by Kay Hooper
Dani stared down at the file open before her, the words—describing a vital life cut short in Boston—blurring. Her chest ached, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was breathing.
Softly, Marc added, “You wanted to find out. But when you did, when that connection opened the door, threw it wide, it scared the hell out of you. So much so you wanted to run the first time. But even then you were courageous enough to try again, I know that now. I was…awed…by the experience, and I asked you to do it again. So you did.
“I didn’t know what I was asking, what it was costing you in sheer energy. And you never said a word. Until that last night, when the dream you took me into was one of your visions.”
Dani looked up finally, staring across the table at him. “I saw your face when we woke up. I saw the horror.”
He shook his head, never breaking eye contact. “The horror was for the dream—not for you. Nobody wants to see their mother die of a terrible disease, and that’s what you showed me.”
“It’s always someone’s doom, what I see. Don’t you get that?”
“I get it. So what? You’re supposed to be to blame for that? Dani, I never blamed you for showing me something that was going to happen, even if it was terrible.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I know. But you will. When you’re brave enough to try again.”
She drew a breath. “I am not taking you into that dream. Not that one. You’re already in it, part of the vision. God knows what would happen if—if—”
“Let’s find out.”
Dani rose to her feet so abruptly that her chair nearly tipped over behind her. “No. We won’t. Not tonight. Not ever.”
In her panicked rush to get out of the room, she nearly ran over her sister in the doorway.
“Whew.” Paris came in and sat down at the conference table. “Been waiting awhile for that cork to blow. Thank you.”
Marc sighed. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It is. Trust me. Dani needed to let go of some stuff, and she’s been so busy giving me my space so I can deal with stuff of my own that I haven’t been able to help her. I think maybe you just did.”
“Really? Because it looked to me like she was still suppressing and avoiding like crazy.”
“I saw her face. She’s in the ladies’ room having a good cry.”
Marc leaned back abruptly in his chair. “Well, that makes me feel like shit. I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“You didn’t hurt her, you just shook her up. Which she needed.”
“How the hell do you know that? The clairvoyance?”
“That, and”—Paris made a vague gesture with the fingers of one hand—“the twin thing. Don’t worry, she’s fine. She was standing paralyzed at a crossroads, and you gave her a shove.”
“I don’t think I care much for the metaphor.”
Paris smiled. “That’s okay. I’ve got a million of ’em. Can you pass me that file, please?”
Hollis waited until she was back in her motel room that evening to report in—and there was a lot to report, even if much of it was unhelpful at best and speculation at worst.
Par for the course when it came to the SCU, Hollis thought.
“If Dani has established a connection,” she said to her boss, using the cell’s speaker capability to talk to Bishop while she dug through her suitcase to find something to wear for pizza and brainstorming at Paris’s house, “it could help us—or be dangerous as hell for her. Or both.”
“It could be worse if he’s the one who established the connection between them.”
“No kidding. Any way for us to determine that? I mean, before it blows up in our faces?”
“We’re in unknown territory here, Hollis.”
“Are we ever in anything else?” She sighed. “Just tell me. What can I try?”
“If Dani’s willing, you can try a dream walk. Between you, you and Paris might be able to sense another connection.”
“What if we wind up in her vision dream?”
“Be very careful.”
Hollis sighed again. “Anybody ever tell you that you can be frustrating as hell, boss? Never mind—rhetorical question.”
“We need to know if Dani does have a psychic connection with the killer, Hollis.”
“Yes, of course we do. And it would be nice to know who my blond ghost was. It was so late by the time Jordan and I got back to the station that I didn’t have a chance to talk about that with the others. Though Jordan checked, and there’ve been no more missing women reported. So there’s not much to talk about.”
“She said to look for her in the water?”
“Yeah. Her. Referring to somebody else, or at least that’s how it sounded. But she came out of the pool. Which has a clogged drain, I’m sorry to say.”
“I doubt that was literal, Hollis. That the remains of whoever she meant will be found in the pool.”
“Well, Jordan was spooked enough that I’ll bet he’s there at dawn with the pool people—and the forensics unit. So we’ll know soon enough what’s in that drain.”
“Considering what was at the crime scene, I’d expect more of the same.”
“Yeah. Dammit.” Hollis brooded, then said, “All these obvious changes in his M.O. Either he’s getting sloppy or…or what?”
“Or something’s happened, either to him or in his life. It could be the move from Boston. It could be something else. But whatever it is, it’s having a profound effect on him and could influence both who he kills and how he kills from this point on.”
“Hmm. What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
Bishop didn’t bother to deny it. “Nothing that could help you in the investigation.”
“Uh-huh. You do realize that secrecy of yours is going to come back and bite you on the ass one of these days?”
“Maybe. But not today.”
Hollis was tempted to say that today was almost over and what about tomorrow, but she didn’t push it—even while she was wryly amused by her own trust in him.
She didn’t trust easily these days.
“You’ll have the new profile ASAP,” Bishop was saying. “In the meantime, be careful. You might not fit the victim profile so far, but neither does Dani, and he’s made it clear he wants her. Everything we think we know about him could be changing—or be just plain wrong.”
“Gotcha.” It was, Hollis decided as she ended the call and closed her phone, not the most reassuring of reminders.
Especially given Dani’s vision dream.
13
DANI DIDN’T REALLY want to sleep that night, mostly because she didn’t want to dream. The brainstorming session with Hollis and Paris had produced nothing useful, as far as they could tell, and the knowledge that Bishop was completely rewriting his profile of the killer had done nothing to help.
The opposite, in fact.
Maybe that was why both Paris and Hollis suggested that she bring them into her dreams.
“Have you ever taken two people in at once?” Hollis asked curiously.
Dani shook her head. “I’m not sure I can even do that.”
Hollis sipped her wine and then lifted the glass in a little salute. “Well, I’m game if you decide to try. If you happen to pull us into the vision dream, we can at least try to remember all the details we can, maybe some you’ve missed.”
“And if it’s just an ordinary, everyday dream?”
Paris said with a grin, “Then we get to be voyeurs.”
“Dammit, Paris!”
Hollis said, “Let me guess. Marc?”
Dani cleared her throat. “Paris thinks she’s being funny. It was just one time; I don’t even know why I dreamed about him that night, because I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Paris said, “that it might be my doing? That you dreamed about Marc that night, I mean.”
“What? How could it be?”
“Something Maggie suggested I try, not l
ong after we first signed on with Haven.” Paris held up a hand before Dani could find the words she was obviously seeking. “Don’t blame her. The suggestion was that I think of something or someone you had a strong connection to and hold that in my mind as I went to sleep on a night when we had planned to dream-walk. So I did.”
“Marc?”
“Well, you were so determined not to talk about him that I knew you still had feelings for him. So I thought about him.” She smiled slightly. “Didn’t quite expect to find myself in such a passionate dream, but—”
“Jesus, Paris.” Dani felt her face get hot and silently thanked the universe that she had been able to bring that dream to an end rather quickly. Or, at least, shove Paris out of it. And why had she been dreaming erotic dreams about Marc, anyway? She’d gotten him out of her system by then.
She had.
Hollis said, “Let’s not think about Marc tonight, okay? It’s not that I’d deprive you, Dani, it’s just—”
Dani held up a hand. “No explanations necessary, really. Look, guys, I don’t even know if I can take both of you in.”
“Give it a try,” Hollis suggested. She drained her wineglass and added, “One of Bishop’s many theories is that when you have enough psychics in the same small area, especially if they’re all focused on the same case, their energies sort of…overlap. All kinds of weird things can happen, but what usually does, in our experience, is that abilities begin to shift, to change. So, even if you aren’t successful in taking us into your dreams, the effort itself might help us or might help your abilities to evolve.”
Serious now, Paris said, “Help us how?”
“Well, we’re all involved in this investigation. Trying to figure out who our killer is, where he is. The subconscious is damn powerful, especially a psychic’s subconscious, and when it’s set free of the arbitrary restraints and limitations we put on our minds and abilities while we’re awake…anything can happen.”
Limits. What are mine? Dani wondered. It was a question she hadn’t really considered, even when asked to do so.
Paris said, “When you say anything, I have to wonder if it’s always a good thing.”
Hollis shook her head without hesitation. “No, there’s a risk. There’s always a risk when we use our abilities. And dreams are a kind of no-man’s land, especially for psychics. Energies can interact in ways we can’t predict.”
Dani sighed. “Tell me again how that could ever be viewed as a good thing?”
“You know how,” Hollis replied promptly. “Whether we like it or not, our abilities evolve. As we use them, as we try to use them, as we test our limits. Now, personally, I don’t like walking in cemeteries. Anymore. But I do it now and then, because I don’t want there to be a place where I’m afraid to use my abilities.”
“I dream whether I want to or not,” Dani said.
“But you choose whether to take others into your dreams. I’m betting you haven’t done it very many times in your entire life. True?”
“True enough.”
“And most of those when we were kids,” Paris offered.
With a shrug, Hollis said, “If you don’t use a muscle, it atrophies. Not something you want to happen to a muscle that could save your life one day. Your decision, of course, but it’s all about control for most of us.”
“I don’t know,” Dani said finally. “I’ll think about it.”
She hadn’t wanted to admit that the very idea of bringing anyone else into a vision dream—especially this one—scared her in a way she couldn’t really explain.
Still, as she tossed and turned that night, she was very aware of the sheriff’s department cruiser that had escorted them home and would remain parked outside, with Marc’s deputies keeping watch over her despite her protests. That reminder of potential danger was added incentive to test her limits.
Plus, Dani admitted to herself that Hollis’s challenge had made her uneasy, and not just because she didn’t want to lose an ability she hardly understood. There was also that creepy voice in her mind and the very important question of who—or what—it belonged to.
Maybe Paris and Hollis could help her figure that out somewhere in the depths of her own sleeping mind.
And what if dream-walking somehow helped them to identify or even find this killer and avert the fiery ending of Dani’s nightmare vision? Wasn’t that worth taking a chance?
Would she ever be able to forgive herself if she didn’t take the chance and what she had seen came true?
No.
And they were both psychics, both unlikely to be harmed by her energies. Right?
Right.
Dani stopped tossing and turning, forcing herself to relax. She closed her eyes and began going through the relaxation and meditation techniques she had been taught, all the while holding in her mind the questions of who and where the killer was.
Ready or not, guys, here we go.
Okay, this is new.” Dani found herself standing at the intersection of two seemingly endless corridors. Each corridor was hospital-like in its gleaming cleanliness, and each was lined with closed doors.
“Hey,” Paris said, beside her on the right, “I thought you always started someplace familiar, to ground the dream. This doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever been.”
“Me either,” Hollis said from Dani’s left side.
“I do always start somewhere familiar,” Dani said, a faint uneasiness stirring inside her. “But I’ve never been here before.”
“Well, your subconscious brought us here for a reason,” Hollis said with a shrug. “There are four corridors and three of us, so I say we split up.”
“No,” Dani said. “We stay together, always in sight of each other.”
“It’s one of her rules,” Paris said to Hollis. “She’s afraid somebody could get lost in her dreams.”
“Well, do you know it couldn’t happen?” Dani demanded of her twin.
“All I said was that the sense of self-preservation would probably pull the visitor out even if you weren’t near to give them a shove,” Paris said.
“Yeah, but you don’t know that for sure. And I’d really rather not have somebody else’s consciousness taking up residence in my dreams, thank you very much.”
“Okay, okay.”
Hollis said, “I’m sort of glad I don’t have siblings. Look, if we’re not going to split up, then somebody flip a coin or something. I know dream time is different from real time, but my dreams usually end right at the good parts, so let’s not waste time arguing when we could be looking for some sign of this creep—and any connection to Dani.”
“I knew you had at least one more motive for trying this,” Dani said.
“Bishop’s suggestion. But he’s right; we might be able to find the connection, assuming one exists.”
Dani shrugged, aware that, as was often the case in her dreams, she was calm, that initial uneasiness fading. She chose the corridor she had been facing. “This way, then. Not that I have any idea what we’re looking for. I doubt it’ll be him.”
“Some representation of him, maybe.” Hollis tested the first door on the left. “Locked. Damn.”
“This one too,” Paris reported from the right side.
Dani hesitated but then kept walking. “Maybe they’re all locked. Maybe my subconscious doesn’t have a clue.”
“Dani, maybe we should stop and think about this.” Paris reached out to touch her sister’s arm, and they both jumped.
“Ow! Paris—”
“What just happened?” Hollis wanted to know.
“Sorry, I forgot,” Paris said to her sister, then looked at Hollis. “Secondary ability. I channel energy. When I’m awake, it’s barely enough to cause static on radios if I hold one in both hands, but when I’m asleep it’s a little stronger.”
“And when she’s asleep and with me,” Dani said, “it’s a lot stronger. We have no idea why.”
Hollis looked interested, but before she could say whatever
was on her mind, they were all startled by a scream.
A woman’s scream of agony, breaking off with chilling suddenness.
It echoed up and down the corridors, bouncing off the hard surfaces until it seemed there were dozens of screams, hundreds of them, endless screams pounding against them.
“Where…?”
“I can’t tell—”
Dani…
“Dani, your nose—”
Dani woke this time curled up on her side, her head throbbing in a way it never had before. She tried to push herself up on one elbow, vaguely surprised at how stiff and sore she felt.
Then she felt something else and reached up to find a thick wetness around her nose and mouth.
Her hand came away red with blood. She reached to the nightstand for a tissue and held it to her nose, then looked toward the doorway of the bedroom just as Paris reached it.
Paris didn’t look so hot; though there was no nosebleed, she was pale and her eyes had a curiously bruised look to them.
“Marc just called,” she said. “We have another missing woman.”
Friday, October 10
It isn’t Marie Goode?” Dani asked as soon as Marc came into the conference room.
“No, she’s present and accounted for. Still under guard, and considering a trip to Florida to visit her folks, but fine.”
“Who’s the missing woman?” Hollis asked.
“Her name,” Marc said, “is Shirley Arledge. Twenty-four, five-two, a hundred and ten pounds, delicate build. Another blue-eyed blonde. Her husband just got back from a business trip into Atlanta and found her gone. No note, no missing luggage or clothes, her car’s still in the driveway, and—most important according to him—her cat’s in the house, and she’d never leave without him.”
“Do we know how long she’s been missing?” Hollis asked. Like Paris, she, too, was visibly tired and had seemed just a bit withdrawn since arriving a few minutes before.
Dani felt guilty as hell.
“Hard to say. Husband left Tuesday, and he said they hadn’t scheduled any check-in calls for such a brief trip, that her plans for the week had been working in her garden, getting it ready for winter. She was nesting, he said. They’d been trying to get pregnant.”