by Rebecca York
In the morning he was startled awake by a crashing noise.
Springing off the sofa and reaching for his weapon, he looked for the source of the sound and saw a light in the kitchen. As he rushed in, gun in hand, he saw Jamie, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, standing in front of the stove, where she was lighting a burner that held a heavy frying pan. Presumably, she’d just slammed the pan onto the burner by way of a cheery good morning gesture, leaving no doubt that she was still pissed at him.
She turned and gave him and the weapon a considering look. There was no need for her to ask how he’d slept because that was all too obvious—he’d tossed around in rumpled clothes most of the night.
He brushed back his hair and ran his tongue over his teeth. “I don’t suppose you have an extra toothbrush?” he asked.
She waited several beats before taking pity on him. “In the medicine cabinet.”
He went upstairs, used the facilities, then washed his face and brushed his teeth. After rubbing his dark stubble, he reopened the medicine cabinet and got out one of the pink disposable razors.
Her shaving cream was on the edge of the tub, and he used that, too, feeling guilty about taking liberties, but he was feeling more human when he came back down.
The smell of eggs, bacon and coffee drew him to the kitchen, where Jamie was moving briskly about, getting down plates. He could tell from her quick movements that she wanted to pitch him out of the house.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I’ve got it under control.”
He poured himself a mug of coffee, then helped himself to eggs from the pan and bacon from a plate sitting on the stove.
“Toast?” she asked.
“That’s okay.”
“Do you want it or not?” she snapped.
“No, thanks.”
So much for civil conversation.
After she’d sat down across from him and taken a few bites of the eggs, he said, “You still want to come with me?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But I’m going anyway. I think you’re going to need me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Half of him wished he hadn’t been on duty last night, and the other half was glad that he had been there when she called, but he couldn’t tell her that or much of anything else.
“Pack an overnight bag,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a long ride and we might not get back tonight.”
“Fine.” She ate a piece of bacon before asking, “What about you?”
“We’ll stop at my house. I keep a bag packed.”
She nodded, then got up and scraped the rest of her breakfast into the trash. He ate a few more bites, then cleaned off his own plate.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“Upsetting you.”
She made a sound like harrumph and began cleaning the pan where she’d cooked the eggs, her shoulders rigid.
He turned away, went back to the living room and folded up the afghan.
“I’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs. When she was gone, he waited a moment, then pulled his cell phone from the holster on his belt and called the office.
Max Dakota answered. “Mack, I see from the log that you checked out last night. Where are you?”
“Something came up. I need to make a quick trip to Gaptown.”
“Because?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s personal,” he said, glad that Light Street detectives had a lot of freedom. Still, he held his breath until Max said, “Okay.”
“I could be out for a couple of days,” he added, just as Jamie stepped back into the living room and stopped short when she saw he was on the phone.
As she gave him a long look, he said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Who was that?”
“The office.”
She kept her gaze on him as she asked, “Did you say you’re driving a nut to Gaptown?”
“Of course not,” he snapped, then changed the subject, striving for an even tone. “You packed fast.”
“We’re not going out dancing,” she muttered.
“Yeah. Right.
“Do you want me to take out the trash?” he asked. “I mean, since you’re going out of town.”
She hesitated for a moment. “All right. The cans are by the back door.”
He pulled the plastic bag out of the kitchen trash can and carried it outside. When he came back she was loudly shaking out a new bag, and he knew she was uncomfortable with him doing a job her husband had obviously taken care of when he’d been alive.
The little kitchen drama set the tone for the trip to western Maryland. After a quick stop at his house to pick up his bag, they headed down Route 70 toward Hagerstown, then onto Route 68 toward Gaptown—the supposed scene of her nightmare.
JAMIE SLID HER EYES toward Mack, then away as she sat in the front seat of his SUV, wondering what she was doing there. She could have stayed home, but she’d insisted on coming along, and once she’d committed herself to the trip, she’d known that he wasn’t going to let her drive her own car.
Now she felt trapped in the front seat with Mack Steele, wishing she were anywhere else. What if the dream was something she’d conjured up out of her own anxiety? She’d be embarrassed that Mack was driving her all this way to check out a figment of her imagination, but that would be the end of it. Despite her mixed emotions, she clung to that hope as they drove west, the terrain becoming more hilly the farther they got from Baltimore. Her refuge. She’d established a life in the city, and she was going to keep living there.
Last week, she’d gotten a letter from her mother, asking her to come home for a visit. She’d ignored the request, because going home always stirred up the bad feelings between herself and her mother’s boyfriend, Clark Landon, along with memories from her childhood that she’d rather forget.
Her earliest recollections of her father were of him staggering around the house drunk, yelling at her mom. Because of his fondness for the bottle, he’d barely been able to support the family with a series of jobs for the railroad, a couple of trucking companies and then as a delivery man for a local flower shop. Because home hadn’t been a warm and comfortable place, she’d spent as much time elsewhere as she could. She’d haunted the library and gone home with friends after school. But the time would always come when she had to go back to the dilapidated bungalow where she lived. And she never knew what she was going to find there. Maybe her parents would be fighting. Or maybe Dad would be at one of the bars he frequented, and Mom would lock the door to keep him out. Then he might smash a window to get in and cut his hand and end up in the emergency room.
Dad had finally drunk himself to death before he was fifty, which had made home life calmer. They’d gone on welfare, which hadn’t even made much difference in their lifestyle.
She’d still been living at home when she’d met Craig. Moving to Baltimore had been the first step in her break from the past. They’d had four good years together, and when he’d gotten killed, she’d been in danger of slipping into depression—until she’d pulled herself together and started over again on her own.
She’d thought she was in pretty good shape—until she’d woken up scared and shaken last night after a nightmare trip back to Gaptown.
The closer they got to home, the more her nerves jumped and the more certain she was that she wasn’t going to like the outcome of this trip. Not at all.
“Slow down,” she said. They were the first words she’d uttered since she’d gotten into Mack’s car. “There’s a speed trap ahead.”
He pressed on the brake and they rounded a curve, where a cop car with flashing lights had stopped another motorist.
“Thanks,” he said. “Was that a psychic insight?”
“No,” she snapped, t
hen continued in a milder tone.
“I’m a native. I know the cops are lying in wait for out-of-towners around that bend.”
When she saw a highway sign coming up, she felt a little jolt as the exit name flashed by. Smokehouse Road.
“Take this exit,” she said.
“Why?”
“Take it,” she insisted.
“Why?” he asked again.
“I don’t know for sure,” she answered honestly. “But I think we’re going to…find something.”
She gripped the sides of her seat as he took the exit a little too fast. She wished she knew why she was giving him these directions. Or maybe she already knew, and she didn’t want to admit it.
“Right or left?” he asked with an edge in his voice when they came off the exit ramp.
“Right,” she answered, wondering why she was so certain where they were going. There was absolutely no hesitation on her part as she gave him directions.
They drove for a few more moments before she told him to turn onto Jumping Jack Road.
FROM A HIDING PLACE where he was sheltered by the woods, the man who called himself Fred Hyde took a bite of the caramel, nut and chocolate bar he’d brought along. He chewed with appreciation as he watched the activity down the hill through binoculars. All those cops rushing around looked like a bunch of ants serving their queen.
He laughed. Yeah, ants.
He’d considerately left the body where it was going to be easily spotted—along the side of the road in a nice open valley. Then he’d made himself comfortable up here, waiting for the fuzz to show up and get to work. They’d be from Gaptown, but he knew there was a cooperative investigative unit that drew on some of the other surrounding jurisdiction.
He’d seen them find Lynn Vaughn’s I.D., so they knew who she was, but they didn’t know why she was here. And, of course, he’d worn rain gear that wouldn’t leave any fibers on the body. He’d also moved the woman from his property to this location, so they weren’t going to find any clues to his identity.
But he wanted them to understand that something serious was going on in their little town, with its speed traps and cops who were so quick to do their duty.
He would have liked to keep enjoying the show, but he had work to do. He took a last bite of the candy bar and crumpled the wrapper, but he wasn’t dumb enough to drop the trash where someone could find it and maybe get a line on his DNA. Instead he put the crumpled paper into his pocket and started down the other side of the hill to where he’d left his car. Things were moving faster now. He had to set up the funhouse again to get ready for the next victim.
“NOW WHAT?” MACK CLIPPED out as he continued down the blacktop.
“Keep going,” she directed, hardly able to speak around the tight feeling in her throat. Pictures were forming in her mind, but she thrust them away. She could be making them up. She hoped she was making them up.
He drove past a couple of farms and a country store.
“You know this area?”
“Of course. When I was in high school, my friends and I would come out here to drive around.”
They didn’t speak again until she saw a crossroads with a restaurant, bar and gas station.
“Turn left here.”
He slowed the car and made the turn. From the small commercial area, they drove into the mountains, where they passed widely spaced farms and houses. When they rounded a steep curve, they were stopped by a police car with flashing lights blocking the road.
A few cars were pulled up along the shoulder, and several spectators were standing along the blacktop, craning their necks toward the center of the activity, where two more patrol cars were pulled up, along with an ambulance.
Mack rolled down the window and pulled up beside a man in jeans and a plaid shirt who was standing on the shoulder and staring toward the cop cars. “What’s going on?”
“Guy found a woman’s body.”
Jamie had been hoping against hope not to hear that news. Now she dragged in a sharp breath as the words slammed into her.
“A local resident?” Mack asked.
“Don’t know. The cops have been asking if we know a Lynn Vaughn. That must be her name.”
Jamie felt a shiver go over her skin as her worst fears were confirmed. She’d been with Lynn Vaughn in her dream. She’d been afraid someone had killed the woman, and now she knew for certain it was true.
“You know her?” the guy asked, looking from Mack to Jamie and back again.
“No. We just happened down this road. I guess we’d better go back the other way,” Mack answered easily, giving nothing away before he rolled up the window, made a U-turn and got them out of the vicinity. He kept going toward the road where they’d exited the highway, then turned into the parking lot of the country store they’d passed earlier. After finding a parking space, he cut the engine and turned to Jamie.
His face looked grim. “I thought maybe the dream came from your imagination,” he said.
She lifted one shoulder. “Even after I gave you a name, and you confirmed that she was a real person?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe that’s what you wanted to think, but I knew something had happened.”
“You dreamed about a murder that turned out to be true….”
Somehow she managed to keep her voice even as she said, “I was hoping it didn’t end that way.”
His eyes boring into her, he said, “People don’t dream about a murder one night, then find out the next day that it really happened.”
Chapter Three
Jamie swallowed, wishing that Mack would stop using the word murder like a bludgeon.
“Tell me exactly what you dreamed.”
She’d deliberately been vague with the details of the nightmare when she’d told him about it. Now she knew she was going to have to be more specific.
“Jamie?”
She stared straight ahead, her hands folded one on top of the other in her lap. “In the dream, I wasn’t myself. I was that woman, Lynn Vaughn. She was in a…I guess you’d have to call it a funhouse.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Did you ever go to a haunted house on Halloween when you were a kid? Like maybe something set up by a local charity to raise money? They had a bunch of spooky stuff to give the kids a fright, but everybody knew it was all for fun.”
“Yeah.”
“It was like that, only it was serious.” She clenched her hands together as she remembered the experience and the place. “It was dark and enclosed. There was scary music. A musty smell. Hallways with things set up to startle you, like witches jumping out. But some of it was a lot worse. One place had a trapdoor where she tumbled through and ended up on a slide that took her to the basement. She landed hard on the cement floor and hurt her shoulder.”
Jamie winced, remembering the pain.
She hated dredging up more details, but Mack was staring at her with an expectant look on his face, so she gulped in a breath and let it out before she went on.
“The light was weird. Someone had worked hard to make the place into a creep show. In one section, there were horror movie posters. Dead-end hallways. Spatters on the floor that looked like blood.
“At first she was alone. But she kept hearing a man’s voice coming from hidden speakers. Then he was there. With her.”
Details came fast and furious now.
“He was wearing black clothes, a black cape, a hood, boots. His face was a mask with a skull. He was talking to her, telling her she was going to pay for what she’d done to him. But he was also telling her that if she could find her way out, he’d let her go. Then she came to a place where she could go right or left. She didn’t want to go on, but he forced her to choose.
“When she did, bright lights went off in her face so she could hardly see, and he came at her with a knife. I don’t think it would have mattered which way she went.”
Jamie rushed on, wanting to get the recitation over with.
“He slashed at her, and I felt her pain. Then everything went black. I was hoping she’d fainted, but I was afraid he’d killed her. I guess he did.”
She said the last part with a little hitch in her voice as she turned to Mack, seeing the set lines of his face.
When he spoke, it was like he hadn’t listened to anything she’d said. “Explain to me how you knew about what was happening to Lynn Vaughn.”
She sighed, deep and loud. “It’s what I said the first time. I dreamed about her.”
“That’s all? You didn’t talk to anyone about her? Get some information from someone?”
“It was a dream!” She heard her voice rise.
“Just a dream. Out of the blue?”
The question made her want to open the door, jump out of the car and run down the road to get away from her interrogator, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get very far. Mack would catch up with her and drag her back.
Instead, she raised her chin. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she said, “I used to have bad dreams when I lived in Gaptown. I’d have a nightmare and it would turn out to be true.”
Before he could demand an example, she went on quickly. “It started when I was nine. I dreamed that Peggy Wickers, a girl in my fourth-grade class, was in an automobile accident. I woke up crying, and my mother came in to calm me down. She was angry that I’d gotten her up in the middle of the night. She told me it was just a nightmare and to go back to sleep. I lay there the rest of the night, thinking about it. Then in the morning, Peggy didn’t come to school and the teacher told everyone about the accident.”
She stopped to catch her breath, then went on. “I’d have dreams like that off and on. Sometimes one every six months, sometimes it wouldn’t happen for a year. It was always something bad, and it always turned out to be true. It stopped when I moved to Baltimore, and I thought I was over it. Then last night, it happened again. I think it’s because it was happening here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
“It’s a pretty strange story.”