Dream Maker

by Charlotte Douglas

  With his aching head pounding in protest, Jared propped himself on his elbows in the grass, and his memory of the crash returned in a rush. Panic and a terrible foreboding surged through him. “Tyler?”

  The man’s hand on his shoulder prevented him from rising. “Your lady friend’s fine. She’s in that fancy car over there, calling the police.”

  Jared sagged back to the ground with relief. His glance slid down the roadside past a dark blue Lexus to a gully beyond where his Volvo—or what was left of it—rested.

  His rescuer followed his gaze. “I was coming up behind you in the inside lane and saw that feller smash into you. You’d have been okay if you hadn’t hit the edge. Flipped your car right off the road and rolled you down the embankment.”

  The impact had crushed the roof and sides of the Volvo like a tin can in a trash compactor. If he and Tyler had been in a less sturdy vehicle, they would both be dead.

  Jared flexed his fingers and toes, and their quick response reassured him. Aside from a splitting headache and terrible nausea from the overpowering odor, he seemed okay.

  Checking in the opposite direction, he discovered the source of the stench and noise. His rescuer was evidently a chicken farmer on his way to market. In a dilapidated truck, piled high with crates, cackling hens beat their wings against the cages, filling the air with a storm of white feathers and a smell that would choke a goat.

  Jared waved away the farmer’s outstretched hand and hefted himself to a sitting position. “Did you get the Blazer’s license number?”

  “Sorry, his plate was so muddy, I couldn’t even tell what state he was from.” The farmer pushed back his hat, and the sun beat on his reddened skin. “Whoever he was, he’s a bad ‘un. Didn’t slow down one stitch when you went off the road. Just took off like a bat out of hell.”

  “Jared, are you all right?” Tyler hurried toward him and knelt in the lush grass, her gray eyes wide with worry. Unfamiliar emotion flooded him at the sight of her—or maybe the strange sensations her presence conjured in the pit of his stomach were simply an aftermath of his blow to the head, which throbbed so painfully he couldn’t think straight.

  She sat back on her heels and scrutinized him with anxious eyes. “You were knocked out, and I was afraid the car might explode before I could pull you away. Thank God, Mr. McCracken stopped and helped.”

  The farmer’s reddened face darkened at her praise. “Just being neighborly, miss. Anybody in these parts would do the same.”

  Tyler jerked her head toward the Lexus. “She’s on her way to a convention in Atlanta, but she stopped to call for help on her car phone. The highway patrol and an ambulance should be here soon.”

  “No need for an ambulance—” Jared nodded toward the Volvo and grimaced “—but we could use a tow truck. And it looks like I’ll be needing new air bags.”

  “You might as well have a new car built around them.” Tyler grinned shakily. “I’m amazed we both got out alive.”

  Above the rumble of speeding traffic, approaching sirens pierced the cool morning air, and on the highway behind them, two Georgia Highway Patrol cars crested the rise.

  Jared shoved himself to his feet, fighting dizziness. “Was I unconscious long?”

  “Not long,” she assured him, “but it seemed like forever.”

  Her concern touched him, and he cursed himself for a fool. If she’d been hurt, he would be the one to blame. He should have heeded the warning in his dreams and sent her away as soon as the ice melted. He’d persuaded himself he needed her help to save Evelyn Granger, but what he really wanted was to keep her beside him for as long as he could. His selfishness could have been the death of her.

  The patrol cars pulled off the road, crushing a blanket of dandelions and clover beneath their heavyduty tires, and parked with lights still flashing. A heavy-set trooper in a freshly pressed uniform exited the first car and approached. “What happened here?”

  “A black Blazer followed us out of the last rest area,” Jared said. Relying on concise journalistic style, he provided the salient details. He’d barely finished his story when more sirens sounded.

  “That’ll be the ambulance,” the trooper said.

  Jared tried to ignore the pummeling in his temples. “We’re okay-”

  “We’ll let the doctors be the judge of that,” the trooper replied in a tone that discouraged dissent. “EMS will take you to the emergency room in Commerce. I’ll meet you there when we’ve finished our investigation here.”

  FOUR HOURS LATER, Jared paced the worn linoleum of the hospital corridor. The harsh fluorescent lights and cloying antiseptic smells recalled memories of another hospital two years ago.

  He stopped, pressed his aching forehead against the wall’s cool plaster, and squeezed his eyelids shut against the unwelcome recollection, but his mind’s eye relayed bright and clear the image of a stocky man in his thirties, with thinning blond hair and eyes the color of faded denim, clutching a filthy, blood-soaked towel to his face. Jared had been wondering who or what had inflicted the jagged wound that laid open the man’s cheek, when pain had exploded in his head, obscuring his vision like torrents of crimson rain in the instant before he’d lost consciousness.

  A tremor of superstition shook him before he shrugged off his irrational fear of hospitals and resumed pacing and waiting for Tyler. He hadn’t had a moment alone with her since the accident. An EMS technician had monitored their blood pressure and pulse during the ambulance ride to the hospital.

  There they had been shunted to separate cubicles to await examination. After the doctor had proclaimed Jared fit for release, the trooper had corralled him to finish his interrogation. Tyler was secluded with the trooper now, providing her version of events.

  Jared prayed she wouldn’t reveal his strange dreams. He couldn’t help her or Evelyn Granger if he was locked up in the loony bin. And God only knew what the trooper would conclude if she told him of the Blazer driver’s warning that women around Jared kept turning up dead.

  Tyler had obviously had good reason to be frightened of the Blazer driver. Probably he was some sicko who had attached himself to Tyler after encountering her at the service station. After all, with her flawless complexion, luxuriant hair and appealing figure, she was a striking woman. As he’d discovered in an investigative piece he’d written on stalkers several years ago, men who hated women and flaunted power over them often chose the prettiest ones as their victims.

  He sank onto a vinyl-covered sofa in the waiting area and cradled his aching head in his hands, waiting for the Tylenol the doctor had given him to kick in. If only he’d managed to glimpse the driver through the Blazer’s tinted windows, maybe he would have been able to give the police a description.

  A disturbing thought joined the pounding in his brain, turning his blood cold. Maybe, since he had some psychic connection with the man who killed Stanwick and Molinsky, the killer also perceived his thoughts. If that was the case, he knew Jared was on his trail and might do anything to stop him—like taking a shot at him on the mountaintop or trying to run him off the road.

  The Blazer driver’s cryptic warning to Tyler now assumed new and deadly meaning, especially if the deceased women he’d alluded to were Mary Stanwick and Veronica Molinsky.

  Jared slammed a fist into his palm and cursed his own stupidity. If the man in the Blazer was the killer he sought, Tyler was in even worse danger than he’d realized.

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T want me to drive?” Tyler asked as they approached the interstate.

  Jared shook his head. “I’m fine. My headache’s almost gone.”

  She touched her face testily, fingering the bruise that had formed on her right cheekbone. “We were both lucky, but I’m sorry about your car.”

  He patted the steering wheel. “The rental car will do until the insurance company evaluates the Volvo. And whoever was driving the Blazer won’t be looking for us in a Ford Taurus.”

  She tried to block the stranger’s inti
midating face from her memory. He was somewhere out there, maybe searching for them this very minute. Before they left the hospital, the highway patrolman had advised them the Blazer had been found abandoned, wiped clean of prints and any other identification. That car, too, had been a rental, but a trace of the credit card it was charged to had turned up a false ID.

  “Do you think he’s still after us?” she asked.

  Jared shrugged and kept his eyes on the road. “I can’t be concerned with him now. He’s already taken a six-hour chunk out of our time, and I have to reach Evelyn Granger to warn her.”

  She bit her lip and tamped down her exasperation. Jared was ignoring the real threat of the Blazer driver to chase after threats he’d only dreamed about. But she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d known he was irrational from the moment they’d met, but she’d been desperate for the job he’d offered, and, m her best Florence Nightingale mode, hoped the trip to Florida would convince him of his delusions and encourage him to seek help.

  What she hadn’t counted on was meeting a homicidal maniac at a service station. Had the man really stalked her across three states?

  Jared interrupted her thoughts. “What did you tell them?”

  “Who?”

  “The highway patrol.” His casual tone belied the tension in his body as he waited for her answer.

  She stretched and rolled her head on her shoulders, hoping to alleviate the tightness in her neck and shoulders, remnants of the crash. “What could I tell them? A car ran us off the road. It could have been the same car I saw two days ago, but I didn’t see the driver who hit us, so I can’t be sure.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Of course.” She bristled at his interrogation. She’d suffered enough grilling from the Georgia Highway Patrol. “I explained we were in a dreadful hurry to reach Florida to warn a woman whom you’d seen murdered in your dreams.”

  “Holy—” Jared struck the steering wheel with the palm of his hand and filled the car with oaths, some more original than others. His wealth of blue vocabulary amazed her. Must be the writer in him.

  She waited until he had exhausted his repertoire of curses. “Don’t you know sarcasm when you hear it? Of course, I didn’t tell them about your dreams. I didn’t want them thinking we were both—”

  She paused, searching for a delicate way to phrase it.

  “Crazy?” he supplied.

  She nodded and eyed him anxiously, wondering if his anger had passed.

  The tension drained from his body and he slumped against the seat. “I’m sorry. I should have known you wouldn’t say anything, but—”

  “What could I say? Your dream story is so beyond bizarre, I’d sound insane just repeating it.” She placed her hand on his arm to soften her accusation. “Besides, you’ve never dreamed about the guy in the Blazer, right?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then there was no reason for me to mention your dreams to the highway patrol.” She didn’t blame him for being edgy. Although he believed in his dreams, he realized how others would view them.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  She relaxed at the change of subject. “Not until the butterflies finish their aerial show in my stomach. It hasn’t stopped rolling since the car did.”

  He threw her a searching look. “Maybe you’ll feel like eating by the time we reach the airport.”

  Jared Slater presented her with one surprise after another. “Airport? To reach the airport, we’ll have to take the interstate through downtown Atlanta. I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  “What won’t take long?”

  “Putting you on a plane to Asheville,” he said in an intractable tone. “You can pick up a rental car there to drive to my place, then switch to your car and go home.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” she sputtered, then winced at her choice of words.

  Jared didn’t blink, but his jaw tensed and a vein pulsed noticeably in his throat. “I was crazy to risk bringing you with me. I’ve put you in terrible danger.

  She raked her fingers raggedly through her hair. “And you think dumping me off in the middle of nowhere will make me safer?”

  A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Atlanta’s hardly the middle of nowhere. You’ve heard that old Southern joke—even if you’re going straight to hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta.”

  The man was definitely certifiable. “You can laugh, Jared Slater, because that maniac in the black Blazer isn’t after you.”

  His smile faded. “I never said he was.”

  “Then how can you be sure he isn’t after me? That he didn’t pick me out as his victim when he first saw me in Brevard?” She twisted as far toward him as her shoulder harness allowed. “How can you be sure he hasn’t gone back to your place to wait for our return?”

  He wasn’t deterred. “Then I’ll buy you a ticket for Raleigh-Durham. Your grandmother can pick you up, and I’ll have your car delivered to you when I return from Florida.”

  She collapsed against the seat, not knowing which was worse—driving to Florida with a crazy man or returning home to Gran’s incessant I-told-you-so’s.

  Not to mention that she’d become overly fond of the kooky but desirable man next to her. She hadn’t realized how fond until she’d seen his unconscious body, dangling from the shoulder harness of the Volvo, and her heart had constricted with grief. Now the thought of not seeing him again, of allowing him to continue suffering his delusions with no one to convince him to seek help, filled her with an incredible sadness.

  If she could persuade him to let her tag along long enough to prove his dreams were deceptive, maybe he would forget about sending her away. Under no circumstances would she return to the mountaintop alone with the dark stranger after her. Nor would she admit defeat by running home to Gran and dependence.

  “Look—” she employed her most patient tone “—you admitted the man won’t recognize our car If he has no idea where we’re headed, I’m perfectly safe.”

  “But what if he does know?” A sense of urgency underlaid his words.

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “How could he know?”

  He glanced toward her again, and she recoiled at the pain in his eyes.

  “You still don’t believe my claims about my dreams, do you?”

  Her heart softened at his distress. “I believe you believe them.”

  “So you’re tagging along to play nursemaid to your poor, misguided, crazy boss.” He ground out the words between gritted teeth.

  Unsure how to respond, she took a deep breath and studied the passing landscape while she cast about for a reply. “I just want to do the job you hired me to do.”

  She tensed at the sight of the approaching interchange. Ahead traffic split in one direction toward downtown Atlanta, in the other toward the beltline that by-passed the city. She held her breath as Jared pressed the accelerator, then switched into the bypass lane.

  “You’re not sending me home?” she asked in amazement.

  He reached over, brushed her cheek with his knuckles, and threw her an achingly attractive smile. “I’m the crazy one, remember?”

  MAYBE HE WAS CRAZY, Jared thought as he flipped on the lights in the suite of the Residence Inn outside Gainesville and dumped their suitcases at the foot of the loft stairs. Maybe his mountain isolation had driven him over the edge and he didn’t even know it. Otherwise, what the hell was he doing, six hundred miles from home at midnight in a strange motel, placing an incredibly beautiful and caring woman in mortal danger, all because of some damn dream?

  Tyler glanced around the room. He followed her gaze, taking in the kitchen, sitting area, dining room, and the stairs to the loft bedroom. The contemporary furniture and carpets in soothing sea greens and blues provided a welcome change from the bleak darkness he’d driven through for the past six hours.

  “Where do I sleep?” she asked.

  He nodded toward the
loft bedroom, picked up her bag, and started up the stairs.

  She laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Then where do you sleep?”

  He suppressed a grin at the suspicion sparking her cool gray eyes. “Downstairs.”

  She eyed the cozy love seats skeptically. “On one of those?”

  He set down her bags, stepped around to the dining-area wall, and pulled a handle. A wide Murphy bed unfolded. “All the comforts of home.”

  His eyes met hers, and for an instant, an intriguing warmth ignited her gaze the way heat lightning backlighted clouds in the night sky, arousing a corresponding glow deep in his abdomen. An overwhelming desire to embrace her and tumble both of them into the soft depths of the Murphy bed seized him.

  He shoved the bed into the wall with an emphatic thud. She already believed he was crazy. No need for her to think him a sex maniac, as well.

  “Aren’t you tired?” she asked.

  “Sure, but I think I’ll take a shower before turning in.” A very cold shower.

  “Thanks for not sending me away. You won’t regret it.” She stretched up on tiptoe and planted a tentative kiss on his cheek, then grabbed her bag and rushed up the stairs.

  Hell, he already regretted it. His only hope was to identify the killer before he could harm Evelyn Granger. Only then would Tyler be safe, as well.

  Hours later, he jolted from a deep sleep with a tortured scream on his lips. Above him, a light switched on in the loft, and before he could reach for his robe, footsteps pattered down the stairs.

  “Are you okay?”

  Tyler stood over him, the light from the stairwell outlining her alluring silhouette through the sheer cotton of her short gown. Her hand cupped his forehead as if she was feeling for fever, and he leaned into the comfort of her touch as he struggled to regain his breath and calm his pounding heart.