Cat in the Flock (Dreamslippers Book 1)

by Lisa Brunette

  Cat got up and pulled down the card. Welcome home, it read. It was from Lee.

  "Have any more long-distance dreamslips with him?"

  Cat hesitated, fingering the card in her hand. "Yes. A recurring one, about the war. And then one about me, which was extraordinarily… intimate, not to mention, um, somehow wrong. There ought to be laws against having sex with yourself."

  Granny Grace laughed. "Well, if Jim Plantation had his way, that would be illegal."

  Cat smiled.

  "I think Greg likes you, too," said Granny Grace. "Doesn't he?" She smiled, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. "Lee represents dangerous territory, but Greg is risky new ground. Don't you agree?"

  "Yes on both counts," Cat said, feeling immoral for entertaining the idea of going out with Greg when Lee was sending such strong signals. She inhaled the powerful scent of the roses sitting on the table in front of her. "A dozen roses! That's over the top. We only had one date. At least, officially."

  "One date, and you're not counting that whole weird St. Louis thing he did. Plus, you've known each other for a decade."

  "Yeah. Since we were in junior high."

  "You're in trouble, kid," Granny Grace said. "Big trouble."

  "I guess I better give Lee a call," said Cat. "Oh, after I fax Larry Price's e-mail to Tim at the county sheriff's office. It'll help them find the digital more quickly."

  "Good idea," concurred Granny Grace, who bid her good night and sauntered off to her own room. Cat ducked into Granny Grace's office and faxed to Tim the copy of the e-mail that Sherrie had carried with her all this time, hoping it would help his team work on that end. While waiting for the fax to go through, she sat down on a stool and called up Lee's number on her cell.

  "Hi, Cat." He picked up on the first ring.

  "Hi." Oh, yeah. She was feeling particularly eloquent tonight.

  "Did you get the flowers?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you like them?"

  "Yes."

  "I guess if I'm going to get anywhere in this conversation, I better not ask yes-or-no questions. What are you wearing?"

  "A parka."

  "You're lying."

  Cat broke on that line. "Why is everyone accusing me of lying these days?" she asked.

  "Because you seem like a perfect angel on the first date, but then it's mighty difficult for a man to get a second, unless he flies half way across the country to save you."

  "I don't recall being saved," Cat said. "Not even in the religious sense. And I guess you're saying that road trip we took wasn't a date."

  "It's not a date if one of us is working," he replied.

  "Fair enough," Cat said. "But you haven't asked me out on a second."

  "I'm asking now."

  "That doesn't sound like a question."

  "Cat McCormick, I'd like to take you to dinner and a movie. How does that sound?"

  Cat giggled. "You're still not really asking me on a date. You're asking me how it sounds."

  "For the love of God, woman," he said. "Will you please go out with me on a second date?"

  "Yes, Lee. If you didn't ask me soon, I was going to ask you myself."

  She decided to table the question of whether or not she should see Greg. For now, this seemed right.

  Chapter 16

  She was lying in bed, unable to move. It was as if she were paralyzed.

  Cat felt herself sweating with fear. The mattress beneath her was already damp, and the dampness made her feel cold. It was a vicious cycle of sweating, feeling the bed grow damper, and then growing colder, but all the while, she was absolutely unable to move. Whose dream was this? She couldn't tell—at first. Then she looked at her hands and recognized the orange, glittery nail polish at once: Wendy's.

  She hadn't thought about her undercover BFF in a while, and doing so now made her flinch with pain. But she was in Wendy's dream now, Wendy's body, Wendy's head. And the terror consuming Wendy was undeniable. Cat felt as if she were going to suffocate from it. She desperately searched along the edges of her mind for where she could pry herself away from Wendy, and then finally she was out.

  She stood by the side of Wendy's bed, looking around. It was a utilitarian metal bed, the kind one would expect to see in a military hospital. On the wall was a God's eye made from Popsicle sticks and yarn. There was a battered dresser that someone had tried to spruce up by covering it in a coat of white paint. On the wall above it were pop star posters with creases across the stars' bellies where the posters had been folded and stapled into magazines. A small closet in one corner had no door, and its contents were spilling out into the room.

  Wendy herself held in one arm a Winnie-the-Pooh bear and in the other a Snoopy doll. She clutched them to her as if they could protect her from whatever she was afraid of.

  The door creaked slowly open then, emitting a sliver of light from a hallway. Cat stood and waited, and at first she didn't think anything had caused the door to open, as she didn't see a soul. But then something moved in her peripheral vision, and she realized there was a very large snake slithering across the floor, right toward Wendy's bed.

  It slid up the leg of the bed and under Wendy's covers. Cat wanted to do something to help her friend. She thought of her grandmother's telescoping umbrella that pulled her out of the waters of Puget Sound in her own dream. But she found herself paralyzed again, standing there, even though she was no longer stuck to Wendy's consciousness. She could only stand by and watch her friend in terror.

  Cat could see the snake move under the covers, between Wendy's legs. It kept going till it reached her crotch. Then it reared up once and struck her there, between her legs, and held on. Wendy screamed but couldn't move to disengage the snake, which had sunk its fangs in deep. Then Wendy must have awakened, as Cat was let out of the dream.

  Cat woke in her own bed in the Grand Green Griffin, sweaty and breathing hard. What had just happened? Wendy was a couple thousand miles away, and they hadn't spoken since Anita kicked Cat out of the church. Could it be possible? Was this another long-distance dreamslipping experience?

  She looked at the clock. It was 4:30 a.m. Since St. Louis was two hours ahead, it was already 6:30 there, which Cat reasoned wouldn't be too unacceptably early to contact someone, especially if you suspected she was awake anyway. Cat pulled out her phone and began typing Wendy a text message: Hey there, Wendy. I apologize for not being honest with you about who I was. But I hope you know I did what I had to do. I really admire your strength.

  She got a reply at once, which startled her: You're lucky I'm awake this early. Stupid nightmare. What are you doing up? Your guilt about not telling me the truth keeping you awake?

  Cat replied, Yeah, Wendy. You were on my mind. You okay?

  I'm okay, Catholic girl. Or was that part a lie, too?

  LOL. Yeah, I'm really Catholic, Cat wrote. Can I call you later?

  I guess, Wendy wrote back. Did you get Jim arrested?

  Cat hesitated. Let's talk later, she said.

  Fine, Wendy said.

  Cat went back to sleep.

  Later that morning, Cat got a call from Tim Schlein, who told her that the Seattle Police Department and St. Clair County Sheriff's Office were working together on the Plantation case, and that Jim was being flown back to St. Louis. Police had been unable to find Anita.

  Sherrie and Ruthie had already been questioned by Seattle police and had given full reports. Granny Grace told them they could stay at her place as long as they needed to, as Greg's apartment was pretty small. But Sherrie was eager to start her new life in Seattle, so Granny Grace had taken her to a career center to talk to a counselor there. Ruthie would be spending the afternoon with her Uncle Greg as soon as he picked her up.

  After Cat got off the phone with Tim, she sat in the Perfectly Pink Parlor with Ruthie, playing with a couple of Barbie dolls that Dave and Simon had brought over for her.

  Cat was passing time till her date with Lee.

  Greg wa
s already late picking up Ruthie due to a Tony-related crisis at work, and Lee was due any minute. So Cat was facing the awkward possibility that her two would-be suitors might cross paths.

  When the doorbell rang, Cat was still sitting on the floor playing with Ruthie. Greg had not yet arrived, and it was time for her date with Lee.

  When she saw Lee through the plate-glass window on the front door, Cat simultaneously felt her heart leap and cringe at the sight of him. She opened the door and let herself be swept up into his arms. It was like coming home. He smelled of musky soap and cologne, and he'd dressed up for their date in a pair of dark trousers and a starched white shirt.

  "Baby," he said. "I've missed you."

  "I've missed you, too," she said, enjoying the embrace for a moment but then disengaging herself before she really wanted to. "But I can't leave yet. I'm sort of babysitting."

  "Babysitting? I thought you were a PI."

  "Yeah, well, it's apparently part of the job description," she smirked. "C'mon in. You'll love Ruthie—she's a doll."

  Lee moved to come in, but a voice behind him pierced the air with its shrillness, stopping the two of them dead in their tracks.

  "You Jezebel!"

  Cat looked up to see none other than Anita Briggs, pointing a gun at her. As soon as Cat saw the woman, she felt the inevitability of the moment. It was as if the last time she'd seen Anita, she'd had a premonition of this exact event. Deep down, she'd known she and Anita would meet again.

  "You're an agent of Satan!" Anita yelled. "You tricked me!" And then the gun went off with a loud bursting sound. Lee jumped in front of Cat, taking the bullet meant for her.

  Cat instinctively tried to catch him, but he was too heavy and tumbled through her arms to the floor. In sickening slow motion, Cat saw him slumped there on his side, red liquid leaking out of his head and covering the entryway floor like spilled paint. She knelt down and put her hand on his head to stop it. Oh, to make it stop! She needed to make it stop.

  Cat couldn't hear anything but the sound of her own screaming. "Lee, no!" she kept yelling. "No, Lee! Not you! No!"

  But then she was aware of Anita standing there, and then another loud shot, the sound ricocheting through the neighborhood, and Anita crumpling to the ground.

  Behind Anita stood Greg, his gun still in his hand. He put it away and pulled out his cell phone. Cat could hear him talking to 911, but it seemed to her as if he were on the other side of a long tunnel.

  Cat cradled Lee in her arms. He opened his eyes. "He's getting away!" he cried, trying to get up.

  Cat held him. "No, he's not getting away," she said, making Lee look at her. "It's me, Lee. We got him. He's dead."

  "I think I shot the kid," Lee said. "His shield." Lee's eyes began to close. She was losing him.

  "Listen to me, Lee," she said, shaking him. "The kid's okay. We got him. You're okay. Stay with me. The medic's coming."

  "The kid," repeated Lee. He reached for the left side of his head. "My ear?"

  "You've been hit," Cat told him, feeling herself break into a cry.

  Greg knelt down, putting his hand on Cat's shoulder. He'd grabbed a blanket from the parlor and was holding it on Lee's head wound.

  When the ambulance arrived, they took Anita Briggs away on a stretcher, her face covered by a white sheet. She was already dead.

  They tried but couldn't stabilize Lee at the scene. He was taken to Swedish Hospital, where they worked for hours to save him. Cat stayed at the hospital waiting to hear, Granny Grace with her as much as she could be. By morning he was stable but still unconscious, and they were worried that he wasn't going to wake up. He was effectively in a coma.

  Granny Grace brought Cat a blue cornmeal muffin from home and placed a vase of purple tulips next to Lee's bed. Cat was sitting with him, holding his hand.

  "I keep thinking he's safer in a war zone than he is with me," Cat said wryly, and Granny Grace squeezed her shoulder.

  "It's not your fault, Cat. Anita would have shot anyone. Maybe you."

  "She would have shot me next if Greg hadn't shown up."

  "I'm so grateful he was there," Granny Grace said. "That was really something."

  "Lee saved me," Cat said, her voice broken by a sob.

  They stood in silence for a moment, watching the blips on Lee's monitors. Tears streamed down Cat's face. Granny Grace held her hand.

  "He doesn't deserve this," Cat finally said. "Not after all he's done."

  "I know, Cat," she replied. "I know."

  Cat hadn't told Granny Grace about what Lee said when he was shot, about shooting the kid. Could that have been the truth? She didn't believe so, not Lee. If something like that had happened, he'd be the first to convict himself, even if it was an accident. Lee didn't believe in human beings as collateral damage. It had to be lingering guilt, some manifestation of the trauma of what he'd been involved with over there.

  Cat looked at his monitors, willing them to change, to register something more than the bland blip signaling he was alive, but not alert. His hand was limp. Every once in a while, his body would jerk a bit, but she couldn't feel him there. It was as if he were in another country, in another time.

  While Cat sat in the hospital waiting room aching to hear about Lee, she watched as the Plantation Revival Church dominated news reports, with two top stories making headlines. The first was about Jim Plantation being taken into custody by the Seattle police, in coordination with authorities in southern Illinois, concerning the death of Larry Price. Price's apparent suicide case had been officially reopened as a murder investigation. Anita's attempted murder of Cat, Anita's death, and Lee's critical condition were also splashed across the TV screen. All of this felt horribly surreal to Cat.

  Then there was the second reason the Plantation Church was in the news. Before word had been received that Larry Price's murder had been covered up as a suicide, the remaining church leadership had gone forward with the plans to christen the statue in the middle of campus. Before she disappeared, Anita had done a great job setting up media coverage of the event, so the statue's unveiling had been captured by more than one camera. What would have been a small news item covered strictly by ultraconservative and Christian fundamentalist outlets had instead gone viral, the footage playing for the entire world to see.

  It was the Reverend Reynolds Chambers who presided over the press conference. Most outlets had cropped his introduction, showing only the moment the sculpture lights came on to reveal the inscription, One in spirit, 1 Sam 18:1, pairing it with headlines like "Murders, Gay Love Scandal Rock Plantation Church." But a few aired his introduction, which went like this:

  "Our church was led by two men who sacrificed everything for Jesus' love. Today Larry Price isn't here to unveil this sculpture himself, but it is a symbol of how he labored on behalf of the church and on behalf of Christ. No matter what we think of his death, in life, Larry Price was a true prayer warrior, and none of us should ever forget that. Amen."

  Cat wondered about Chambers, whose sole crime, it turned out, was a certain leering hypocrisy where women were concerned. How much had he known about all this? Cat thought back to his sermon the day she met him for the first time. It's possible he'd seen what was coming and had already mindfully begun to separate the congregation from Jim. He was a smart man, and it would be up to him now to salvage the church.

  Cat also talked to Wendy, who called to see if Cat was all right after the news broke. "I'm praying for your soldier," Wendy said. "He's the one you were talking to that night, right?"

  "Yes," Cat said.

  "And to think, I assumed you were doing some kind of story on us. But the whole time, you were actually some badass PI. Imagine that."

  "I don't feel very badass right now," Cat said.

  "Listen, I want to tell you something," Wendy announced. "I don't like being lied to. It's like the worst thing you can do to me, but I forgive you."

  "Thanks, Wendy," Cat said. "I don't deserve it, but that mean
s a lot to me."

  There was a pause, and then Cat ventured, "You've been through some shit, haven't you?"

  She heard Wendy sigh on the other end. "Yeah," she admitted. "Shit that nearly broke me, if you must know. But I survive."

  "Well, I wish I were there in St. Louis so we could hang out," Cat said. "But you can call me anytime just to talk. I mean it."

  "Likewise, Cat," said Wendy. "And I might just get a wild hair to come out there and visit you, too."

  "Well, you have an open invitation," smiled Cat. "Anytime."

  Chapter 17

  Here it all was again: the rotisserie chicken smell, the glaring fluorescent lights, the two-for-one olives. She was in the grocery store again; she was in Lee's recurring nightmare.

  This time, she understood it. The grocery store was like any ordinary grocery store here in the States, but the enemy soldier and Lee were from Iraq. His two worlds, colliding in one dream. But what had really happened that day?

  Instead of peeling away from him, she tuned into his thoughts, his feelings. His heart was erratic; she could feel his pulse in her ears.

  "You're not really here, Lee. You're dreaming," she heard herself say. Her own voice was so loud in her head that it seemed to reverberate in her skull.

  It made him stop. He stood in the frozen food aisle, looking around.

  She tried it again. "You're not really here. You're dreaming. You keep having this same dream, Lee. Look at your hands."

  He looked. She looked. His hands were muscled, veined, with calluses on the pads of his palms. Then he gazed at the glass door of the ice cream case, as if he expected to see Cat's face reflected there. She couldn't believe it. She could hear his thoughts—he recognized her voice. Amazing.

  Of course, only Lee's face stared back at them in the reflection. But somehow, miraculously, she knew he knew that she was with him. He smiled into the glass.

  She couldn't stifle a giggle, and it seemed as if he heard it. For a moment, it was as if the two of them were playing. He waved his hand.

  "This didn't happen in the States," she said. "You were in Iraq. Take us back there. We need to go back and see what happened."