“You said it yourself, I can’t run for almost another whole day,” Jack said. “Knowing what’s happened to Taylor would be great, but at this point it’s a luxury. The Society has more important worries. I’m heading to The House.”
Gavin went silent on the line and Jack was forced to wait for him to continue. The brief respite gave the adrenalin that had flushed into his system a chance to work its way through and out.
“Jack, tell me…” Gavin finally resumed their conversation. “Do you think you’re the only one who can save the day up there? The only one already committed to playing hero? The House has its defenders, and they’re good. Believe me. They’re ready, and they know what they’re doing. Let them do their jobs. We need you to stay…put.”
“For how long?” Jack asked.
“As long as it takes,” Gavin said.
“Look, I’m fine. I can make another run right now.”
“No one’s fine this soon after a run. Especially like the one you had.”
“Six hours. I’ll wait six.”
“No. You’ll wait until you’re authorized,” Gavin said. “I’ll make you a deal. While you’re waiting, I’ll send Zeke down there to work on a sketch of the girl with you.”
Jack sighed, knowing Gavin was right. He had to be honest with himself. He was in no shape to attempt a reconnaissance, or a rescue mission. Go now, and he wouldn’t be the only one in danger. Considering the lousy shape he was in after this latest run, he could get others killed.
“All right,” he said.
“Good,” Gavin said. “Zeke left two hours ago. He should be at the diner in Yarnsport in another hour-forty-five.”
Zeke was half way here? Gavin had put his plans in motion before Jack had even called back. Figured. His superior, with his cold, Rubik’s cube of a mind, rarely surprised him. Though it did reassure Jack that in the midst of onrushing tragedy, Gavin could still be human. He hadn’t written off the Lost One after all.
When Gavin spoke again, it was as if he’d read Jack’s mind.
“We could be dead at any moment,” his boss said. “It doesn’t mean we have to stop being who we are.”
Chapter 8
Lara picked her way over the hundreds of bodies that scattered the ground, smoke and a noxious chemical that burned her eyes, still rising into the night air. Only a few of the bodies were complete, with arms, legs, a head. Most were pieces, many no longer recognizable as human.
Dizziness sent her stumbling forward, unsteady on her feet at the unexpected transition from her cell to this place.
What am I doing back here?
It was the same dream. Why was she dreaming it again? She never had the same nightmare twice. Yet, she was held captive by it, made to see the same things as before, play the same role.
She reached out for the trunk of a nearby tree to keep herself upright and her hand came away covered in gore. As before, she doubled over and tried to vomit, but her body wasn’t any more successful at purging itself this time. Thankfully she was too spent, too drugged to give the pain that sank, along with someone’s blood and viscera, into her hand much notice.
Hasn’t this already happened? Aren’t these people already dead?
She went through all the motions she had the first time, bent down to wipe her hand on the grass, held her knees and moaned and rocked in an effort to comfort herself. Stood up again and turned in a circle to count the five guttering, collapsing buildings.
Then she waited for it to all be over. Steeled herself for the unseen hand to grab her ankle.
Except it didn’t happen. The scene didn’t end. Nothing rescued her from the smell of burning bodies. Or the quiet stare of the child with the scorched remains of a stuffed dog beneath her, but no arms to hold it.
Wake up!
Lara began to wail, low in her throat, barely audible. Somehow she knew this place and these people. She’d seen their faces before somewhere. Hadn’t she?
Please, stop this. Wake up.
What about the people in the farther buildings she could see that hadn’t been destroyed. Where were they? Why wasn’t anyone rushing out to check for survivors?
Lara.
Someone whispered her name, the sound coming from behind her.
Lara.
She knew who called. It was the one voice she didn’t want to hear. Not now. Not here.
Lara.
Hearing the voice meant something bad had happened, worse even than this unfathomable atrocity. The voice asked her to turn and look. Out of the periphery of her eye, a figure took shape–
“Don’t make me look!” Lara cried. “Please, don’t make me look.”
Slap.
“Is she running?” the older of her captors, the one who manned the cart of medical implements, asked.
Grey Man studied her, and then gave a sour look.
“She’s hallucinating,” he said.
“Now what?”
“We wait. She’s useless to us like this.”
He backed out of her field of vision.
Chapter 9
Yarnsport’s only diner served soft shell crab omelets for breakfast, as well as fried oyster bacon cakes, which drew a huge crowd, even on a Tuesday morning. Jack settled for the more plebian eggs and sausage with toast and tasted none of it. He simply ingested and focused on the current task, doing everything he could to find his Lost One.
On one hand, it made him uncomfortable discussing society business in such a public place. On the other, the 1920s house turned restaurant overlooking the bay was a noisy tourist trap. People at one table couldn’t possibly hear what those at neighboring tables said. Zeke had also managed to score a booth tucked into an alcove, where they’d have a visual on anyone coming toward them with at least five seconds warning.
“Okay,” Zeke said, and swiped a finger across his tablet’s screen in Jack’s direction. The image on Zeke’s screen appeared on Jack’s laptop a moment later. “How’s she look now?”
Jack had worked with Zeke several times before. In his early thirties, the former Detroit PD police sketch artist was the only one the Society had in its membership. A dreamrunner whose sole run had resulted in him losing his left leg below the knee, Zeke had benched himself for good. However, he’d once told Jack he’d probably off himself from boredom if he wasn’t in the thick of things. Due to the unique way finders worked to locate Lost Ones, often a sketch, created in collaboration with Zeke, was the only clue they had to identify a new, previously unknown runner. Zeke was almost preternaturally skilled at what he did and Jack valued his abilities highly.
While he never twinned himself after that first ill-fated attempt, Zeke enjoyed traveling the fields on occasion, where he claimed it was easier to uncover information people tried to hide from one another. Jack never thought of that in-between world, with its landscape of golden, deceptively tranquil plains and convoluted mazes, as anything other than a perilous version of Grand Central Station. In order to run from Point A to Point B all runners had to connect through the fields. Setting foot in and never coming out again was the sobering prospect of every run. The idea that someone would willingly spend time in there, poking around in the psychic pollution given off by the billions of people on the planet as they slept, was not something Jack considered fun. People dreamed ugly. They dreamed of worlds where the rules of physics did not apply. The darkest twists and turns of their minds were let out to play in the fields. Jack preferred to spend as little time as he could contemplating his fellow humans’ inner realities.
Zeke, though, was about the closest the Society had to a psychic nerd. If he wanted to go tromping around in that golden hellhole, more power to him.
“Better,” Jack said, studying the computerized sketch on his laptop. “But her eyes are a little larger, or else her face is thinner and that makes them look larger. Her lips are more beautiful than this, and more forlorn.”
“Forlorn?” Zeke asked, suddenly more interested than he had been seconds ago
. “Beautiful?”
Jack growled a warning. “That’s what I said.”
“Okay.” Zeke’s dark eyes examined him, curiosity evident. “Okay. Forlorn. Forlorn, how? The program has a limited number of descriptors I can plug in which translate to changes in features, threatening, angry, cold, etcetera, but nothing even close to–”
“I don’t care,” Jack said. “You’re the artistic genius. Use your talent and interpret what I tell you.”
Zeke swept a hand over his shaved black head, the gesture indicating frustration and a hint of nervousness. The shaved head was a new thing. Jack had his suspicions Zeke did it attempting a Ving Rhames or Bruce Willis action star look, but he wasn’t built for action. He was built like an artist. The most shaving did for him was make him look…bald.
The hell if Jack would say anything, though, and hurt a friend’s feelings.
“All right,” Zeke said and went back to work on his tablet. “Give me a couple minutes. Let me see what I can do.”
Jack finished his food, wishing they could hurry up this meeting. He wanted to get back to the cabin. He knew what Gavin had told him. He wasn’t supposed to go for another run until he received authorization, but he wasn’t planning to wait. As soon as they were done here, he was mounting his own personal search party for Taylor March. The sooner Taylor was found, the sooner he could get back to his Lost One.
“Something else,” Jack said. “When I was there I saw a uniform on her bed. It had a patch.”
Zeke looked up, all business. “Describe it.”
“I only saw the shirt. Khaki. Cotton. Short-sleeved. Crisply tailored.”
“What did the patch say?”
“It had one, no two lines of text. I couldn’t read the words, but it had this picture on it of a bird. A seagull, I think.”
“A seagull. You’re sure? In flight?” Zeke asked. “Did it look like that cliché V-shaped image of a bird you see on tourist junk around here? You know Sunday painters and their seascapes with seagulls flying against a sunset?”
“No. The bird wasn’t flying. It was just standing there. The gull body, two legs.”
“Like you’d see if it was wading along the shoreline.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure it was a gull, not some other water bird? A plover, sandpiper, grebe?”
“It was a bird. Grey-suited Nazis were abducting my Lost One from right under my watch.”
“Okay.”
“You think I had time–”
“Okay.”
“–to reach for an Audubon field guide?”
“Okay, Jack.” Zeke put up a hand to forestall any more of Jack’s exhausted tirade. “I hear you. It was a bird. I can work with that.”
Jack saw him open up a new screen on his tablet.
“What shape was the patch? Square? Rectangular? Circular?”
“Rectangular,” Jack said. “Vertical, not horizontal.”
“Sides straight or bowed outward?”
“Bowed.”
“Background color?”
“White.”
“You said two lines of text. Above or below the bird, or both?” Zeke asked.
“Above and below. One line of text above and one under the bird.”
“Good. We’re getting somewhere.”
As Jack watched, the patch came into being on the tablet. Zeke’s fingers flew over the device, deft and sure.
“Printed or embroidered?’
Jack thought about it. They’d ventured into the more hazy parts of his memory.
“Printed. No, embroidered,” he answered.
“Color? Or colors?”
“Just one. Blue.” Jack searched the dining room for something in a comparable hue. “Like that.” He pointed at a cutesy tschotske of a lighthouse sitting on the fireplace mantel in the dining room.
“Periwinkle,” Zeke said.
“Whatever,” Jack said. “That’s all I remember.”
“Any way you can narrow down a geographical range for me?”
“Western hemisphere.”
“Gee, that’s specific.”
“It’s all you’re going to get.”
“The patch could be from anywhere with a coastline,” Zeke said. “Anything. Local fish and wildlife, some rinky-dink police department, marine organization. For all we know the patch might belong to a private contracting service with the word seagull in its name.”
“She didn’t strike me as the HVAC repairwoman type, Zeke.”
Zeke toggled back to his original screen with the Lost One’s sketch. “Yeah. I’ll grant you that. This her?”
Another swipe of the artist’s finger and the drawing on Jack’s laptop refreshed itself.
Jack let out a heavy breath. That face. The tortured girl whose eyes he knew. The one he would not abandon if it were his last act as a finder.
“That’s her,” he said. “Or close enough.”
Getting up from the table, he tossed down several bills to cover the meal and tip.
“Thanks.”
It was time to get back and do his job.
Five minutes later, Zeke completed some refinements on the sketch and forwarded it via email. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
“We’re done here,” he reported.
“How’d it go?”
“We got a good sketch. Best he’s ever given me. Plus, he remembered a solid detail that should help us find her.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but.’ ”
“He’s wound pretty tight.”
“We all are right now.”
“No. You’re not getting me,” Zeke said. “This one’s different for him. He called her ‘my Lost One.’ ”
“Every finding is personal for him.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t usually tell me I need to make the lips more beautiful. Or describe them as ‘forlorn.’ ”
Zeke waited through a long silence on the line.
“I see,” came the response at last.
“Yeah, I hope you do.”
Zeke started to cut the call, when he heard the question.
“Are you telling me you’re the only one among us who isn’t wound tight right now?”
“Gavin, my life was shit before the Society. Pure shit,” Zeke said. “What I’ve gotten so far, the reprieve from the demons? That’s more time than I ever expected. I can die a happy man.”
Another long pause.
“Thank you, Zeke. Good job.”
The line went dead.
Chapter 10
Gavin hadn’t called back by the time Jack returned to the cabin. Jack had tossed his latest phone for another burner, per protocol anytime a finder made a call from a safe house, or even inserted the phone’s battery while staying in one. Safe house locations were sacrosanct, and it was amazing what could be pulled off a phone these days, including, but not limited to the last several hundred locations from which calls had been made. Gavin had his newest number, but so far the phone remained silent.
Jack took it as a sign he was on his own. Likely to be pissed when he found out, Gavin would view his decision to initiate a run as a violation of orders. As far as Jack was concerned, however, they were all on borrowed time anyway.
Sometimes rented out to tourists so that anyone watching would believe it was just another vacation rental, the Society owned the cabin, as they did all other houses and apartments where finders lived while on assignment. Each unit required a specific set of features to protect its location from possible discovery should a rogue non-Society runner ever follow an agent back to his or her true body. Steel doors lockable with a key from the inside were mandatory, plus the ability to cover all windows in less than a minute in a way that couldn’t be countermanded from inside the dwelling. An intruder who jumped in, but couldn’t get a door or window open, wouldn’t know where the house was located, and thus couldn’t send in other operatives, or trace ownership of the house back to the Society. Drapes and blinds didn’t cut it to protect wind
ows, since they could be easily pushed aside. Tinted security film that wouldn’t crack under repeated blows from a sledgehammer was one option. Jack’s cabin used another, automated roll down security shutters, the type typically installed on expensive homes in hurricane prone areas.
Jack locked his front and back doors, lowered the shutters, locked the shutter controls box, and then stowed the keys in a crevice in the wall behind his bed he’d noticed the last time he was here. In over twelve years as a finder he’d never been tracked home on a run, but who knew what resources the Greys now had at their disposal? By virtue of who they were, dreamrunners tended toward a level of preparedness some said bordered on paranoia. Just because such precautions hadn’t yet been needed, didn’t mean they weren’t justified. Any unexpected visitor who detected Jack’s dream signature in the fields and hitched a ride here would find himself in one big locked box, with no view to the outside world.
Jack shed his shirt and boots. It was always easiest to twin himself wearing exactly what he already had on, but he wasn’t planning to split off a doppelganger. If it turned out he needed footwear and a shirt, he could create something on the other end. This trip he intended to visit the fields only in his search for Taylor. He could afford the comfort.
Checking the thermostat in the bedroom, he set it to a temperature that would keep his body warm enough without a blanket or other covering, and then lay down on the bed. Closing his eyes, he went through the ritual of self-hypnosis that guided him into the proper state, and would allow him to project himself where he needed to go. Deep, slow breaths, relaxation, a narrowing and heightening of consciousness, engaging his special gift. In his mind’s eye, he visualized the glowing barrier that would lead him into the golden mists and oddly horizonless plains of the fields.
Ninety-eight percent of all runners required one crucial element before they could start a run, a specific destination in mind. They could go anywhere they desired, but only if they knew what that place looked like beforehand down to the last detail. Neither drawings, maps, nor verbal descriptions could ensure a successful run. A photograph was the absolute minimum. Prior to the advent of photography, few dreamrunners dared to twin themselves, restricting themselves to what Jack was doing now, traveling the fields without attempting to bilocate. It was only after photography came into its own in the later half of the 19th century that the risks of materializing inside a wall or floor or other solid object were reduced to the point that twinning became commonplace.
Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel) Page 4