t feel like freaks.
Sited on more than five hundred acres of fairly remote land outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, the sprawling compound that was Haven boasted a huge central home and command center where both the Garretts and dozens of operatives could live in comfort, temporarily or for years, as some had. There were also numerous neat homes built near the main house, also for operatives and sometimes their families, plus for some of the technical and maintenance people necessary to keep such a large compound clean and operating at peak efficiency.
On the same acreage but not near the compound was a private airstrip, fully staffed, with a hangar large enough to house the three company jets plus two helicopters.
Haven had grown just as the SCU had, now boasting dozens of operatives trained and working cases all over the country, and dozens more learning about their own abilities as well as how to be effective investigators. Some made their home base in different cities across the map, while others lived or spent most of their off-duty time at the Haven compound.
John Garrett’s wealth and brilliant business mind kept Haven running, practically speaking, but it was Maggie Garrett, with her deep empathy and compassion, and her unique ability to heal wounds of the mind and soul as well as those of the body, who was without question the heart of Haven.
“Did she say any of their people experienced nothing?” Bishop asked, looking up from his notes.
Tony nodded. “Yeah, five so far. One operative is, like Kendra, pregnant. The other four are brand-new, not yet trained, and tested low on our scale in terms of how strong their abilities are.”
Slowly, Bishop said, “So far, with the exception of Hollis and Reese, all of those summoned are not members of the SCU.”
“And that means?” There was a frown in Galen’s voice, if not on his impassive face. He had experienced all the symptoms of something extraordinary, as most of the unit had, but had not felt anything beyond those, and certainly not anyone or anything calling him to go to Prosperity.
And he hadn’t needed to tell anyone in the room that being contacted in such a way, with all his walls up and likely stronger than they had ever been in his life, had disturbed him more than it had most of the other agents. He was a guarded man by nature, and after a fairly recent case in which his mind had been touched and even used without his awareness, he was extremely wary of anything similar happening again.
“At a guess, it could mean that whatever happens in Prosperity won’t be the sort of situation that drives law enforcement to invite us in officially,” Bishop replied.
“So no actual crime?”
“Could be. Or crimes that seem normal, crimes the locals believe they should be able to solve.”
“You and Miranda didn’t see anything that could answer at least that question?” Despite the rather impatient words, his tone could best be described as deceptively mild. Not that anyone in the room was deceived.
Bishop shook his head. “No, we saw nothing specific as far as actual events are concerned.”
“Then what did you see?” An edge had crept in.
Tony looked at Galen in faint surprise but didn’t comment or question the other agent’s uncharacteristic insistence. He just looked at Bishop and waited, curious.
“Nothing specific,” Bishop repeated, calm. “Except . . . evil. A doorway we have to keep closed. And seal.”
“A door someone or something is trying to open?” Galen asked.
“So it seems.”
“But not an enemy we know.”
“Not one we can put a name to. But likely a negative force we’ve encountered before.”
“Want to explain that?” Galen invited.
“At this point, all I know is what I feel, what Miranda and I felt during that vision. We’ve destroyed countless evil killers over the years. But only a handful were truly destroyed in a real sense, their negative energy transformed and dispersed.”
“So they exist. Their evil still exists.”
“As I said, it’s nothing we can point to specifically. More an emotional . . . certainty.”
“That somebody’s out to get even? Maybe a lot of somebodys?”
“It’s what we feel, Galen. That we . . . received . . . emotions is rare enough. The power of these . . . Whatever this enemy is, it’s something very old and very dark. And very determined. It’s pressing against the other side of that door. Trying to force it open.”
“To get at us?”
Bishop glanced at his wife. “That’s the way it feels.”
“But?
It was Miranda who answered that, her voice very steady. “What we felt was something gleeful. Playful. Destroying us may be the endgame, but this . . . thing . . . intends to have fun. To manipulate people. To hurt people in ways most sane minds can’t even imagine.”
Tony muttered, “No wonder you both looked so shook.”
Galen said, “But not a crime? Not a killer?”
“It’s not what we saw, Galen.” Bishop remained calm—and was uncharacteristically willing to talk about that vision; normally he and Miranda said as little as possible, wary of doing anything that could make a bad situation worse. “No specifics, just emotions. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. In fact, it’s very likely to happen. If something dark, maybe negative energy, begins to exert an influence over the people in Prosperity, anything could happen.”
“Hell,” Tony murmured, “everything could happen.”
Bishop didn’t appear to find that statement overly dramatic. “Yeah, everything could. Including horrific crimes. We’ve seen monsters shaped like human beings. We’ve seen negative energy affect people and events, causing death and chaos. We’ve seen men able to manipulate negative energy who thought they were gods.” That last seemed to be very deliberate, and Bishop kept his gaze steadily on Galen.
After a moment, without looking away, Galen said, “I have to be there.”
“You weren’t summoned.”
“Doesn’t matter. I have to be there.”
“Why?” Bishop asked simply.
Entirely unwilling and not trying to hide it, Galen said, “It’s something I feel.”
Almost immediately, Bishop nodded. “Okay. Hope you brought your go bag.”
“I did.”
Bishop exchanged glances with his wife, who had looked up from her laptop to silently observe. She had been right; Galen was ready to come off official leave and rejoin the unit.
Do you think he’s really ready?
He obviously believes he is. We have to respect that, beloved.
Yes . . .
Out loud, Miranda merely said, “So far, I’m not finding anything on Prosperity except chamber of commerce stuff. Pretty little town with much to recommend it to passing tourists. No crime to speak of, so far, at least. Popular sheriff, well-trained deputies, well-funded police, fire, and other emergency services. They have a very good small hospital with quite a lot of state-of-the-art equipment and first-class doctors. A weekly newspaper still in print, with the online version updated daily. A radio station, but no local TV station.”
Galen asked, “Is anything unusual happening yet?”
“If it is, it’s being kept quiet. No law enforcement alerts, nothing unusual from the radio station, and the closest TV stations are all wrapped up in politics and their own local stories, including the usual sort of local crimes.”
Tony said, “We probably should have someone monitor social media.”
“We already have someone doing that at the mountain house,” Bishop said.
Though he hadn’t been there very many times, Tony was fairly certain that Bishop kept either permanent or semipermanent technical and maintenance people onsite at the mountain house, which was a remote but huge complex, dug into the mountain so that it was even more vast than it appeared, with an impressive command center that nonetheless was also a home that could probably house more than a couple dozen people indefinitely and in comfort. And though he’d never heard anyone say, he was also fairly certain that the house was privately owned by Bishop and Miranda, and that whatever went on there was not an official part of FBI functions.
He hadn’t asked before and didn’t ask now.
“What else are they doing?” Galen asked.
With a faint smile, Bishop said, “Working on official identity credentials for the six non-SCU people summoned.”
“Credentials?”
“They’ll officially be private investigators with Haven. On the books if anybody wants to check.”
Tony murmured, “All six? Add in Hollis, Reese, and Galen, and that’s nine investigators descending on a town that hasn’t asked for help. Yet.”
But Galen was clearly thinking along different lines. “I guess not even you could make them FBI agents with a wave of your hand.” It wasn’t a disrespectful tone, exactly, just a Galen tone.
Bishop’s faint smile remained. “No?”
Galen eyed him, a slight frown pulling his brows together.
Miranda intervened to say calmly, “We’ve set most everything in motion, pretty much all we can do from here. I say we get to the jet, fly up to Vermont to pick up Olivia Castle, then head for the mountain house tonight.”
Tony asked, “Do we pick up anyone else along the way?”
Bishop looked at him, clearly undisturbed by Galen’s continued frowning stare. “No. Reno Bellman has already headed west in the other jet to pick up Dalton Davenport, Logan Alexander, and Sully Maitland. I doubt they’ll reach the mountain house before late tomorrow.
“I spoke to Victoria Stark; she was already heading north, on the road leaving New Orleans. She’ll probably be at the airstrip near the mountain house by the time we land.”
Tony lifted an eyebrow. “Determined, stubborn, independent, or all of the above?”
“All of the above.” Before Tony could ask anything else, Bishop said, “We need you to stay here at Quantico, Tony. Quentin and Diana are on their way in. Isabel and Rafe. Possibly others as they wind up their investigations. Depending on how long this takes.”
“And what’re we supposed to do here?” Tony asked.
Bishop’s reply sobered him a lot more than he cared to admit.
“You’ll coordinate with us at the mountain house to begin forming a second line of defense. In case those summoned aren’t able to . . . hold the line.”
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
It was still fall even in Kodiak, Alaska, but a chilly one, and the temperature had been dropping all day. Still, when Dalton Davenport wrenched open the front door of his small cottage in response to an imperative fist pounding on the wood, his breath was only slightly visible in the low light of the front porch fixture. It was dark, it was getting late, and Dalton was very clearly in no mood for visitors.
Even a visitor he knew. Maybe especially a visitor he knew.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snapped.
“Hello to you too, Dalton.” Serenely undisturbed by the greeting, Reno Bellman strolled in, pretty much forcing him to give way or be touched. And he hated to be touched. He all but slammed the door behind her and followed her into the small but comfortable den, whose best feature was a large picture window that overlooked the beautiful harbor far below, not much of which was visible currently except a number of twinkling lights.
Reno was a tall, willowy woman with shoulder-length black hair and exotic green eyes. Not conventionally beautiful, but completely unforgettable.
Dalton hadn’t seen her in two years.
“Well, if you’re going to get away from people, at least you found a nice view,” she commented, standing with her hands in the pockets of her light jacket as she faced the picture window. “At least, I assume the view would be nice if we could see it. The harbor, I think.”
“How did you find me?” he asked roughly.
“I found you two months after you bolted from Chicago.”
“I didn’t—”
“It wasn’t long after that last conversation in person with Bishop, as I recall. It apparently occurred to you that he was not about to give up on you. Maybe it even occurred to you that I wasn’t going to give up on you. So you bolted without a word. Or even a note left on the pillow.” Her voice remained serene. “For future reference, Dalton, should you ever need it, going to bed with a man and waking up without even a note is rough on a woman with even the strongest ego, especially when her bedmate flees the city.”
He couldn’t see her face. “Reno—”
“You bolted. To Alaska, of all places. You do realize he knows exactly where you are, I hope? Those sat phones he gave us contain nice FBI-strength GPS trackers. And no matter how much you might want him to butt out of your life, you hang on to that phone like we all do. Just in case.”
“Never mind Bishop. Reno, what are you doing here?”
No expletives, she noted. Maybe he was mellowing. “Oh, just visiting.”
“Fuck that. You’re here for a reason and I damned well want to know what it is.”
Or maybe not.
She swung around to face him, a challenge in the tilt of her head. “Tell me you didn’t experience something very strange earlier today, and I’ll get back on that damned floatplane and be on my way back to the mainland and the far more comfortable jet waiting there for me.”
He scowled at her.
Reno decided he hadn’t changed much in two years, at least not physically. He was still too thin for his height of just under six feet, though his wide shoulders and strong bones made that fact less obvious than it might have been. His thick brown hair needed cutting as usual, and his hazel eyes, which still changed color according to his mood, were dark and angry under slash-straight, frowning eyebrows.
“Well?” she prompted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he snapped.
She nodded. “Ah. So you did get the summons. Just guessing, but I’d say you got slammed by the worst headache of your life, saw some very weird and very bright colors, and heard voices or whispers, a whole lot of them, telling you that you have to go to Prosperity.”
“I,” he repeated grimly, “am not going anywhere.”
Pulling one hand from her pocket, Reno gestured with a thumb over one shoulder to a small desk in a corner of the den. “And that’s not a map of the southeastern US of A spread out on your desk. I take it you found Prosperity? A hitherto peaceful little mountain town in North Carolina?”
If an already-murderous glare could get worse, his did.
Reno wondered idly why she’d never been afraid of him. He was a very dangerous man, after all, far more so than even Bishop knew. Or, at least, she thought so. “Come on, Dalton, if you were curious enough to look for Prosperity, then you’re curious enough to at least wonder what it’s all about.”
For several moments it appeared he was too angry and determined not to care to give in, but then he winced and reached up to rub his left temple briefly, and some of the rage drained away, leaving his eyes lighter but his face weary. “I don’t want to go,” he muttered.
“Still no luck with the shield, huh?” Reno didn’t have much of one herself, but she knew both that she was in the rather amazingly small percentage of people he couldn’t read, and that her own abilities made her a pure receiver, so she didn’t broadcast to telepaths anyway.
They were likely the only reasons she had been able to get closer to him than anyone else had. Once upon a time.
She wondered, as she had wondered silently more than once, if he even realized that the sheer raw power of his abilities, unshielded, made any sensitive person anywhere near him completely aware of the hot fury of his constant wordless rage. She doubted it, even though he had spent time with empaths and telepaths who could certainly have explained it to him.
Being a pure receiver herself, she could most certainly have explained it to him. Which might have been another reason he had bolted from Chicago.
“No,” he said finally. “No luck building a shield.” He stepped past her, automatically keeping an obvious distance between them that might have discouraged most women, and sank down in what looked like a comfortable leather chair at right angles to a long leather sofa.
She moved far enough to sit down on the end of the sofa nearest his chair, respecting his personal space and knowing better than to wait for an invitation. “Bishop says it’s the sort of thing that tends to happen in the field,” she reminded him.
“I know what Bishop says,” he snapped, but more quietly.
“Then why not try it,” she said practically. “Trying to do the thing on your own hasn’t worked. Obviously. Being a hermit hasn’t done anything except make you more angry and, if possible, more ill-mannered. What’ve you got to lose?”
“My mind,” he said grimly. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
Reno considered briefly, then said, “Well, if my vision was accurate, and they mostly are, you may not have to worry about that much longer.” She stopped there and waited. Patiently.
Dalton glared at her again, clearly unwilling to ask. But she merely smiled and waited. Patiently. And finally he swore at her and added, “You are the most maddening woman I’ve ever known.”
“Yeah, I’d be flattered by that except I know most of the women you’ve known have been doctors and nurses and therapists.”
He stiffened.
Reno held his angry gaze, smiling faintly now. “It is what it is, Dalton. We’ve all done time on shrinks’ couches, in clinics, even in jail and locked up in other . . . facilities . . . occasionally. Most of us have been on too many meds and forced into way too many programs of one kind or another designed to fix what mainstream doctors insist is broken. You had it rougher than most on that score, and for longer than most, but a lot of psychics went through a dozen different kinds of hell that make yours look like a party. Stop being so touchy. Get over it.”
Dalton smiled, though few would have recognized the expression. “You were always the psychic in the center, weren’t you, Reno? You and your collection of freaks.”
With a chuckle, she said, “As a general rule, I like psychics better than the so-called normal people. So, yeah, I keep in touch with a few other freaks like us.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t join that FBI unit of Bishop’s.”
“Somebody had to stay out here in the world and keep an eye on the freaks who wouldn’t or couldn’t be cops.”
Dalton shifted slightly in his chair and frowned. “All right, you can stop using that word.”
“What, freaks? Thought it was your preferred label for us.” Her faint smile remained.
“I don’t like labels,” he snapped.
“Doesn’t matter what you like. The world’s full of them. Something else that is what it is.” Changing subjects smoothly, she said, “I don’t see any little womanly touches about the place. Still determined to go it solo?”
An indefinable emotion passed over his angry face and was gone. “Some people should be alone. You know that.”
“I know you believe that. I should think you’ve scared away most women you’ve encountered here without much effort whether you could read them or not,” she said in an agreeable tone. “Just the way you did in Chicago. But I don’t scare so easily.”
“No?”
“No. Enough apocalyptic visions tend to put all kinds of other things into their proper perspective.”
His frown deepened. “That’s twice you’ve hinted something bad is coming. Either explain it or cut it out.”
“I doubt I have to explain much. You were never a stupid man, Dalton—about anything except people, at least—so I’m sure you’ve figured out for yourself that the threat we were warned about is something way, way beyond bad.”
His mouth tightened. “So what if it is. I plan to stay here and mind my own business, and if you’re as smart as you think you are you’ll do the same thing.”
“Stay here?”
Dalton glared at her.
With a soft laugh, Reno shook her head. “Such an angry man. That hasn’t changed. Well, to be honest, neither have I. Much. Except that I’ve decided I sort of like this world the way it is, flaws and all. Not really ready for an apocalypse of any kind, not if there’s a chance we can stop it.”
“We?”
“Mmm. We weren’t the only ones summoned. I understand there are six of us outside Bishop’s unit plus two SCU agents who were called and one more coming along for reasons of his own. We should make up a highly unusual team, to say the least. I left Chicago earlier today on the jet. Stopped briefly in Montana to pick up Sully Maitland. I’m sure you remember him. He and the jet are here waiting on the mainland. After we leave Alaska, we fly down to San Francisco to pick up Logan Alexander, who you also remember, and then head cross country to North Carolina to meet up with the rest.”
He was still frowning. “Long trip.”
“Yeah, even if I manage a nap on the leg back, jet lag doesn’t begin to describe the way I’ll feel by the time we finally get to North Carolina.”
“To Prosperity?”
“Eventually. First, the plan is to gather at what Bishop describes as our command center not very far from Prosperity.”
“That place of his in the mountains?”
“I believe so. I’m told there’ll be technical people staying there for the duration, plus Bishop and Miranda, standing ready to support our efforts in any and every way they can. So we can basically call on FBI resources plus just about anything else in order to do whatever we have to do.”
“Reno—”
“And at Quantico, they’re already forming up a second line of defense. In case we fail.” She got to her feet. “Not that I mean to fail, and I doubt anyone else does. But you never know, after all. It’ll be the first team effort for us, so we’ll have to wait and see. Go pack a bag, Dalton. We need to get going.”
“I’m not coming.”
“Of course you’re coming.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You heard me. No.”
Reno was not Bishop’s “perfect psychic,” which meant she could not control her abilities a hundred percent of the time. But like all psychics she had at least one quality unique to her: Pulling someone else into a vision with her was one of those unique qualities. Another was that she could, at least for a relatively short while afterward, remain connected to one of her visions.
And experience it a second time.
Without warning, she leaned over and grasped Dalton’s wrist. And pulled him into that seared and blasted hell with her.