She looked at the unconscious man and the items that had fallen out of the grocery sack.

“Gatewood was waiting for me inside the garage,” she said.

“Inside? Shit. I don’t know how he got past us. Where are you? Are you safe?”

“I’m all right. I’m in the garage near the elevator lobby. Gatewood is unconscious.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I think he suffered a seizure.”

“A seizure?”

She put one hand on the camera and looked at the fallen man. “Maybe a brain aneurysm. How should I know? I’m not a doctor.”

“I’m on my way in with the team,” Roger said. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes. We’ll take charge. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. Remember, you promised to keep Lark and LeClair out of this. I’m supposed to be working undercover. If the media finds out our firm was involved in the investigation, they’ll run with it. Catalina and I are still trying to live down the rumor that we’re running a psychic investigation agency. We don’t want to attract any more clients who think we read palms and tell fortunes.”

“Don’t worry. Gossard Consulting doesn’t want the wrong publicity, either. Any hint of the paranormal would hurt our credibility. Got to protect the brand.”

“Speaking of your brand, you’ll be thrilled to know your psychological profile was right about one thing. The Speed Date Killer really does look like Mr. Nice Guy.”

CHAPTER 2

Thought you were dead,” Victor Arganbright said.

“You mean you hoped I was dead.” Harlan Rancourt contemplated one of the hundreds of pictures that cluttered Victor’s large paneled office. “You never really believed I was permanently out of the way, did you? That’s why you spent the past five years looking for me.”

Five years. He had been on the run for five very long years, hiding not just from the Foundation but from the past. In the end he had been forced to acknowledge that, although he could probably evade Arganbright’s security people indefinitely, he could never outrun the past. It was always there, one step behind him. He was so damned tired of running.

“You did a good job of hiding,” Lucas Pine said.

“Coming from you, that is a compliment,” Harlan said.

He studied the painting a moment longer. The oil was a mediocre nineteenth-century picture of the oracle of Delphi. It wasn’t much to look at. The oracle was shown in her classic pose, seated on a three-legged stool that straddled the crack in the floor of a vast cavern. The figure, draped in a hood and flowing robes, delivered her prophecy as she inhaled the mysterious fumes that seeped up through the opening in the rock. Those who had paid handsomely for her pronouncements waited nearby, anxious to hear her cryptic warnings and advice.