looked down. Strange machines moved on the street below. Lights glowed and flashed. Cars, some part of his brain whispered. Get a grip. You’re fourteen floors above the street.
“Don’t you see the bridge?” Tucker asked. “It leads to all the answers, Fallon. You just follow the crystal brick road to find the wizard.”
Fallon concentrated. A crystal bridge materialized in the night. The transparent steps were infused with an internal light. He pulled harder on his talent. The bridge brightened and beckoned. But a tiny sliver of awareness sliced through the wonder of the scene.
“Think I’ve seen that bridge before,” he said.
“Yeah?” For the first time Tucker sounded slightly disconcerted. “Where?”
“In the movies. Damn silly plot but the special effects were mildly entertaining.”
Tucker chuckled. “Leave it to Fallon Jones to come up with a logical explanation for a perfectly good hallucination. Well, it was worth a shot. But if you won’t do this the easy way, I guess we’ll have to go with Plan B.”
He moved suddenly, bringing up the object in his hand. Fallon tried to raise one arm to block the blow, but his muscles would not obey. Instinctively he twisted aside, instead. He lost his balance and went down hard on the tiled floor.
The object Tucker wielded was a hammer. It struck inches away from Fallon’s head. He heard the crack of the tiles. The entire balcony shuddered with the force of the blow.
Somewhere in the night a woman started screaming.
“You crazy son of a bitch,” Tucker said. He raised the hammer for another blow. “You’re supposed to be out of your head by now.”
Fallon rolled away and reached for more talent. The hammer struck the floor of the balcony again.
He managed to scramble to his feet. The sparkling, iridescent night spun wildly around him.
Tucker charged him in a violent rush. The promise of imminent death sent another rush of adrenaline through Fallon, producing a few seconds of brilliant clarity.
He finally succeeded in getting a focus. For an instant the familiar features of the man he had considered a trusted friend were clearly visible in the light from the living room. Tucker’s face was twisted with a maddened rage. Fallon realized that he had never known the real Tucker until tonight.
The shock of being so terribly, horribly wrong brought another dose of clarity. People had died because of Tucker Austin, and Fallon knew that he was, in part, to blame. He summoned up the full, raging force of his talent, reached into the heart of chaos and seized a fistful of fire. He hurled the invisible currents of paranormal radiation into Tucker’s aura. Not exactly Zeus with the lightning bolts but good enough to get the job done.
Tucker grunted once, clutched at his heart and instinctively reeled backward to escape the onslaught of energy. He fetched up hard against the balcony railing. He was a tall man. The barrier caught him at mid-thigh. The force of his momentum sent him over the edge.
He did not scream, because he was already dead. But Jenny’s scream went on forever. Fallon knew he would hear it for the rest of his life.
PROLOGUE II
Isabella: one month ago . . .
She was not expecting the killers to come for her in the lingerie department.
She was always especially alert at night after work when she walked through the mall’s deserted parking garage. She never entered the cheap motel room that she rented by the week without checking for the telltale paranormal fog indicating an intruder. When she shopped for groceries, she was careful to keep an eye on strangers who invaded her personal space, and she never, ever ordered in. No one had an excuse to knock on her door.
But for some reason Isabella had felt reasonably safe selling women’s underwear in the discount department store for the past week. The sight of the two men loitering across the aisle in women’s sportswear sent a frisson of electricity across the nape of her neck. When you were psychic, you paid attention to your intuition.
She heightened her talent cautiously, bracing for the unpleasant chill of awareness. She possessed the ability to perceive the unique energy generated by those who kept secrets. Everyone harbored countless mysteries, small and large, however, so it was a given that if there were people in the vicinity, there would be a lot of fog.
Her coworkers and the shoppers around her were abruptly surrounded by misty auras. She wrestled with her talent for a few seconds, concentrating on those two men.