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"Okay," Lindsey said, going at her breakfast somewhat less heartily than Hatch did, "let’s suppose there was brain dae of some sort, after all But minor So h to cause paralysis or speech proble like that In fact, by an incredible stroke of luck, a one in a billion chance, this brain dae had a freak effect that was actually beneficial It could’ve made a fe connections in the cerebral tissues, and left you psychic"

"Bull"

"Why?"

"I’m not psychic"

"Then what do you call it?"

"Even if I was psychic, I wouldn’t say it was beneficial"

Because the breakfast rush had passed, the restaurant was not too busy The nearest tables to theirs were vacant They could discuss theoverheard, but Hatch kept glancing around self-consciously anyway

I his reanie County General Hospital, and in the days after Hatch’s release, reporters had virtually caer than any ible for considerably more than the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had said would eventually be every person’s fate in celebrity-obsessed A to earn his faht his way out of death; Lindsey, Nyebern, and the resuscitation teaed him back He was a private person, content with just the quiet respect of the better antique dealers who knew his shop and traded with him sometimes In fact, if the only respect he had was Lindsey’s, if he was faood husband, that would be enough for hi to talk to the press, he had finally convinced them to leave hioat--or its equivalent--was available to fill newspaper space or a minute of the airwaves between deodorant commercials

Now, if he revealed that he had coe power to connect with the mind of a psycho killer, swarain He could not tolerate even the prospect of it He would find it easier to endure a plague of killer bees or a hive of Hare Krishna solicitors with collection cups and eyes glazed by spiritual transcendence

"If it’s not some psychic ability," Lindsey persisted, "then what is it?"

"I don’t know"

"That’s not good enough"

"It could pass, never happen again It could be a fluke"

"You don’t believe that"

"Well … I want to believe it"

"We have to deal with this"

"Why?"

"We have to try to understand it"

"Why?"

"Don’t ’why’ me like a five-year-old child"

"Why?"

"Be serious, Hatch A woman’s dead She may not be the first She may not be the last"

He put his fork on his half-ee juice to wash down the hoht, it’s like a psychic vision, yeah, just the way they show it in the movies But it’sto think of an analogy When he had it, he opened his eyes and looked around the restaurant again to be sure no new diners had entered and sat near the cold He sighed

"You know," he said, "how they say identical twins, separated at birth and raised a thousand miles apart by utterly different adopted farow up to live similar lives?"

"Sure, I’ve heard of that So?"

"Even raised apart, with totally different backgrounds, they’ll choose similar careers, achieve the saive their kids the same names It’s uncanny And even if they don’t know they’re twins, even if each of them was told he was an only child when he was adopted, they’ll sense each other out there, across the miles, even if they don’t knoho or what they’re sensing They have a bond that no one can explain, not even geneticists"

"So how does this apply to you?"

He hesitated, then picked up his fork He wanted to eat instead of talk Eating was safe But she wouldn’t let hi His tranquilizers He put the fork down again

"Souy’s eyes when I’, and now sometimes I can even feel him out there when I’m awake, and it’s like the psychic crap in movies, yeah But I also feel this … this bond with him that I really can’t explain or describe to you, no matter howyou think he’s your twin or soer than me, maybe only twenty or twenty-one And no blood relation But it’s that kind of bond, that , have some fundamental quality in common"

"Like what?"

"I don’t knoish I did" He paused He decided to be entirely truthful "Or maybe I don’t"

Later, after the waitress had cleared away their e black coffee, Hatch said, "There’s no way I’o to the cops and offer to help the"

"There is a duty here--"

"I don’t know anything that could help them anyway"

She blew on her hot coffee "You knoas driving a Pontiac"

"I don’t even think it was his"

"Whose then?"

"Stolen,else you sensed?"

"Yeah But I don’t knohat he looks like, his na like that co that could help the cops?"

"Then I’ll call it in anonymously"

"They’ll take the inforive it to them in person"

He felt violated by the intrusion of this psychotic stranger into his life That violation er er, or the supernatural aspect of the situation, or the prospect of brain da driven by some extremity to discover that his father’s hot te to be tapped