Life is But a Dream: A Marlow and Sage Mystery (A Nursery Rhyme Suspense Book 2)

by Lee Strauss

  Sage checks her phone and frowns.

  “Is something wrong?” Eliza asks.

  “It’s Tristan. He wants to show me something he’s been working on at the old boat shed. He says it’s a surprise.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  Sage shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m curious, but I don’t want him to think everything can be fixed between us with one gimmick.”

  “Would you like me to go with you?” Eliza asks. “I could be your buffer.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Sage pushes away from the table. “You don’t mind?”

  Eliza smiles brightly. “Not at all.”

  50

  

  Sage

  I picked frantically at the knots at my wrists. I was almost there, but had run out of time. Lizzy stepped purposefully toward me with hard determination in her eyes. If she had her way, I’d show up face down in the canal tomorrow morning.

  I rocked the boat from side to side in one last ditch effort to thwart her plans. I managed to flip the boat over, my body thudding to the hard ground. Lizzy swore, and I heard her step back, presumably to lay down her weapon in a safe place. The boat concealed me, but wouldn’t protect me forever. I picked at the last knot and felt the ropes loosen. I flicked my hands free. I readied myself for Lizzy to flip the boat off of me. My feet were still bound, but she wouldn’t expect my hands to be free.

  I waited.

  The edge of the boat lifted. Lizzy straightened her legs to heave it off me. I grabbed at her ankles and pulled. She fell flat on her back, gasping as the wind was knocked out of her.

  I undid the final knot, grabbed an oar and raised it over Lizzy, ready to strike.

  She whimpered and looked at me with bewilderment in her eyes. “Sage?” She blinked frantically, taking in our surroundings. Her eyes were filled with fear.

  I lowered the oar. “Eliza?”

  “What’s going on? What happened to me?”

  I couldn’t tell for sure if it was really Eliza or if it was Lizzy trying to fool me, but I didn’t have to make that call. Suddenly Marlow burst through the door along with Zed and the police.

  51

  

  Marlow

  Stocking shelves at Smart Mart in suburban Detroit gave me a lot of time to think. My hands opened boxes, placed tin cans and cardboard packages on metal shelves, and lined the food products in neat rows along the front edge, all while my mind replayed the events of the last month.

  Eliza Gellar’s arrest was big campus news. Were the suicides really murders after all? How could a girl like that commit such intricate and heinous acts? They didn’t know the half of it. Eliza as Lizzy had a telepathic ability and with her own secret chemical concoction, she was able to lure her victims to step into the canal to their deaths. It was when she was in this other plane that her eyes would turn yellow, but as of yet, I was the only person able to see them as such.

  The police had instructed Sage, Zed and me to keep quiet until the investigation was complete. Poor Zed hadn’t recovered. He’d fallen hard for a girl who was a fractured part of her whole. He’d recover over time like most heartbroken people do, and I was there for him whenever he needed me.

  Final exams kept us busy during the last week and before we knew it, our freshman year was over. I, for one, needed the break. A slow relaxing uneventful summer was what the doctor ordered. I tidied up the cereal aisle.

  “Hey, handsome.”

  I turned to the voice and smiled. “Hey, Dakota.”

  She poked me playfully in the ribs. “When’s your shift over?”

  “Two hours.”

  A happy coincidence: Dakota lived only twenty minutes from my house in Detroit.

  “Did you drop by just to ask me that, or are you actually shopping?” I asked.

  “Oh.” She grabbed a box of cereal off the shelf. “I’m shopping.” She drew pink hair behind her ear. “Do you want to come over later?”

  Dakota and I had kept in touch since leaving DU and had entered a pleasant slow-building relationship. She was cute and smart and I liked her.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Great. I’ll pick up a couple frozen pizzas.” She put the cereal back on the shelf, taking a moment to ensure it was lined up neatly. “We can watch a movie if you want.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She walked backward and saluted. “See you then.”

  Dakota disappeared around the end of the aisle and I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. It was actually possible I could have a bona fide girlfriend soon.

  I finished my shift and rode my bike home so I could shower before heading to Dakota’s. My phone buzzed just as I reached the door. Sage’s name lit up, and my heart rate spiked. This was how I responded to a girl who wanted nothing more than friendship. Why didn’t my heart do somersaults when I thought about Dakota?

  Didn’t matter. Dakota was a nice girl and she liked me. I let Sage’s call go to voicemail.

  I barely made it to my bedroom before my curiosity got the best of me. I had to know why Sage had called. I pressed play.

  “Marlow,” Sage’s voice began excitedly. “I have something fantastic to show you. A math problem I’ve been working on for a long time. I can see the future, Mars! You won’t believe it!”

  I hope you enjoyed reading LIFE IS BUT A DREAM. Please consider leaving a review as they are very helpful to indie authors and also help readers find the books they love.

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  Read on for Chapter One of Hickory Dickory Dock!

  After a tumultuous freshman year at Detroit University, Marlow Henry and Sage Farrell look forward to a calm, uneventful summer break.

  Not gonna happen.

  Before Marlow can even make his blossoming relationship with Dakota official, Sage pulls him into her new discovery – a math equation that opens a window in time and space. Then they witness a murder.

  Fate pulls them into a war-torn and deserted version of Marlow’s neighbourhood where they are forced to help a rebel group counterattack. The group’s ethics are questionable and Marlow has a personal reason to distrust the leader. Plus, members of their small community keep dying.

  The situation is more dire and twisted than Marlow and Sage can imagine. No one is safe. No one can be trusted. They don’t even trust each other. How can they save the world, if they can’t save themselves?

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Chapter 1

  Marlow

  The air smelled like an odd mix of road salt and dead worms. It had rained at some point between my stocking the jars of dill pickles at Smart Mart and punching out at the end of my shift. Puddle water spat on my legs as I pedaled through the remnant drizzle, the dampness spreading, cool along my ankles.

  I hurried home through suburban Detroit, past aging single-level or two-story wood-and-red-brick homes, which were in need of paint and a lawn mower, and, in more than a few cases, occupants. I wanted to shower and unwind a little before heading to Dakota’s for pizza and a movie. I grinned crookedly into the wind, thinking about our flirtatious interlude in the cereal aisle. The way she’d played with her pink hair and widened her eyes when she suggested we get together tonight—I mean, she was obviously into me! A phenomenon that I still found difficult to wrap my nerdy brain around.

  I muttered to myself, “Don’t jinx it, Henry.”

  My tires crunched over gritty asphalt, its sand residue left over from winter and a lack of city funds to properly clean the streets. My thoughts lingered on Dakota. We hadn’t officially become a couple, but that hadn’t stopped us from engaging in more than a few hot summer kissing sessions. My neck heated up in anticipation. I sped up until my bike felt like it was
skimming across the surface of the road.

  I locked my bike out of sight around the back of the house. We lived in one of those two-story homes in need of paint and a lawn mower. A large rectangular patch of grass on our lawn was prominently greener than the rest—our house, as were most houses in the neighborhood, was still on septic. There’d been promises by past governing officials to lay pipe for a sewer, but never the money to follow through.

  I’d been so busy with my summer job at the store and hanging out with Dakota that I hadn’t had time to play Mr. Fixit. And there were plenty of things inside the house that could also use a little love.

  I had taken the time, though, to duct-tape the holes in all the window screens in an effort to combat the endless fight against mosquitoes and other swarming insects. The screen door slammed behind me as I entered through the back.

  I bellowed my usual greeting. “Hey, Mom. I’m home!”

  Our house smelled of sausage and cigarette smoke—not exactly pleasant or, for that matter, a place a guy would bring a girl he was hoping to impress (read: seduce). I was glad I was going to Dakota’s place, but it did make the seduction fantasy less likely. I’d met her father. He outweighed me by a hundred pounds.

  TV chatter trickled from the living room.

  “Mom?”

  “In here,” she answered with a weariness that made me feel tired. Mom sat in an old, faded and worn armchair. Her salt-and-pepper hair was slightly greasy and unkempt, and she still wore her stained sausage factory uniform which hung loosely over her thin shoulders. A large ashtray, the kind like a platter on a brass stand, sat to her right. Smoke from a half-expired butt resting in one of the grooves swirled upward in ethereal white tendrils toward a yellowing, nicotine-coated ceiling.

  “How was work?” Mom asked. War images flashed across our ancient TV screen. It was so old it was square. Another terrorist attack in the Middle East. Or was it Asia?

  I headed toward the kitchen and answered Mom's question over my shoulder. “Good.” I reached into the fridge for a cold pop and guzzled it back as I headed up the stairs to my room.

  I stripped off my shirt and removed my phone from my back pocket. Sage Farrell’s name and her excited text stared up at me. It was a repeat of the voice mail she’d left earlier.

  Sage: I have something fantastic to show you. A math problem I’ve been working on for a long time. I can see the future, Mars! You won’t believe it!

  Sage was a brunette beauty I’d met in Detroit University. We’d just completed our freshman year, which had been unbelievable—and I mean that in the literal sense. We ended up solving two campus crimes, but that wasn’t the amazing part. It was how we did it. We had a connection.

  Unfortunately that connection didn’t include the romantic type. At least not for her. My heart, by contrast, had been pretty much levelled. I liked her. A lot.

  To my chagrin (that fact that I’d use the word “chagrin” validates my nerd card), she had me solidly in the “friend” category. Kill me now. I still didn’t see what she saw in that jerk Tristan Coy, but I was the last person on earth who could claim to understand girls.

  I didn’t know what she meant by seeing the future. Was she into astronomy now? Charting the stars? Had she stumbled into a type of palm reading that required x plus y to equal z?

  I’d hoped that a couple months with Sage out of the picture, and Dakota in it, would free me from my infatuation. I required a Sage Farrell detox. Apparently, I needed more time, if I could go by how the mere sight of her name sent my heart racing.

  I ignored her message and jumped into the shower, firmly planting the image of Dakota and her cute impish grin in my mind.

  I was barely dressed—jeans zipped, but shirt unbuttoned, and still in my bare feet—when my phone pinged.

  Sage: I’m at your house. Front door.

  I gasped and then sprinted down the steps before Sage rang the bell and my mother answered. I paused briefly to collect myself, not aiming for “cool” exactly, since I’d never hit that bulls-eye before, just “not completely rattled.” I took a breath and stepped onto my front stoop, quietly shutting the door behind me.

  Sage stood there, pretty as anything, wearing shorts that revealed her long, porcelain legs, and a loose blouse with the top buttons undone. A silver pendant hung delicately against the smooth skin on her chest. I let my eyes linger.

  Man, I loved summer.

  She shifted, holding up a thick book, and my attention returned to her face, which was flushed from the warmth of the season. Her eyes were bright with whatever it was that was causing her so much excitement.

  “Hi, Marlow,” she said.

  “Hey.” Out of habit, I pushed up on my glasses, except they weren’t on my face, so I just weirdly poked myself in the forehead.

  Sage grinned, swinging her dark ponytail side to side. “Why don’t you just leave them off?”

  She was referring to my glasses, the ones without prescription lenses, that I usually wore even though it’d been months since I’d had my eyes lasered. Specs were just part of who I was. Or at least who I saw myself as.

  Sage was a fan of fashion frames, but I noticed she wasn’t wearing any today. The summer heat makes them slip down the nose.

  “Maybe I’ll wean myself off this summer,” I said noncommittally. “How’d you know where I live?”

  She shrugged. “This old-fashioned thing called the phone book. Are you going to invite me in?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I hesitated, swallowing the embarrassment at the thought of her seeing my house and meeting my mother. I opened the door and motioned for her to go inside. My knees almost gave out at the flowery scent of her shampoo as she passed by. It’d been a while since I’d been in close quarters with Sage Farrell and my defenses were down.

  I fumbled with my buttons.

  “Don’t mind the mess,” I said. I took in our home, trying to see it with the eyes of someone new. Our place was small and caught in a nineties time warp. Wall-to-wall taupe shag carpeting with a well-worn path from the living room to the kitchen and down the hallway. A deep-green couch-and-chair set in a dusty-rose floral print. An old painting of a tall ship at high seas above the couch against a sponge-painted “feature” wall. The hunter green venetian blinds with their matching dust-covered window toppers.

  Mom was in the middle of a long drag on her cigarette. Her eyes widened at the sight of a girl in our house, but she stayed cool, exhaling a burst of smoke through her nose like a wimpy dragon lady. She stood.

  “This must be Dakota,” she said.

  Sage’s smile disappeared and I winced. “No, Mom. This is Sage. We met at DU.”

  Sage held out her hand, smile returning. “Hello, Mrs. Henry. Nice to meet you.”

  I assessed my mother through Sage’s eyes. Average height, bone thin, bare face that could be pretty with a little attention. I’d got my dark hair and green eyes from her.

  “Well, I’ll leave you kids alone,” she said, and I appreciated her tactfulness. She disappeared into her bedroom down the hall.

  Having Sage in my house was unnerving, and I swallowed dryly. “Wanna drink or something? Water? Juice?” I cut through the dining area, where Sage unloaded a thick book—a volume that looked ancient and had a library label on the spine—from her shoulder bag and laid it on our round pinewood table.

  “Apple juice would be nice,” she said.

  The kitchen was all white: walls, cabinets and appliances. The laminate counters and vinyl flooring were scuffed and stained. The only splash of color was a string of green vine stencils along the top of one wall. I turned on the tap, leaned over the sink and lapped water like a dog, then wiped my wet chin with the back of my hand. I poured her a glass of juice, handed it to her and we went back to the dining room. “So, uh, what’s up?”

  Sage lifted the text book, the cover rough in texture and a faded green. “It’s an old Greek Mathematics textbook.”

  I had to admit it looked cool. “Where’d you
get it from?”

  “The DU library.”

  “What’s so special about this book?”

  “I found this in it.” She removed a sheet of paper, yellow with age, that had been tucked into the book and slid it across the table to me.

  It looked like a math formula with unusual, not-so-Greek looking symbols involved. I had no idea what it could be.

  “What’s so exciting about it? I mean it’s cool that you found an old book with someone’s notes, but…”

  Sage reached into her bag and produced a notebook, not thin and new, but one that had thickened with use, and fingered through several pages filled with math notations, line upon line upon line.

  “Look.” She fanned the pages again.

  “A bunch of math equations?”

  “Not a bunch, Marlow. Just one.”

  “That’s one long equation?”

  “This is a math equation I’ve been working on for ages. I couldn’t solve it, Mars, and it had been driving me crazy. Then I found this.” She tapped the sheet of paper with her forefinger.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the conclusion of the equation!”

  Okay. That was interesting. “You’re saying you’ve been working on a math equation of your own, one long enough to fill up pages and pages of a notebook, and found a piece of the same equation, the solution, in an ancient Greek math textbook, that had been written by someone else?”

  “Yes! And if you can go by the yellowing wear of the paper, it was completed by someone a long time ago.”

  “Before you were born,” I said, feeling suitably stunned.

  Sage nodded.

  “Wow. That’s incredible.”

  “It’s more than just incredible.” Sage removed her slim laptop from her shoulder bag, then locked her chocolate-brown eyes onto mine. “The equation is solved and when I entered it into my laptop, a window opened.”