The thought of losing his sisters to the Coppersmiths threatened to stir up the dark waters deep inside. Since their days at Summerlight, Abby and Gwen had been there for him. Abby had taught him the ropes of the hot books business. Gwen had always been around to drive the nightmare monsters back into the depths. The bad dreams hadn’t surfaced in a while, but he knew they were still swimming around down there in the bottomless pit.
Okay, so Gwen and Judson were sleeping together. No problem. At this point it probably didn’t amount to anything more than a one-night stand. Maybe two or three nights. Whatever. It didn’t mean he would lose her, too. What was happening between the pair was just the natural result of a lot of adrenaline, excitement, danger and mutual physical attraction mixed up together. He’d been there often enough to know how the chemistry worked.
But a chill went through him. Gwen didn’t do casual sex, and while the relationship between her and Judson had ignited quickly, it did not look like it would burn out fast. Even Wyatt Earp had noticed the heat between those two.
He did not want to think about what his nights would be like if the dream monsters returned. He did not want to think about what his world would be like if he lost both of his sisters to the Coppersmith family. So he got some coffee and found a private space in which to suck up the caffeine while he went through the bankbook that he had found in the wall safe. Numbers were always interesting, especially when they were linked to money.
After a while he took the small computer out of the backpack and went online. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. He was as good at finding interesting stuff hidden in cyberspace as he was opening concealed wall safes.
Really, he had been born for a life of crime.
Twenty-seven
She sensed the dark energy of Judson’s psi-charged dreamscape just as she was about to slip into a lucid dream of her own.
She was in her robe, nightgown and slippers, curled up in the chair in front of the fire with her feet tucked under her. She was orchestrating the delicate trance-like state, summoning images from the scene of Louise’s murder, when the currents whispered to her from the other room.
Her first thought was that the unfamiliar tendrils of dreamlight had been generated by her own self-induced hallucination. As often as she had gone into the waking dreamstate, she could never be sure of what she would experience. Trances were, by their very nature, unpredictable.
But when she heard Judson utter an urgent, half-choked shout, she was jolted out of the trance.
She stood quickly. Max was awake, too. He sat up on the bed and gazed fixedly toward the doorway into the other room.
Judson groaned.
Gwen hurried to the doorway. In the faint light from the fireplace behind her, she could see Judson sprawled on the bed. His ring was infused with sun-hot light.
Max jumped down from the bed and joined her in the doorway, meowing in a low, uneasy manner.
Gwen heightened her talent and slid into a waking trance to get a sense of what was going on in Judson’s dreamscape. She was not surprised by the explosion of amber lightning that crackled in the atmosphere, but she was stunned by the dark, seething energy of violence that pooled around the bed. With her dreamer’s intuition, she knew that Judson was living through whatever had caused the nightmare. His unnaturally deep sleep had intensified the effects.
“Good grief,” she whispered. “How long have you been dealing with this dream, Judson?”
She walked slowly toward the bed. She had never dealt with a sleeper so profoundly asleep. Normally she worked with clients who were awake. The therapeutic process involved putting clients into a light trance and then summoning their dreamscapes to a level just below that of conscious awareness. But her intuition warned her that it would not be a good idea to try to shake Judson awake. In his present condition, it would take him some time to distinguish between his dreamscape and the waking world. In effect, he would wake up in the midst of a vivid hallucination. It might take him a few seconds—as long as a minute, perhaps—to sort things out. In those circumstances, a strong psychic wearing a ring infused with unknown paranormal energy could do a lot of damage in even a short period of time.
Although she dared not bring him out of the dreamscape too abruptly, she had to make physical contact in order to help him. She was not sure how he would respond to even the lightest touch. He was trapped deep in the underworld. That was never a good thing.
“Really, Max, the first lesson everyone with psychic abilities should be taught is how to control their own dreams,” she said softly.
Max meowed again. It was an aren’t-you-going-to-do-something-about-this-situation sort of meow. He twitched his tail a few times, expressing his growing impatience, and came to sit very close to her feet, pressing his big body against her leg.
On the bed Judson uttered another low, guttural sound. The energy whipping around him grew darker and more dangerous. The sunlight stirring in his ring got hotter.
There was no option, Gwen thought. She could not let him slide deeper into the dreamscape.
She gathered herself and pulled hard on her talent. At her feet, Max pressed more firmly against her leg as if to offer support.
Cautiously, she reached out and touched two fingertips to the palm of one of Judson’s out-flung hands.
Although she thought she was braced for the physical connection, it was all she could do not to scream aloud when the electrifying shock zapped across her senses.
She walked straight into the heart of his nightmare.
Amber lightning arced and flashed in the darkness that enveloped her. She sensed the ghastly fog that was the hallmark of violence and death. A dreadful miasma infused with a terrible violet-hued light seethed around her feet. She thought she heard a cat meow.
“Judson,” she said quietly. “Where are you?”
“Welcome to my world,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
She turned, searching for him in the lightning-streaked darkness.
. . . And saw him watching her from the shadows, a churning pool of ultraviolet energy at his feet. His eyes burned with a heat that matched the molten fires that flared in his ring.
He did not look like a man trapped in hell—in this dark underworld, he reigned.
“You should not be here, either,” she said. “It’s just a bad dreamscape. Come with me.”
Conversations conducted in other people’s dreamscapes were no different than those she had with ghosts in her own trances. The dialogue came to her as feedback from her dreamer’s intuition based on what she sensed in the client’s aura.
“I can’t leave,” Judson said.
“Why not?”
“I lost something here. I have to find it.”
“What did you lose?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll recognize it when I find it.”
“I understand. This is a recurring dream for you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. I come here often.”
“You come here to search for whatever it is you lost, but tonight you’ve gone down too deep,” she said. “I was afraid of this. You’re here now because of what happened at Louise Fuller’s house today. You need to return to the surface with me. You must let your senses recover before you dream this dream again.”
That seemed to amuse him. “You don’t get it, do you? This is my world. It’s where I belong.”
“No, it’s your dreamscape, and you can change it. I can show you how.”
“It may be a dreamscape, but it’s also my past,” he said. “No changing that, is there, Miss Psychic Counselor?”
“You can’t change the past, but you can find a better way to deal with it.”
“Damn. You sound like a real therapist,” he said. “The expensive kind. But you’re not a real one, are you?”
“No, I’m just a psychic counselor, but I do know something about how to find things that are lost in dreamscapes. You’re going about it th
e wrong way.”
“Yeah?” He was starting to sound bored.
She was losing him.
“Come back to the surface with me,” she said. “Later, when you’re fully rested, I’ll help you search this dreamscape.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve come down too far this time. Never been this deep before. But I can see things here that I’ve never seen before. Maybe tonight I’ll find what I’m looking for.”
“It won’t do you any good if you can’t get back to the surface. I was afraid of this. Listen up, Coppersmith. You went too deep into your dreamscape tonight because of that psi-burn at Louise’s house today.”
“You were there, too. Why didn’t you crash and burn the way I did? Have you got some special psychic superpower?”
“No, I’m okay tonight because you protected me from the worst effects of the storm in Louise’s house,” she said. “But you were also shielding Nicole and Max and yourself, as well. Heaven only knows how much energy you had to focus through your ring to save us all. But you temporarily exhausted your senses in the process. You need to be sleeping soundly now, not visiting this dreamscape.”
“You should leave before you get trapped here with me.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” she said. “Come back with me, Judson.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. Too late.”
There was no emotion in the words—neither regret nor despair. Judson sounded as if he was making an observation about the weather, detached. Like one of the ghosts, she thought. Another chill shivered through her. This was not going well. She had never dealt with anyone who had fallen this far down the rabbit hole of a dreamscape. She was out of her depth, as well, but she was very sure of one thing. She had to get Judson back to the surface before he went any deeper.
“No, it is not too late,” she said. “We can get out of here, but we have to do this together. You’re not the only one who went too deep tonight. I had to come this far down to find you. I am trapped with you.”
“I told you that you should not have come here.”
This time she thought she heard a flicker of emotional intensity in Judson’s dreamscape voice. He sounded angry. She told herself that was a good sign.
“Well, I did come here and now I’m stuck,” she said. “If you don’t come with me, I won’t be able to leave this place.”
“You’re the psychic dreamer. Get out of this hell while you still can.”
“Not without you. Stop arguing with me. This isn’t just an ordinary dream. This could become a coma. We have to leave. Now.”
It was weird, but she was starting to lose her temper, too. That wasn’t supposed to happen to her in a dreamscape. She had trained herself to be the clinical observer and guide. It was her job to gently lead the client out of the closed loop of a recurring nightmare. Any strong emotion on her part caused distortions and confusion in the world of dreams—a world that was constructed of distorted and confusing images.
“You don’t give up easily, do you?” Judson asked. He sounded intrigued by her stubbornness.
“No,” she said. “Not when it comes to my clients.”
“Is that what I am? A client?”
“That’s what you are tonight. Take my hand, Judson.” She made it a command.
For a harrowing eternity in dreamtime, she thought that he would not respond. Then, to her overwhelming relief, he reached for her hand. She knew the action was just her mind’s way of interpreting what was happening. In a very real sense she was dreaming, too. Judson was resurfacing. He wasn’t really reaching for her hand. She knew that. The hand-holding was a dream metaphor.
Which was why it came as a physical as well as a psychic jolt when she felt his powerful fingers lock fiercely around her wrist in the waking world. The shock brought her instantly out of the dreamscape. Judson came with her.
He opened his eyes. Simultaneously he tightened his hand around her wrist.
“It’s okay, Judson, you’re awake.” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, assuming that, with his preternatural night vision he could see it. Delicately, she wriggled her fingers, trying to free her manacled wrist. He did not release her. Instead, he continued to shackle her while he watched her with eyes that burned.
“I’m not one of your clients,” he rasped.
“You’re awake. It was just a bad dream. I was afraid you might be sleeping a little too deeply, you see.”
“I’m not one of your damned clients.”
“What?”
“I said I’m not your client.”
She reminded herself that after awakening from a deep dream, the dreamer often continued to be confused by images from the underworld for a time. The goal was to soothe and reassure and guide the dreamer all the way back to the shore of the normal.
“You’re not a client,” she said soothingly.
“Damn right.”
He used his hold on her wrist to pull her off her feet and down onto the bed. The maneuver was conducted with the precision of a judo throw. One instant she was upright, the next she was flat on her back. The shadowy bedroom spun around her.
Okay, this was a new experience in the uncharted waters of psychic dream counseling, she thought. She had lost control of the session. That was not supposed to happen.
Before she could reorient herself and come up with a game plan for dealing with the situation, Judson was on top of her, one muscled thigh pinning her leg to the quilt. He captured her other wrist, anchored it beside her head, and took her mouth with a ruthlessness that stunned her senses.
The kiss was incendiary, literally. Hot energy burned in the atmosphere. She was mildly astonished that they did not set fire to the drapes. But unlike the terrible energy of the dream, this was the fiercely exhilarating fire of turbocharged passion.
Judson was running hot. She was still fully jacked from the dream therapy work. That made for a lot of heat. But it was the return of the breathtaking sensation of psychic intimacy that shocked and thrilled her. Something very strange had happened between them last night and it was happening again tonight. Her intuition warned her that the more time that she and Judson spent together—not just having superheated sex but within range of each other’s auras—the more powerful the bond would become—at least on her end.
Judson freed one of her wrists so he could untie the sash of her robe. His palm closed over her breast. He moved his mouth down to her throat.
She slid her hand up under his T-shirt and clawed at his muscled back. He was burning up with a psi-fever.
“Judson,” she whispered.
“Not a client,” he growled. “Say it. Not a client.”
“Not a client,” she gasped. “You can’t be a client, because I never sleep with clients.”
“That’s right. You don’t sleep with clients. You sleep with me now. Only me.”
He yanked opened the top of her nightgown and kissed her breasts with a hungry, desperate reverence. At the touch of his tongue on her sensitive nipples, she cried out. He released her other wrist to unzip his trousers. He fumbled the hem of her nightgown up to her waist. Then his hand was between her thighs.
“Wet and hot,” he said against her throat. “That’s how I like you.”
She reached down and circled him with her fingers. “Hard and hot. That’s how I like you.”
His laughter was low and dark and wicked. “We were made for each other, Dream Eyes.”
Maybe, she thought, but probably not. This wasn’t love. They hadn’t had time to fall in love. This was raw passion fueled by the bond that had been forged in the paranormal fires of shared danger and the dream therapy experience. She knew she could not trust her emotions tonight, but in the heat of the moment she did not care.
Judson got his pants off and then he was back on top of her, driving into her hard and deep. She pulled him close and wrapped herself fiercely around him.<
br />
Her release swept through her in seconds. She heard Judson groan as he followed her over the edge and into the effervescent seas that awaited them.
Twenty-eight
It had been a good night at the online fishing hole. The grooming of the new client was coming along nicely. The woman’s ninety-two-year-old father-in-law was in excellent health and showed every indication of making it to a hundred. Unfortunately for the heirs, the old man was burning through the inheritance at a fast clip. At the rate he was going he would outlive his money. The daughter-in-law had a problem with that. She and her husband had been counting on her father-in-law’s money to finance their own retirement.
It was all so unfair. Sundew understood that. And it wasn’t as if the old man enjoyed a good quality of life, after all. He had been forced to give up both driving and his beloved golf a few years ago. Now he spent his days playing cards and watching television with the other residents at his very expensive retirement community while he whined that no one ever came to visit him. Meanwhile his son and daughter-in-law were watching their inheritance go down the drain.
The old man’s death would change everything.
Back at the start, Sundew had been obliged to spend months drumming up business. The process involved hours of online research just to identify potential clients. Then followed the laborious task of introducing them to the notion that their inheritance problems could be made to go away as if by magic—for a price.
The business was more streamlined these days, requiring less research and less risk. As always, word of mouth had proved to be the best form of advertising. The online whispers were so effective that Sundew had no shortage of potential clients dropping into the chat room.
Money was no longer the object. Now Sundew worked to support a habit.
Somewhere along the line, the murder-for-hire game had become a total rush.
Until recently, Wilby, Oregon, had been the perfect lair in which to hide between hunts. True, the brouhaha two years ago had been a near disaster but things had settled down after Gwen Frazier left town. Then Sundew had discovered that Evelyn Ballinger had become suspicious. The problem had been resolved easily enough, but now the situation had begun to disintegrate.
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