Dream Man

by Linda Howard

“I’m stopping the bleeding,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “I know. It’s almost stopped. She’s going to be all right, partner. Everything’s going to be okay.” Trammell wrapped his arms around him, easing him away from Marlie. The medics moved to take his place. “We’ll go to the hospital with her, but she’s going to be fine. I promise.”

  Dane closed his eyes and let Trammell lead him away.

  “I really do feel well enough to go home,” Marlie said the next morning. She yawned. “It’s just that I’m tired from fighting off the vision.”

  “And from loss of blood,” Dane said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  She was propped up in bed, and except for the thickness of the bandages on top of her shoulder and at her waist, it was difficult to tell there was anything wrong with her, though to Dane’s critical eye she was still far too pale.

  He had been at the hospital with her all night. If he lived to be a hundred and fifty, he’d never forget the absolute, bone-chilling terror of those minutes when he had realized that he had been lured away, and left Marlie unprotected. It had taken him a lifetime to get back to her, and cost him another lifetime in the effort to get into the house. The hospital had been a zoo, with cops everywhere and reporters fighting to get in to talk to Marlie, and Dane had been totally unable to cope with it. All he had been able to do, once the doctors had let him get to her again, was hold her hand and try to reassure himself that she was really all right.

  Trammell had taken over; he had handled the reporters, categorically denying them access to “Marlie’s room but promising a news conference later in the morning. He had deflected Bonness and Chief Champlin away from Dane. He had called Grace, who had brought fresh clothes and toiletries for both Dane and Marlie. Dane had showered and shaved, but the haggard lines in his face revealed the toll the night had taken on him. If it hadn’t been for Trammell, he wouldn’t have made it through the night.

  Trammell had been there for most of the night, too, but he had left around dawn and just returned. He was impeccably dressed, as always, though he, too, showed the signs of a sleepless night. Grace had remained with them.

  Marlie pressed the button that moved the head of the bed to a more upright position. She truly did feel well enough to go home; the cuts were sore, and she had to be careful when she moved, but all in all she wasn’t in any undue pain. She was alive. The heavy sense of evilness that had been pressing down on her for weeks was gone. The sun seemed brighter, the air fresher.

  “I’ve told you everything that happened last night,” she said. “Now I want to know what you’ve found out this morning.”

  Dane smiled at her reassuringly normal tone. “Don’t look at me. I haven’t left this place. I don’t know anything.”

  Grace stretched out her long legs. “Yes, Alex, spill your guts.”

  Trammell propped himself against the windowsill. “We found his car about two blocks away, and ran the license plate. His name was Carroll Janes; he moved here from Pittsburgh about five months ago. Pittsburgh PD have several unsolved murders that fit the bill. We searched his apartment and found a blond wig he evidently wore all the time, except when he was killing. He worked at Danworth’s department store, in customer service. Evidently that’s how he picked his victims. If anyone gave him a hard time—bingo.”

  “That was the tie,” Dane murmured. “They all shopped at Danworth’s. I remember Jackie Sheets’s friend saying that she had been upset about a blouse that came apart, or something like that. God, it was right there in front of me. I even thought that they shopped at the same place, but that just about everyone in the city did, too.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Marlie advised tartly. “You aren’t clairvoyant, you know.” After a startled second, he chuckled. He was looking better, she decided, that stark look fading as he recovered from the shock.

  “Carroll Janes,” Grace said. “That’s a strange name for a man.”

  “No joke. That’s why we didn’t turn him up on those lists we were running. His name was crossed out because it looked like a woman’s name.” Trammell sounded disgusted at that oversight. “We don’t have much background on him yet. We may never know what made him tick. I don’t know if it even matters. A subhuman son of a bitch like that doesn’t deserve to live.”

  Marlie saw Dane flinch. He was having a harder time handling the night’s events than she was. He deeply regretted that she had been touched by such ugly violence, but in an odd way she felt stronger. She wasn’t elated that she had killed a man, but neither was she consumed by guilt. She had done what was necessary. If she had hesitated, she would be dead now. She had controlled the vision, and this time she had won. Carroll Janes was dead; Marilyn Elrod and Nadine Vinick and Jackie Sheets, and all of the other women he had killed, finally had their justice.

  Dane picked up her hand and played with her fingers, his eyes closing as he felt again the overwhelming relief that she was all right.

  Grace elbowed Trammell. “We have to go now,” she said. “I have to get ready for work.”

  “I’ll be back this afternoon,” Trammell added. “Call me if you need me before then.”

  “Okay,” Dane agreed. After they left, he walked to the door and leaned out to get the attention of the uniformed officer who stood guard there. “No visitors,” he said. “Not even the mayor. No one.”

  “I may have trouble keeping the docs out, Hollister,” the officer warned.

  “Well, maybe them. But knock first.” He closed the door and went back to Marlie’s bedside. He stroked her face, smoothed her hair.

  She reached up and touched his cheek. “I really am all right. And I’d much rather be at home than here.”

  He turned his head to kiss her fingers. “Just be patient, okay? If the doctor wants to watch you for another twentyfour hours, he must have a reason. Let me be certain you’re okay before you leave. I need that.”

  There was naked emotion in his face. Dane was wide open, not bothering to guard himself. After what he had been through, he would never again try to control his feelings for her. He had almost lost her the night before; life was too short, too uncertain, to do anything but live it to the fullest.

  His expression was serious as he smoothed her hair away from her face. “We didn’t finish getting things ironed out between us last night.”

  “No, everything got a little hectic there, didn’t it?” “Are you still mad at me?”

  A little smile curved her mouth. “No.”

  “I swear to God I didn’t string you along just to stay on top of the situation. The only thing I thought about being on top of was you.”

  She snorted. “Gosh, that’s romantic.” But the smile remained.

  “I don’t know how to be romantic. All I know is I want you, and I can’t let you go. I’ve never run into this type of situation before, so I probably messed up in the way I handled it. I wanted to take my time, see how things developed. I didn’t want to rush you, or put pressure on you while all of this other mess was going on. You had enough to worry about.”

  She bit her lip, bemused by his words. Ye gods, maybe Trammell was right; maybe Dane really was too hardheaded to know when he was in love, or that a woman would reasonably expect him to say so. She took a deep breath, conscious of how much she wanted everything to go right this time. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who had been a little too cautious; maybe she needed to encourage him more.

  “Is sex all you want?” she asked, tension invading her as she waited for his answer.

  “Hell, no!” he said explosively. “Honey, tell me what you need. I can do something about it if you’ll tell me, but don’t leave me in the dark like this. What can I do to convince you of how I feel about you?”

  She drew back in the hospital bed, giving him an incredulous look. “Convince me? Dane, you’ve never told me to begin with! I don’t have any idea how you feel!”

  It was his turn to stare incredulously. “What the hell do you mean, you don’t have
any idea how I feel?”

  She rolled her eyes beseechingly toward the heavens. “Lord help me, the man’s as thick as a tree. How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me? I’ve told you time and again that I can’t read you! Say it in plain English, Dane. Do you love me? That’s what I need to know.”

  “Of course I love you!” he roared, his temper flashing.

  “Then say so!”

  “I love you, damn it!” He surged to his feet and stood over her bed, hands on hips. “What about you? Are we in this together, or am I soloing?”

  She thought of punching him, but decided not to put that much strain on her stitches. She contented herself with saying, “No, you aren’t soloing.”

  “Then say it!”

  “I love you, damn it!” She said it just as belligerently as he had.

  His chest heaved with the force of his breathing as they faced each other down in silence. Finally the tension eased out of his coiled muscles. “That’s settled, then.” He sat down again.

  “What’s settled?” she challenged.

  “That I love you and you love me.”

  “So what do we do? Call a truce?”

  He shook his head and picked up her hand again. “What we do is get married.” He pressed a kiss to her fingertips.

  “We aren’t going to wait six months, either, like some people I know. It’ll probably be this weekend. No longer than a week.”

  Marlie’s breath caught, and a luminous smile broke over her face like sunrise. “I’m sure we can manage it by this weekend,” she said.

  He wanted to fold her in his arms, but he was too afraid of hurting her. He looked at her, and was amazed at how calm she was. She had been stalked by a killer, had emptied a pistol into him, and she seemed so … peaceful. Not even getting engaged had shaken that serenity.

  He began shaking, as he had several times that night. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, for the fifteenth time, his expression telling her where his thoughts had gone. “God, baby, I messed up bad. I never intended for you to be in danger. I don’t know how he found you.”

  Her blue eyes were even more bottomless than usual.

  “Maybe it was meant. Maybe it was my fault that he found me. I should have gone to a safe house. Maybe, at the end, he could sense me the way I could sense him. Maybe I was the only one who had a chance against him, because I could tell where he was, what he was doing. There are too many maybes; we’ll never know for certain. But I’m okay, Dane, in every way.”

  “I love you. When I thought he had you—” His voice cracked. Suddenly he couldn’t stand it. With exquisite care he gathered her up in his arms and lifted her from the bed, then sat down and cradled her on his lap, his face buried in her hair.

  “I know. I love you too.” She didn’t protest that the action jarred her shoulder, or that he was holding her too tightly for comfort. She needed that contact, the security and warmth of his embrace. She nestled against him.

  “Dane?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “There is one thing.”

  He raised his head. “What?”

  “Are you certain you want to marry me?”

  “Damn right I am. What brought this on?”

  “I know how uncomfortable it makes you that I am what I am. And I can’t marry you without telling you everything. I’ve pretty much recovered all my abilities. In fact, I’m better at it than I was before, because now I can control it.”

  He didn’t hesitate. The only way to have Marlie was to take her as she was, psychic abilities and all. “But you can’t read me at all, right?”

  “Nope. You’re the most thickheaded man I’ve ever seen. It’s such a relief.”

  He grinned, and brushed a kiss across her temple. “It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. I’m going to marry you, no matter what.”

  “But I can check up on you,” she admitted. “If you have a bad day, you won’t be able to hide it from me, the way cops usually do with their wives. There won’t be any tucking it away in a corner of your mind, because I’ll already know what happened.”

  “I can live with that.” Easily, he realized. At this point he could probably live with her even if she were a card-carrying swami and rode a magic carpet. “If you can handle being a cop’s wife, I can be a psychic’s husband. What the hell; how rough can it be?”

  Epilogue

  DANE ROLLED OUT OF BED, LOOKED AT MARLIE, TURNED green, and dashed for the bathroom. She propped herself up on her elbow, considering the situation with mild disbelief. “I’m the one who’s pregnant,” she called. “Why are you having morning sickness?”

  He came out of the bathroom several minutes later, still rather pale. “One of us has to,” he said. He groaned and collapsed on the bed. “I don’t think I can make it in to work today.”

  She nudged him with her foot. “Sure you can. Just eat some dry toast and you’ll feel better. You know Trammell will tease you if you don’t show up.”

  “He already does.” Dane’s voice was muffled in the pillow. “The only thing that keeps him from telling everyone else is that I know something just as bad about him. We have each other in a Mexican standoff.”

  She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She felt wonderful. She had been queasy a little at first, but never quite to the point of throwing up, and that had soon passed.

  For her, that is. Dane was still throwing up regularly, every morning, though it was just past New Year’s and she was now six months along. He was paying the price for getting her pregnant immediately after their wedding.

  “I wonder how you’re going to handle labor and delivery,” she mused aloud, giving him a wicked look.

  He groaned. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  He didn’t handle it at all well. As a labor coach, he was a complete washout. From the time her pains started, he was in agony. The nurses loved him. They installed him on a cot next to her, so he could hold her hand; it seemed to give him comfort. He was pale and sweating, and every time she had a contraction, he had one too.

  “This is wonderful,” one older nurse said, watching him with joy. “If only all the fathers could do this. There may be justice in this world, after all.”

  Marlie patted his hand. She was ready for this to be over, even if the price was these steadily increasing pains that were now threatening to become very serious indeed. She felt heavy and exhausted, and the pressure in her pelvis threatened to tear her apart, but a part of her was still able to marvel at her husband. And she was supposed to be empathic! Dane had suffered through every month, every pain, with her; she wondered just how labor pains felt in a man.

  “Oh, God, here comes another one,” he groaned, gripping her hand, and sure enough, her belly began to tighten. She fell back, gasping, trying to find the crest of the pain and ride it.

  “This is going to be an only child,” he panted. “There won’t be another one, I swear. God, when is he going to get here?”

  “Soon,” she answered. She could feel the deep, heavy tightening within. Their son would arrive soon.

  He did, within half an hour. Dane wasn’t able to be there during delivery; the doctor had been forced to give him a sedative to ease his pain. But when Marlie woke up from an exhausted doze, he was sitting in the chair beside her bed, looking pale and exhausted himself, and he was holding the baby.

  His rough face broke into a grin. “It was rough,” he said, “but we did it. He’s great. He’s perfect. But he’s still going to be an only child.”

  LINDA HOWARD is an award-winning author whose New York Times bestsellers include Open Season, Mr. Perfect, All the Queen’s Men, Now You See Her, Kill and Tell, and Dream Man. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.

  Books by Linda Howard

  A Lady of the West

  Angel Creek

  The Touch of Fire

  Heart of Fire

  Dream Man

  After the Night

  Shadow of Twilight

>   Son of the Morning

  Kill and Tell

  Now You See Her

  All the Queen’s Men

  Mr. Perfect

  Open Season

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Books eBook.

  *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1994 by Linda Howington

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the American New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-671-01975-4

  ISBN-10: 0-671-01975-9

  eISBN-13: 978-1-439-18787-6

  This Pocket Books paperback edition June 1995

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-67W or business@simonandschuster.com.