She collapsed.
Keith screamed her name.
Shit!
“Get in there now!” Richard ordered through his com link.
Not waiting to see how quickly his team administered the adrenaline cocktail that would either save Madeline Temple’s life or finish ending it, he sprinted for the door. Keith’s cry of denial haunted him as Richard left his calm, clinical laboratory behind.
Calm and clinical was his job. A Watcher was trained to be detached and remote.
But the center was closing in on Sarah and Madeline, using their mother as bait. The twins were taking lethal potshots at each other’s minds. And the only chance Richard had to save the twins’ legacy—and the life of the woman he’d fallen for the first time their minds had touched—was to push them all toward a confrontation with evil. A showdown the Brotherhood wouldn’t let happen if he couldn’t keep Madeline alive long enough to win her trust.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Maddie closed her eyes and leaned her head against Jarred’s shoulder. He was sitting behind her on the exam table, still holding her close. His barely controlled anger was spiking her migraine higher. But his soothing touch was there, too. After everything, he’d still come looking for her, begging her to come back.
“I can’t remember any more,” she said to Sarah’s Raven—Dr. Metting. Her throbbing head was the only reason she didn’t scream the words.
The man’s drugs had saved her life after she’d woken mindless, seizing, bleeding, and struggling to reconnect with Sarah and grieving when there was nothing left of her twin in her mind. But Maddie nearly dying clearly didn’t rate the man’s sympathy or a reprieve from his endless questions.
“You saw the playhouse,” Metting pressed. “An abandoned storefront and a clearing in the woods where a lot of people surrounded Sarah. Tell me what other images she showed you.”
They’d been through this two—three times. The man’s experience managing the side effects of recovering from a dream link was remarkable. She felt more focused, more in control, than she had in months. Which might have earned him her respect. Except Maddie knew exactly how he’d gotten so good at what he was doing. She could imaging Metting driving her sister past her limits the same way.
“I saw Sarah suffering because she trusted you. Because you turned her mind into whatever she’s become. And then you turned this Wolf character loose on her. Explain to me again why I would tell you anything, you sadistic bastard!”
Jarred hugged her body closer. His mind brushed hers in concern. So far he hadn’t interfered with her and Metting. He’d explained about the dreams, about the research center and what this Dream Weaver program was supposed to be about. About Metting and some other secret scientist—Sarah’s Wolf—and the damage the men had done to both Maddie’s and Sarah’s minds. Jarred was livid. Furious. Ready to beat Metting to a pulp if that’s what Maddie wanted. But he was waiting. For her. With her.
We’re going to get through this together, his thoughts promised. We’ll figure this out, and we’ll fix it. You’re not alone.
Metting was studying the two of them. Almost smiling. As if he could hear everything going on in her head, which evidently he had the ability to do.
“You make me sick.” Maddie remembered digging her nails into the man’s skin, making the red slashes that streaked down his neck. She suddenly regretted resisting Sarah’s instincts to get rid of the Raven that had betrayed them both.
“Obviously.” Metting didn’t so much as blink. “Think. Which of the things you saw in the last dream felt real to you, and which were mere projections of Sarah’s dementia?”
“Felt real?”
“Use your intuition, Dr. Temple.” Metting’s tone was patient. Almost hypnotic. “Which parts of what you saw are about your twin’s surroundings at this moment in time? Which were symbolic of other states of consciousness that she was remembering, or anticipation of what she’d see in the future? You’ll know the difference by the strength of how what you shared made you feel. What actually took place is of less importance.”
Maddie clenched her fingers into fists. Metting caught the hostile impulse to strangle him until he shut up, and he smiled in…approval?
“Your abilities are developing rapidly.” He typed into his laptop. “No doubt because your psychic barriers have been breached so often by your sister’s dream work. But the depth of the knowledge you’ve absorbed about projecting into others’ minds won’t surprise me again. I assure you, my defenses are formidable.”
“Because you’re…” She felt Jarred’s arm snake around her. To protect her, or to keep her from launching herself at Metting?
“Psychic? Yes.” Metting nodded. “Otherwise, I’d never have been able to reach Sarah’s mind. She trusted me to—”
“To protect her?”
His eyes chilled to the demon black of Sarah’s dreams. The rest of his expression stayed locked into the forced calm of damage control.
“Yes,” he admitted, “the same as you’re trusting Dr. Keith. And like him, I’m doing everything I can to salvage this—”
“Disaster?”
“Unexpected outcome. My mission was to keep Sarah’s dreams from becoming—”
“Dreams you had no business picking apart, then manipulating!”
“Either I picked them apart, or the Watchers would have had no choice but to—”
“Kill my sister, even though she was no threat to anyone while she was lying in the coma you dragged her out of? If you think we’re not going to have this conversation, Doctor, you’re very much underestimating me.”
Sarah couldn’t remember which of the details about Metting she knew because Jarred had discussed them with her. And which she had absorbed—was still absorbing—from Jarred’s mind, while he held and supported her and gave her the confidence to face the architect of her sister’s nightmares.
I’m here, Jarred assured her.
“I’m not opposed to the conversation.” Metting sure as hell sounded opposed. “We can talk all night long about how this is my fault, and how the Brotherhood is to blame for everything they’ve tried to stop the government and Trinity Center from doing. But the more time that passes after emerging from your sister’s link, the harder it will become for you to connect with her emotions. And those feelings are the truth about everything you just experienced. I assure you, isolating each of them is the only way for you to save Sarah.”
Maddie looked back to find Jarred’s expression clouded with concern. He nodded reluctantly. As much as he clearly hated it, he believed Metting.
“You seemed…” Jarred said. “Sarah seemed the most upset when you two were watching your mother in the clearing, surrounded by men with guns. Is that where she is now?”
“You saw that?” Maddie turned back to Metting. “He…How is that even possible?”
“He surrendered his consciousness to yours. His reality, his body image, became subjugated, so he could be absorbed into your dreams.” The Raven’s raised eyebrow said he was impressed. “And he managed it instinctively, with no coaching or any real understanding of what he was doing. His trust in you allowed him to see and feel and travel with you, wherever Sarah took your mind.”
His trust in you…The same trust that had almost gotten Jarred killed.
“The Wolf that Sarah keeps revealing,” Metting insisted. “Was he there, with your sister and your mother?”
Maddie pressed fingers to the side of her head, feeling more scattered with each new question. She’d never trust Metting. But if he was the only thing standing between the darkness and Sarah and Maddie and Jarred, did she have any choice but to give him the answers he wanted?
“Sarah’s emotions were…” Maddie searched for the words. Deeper inside, where a glimmer of her twin began to sputter. “…murderous at the clearing. I don’t know if the Wolf was there, but I could feel her hate for him. I could hear his voice, and she wanted to rip his throat out. But…he had too much contro
l for her to break free. And she’ll be outnumbered…It…That was the future, I think.” Maddie sifted through more of what she remembered. “She’s not wherever that place is. It hasn’t happened yet. But she knows it will, and she knows she’ll die without me there, and she’s determined not to let me come. She’ll get our mom out without me. It…It feels like a trap, and she knows it is, but she’ll go anyway, to—”
“Of course it’s a trap.” The übercontrolled Metting slammed a fist to the counter beside his laptop, then raked fingers through his black hair. “This whole thing’s been a trap from the goddamned start!”
“You’re…” Maddie didn’t want to believe it. But it was right there, in the emotions rolling off Metting, and in her twin’s feelings in their dream. With nauseating certainty, Maddie accepted the truth. “He’s…”
She stole another glance at Jarred. He kissed the tip of her nose and nodded.
“Yeah. He’s in love with Sarah.”
“How could you be in love with her”—Maddie surged to the edge of the exam table, outrage overriding her exhaustion—“and make her do all those horrible things? Leave her to the whim of those horrible people, until she was so terrified she ran from you. You bastard…How could you!”
The light in Metting’s eyes could have been madness. Or regret. A dying flicker of hope? “I did it to protect your sister and ultimately the gifts you were both born with.”
“Our legacy. This family curse you’re not going to talk with me about, because there’s no time. Because there’s no real point, is there? Not if my family and whatever we are has to end soon, because either you and your secret society or the government is going to destroy us because you can’t control us!”
Metting was staring at his computer again, ignoring her outburst, his emotions shuttered away.
“I don’t want to control you and Sarah,” he finally said. “I need you two to learn how to control yourselves. I need you to work with your sister, so you can help me stop this situation before it’s too late.”
“And how, exactly, are the twins supposed to do that?” Jarred interrupted for the first time since Metting’s interrogation had begun. “I almost didn’t get Maddie back this time. You warned me that if I didn’t, her mind would be lost forever. She’s not going to work with Sarah anymore. She’s not going back to the godforsaken place I found her. Not when you can’t guarantee another dream won’t finish shredding what’s left of her sanity!”
Jarred had stayed out of it. He’d brought Maddie back and watched in horror as Metting and his assistants fought to get her heart started again. Then he’d held her as she came around, answering her questions and helping her piece together the last eight hours. Metting’s drugs had calmed her mind and the worst of the dream’s side effects. Then the bastard had insisted on this maddening debriefing of Maddie and Sarah’s dreams. And Jarred had done his best to stay calm and supportive through all of it.
Enough was enough.
“You’re not seriously expecting Maddie to search out her sister’s mind again,” he demanded.
Maddie shivered in his arms.
“We have to recover Sarah,” Metting insisted, “before this meeting in the woods takes place.”
“Bringing Sarah in is your problem. Maddie’s already here, and—”
“And her mother is being held by the man her twin is planning to meet, so Sarah can kill him. I can persuade the Brotherhood to protect both Phyllis and Sarah, but only if I have the information we’ll need to eliminate the Wolf and his men at the same time.”
“Persuade?” Maddie was shivering from head to toe. Jarred could feel her fear and how hard she was trying to hide it while she gave Metting shit.
“If the center gains control of Sarah’s mind, it won’t matter that I erased the records of my Dream Weaver work from their systems. This Wolf has already used my techniques with some degree of success. He’ll extrapolate the rest from Sarah, and the project will continue into full weapons testing. We can’t allow that to happen, no matter the cost.”
“We?” Maddie sputtered. “I don’t work for you, Dr. Metting. And I refuse to work with this brotherhood of yours that doesn’t care about me or my family, except for how it can use us to get what it wants.”
“So you’re amenable to Sarah trying to free your mother on her own and getting herself killed or recaptured in the process? You really hate her that much?”
Maddie didn’t answer. Jarred could feel the tears of frustration she refused to let Metting see.
“She’s communicating with you about her plans,” Metting continued, “no matter how volatile your relationship with her has become. On an unconscious level, Sarah still trusts you. She knows she needs your help.”
“And she hates you.” Maddie stopped rubbing the side of her head. Her hand slapped the exam table. “Why would I deliver Sarah to you people, after everything you’ve already put her through?”
“Because if you don’t, you’re signing her death warrant.”
“And you don’t care what this will do to Maddie?” Jarred held on tighter to the woman who’d claimed his soul. She’d almost died saving him from Sarah. Her heart had stopped, after she tracked her twin and almost failed to disengage from their link. How much more could her mind and body take?
“I care as deeply as you do, Dr. Keith.” Metting sighed, and then Jarred could feel everything the man had been holding back. Guilt, shock, anger, grief, and…love for Sarah. The same way Jarred would love Maddie without end, no matter how impossibly they were separated. Then just as quickly, the door to Metting’s mind slammed shut. “But my feelings are irrelevant unless we can save these women from being absorbed into an evil that can’t be allowed to win.”
“What exactly do you want?” Maddie demanded.
“I have to know everything you haven’t told me about your dream,” Metting said. “The information Sarah’s not even aware that she sent you. Without that, your sister and my men won’t have a chance to defeat this Wolf or the government’s plans for Dream Weaver.”
“Or to save my mother?” Maddie insisted. “You save my mother, or I don’t tell you another damn thing. If Phyllis dies, there will be no hope for Sarah. She already blames herself for my father’s death. She thinks I blame her. She’s obsessed with trying to make what happened that night right. If this Wolf kills my mother because of Sarah, her mind will finish disintegrating.”
“We’ll do everything within our power to protect your family, Ms. Temple. That’s the only promise I can give you. You’re going to have to—”
“Trust you?” Jarred felt Maddie recoil at the words. “How can you expect her to trust you and an organization you’ve barely told us anything about?”
“I expect her to keep fighting for her and Sarah’s lives, the way she has since she barged into Trinity Center. If Maddie stops fighting now, her sister and her mother die.”
“What else do you need to know?” Maddie leaned deeper into Jarred’s embrace, needing his presence to balance her hopeless fear for her family.
“You initiated the dream connection on your own this time,” Metting said. “For the first time, you were in control of your and Sarah’s dreams. You were seeing things Sarah never wanted you to see. Things she’d never have shown you on her own. What did you discover?”
Maddie hesitated. Sarah would see this as a betrayal, telling her Raven the secrets of their minds.
“His methods are twisted,” Jarred reasoned with begrudging acceptance. “But I believe Metting’s been fighting for Sarah all this time. And I believe he cares about her. I have some experience with what that can be like…” Jarred kissed the tip of Maddie’s nose. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to put myself between you and whatever’s trying to hurt you. If that’s what he’s been doing, then—”
“But he’s the Raven!” Maddie confronted Metting. “Sarah wants to kill you.”
“Does she?” His gaze pierced Maddie’s certainty. “I’ve centered her mind,
from the coma to waking to her very first dream projection and beyond. The Wolf would have encouraged Sarah to build on that connection, rather than trying to start over again with his own presence. He wouldn’t have had time in the three months you say she’s been involved in your dreams, to anchor Sarah with his own identity. Not and keep me in the dark about the dream projections he was doing while Sarah and I continued to work together.”
“What are you saying?”
“The Wolf implanted a symbol of me into the dreams he had Sarah send you, as well as the ones he implanted into Kayla Lawrence. But Sarah took her connection to me further than he would have wanted.”
“Sarah wanted you in the Wolf’s homicidal dreams?”
“I think she wanted me to see what was happening.”
“So you’d be proud of the little freak you’d made?”
“So the raven image would stop the projections somehow. Except I didn’t. Now she’s trying to get you to see. To stop her. There are messages in her simulations. In the recurring links you’ve shared with her. My dream image would have been close to whatever Sarah wanted most for us to know.”
“You…” The Raven’s cries. His wings rustling as he flew overhead. Watching. Waiting. Maddie could hear them all over again. “You were there…”
“Where, Madeline?” he said in a hypnotically soft voice. Had he said it out loud? In her mind? She wanted to look back to Jarred to be sure, but she couldn’t turn away from Metting’s dark gaze. “Who did Sarah want to kill in your dreams? She’s trying to tell us what the Wolf wants, so we can stop him before it’s too late. Help me save your twin and your mother…”
Maddie felt the intensity of Metting’s mind touch hers fully for the first time. His was a brutally honest consciousness. But there was a layer of concern. As if he knew how fragile her hold was on reality. He was being excruciatingly careful. Urgent, but careful. And honest. And he was doing nothing now to shield his own emotions—his commitment to protecting Maddie from as much of her memories of Sarah’s nightmare as he could. And at all costs, to protect Sarah from the miscalculations he’d made.
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