Strangers

Dom had tested their powers last night, Ginger noticed that the priest regarded the weapons with a mixture of displeasure and fear, that he seemed far less optimistic than yesterday, when his discovery of his amazing gift had sent his spirit soaring. "No dream last night," he explained when she asked the reason for his grim mood. "No golden light, no voice calling to me. You know, Ginger, I told myself all along that I didn't believe I was being called here by God. But deep down that is what I believed. Father Wycazik was right: There was always a core of faith in me. Recently, I've been edging back to an acceptance of God. Not only acceptance: I need Him again. But now… no dream, no golden light… as if God's abandoned me."
        "No, you're wrong," Ginger said, taking his hand as if she could absorb his distress by osmosis and leave him feeling better. "If you believe in God, He never abandons you. Right? You can abandon God, but never the other way around. He always forgives, always loves. Isn't that what you tell a parishioner?"
        Brendan smiled wanly. "Sounds like you went to seminary."
        She said, "The dream was probably just a memory surging against the block that's holding it down in your subconscious. But if it was really God summoning you here… well, the reason you no longer have the dream is because you've arrived. You've come as He wanted, so there's no need for Him to send you the dream any more. See?"
        The priest's face brightened a little.
        They took up seats around the table.
        With dismay, Ginger saw that Marcie's condition had worsened since last night. The girl sat with her head bent, face half-hidden by her thick black hair staring at her tiny hands, which lay limply in her lap. She mumbled: "Moon, moon, the moon, moon… She was in all-out pursuit of those memories of July 6, which remained teasingly on the edge of her awareness and which, by their tantalizing inaccessibility, had drawn her into obsessive contemplation of their halfglimpsed forms.
        "She'll come out of it," Ginger told Jorja, knowing how empty and foolish the statement was, yet unable to think of anything else to say.
        "Yes," Jorja said, apparently not finding it empty or foolish but reassuring. "She has to come out of it. She has to."
        Jack and Ned stood the plywood panel against the door and braced it with a table again, assuring freedom from eavesdroppers.
        Quickly, Faye and Ginger told of their visit to the Jamisons' ranch and of being followed by the two men in the Plymouth. Ernie and Dom had been followed, too.
        This news made Jack edgy. "If they're coming out in the open to keep tabs on us, that means they're almost ready to grab us again."
        Ned Sarver said, "Maybe I'd just better stand watch, make sure nobody's moving in on us already." Jack agreed, and Ned went to the door and put one eye against the narrow crack between the plywood and the door frame, looking out at the snow-swept parking lot.
        At Jack's request, Dom and Ernie explained what they had found on their tour of the Thunder Hill Depository's perimeter fence.
        Jack listened carefully, asking a number of questions for which Ginger could not always discern the purpose. Were any thin bare wires woven through the chainlink fence? What were the fenceposts like? Finally, he asked, "No guard dogs or men on patrol?"
        Dom said, "No. There'd have been prints in the snow along the fence. Must be heavy electronic security. I'd hoped we'd be able to get on the grounds - but not after I got a close-up view of the place."
        "Oh, we'll get on the grounds all right," Jack said. "The tricky part will be getting inside the Depository itself."
        Dom and Ernie looked at him with such astonishment that Ginger knew Thunder Hill must have looked formidable, indeed.
        "Get inside?" Dom said.
        "No can do," Ernie said.
        "If they rely on multiple electronic systems for the perimeter security," Jack said, "they'll very likely also rely on electronics at the main entrance. That's the way it is these days. Everyone's dazzled by high-tech. Oh, sure, Thunder Hill will have a guard at the front gate, but he'll be so used to depending on computers, video cameras, and other gadgets that he'll be lax. So we might be able to surprise him, get by him. Once inside, though, I don't know how far we can go or what we might be able to get a peek at before