“Ah . . . your so-called miracle!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a miracle. I guess I just can’t help myself.”
Again that unsettling grin. It was even more troubling than the things Dillon said. That and the pulse of his heartbeat like an electric charge throbbing through the room. “A thousand years ago,” the profiler said, “if a man prayed to the heavens, and it just happened to coincide with an eclipse, he was proclaimed a prophet. Does that make him one?”
“That depends. Was the moon anywhere near the sun at the time?”
“There’s a logical explanation for what happened at Hoover Dam, and someday we’ll find it. You just happened to be caught in the circumstance of coincidence.”
“Then I suppose I have a talent for coincidence.”
“And now you’re having nightmares.” The profiler sat back, his eyes steady, taking the tiniest sadistic pleasure in the discomfort his mention of it brought Dillon.
“Just one,” Dillon corrected him. “It keeps coming back.”
“Tell me about it.”
Dillon grinned. “It’s not in your files?”
“I’d like to hear it in your words.”
Dillon slipped into himself for a moment, then he seemed to return, and his eyes became sharp and focused again. “Three figures, standing on the edge of some sort of platform. A man, a woman, and a child. The smell of perfume.”
“Go on.”
“There’s someone else in the dream as well. A man. Balding. He’s in a leather chair, but it’s a strange color. Sort of pink, or purple. It’s a recliner, and he’s leaning back.”
“Images from your past.”
“No,” he said, “from my future. They’re bringing something horrible— something unimaginable, but of course you won’t believe me. You won’t believe anything until it’s too late.”