Without knowing whether Charlie had heard him, he left the trees behind, took off across the severely manicured lawn, toward the spot where Preach stalked Lucy.

*   *   *

Charlie realized that the man she was after had the advantage of knowing the layout of the house whereas she did not. Therefore she paused in the two-story entryway, assessing her immediate surroundings. To her right was a salon, complete with an enormous stone fireplace, flanked by a pair of well-worn oversize leather sofas. She could smell the faint whiff of embedded cigar smoke wafting in the air. To her left was a hallway. She could see the first room off of it, its paneled sliding doors open: a library. Dead ahead was a marble and brass staircase winding up to the second floor.

As soon as she attuned herself to the miniscule noises every house makes, she heard the small scuffle and creak of shoe soles against old wooden floorboards, and, shrugging off her backpack, stowing it in a deeply shadowed nook, she moved off in that direction, down the wood-paneled hall. Past the library, with its dry, almost spicy scent of old books, past a closed door, then into the third room. Every inch of its four walls, even the back of the door, was completely covered with mirrors. Charlie saw her image reflected back on herself from every conceivable angle. She turned, for a moment disoriented and slightly dizzy. Whether it was the mirrors or a reoccurrence of her Takayasu’s was impossible to determine, but it was foolish to take chances. She dug in her pocket for the vial of Imuran, but at that moment she spied a moving shadow out of the corner of her eye, and in turning toward it, she lost control of the vial. It bounced off the floorboards, rolling toward a far corner. And as she scrambled after it, Trey Hartwell barreled into her.

Chapter 52

52

“My son, my son!” Preach cried. “At last we meet in the future that’s occupied my mind for decades.”

No one but Preach and Whitman should have known what he was talking about, but Lucy found that she did. The branches Preach mentioned were his manipulations—the chess moves he made so far in advance no one understood what he was doing, let alone had a clue as to what his objective was. But she knew—suddenly she knew.

She stared at Whitman, her expression tense. “Who are you?”

“Whitman, Lucy. Flix’s—”

“Preach has talked about you,” she said. “And now the situation’s making more sense. Preach brought us both here for a reason.”

“What are you talking about? How do you know—”

“Listen to me, Whitman. Everything that’s happened to us has been for a reason—his reason.”

He frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Because,” she said, “I’ve been where you’ve been.”

His frown deepened. “With him?”