Dream Maker

by Charlotte Douglas

  She swallowed hard. He’d just entered the Twilight Zone. Maybe the aneurysm in his brain had been repaired, but it had obviously left him damaged, delusional. “How can you know the killer’s mind if you don’t know who he is?”

  He stared at her with eyes void of light. “Because he haunts my dreams. Veronica Molinsky was only the first victim.”

  “There’ve been more?” The poor guy had really gone off the deep end.

  She jumped as a sharp rapping reverberated through the room and Sheriff Tillett’s voice filtered through the front door. She’d been so entranced by Jared’s story, she hadn’t heard the sheriff’s vehicle approach.

  “I won’t come in,” he said when Jared opened the door. “Just wanted to report my men and I have searched the mountain, and it’s deserted, except for Sweeney at his farm. Tourists won’t arrive for another month.”

  Jared appeared calm and rational, not the tortured man of a few moments earlier, Tyler thought.

  “No sign of our shooter?” he asked.

  “Just some tire tracks,” the sheriff returned. “In the mud at the foot of your drive. Might have been somebody from town trying out a new gun, thinking nobody lived here this time of year. Whoever it was is long gone.”

  “Thanks for checking. Sorry to have troubled you,” Jared said.

  “No trouble.” The sheriff replaced his hat and tapped the broad brim in a salute. “Just doing my job. By the way, power crews are on the mountain, so your electricity should be restored soon.”

  Jared locked the door and turned to her. “Looks like the coast is clear, for now.”

  The sheriff’s explanation bothered her. “Odd that someone would try a new gun and only shoot it once.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Whoever fired the shot could have realized he’d hit something and taken off to avoid the consequences.”

  “Maybe.”

  Tyler studied her mysterious host. Jared’s rational demeanor and words contradicted his wild story moments earlier of a killer haunting his dreams. Her thoughts whirled in confusion. One minute, all she wanted was to pick up her bags and rush out the door, off the mountaintop, and back to the security of home. The next minute, the thought of never seeing Jared Slater again filled her with sorrow. The man was a whole catalog of contradictions—infuriating and yet sensitive, arrogant and yet humble, mesmerizing and yet frightening. In a word, he was fascinating. He drew her to him the way a compass was drawn to the North Star.

  She would never make a prudent choice in his disturbing company. She glanced toward her bags and computer, which had remained by the front door. If she left now, she could stay overnight at the motel in Brevard and decide in the morning whether to drive home or return to the mountain.

  He followed her gaze. “Don’t go yet, please.”

  Lights blinked on in the kitchen and the refrigerator hummed, announcing that electrical service had resumed.

  “At least have supper with me. Then I’ll tell you the rest of my story.”

  If she hadn’t looked at him, she could have picked up her bags and left, but his lopsided smile, underlaid with a sense of terrible isolation, melted her resolve.

  While Jared prepared supper, and later, as they devoured bowls of thick vegetable soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, she hoped he’d forgotten his strange tale. They talked of the Tar Heels’ winning basketball season, a particular politician’s latest tirade in the Senate, and compared favorite hiking trails along the Blue Ridge Parkway. As they talked, Tyler avoided mention of his tale about the nightmares.

  When they’d finished after-dinner coffee in front of the fire, she set her cup aside and stood. The mantel clock read eight-fifteen—still early enough for her to drive to Brevard and find a room for the night.

  He followed her to the door. “What about the job?”

  She met his eyes—a definite mistake—then tore her gaze away. “I’ll call you from the motel in the morning and let you know. Good night, Jared.”

  THE STRANGER TOSSED on the uncomfortable mattress in his Brevard motel room, threw back the covers, and stumbled across the floor to the bathroom. With trembling fingers, he uncapped an aspirin bottle, then washed the tablets down with a cola gone flat.

  Damn his stupid impatience. If he hadn’t spent the night on the mountain, he wouldn’t have caught a cold. And if he hadn’t been shaken with chills, he wouldn’t have missed his shot. He’d waited in his car behind the summer cottage at the foot of the mountain until the sheriff and his deputies had passed, but there had been no sign of the coroner’s wagon. That meant the woman was still alive.

  No matter. His cold wouldn’t last forever, and the next time he saw her, he wouldn’t miss.

  Unable to sleep with his sinuses congested, he turned off the lights in his room, opened the draperies, and with his revolver on his lap, sat watching the parking lot. He didn’t think the lawmen had seen him, but he would stay alert and watch the parking lot, just to make sure.

  Chapter Four

  Jared ignored Tyler’s farewell and stood between her and the door while he warred with his own conscience. Sending her away might keep her safe, but without her help, the next victim was doomed. With a twinge of guilt, he conceded his desire to keep her with him for as long as possible.

  For the first time in two years, his isolation had been breached, the pain of his loneliness eased. In a few short hours, Tyler Harris had brought light and laughter into his life again with her witty conversation and spunky courage. And he would have to be a dead man to resist the charm of her appealing face and delectable curves. He’d known many women, but none had ever affected him as Tyler had. If she walked out the door now, he would be more alone than ever.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, but resisted the urge to draw her into his arms. “You can’t make a decision about the job if you don’t know all the facts.”

  Her eyes glinted like burnished silver in the firelight, and her fragrance tortured him with its sweetness. “I know enough.”

  “You know enough to think I’m crazy or dangerous or both.” He slid his hands down her arms, took her bags and placed them by the door. “Give me fortyfive minutes. Then, if you still want to leave, I’ll call the motel in Brevard and make you a reservation.”

  “But it’s getting late—”

  In spite of her protests, she allowed him to lead her back to the chair before the fire.

  At his small victory, a thrill of pleasure surged through him, followed quickly by dread. When she’d heard what he had to say, she might be more determined than ever to leave.

  To delay exposing the demons of his dreams, he refilled her coffee cup and replenished the fire before settling in the chair opposite her.

  Without an excuse to stall any longer, he plunged back into his story with all the enthusiasm of a man entering a burning building. “Veronica Molinsky was the first victim in my dreams, but she wasn’t the last.”

  Tyler eyed him over the rim of her cup with an expression that revealed none of her thoughts. “How many others are there?”

  “Two,” he lied. He wouldn’t frighten her with his vision of her death. When the time came to send her away for her own safety, she would be better off not knowing.

  “Are they both dead?” Interest kindled in her eyes, and a hint of something else that pierced him like a spike—pity.

  He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes against her sympathy. “I’d better back up. None of this makes much sense, but it makes even less sense out of order.

  “Once I had read the police reports and realized Veronica Molinsky died exactly as I’d dreamed, all I wanted was to escape. I was still too weak to work. Even the kind attentions of family and friends exhausted me. So I bought this house and moved here, hoping tranquillity and mountain air would flush the nightmares from my brain.”

  He shut his eyes and when he grew quiet, she thought he’d fallen asleep. Poor guy. Evidently isolation had only worsened his delusions. Common sense urged he
r to race to her car and flee the mountaintop, but Jared Slater, a mesmerizing paradox, a man of steel and sinew who could best any opponent—except those without substance: his traumatic dreams—held her heart captive.

  He opened his eyes again, staring through the dim light. “The dreams did stop for a while, and I attributed that to the fact I’d regained my strength.”

  He’d regained his strength, all right, as well as that of two others. “The mountain air?” she asked.

  “Partly,” he replied with a grin. “At first, all I could manage was the trek down the drive to the mailbox and back. After I’d begun working out with weights, I indulged myself in a new hobby, rock climbing.”

  “I thought you didn’t leave the mountain.”

  “Didn’t have to. Right behind the house is a sixtyfoot rock face. I rappel down and claw my way back to the top. Does wonders for the muscles—and helps me sleep.”

  She flinched in surprise when the clock on the mantel chimed the half hour. “And you haven’t dreamed of Veronica Molinsky again?”

  He shook his head and a shock of fine brown hair tumbled across his high forehead. “For the first six months, my dreams were nothing out of the ordinary. Then I began to have persistent dreams of a pleasant woman with dark hair laced with gray. She reminded me of my mother.”

  She confronted him with raised brows. “Your mother?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched in a smile. “Don’t play armchair psychiatrist with me. I love my mother and have no unconscious desire to kill her.”

  “Sorry.” She blushed at having her thoughts read. “What happened next?”

  “At first the dreams were innocuous—simple scenes of the woman preparing meals, weeding her garden, playing with her grandchildren. The only odd thing about them was their repetitiveness.” His grip tightened on the chair arm. “But after a few weeks, they changed.”

  When a burning log broke and crashed into the ashes of the fireplace, she jerked with alarm, revealing her tightly-strung nerves. “You dreamed then that she was murdered, too?”

  “No.” He massaged his temple as if his head ached, and she wondered if he still bore the scars of his operation beneath his hair. “It’s difficult to explain. In my dreams, I was no longer me, but the killer who stalked her. I watched her through his eyes, felt his hatred and rage. I knew that she, too, just like Veronica Mohnsky, was eventually going to die, killed by the same man.”

  Her heart hammered against her ribs. How could he know a killer’s mind, unless the burst aneurysm had severed his sanity, creating a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—two personalities in one man, each unaware that the other existed. “Did you warn the woman?”

  Anguish twisted the handsome lines of his face. “How could I? I had no idea who she was or what part of the country she lived in.”

  “So you did nothing?” She couldn’t restrain the horror in her voice.

  “I did everything I could.” Slater rose and began to pace in front of the hearth. The fire cast his shadow across the room—a distorted version of him that loomed, frightening and overpowering, in the gloom. “I kept paper and pencil beside my bed and recorded every detail from the dreams.”

  She recalled the legal pad beside his bed and his cry of pain and frantic scribbling upon awakening that morning. “And you found her?”

  He turned his back to the fire and thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It took months. I finally narrowed down the section of the country to the Northeast by researching the trees, shrubs and flowers in her garden and the style and materials of her home.”

  She pictured him, fingers flying over his computer keyboard, racing against time. “Wasn’t that like looking for a needle in a haystack?”

  “First I had to find the haystack,” he said with a wry grimace. “So I gleaned tidbits of information from my dreams. Her first name was Mary. Her husband’s name was Pete. In one dream, I watched him empty the contents of his pockets onto his bureau. He carried a badge.”

  “A policeman?”

  “A detective. I even saw his badge number.”

  His story became more unreal by the minute. “And you located him by his badge number?”

  “If only it had been that easy. Do you know how many police departments there are in the Northeast?”

  She shook her head. “How did you find the woman named Mary?”

  “In one dream, I watched her drive by a college campus. I couldn’t see its name, but a stone tablet on the entrance gate stated it had been founded in 1837. By looking up all colleges established that year in the Northeast, I pinpointed a small town in Massachusetts.”

  No wonder he needed a research assistant. Tracking down Mary’s location must have taken weeks. “How long did it take to identify Mary after that?”

  He slumped into his chair. “I boarded a plane that night to Boston and booked into a hotel at the airport.”

  “Then you did leave the mountaintop.” The fact disturbed her, shattering his alibi.

  “I had no choice,” he said in a toneless voice. “I had to warn Mary. That night at the airport, the killer closed in on her in my dream.”

  His distress throbbed like a palpable presence in the room. But Mary had been in real danger only once he found her, Tyler thought. She bit back her suspicions and waited for him to continue.

  “As soon as I awoke, I rented a car and drove a hundred miles to the town where the college was located. I went straight to the police department, gave them the badge number, and asked to speak with Pete.” He leaned forward and hid his face in his hands.

  Compassion stabbed through her as she watched him relive the pain. Maybe all of it had happened only in his damaged mind. “You don’t have to tell me all this.”

  “But I do. You have to know what to expect if you’re going to work for me.” A trace of a smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “Now you understand why the pay is so good.”

  His salary offer had been irresistible, but even more tantalizing was the man—an enigma she itched to unravel, if only to ease his grief. Whether he suffered from multiple personalities or psychotic delusions didn’t matter. What mattered was that the man before her seemed honest, good, and decent, and didn’t deserve what was happening to him.

  “The man’s name was Stanwick,” Jared continued, “and the desk sergeant looked at me strangely when he gave me Pete’s address. When I parked in front of Stanwick’s house, I experienced a chilling sense of déjà vu. Everything was just as I’d dreamed it, right down to the pale blue flowers that bordered the front walk.”

  Jared levered himself out of his chair and crossed to the kitchen, removed the brandy bottle from its cupboard and poured himself a glass. “I’d offer you a drink, but you may be driving once my story’s finished.”

  He gulped the brandy, and his face contorted as if he’d swallowed bitter medicine. “A young man, Mary’s grown son, answered the door, and I asked to see Mary Stanwick. He led me into the living room, which seemed as familiar as my own house. The man I recognized as Pete was sitting on the sofa, staring at the floor.”

  Jared studied the bottle as if contemplating another drink. “I cleared my throat to announce my presence, and Pete lifted his head. I’ve never seen a man so devastated.”

  “You were too late?” She yearned for a way to ease the pain that shone in Jared’s eyes.

  He succumbed to pouring another finger of brandy. “I feared I was, but I had to be sure. I asked again if I could speak with Mary.”

  He carried the brandy snifter back to his chair and sat, cradling it between his palms, pondering the amber liquid as if it held a secret he could unlock. “Stanwick looked like a man who had no tears left in him. He told me Mary had been shot to death in the church parking lot the previous night after leaving her quilting-club meeting.”

  Jared’s agony tempered her skepticism. No one could really predict the future, but he believed he’d had foreknowledge of the danger to Mary Stanwick and had been unab
le to stop it.

  She played along with his delusions. Maybe eventually they would make sense. “How did you explain your presence there?”

  He gripped the glass so tightly she feared it would shatter in his hands. “I didn’t. I just left.”

  “You left? That’s it?” Irritation blended with sympathy. “What about the killer?”

  He set the untouched drink aside. “I would have helped the police with their investigation if I could, but I knew nothing of any substance about the killer. If I’d gone to them with the story I told you, they would have locked me away as a signal-twenty.”

  “Signal-twenty?”

  Another smile flitted briefly across the sturdy angles of his face. “That’s police code for a crazy person. You’ve probably considered the possibility yourself.”

  Since she couldn’t deny it, she ignored his question. “If I decide to stay, what would my duties be?”

  He leaned forward, eyes blazing. Tortured he might be, but he didn’t give in to despair. He emanated a sense of burning purpose and determination. “To help me catch this guy before he strikes again.”

  Jared appeared as sane as anyone, but she couldn’t know for sure. She shook her head wearily, too tired to struggle with her emotions. “I’m a researcher. You’ll have to find someone else to play Dr. Watson to your Sherlock.”

  He rose, grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet. “You’ve had a rough day. Why don’t you get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  Fatigue seeped through her. The alertness needed to navigate the twisting mountain roads had deserted her an hour ago. Staying the night might not be wise, but driving in her present state would be suicide.

  “Okay.” She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. “But I’m not making any promises.”

  He brushed a curl off her cheek, and the warmth of his hand seared her skin. If the man was insane, she must be crazy, too, to be so drawn to him.

  She followed him down the hallway as he carried her bags to the bedroom again. When she turned to bid him good-night, he grasped her shoulders and peered into her eyes.