The First Horseman [antikvár]

PROLOGUETHE HUDSON VALLEY NOVEMBER 11, 1997Tommy was nervous. Susannah could tell, because she knew he liked to talk, and yet, he hadn't said a word for fifty miles. Not that she could blame him. She was nervous, too. And excited. And scared.It was dusk when they got off the Taconic Parkway, switching on the headlights as they traveled through rolling farmland, a Ralph Lauren landscape where the houses were so perfect, you just knew they were owned by doctors and lawyers. They were 'mini-estates,' or enclaves with names like 'Foxfield Meadows,' and they didn't really grow anything except, maybe, sun-dried tomatoes and arugula.As they passed the Omega Institute, Susannah wondered aloud - what's that? And the driver, Tommy, made a sound like a duck - kwak-kwak-kwak! So both of them laughed (a little too loud), and Susannah thought, Some kind of New Age thingie.The thing was - what made her nervous was: the whole deal about the teeth, about pulling out the teeth. No matter how you looked at it, pulling out the teeth was creepy. It was like Nuremberg or something. So if they got caught, it wouldn't just be murder, it would be . . . what? Charles Manson, or something.Not that she'd be the one to do it - she couldn't hurt1