It was, of course, up to the customer to interpret the meaning of the prophecy. You paid your money and you took your chances.

The pictures hanging on the walls and stacked on the floor of the office varied in quality, artistic style and value. Some were hundreds of years old. Others were modern. But they all had the same theme. Arganbright was obsessed with the subject of oracles.

So am I, Harlan thought.

He turned away from the painting and regarded the two men he was confronting. He was well aware he was taking a risk, but it was a carefully calculated risk. That was the only kind he took, and he was very good at the business. He was a grand master–level chess player when it came to judging the odds and predicting the outcomes. But even for him this was a major move. If he was wrong it could cost him his life, or worse. He might end up in a locked ward at Halcyon Manor, the psychiatric hospital where the Foundation confined the real monsters.

It was late afternoon. Arganbright and Pine had been working in the office when he had called Victor’s private number to inform them that he was standing thirty floors below their penthouse at the front door of the Foundation tower. After ending the call he had been met by two armed guards and escorted upstairs in a private elevator.

Victor was seated behind a massive desk. Lucas lounged on the corner, one elegantly shod foot braced on the floor, arms casually crossed. They had dismissed the security team, but Harlan was sure both men were armed. They watched him as if he was one of the psychic monsters the Foundation hunted down and housed in Halcyon.

Monsters like Larissa Whittier.

They all had good reason to be wary of each other. It was no secret his father had viewed him as the heir apparent to what had become the Rancourt family business—or criminal mob, depending on your point of view—the Foundation. He knew that as long as he was alive, he represented a threat to the men who were now at the top—Arganbright and Pine.

They made an intriguing couple. Pine, silver-haired and polished, had the looks and stage-trained voice of an actor. It would have been easy to assume he was just another retired Las Vegas show personality—a former lounge singer or a magician, perhaps. He was retired, all right—from the CIA.

Victor Arganbright appeared at first glance to be Pine’s polar opposite. He radiated the grim, humorless demeanor of a man who was haunted night and day by his self-imposed task of tracking down a dangerous conspiracy.