“This is Special Agent Cheney Stone, Kathryn. May we speak with you?”
“I’ve been watching the news. I hope you’re being careful. Yes now I recognize you, Agent Stone. You saved Julia’s life.”
Julia nodded. “Yes, he did. Agent Stone is continuing to keep me safe.”
They followed Kathryn Golden into the immense living room that stretched, Cheney saw, the entire length of the house. It was long and narrow, with thick burgundy drapes closed over the wall-to-wall windows set at both ends. The floors were darkly varnished, bare of rugs. He looked over at a huge dark-veined golden marble fireplace on the opposite wall that looked like it had never been used.
The room was starkly elegant, like a museum, until you realized all the furniture groupings in the long room were black woven rattan. The extreme contrast in styles wasn’t tacky, but rather oddly charming. There had to be a story behind this. Then he noticed the modern art covering one of the stark white walls, dark violent paintings, some of them of mouths that seemed to be screaming at him. It gave him the willies to look at them.
Suddenly Kathryn Golden stopped in her tracks, and didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.
CHAPTER 33
“Ms. Golden? Are you all right?”
“Please be quiet. I’m having a vision. You and Julia—back away. Go sit down.”
Julia didn’t seem at all alarmed or find this particularly strange. She shushed him, pointed him to one of the long rattan sofas.
He watched Kathryn Golden kick off her high heels, sink to the floor, and assume the lotus position facing the fireplace, her black skirts billowing out around her. He guessed she knew better than to wear a tight skirt. He saw she had a nice French pedicure and perfect fingernails.
He opened his mouth but Julia shushed him again.
They sat silently as Kathryn Golden threw her head back, clenched her hands on her thighs and began to weave, left to right, right to left, and started to keen, an eerie sound that was vaguely ridiculous but nevertheless raised gooseflesh on his arms.
She began moving in a wide circle now. He heard her breathing heavily. He felt like arresting her for fraud, or maybe for trying to scare an officer of the law.
The weaving lessened, the keening became low, almost a whisper. Then, suddenly, it was over. She snapped awake, came to her feet in a single graceful motion and smoothed her skirts back down. She slipped her heels back onto her feet.
She sat down opposite them, crossed her legs, and stared at Julia. “My vision was about you, Julia. In it, I was you—I felt young and limber, like I could leap into a tree if I wanted to. It felt so very good. Then I saw a man and I knew he was watching me—rather you. I saw deep cold blackness at his center, saw the virulent purple flashes of his narcissism and his pride in himself and his work.
“He’s the one who wants to kill you, Julia. That first time at Pier 39 you were nothing to him, only a job to carry out. He didn’t hate you, nothing like that. But he does now.” She stopped because her breathing had kicked up. She closed her eyes a moment, then slowly opened them, blinking.
Julia said matter-of-factly, “He was all over the news, Kathryn, his picture, the fact that he’s probably a hired killer, the works.”
“Always the little skeptic,” Kathryn said, pleating her skirt with long thin fingers. “August said you often refused to believe anything anybody said, except for him, of course.
“What I told you is the truth, Julia, and it’s deeper than the news. I saw what’s inside him, what he’s about. He’s very dangerous and very smart, but he’s barely human anymore. He’s empty and cold. He wants to kill you, wants it to his very core.”
“The cops didn’t release his name to the media,” Cheney said. “Did you see in your vision what it is, Ms. Golden?”
“I am not a performing seal, Agent Stone.”
Proof enough, Cheney thought. “Did you happen to see where he is, ma’am? We need to bring him down before he can take another shot at Julia. Can you help us find this monster?”
She drew in a very deep breath, let it out slowly. Her dark golden-green eyes, witch’s eyes, never left his face. Maybe that was where she’d gotten her last name.
“I think he has an author’s name, isn’t that odd? Usually, of course, people don’t think about their own names, but I got this flash—he happened to look at a book and he felt at one with it. An author’s name, is this close?”
Damn. “Yes, it’s close.”
“Good. Now as to where he is. Again, he wasn’t thinking about where he is. But he’s watching me—well, he’s watching Julia, and he’s planning. I could feel chaotic energy roaring through him, the feeling he could outrun anyone, fight anyone, kill anyone who tried to stop him. But you know? I think he has bad eyes, though. You know already he wears glasses. He thought, only a moment, that maybe he’d get laser surgery, but he’s afraid to, his vision is too important to him.”
She turned to Julia. “If I’m pulled into another vision about him, perhaps it will be to where he’s staying and I’ll see it. I don’t want him to kill you. To lose poor August and to then lose you six months later—it would be too much. But I don’t understand. Why would anyone go to all this trouble to kill you? Fact is, if he knows why, he doesn’t care enough to even think about it in passing. You’re a challenge to him now, maybe the biggest challenge he’s ever faced from his prey. You’re his entire focus now.”
Julia said, “Who do you think killed August, Kathryn?”
“My opinion?”
