Falling Awake

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Stop it.” Scargill raised the nose of the pistol. “I don’t want to hear any more. You’re trying to confuse me.”

  She had nothing to lose, Isabel thought. All she could do was keep talking and hope that some of what she was saying penetrated the haze that the CZ-149 had created in Scargill’s brain.

  “Amelia achieved her second goal, more or less. Through Randolph Belvedere, she got control of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research,” she said. “But things went wrong again when Randolph fired me. That’s Amelia’s big problem, you see. She’s brilliant but she keeps miscalculating because she doesn’t understand other people’s motivations. She assumes everyone is driven by the same things that drive her, but she’s wrong. I think that’s probably making her crazy.”

  Scargill looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “Maybe you’re the one who’s crazy.”

  “Always a possibility, of course.”

  amelia checked the screen of her phone. The tiny moving dot that was the Maserati was slowing. Angrily, she hit the redial button.

  “You’d better keep your speed up, Cutler. You’ve only got an hour and twenty minutes left. At the rate you’re going now, you’ll be late, and you know what that means.”

  “The fog is getting worse,” Ellis said evenly. “I can’t see five feet in front of the car. I’m using a back road to avoid traffic. That means occasional stop signs. In fact, there’s one coming up and I just passed a police cruiser. I’ve got to stop. Can’t afford to get pulled over for a ticket.”

  “It’s your choice, of course,” she said sweetly, watching the blip on the screen halt. “But if you’re late, you know the penalty.”

  “I won’t be late.” Ellis cut the connection.

  She hated that he felt in a position to treat her so rudely. Nobody gave her the respect she deserved. She started to punch redial but paused when she saw that the dot was moving again, faster than it had been a moment ago. That was a good sign. Cutler was running scared. She liked that. It was very satisfying.

  But not nearly as satisfying as watching Lawson go down.

  ellis parked in the trees, collected the gym bag and went the rest of the way on foot. He had thirty minutes until the deadline. There was still a little light left but the Roxanna Beach Amusement World was enclosed in an impenetrable gray fog. The only sound was the steady pounding of the unseen surf. It echoed eerily in the mist, creating a disorienting sensation. With luck it would mask any noise he was forced to make.

  He approached the amusement park from a point that was farthest from the main entrance, chose a spot that was concealed by the wall of an aged restroom and went to work with the wire cutters.

  amelia checked the dot on the phone screen again and hit the redial.

  “What do you want now?” Cutler asked in low tones.

  “You’re pushing the envelope,” she said, her anger building again. “You’re at least thirty minutes away from town. If I were you, I’d worry.”

  “I told you, the fog—”

  This time she cut the connection before he did, taking a great deal of fierce pleasure in the small, savage punch of the end button.

  She had made the right decision, she thought. They were all badly flawed. It had become obvious in the past few weeks that Scargill’s basic temperament wasn’t going to change. He still wanted to be a hero, another Ellis Cutler, for crying out loud. She couldn’t work with such a major personality defect.

  Isabel Wright was another mistake. She hadn’t turned out to be a meek, dithery little dreamer who would do as she was told.

  As for Cutler, well, she had known all along that he wasn’t going to stop being a problem until he was dead.

  The only answer was to get rid of all of them and start from scratch. With the resources of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research, she would be able to find her own dream talent.

  Meanwhile, if everything went as planned, tonight she would not only get rid of her mistakes, she would start the first smoldering embers that would eventually burn down Jack Lawson’s precious empire.

  at the far end of the park, Ellis dropped the phone back into the pocket of his windbreaker, making sure it was still set to vibrate, not ring, and continued working his way through the eerie landscape. The hulking shapes of the long-silent rides loomed like the ruins of an alien civilization in the mist.

  He was fairly sure that Amelia had called him from somewhere near the cliff side of the park. He had heard the surf quite clearly in the background. In addition, although he had listened closely, he had not heard her voice except through the phone. That meant she was not in the immediate vicinity. He had been careful to keep his voice low and to muffle his phone with the thick canvas of the gym bag.

  First things first, he thought, moving past an old bumper car platform. Amelia had probably set a guard, either Scargill or another one of her behavior modification program success stories. Whoever he was, he would be somewhere near the entrance to the park.

  yolland heard the footsteps on the pavement behind the ticket booth. A jolt of alarm went through him. Automatically, he reached for the nearest fuse. Then he realized that whoever he was, the guy was approaching openly from the interior of the park.

  Scargill. The doc had sent her doped-up pal to check on him. Rage replaced alarm. Didn’t she know he was a professional? He didn’t need anyone checking up on him, especially not some dope fiend.

  He leaned out of the booth.

  “Tell the doc I said for you to take care of your job and I’ll take care of mine—” He stopped when he realized he could not see Scargill in the heavy fog. “Where are you?”

  He thought he heard a slight sound behind him but by the time it registered it was too late.

  There was searing pain at the back of his head and then he plummeted into a bottomless pit of night.

  ellis left the guard bound and gagged inside the ticket booth. He had twenty minutes left. He wondered if Amelia would call again. If she did, he would not be able to risk answering the phone because she or Scargill might be close enough to hear him talking and realize he was inside the park.

  He made his way along the back of a row of empty arcade and concession booths, listening intently for the telltale murmur of voices. He knew Isabel. If they hadn’t gagged her, she would be handing out plenty of free advice to Scargill or Amelia.

  But he did not hear her as he moved among the rows of shuttered arcades and stands. That silence scared him more than anything else that had happened so far.

  He turned a corner at the end of a line of food stalls and stopped suddenly when he realized the rear door of one of the booths was partially open, sagging on its hinges. He watched for a moment and thought he saw a shifting in the shadows inside.

  Someone was in the booth.

  He had fifteen minutes left when he switched on the phone in the pocket of his windbreaker and kicked open the sagging door at the back of the stand.

  “Freeze, Scargill.”

  Scargill had his back to him, keeping watch at the front of the stand. He jerked at the sound of Ellis’s voice and then went very still.

  Ellis stepped into the booth and took in the interior in one quick glance. Despair knifed through him. His worst nightmare had just come true. Scargill was alone. There was no sign of Isabel.

  “So you managed to pull off one of your tricks after all,” Scargill said in a dull, flat tone. “Why am I not surprised? But it doesn’t matter. You lose, pal.”

  “Put the gun down and move away from it.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” Scargill obeyed.

  When the gun clattered loudly on the counter Ellis realized that Scargill was shaking badly.

  “Where is she?” Ellis asked. He was in a place that was so cold and so impossibly bleak nothing else mattered. He knew he could kill without any hesitation at all from this realm. He wanted to kill.

  Something of what he was feeling must have showed on his face because Scargill looked both ill and scar
ed. He had to try twice before he could speak.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy, Cutler.”

  Ellis raised the pistol two inches. “Where is she?”

  “Right here,” Amelia said.

  She appeared outside the booth, standing on the other side of the counter. Ellis realized she must have been hiding in the stand across the way. She had Isabel. Amelia gripped her forearm in one hand. With the other she pointed a pistol at Isabel’s head.

  “I don’t know how you did it, Cutler. According to the data from the GPS indicator, you’re still ten miles away. But when I couldn’t raise Yolland a few minutes ago, I realized you were probably inside the park. You always were unpredictable.”

  Ellis allowed himself to breathe again. Isabel was still alive. Her hands were bound behind her back but she looked amazingly calm and composed and she was still alive.

  “Hello, Ellis,” she said quietly. “I knew you’d get here in time.”

  “Shut up,” Amelia ordered. She kept the pistol aimed at Isabel’s temple while she smiled ferociously at Ellis. “Drop the gun.”

  “Better do as she says,” Scargill said. With a trembling hand, he picked up the pistol he had placed on the counter and pointed it at Ellis.

  Ellis looked at Amelia. “You’re going to kill Isabel anyway, aren’t you?” He shrugged. “I might as well take you out at the same time.”

  Amelia looked baffled by that logic. “Vincent will shoot you dead before you can make a move.”

  “No he won’t,” Isabel said quietly, simply, her eyes never leaving Ellis’s face.

  Amelia laughed. “Of course he will. He understands that he needs me, don’t you, Vincent? I’m the only one who can give you the right dose of the CZ-149.”

  “Scargill is fast,” Ellis said. “He can probably take me out. But you will be dead before that happens so it won’t make much difference to you. Your only hope is to put down the gun.”

  Scargill gave a raw, weary, utterly humorless laugh. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a three-way standoff.”

  “Looks like,” Ellis agreed. He raised his voice slightly. “This would be a very good time.”

  “No.” Amelia took a step back. Her face worked with fury as she struggled to come up with a way to get out of the impasse. She yanked Isabel with her. “No, you’re not going to do this to me, Cutler. I’m not going to let you win, not after all I’ve gone through to get this far. I’m leaving now and I’m taking Isabel with me. Don’t move. Do you hear me? Don’t move or she dies.”

  Amelia-Maureen was fraying fast around the edges, Ellis thought.

  Clank, clank, clank.

  The muffled rumble of a heavy, rusty chain lift shuddered across the park. Simultaneously a spiraling maze of small yellow and white lights lit up the foggy twilight. The majority of the bulbs that festooned the old roller coaster had broken or burned out long ago but there were enough left to illuminate the carcass of the old thrill ride in a strange, ghostly glow.

  “What?” Amelia’s voice was shrill with rage and bewilderment. Clearly unnerved, she jerked her head around to stare over her shoulder at the strange apparition that had appeared. For an instant she seemed confused and distracted by the clanking noise and the otherworldly light.

  Down, Isabel, Ellis thought. For God’s sake, get down.

  As though she had read his mind, Isabel was already in motion, seizing the opportunity. She dropped like a stone to the ground, vanishing from sight on the other side of the counter. Amelia reflexively let go of her arm rather than be pulled off balance.

  “Damn you, Cutler.” Amelia whipped back, gun swinging toward Ellis.

  He pulled the trigger at the same instant that Vincent Scargill did.

  Amelia Netley collapsed without a sound.

  The roar of the guns filled the night, louder than the clanking of the roller coaster.

  Ellis watched Scargill.

  “Take it easy,” Scargill said. He put the gun down very carefully on the counter. Then he wiped his forehead. “Thanks. Wasn’t sure if you believed Isabel a minute ago when she said that I wouldn’t kill you.”

  Ellis lowered his pistol. “Amelia didn’t believe her but I did.”

  Isabel scrambled to her feet. “Are you two okay?”

  “Yes.” Relying on his good shoulder, Ellis planted one hand on the counter and vaulted through the opening to get to her.

  Scargill followed him, moving much more slowly and awkwardly. He went to stand looking down at the very still body on the pavement. A visible shudder went through him.

  Farrell appeared from the dark, misty space between a teacup ride and the carousel.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, checking faces anxiously. “I heard you give me the order to start the roller coaster but then I heard two shots.”

  “Farrell,” Isabel whispered.

  “Your timing was perfect,” Ellis assured him, switching off his phone.

  The clank, clank, clanking stopped.

  Ellis listened to the silence and felt the breathless anticipation that meant the roller coaster train had reached the summit of the first, high lift hill and now hung there waiting for the irresistible force of gravity to take effect.

  Isabel threw herself into his arms. He wrapped her close and hard against him.

  There was a grinding, metallic screech of rusted track and ancient steel wheels as the cars went over the top. Or maybe that was his heart, Ellis thought, breaking free of the dark place deep inside where he had kept it safe all these years.

  There was a dazzling, intoxicating whoosh and a thrilling rush of excitement as the roller coaster cars plunged into the first, glorious turn.

  Isabel tightened her arms around him.

  No going back now.

  40

  isabel flopped back against the pillows, exhausted. “I can’t believe I’ve got three men sleeping under my roof tonight. This is definitely a personal best for me in terms of my social life.”

  Ellis came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his lean waist, his hair damp from the shower.

  “But only one man sleeping in your bed,” he reminded her.

  She smiled, enjoying the sight of him standing in front of her in her bedroom; relishing the knowledge that he was safe.

  “True,” she said.

  “Could have packed Dave and Vince off to a motel,” Ellis said, untying the towel.

  “Not after all they’ve been through. Dave is dealing with the closure that he got tonight regarding his sister’s death, and poor Vincent is still ill from the effects of the CZ-149. I couldn’t send them away to a lonely motel room. Besides, they both needed you.”

  “Me?” He pulled aside the covers and got in next to her. “I didn’t do anything except tell them what to say to the cops and give them both a couple of beers after we got them back here.”

  “You talked to them.” She turned on her side and propped herself up on an elbow. “You let them talk. That was important. You’re a role model for both of them whether you like it or not.”

  “Not,” Ellis grumbled. He leaned back against the pillows and put one hand under his head. “Got no training as a role model and no aptitude for the job, either.”

  “Au contraire.” Smiling, she bent her head and kissed his mouth. “You’re a natural. No wonder Lawson is always after you to return to Frey-Salter to do special seminars for the new recruits.”

  “Huh.” He looked at his watch, which he still wore, and sat up again, shoving back the covers. “Speaking of Lawson, I’d better turn off my phone and yours, too. I know him. As soon as he’s finished doing damage control on that end, he’ll call me back, wanting to ask more questions. We won’t get any sleep at all.”

  The official story had been put together by Ellis and Lawson via a phone call while they all waited for the emergency vehicles to respond to the scene at the amusement park. It was simple and reasonably straightforward: While employed at Frey-Salter, Inc., Dr. Amelia Netley, using the name Maur
een Sage, had engaged in high-level corporate espionage. She stole some very dangerous experimental sleeping medications. She was also suspected of killing Katherine Ralston, presumably because Katherine had stumbled onto the scheme.

  Following the murder, Maureen disappeared, assumed her new identity as Dr. Amelia Netley and landed a position at the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research. Ellis and Vincent Scargill, agents of the corporate security firm Mapstone Investigations, had been sent out to gather evidence. Isabel had assisted in the investigation.

  Tonight, fearful that the investigation was closing in on her, Amelia kidnapped Isabel with the goal of exchanging her for an airline ticket and guaranteed safe passage out of the country. Ellis and Vincent, together with the help of Dave and Farrell, had staged a rescue operation.

  “Think the local cops will buy that story you and Lawson concocted?” Isabel asked, watching Ellis turn off his phone.

  “Sure. It’s the easiest way to clean up the mess.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “So much easier to let Mapstone Investigations, with its murky connection to the feds, take responsibility.”

  “You got it.”

  “Think Lawson can keep his agency out of it?”

  “Lawson has managed to keep himself and the work he does at Frey-Salter out of the public eye for over thirty years. What happened at the amusement park tonight is just a small glitch as far as he’s concerned. Could have been a lot worse and he knows it.”

  He turned off the ringer on the phone beside the bed, hit the lights and got back under the covers.

  Unable to suppress another of the little quivery sensations that had plagued her since the events in the amusement park, Isabel drew her knees up under the sheets and wrapped her arms around them.

  “Ellis?”

  “Yeah?” He reached for her, pulling her down against him. “What’s wrong? You’re shivering.”

  “I feel the same way I did after we found Gavin Hardy’s body. Exhausted but very, very wired.”