by Davis Bunn
“I’ll be fine.” The needles clicked a moment. “Those bodyguards hovering around the entrance to your complex, they’re yours?”
“They are assigned to me, but by other people.”
“Are they part of the problem?”
“I wish I knew.”
Dorothy nodded, as though she had expected nothing less. “You go get some sleep. Nobody’s getting in here tonight.”
• • •
The dream came soon after she shut her eyes, or so it seemed the next morning. The sensation Elena carried from sleep was as strong as after every other dream. But this morning there was no dread. No screams that sawed at the pre-dawn light. Only bliss.
The problem was, the hypnosis had not worked. Elena recalled nothing whatsoever. Nothing, that is, except the dream itself.
She lay and stared at the ceiling and felt new tendrils of doubt swirl about her. What if the dreams were genuine? What if she and the other dreamers shared real moments of foretelling? What if they had somehow managed to pierce the veil of now? What if her entire investigation was not merely wrong, but dangerous? What if the divine hand was truly at work, and she was the one seeking to wrest control back to a human level? What if God did not respond to her prayers because he had already said everything he intended?
When she emerged from the bedroom, the retired police officer stood in the kitchen alcove. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thank you.” Seldom had the fresh-brewed coffee aroma smelled better.
Dorothy handed Elena a mug. “Everything was quiet out here.”
Elena poured milk from the little pitcher. The fog resulting from the dream might have been more pleasant than on other such mornings. But the sense of disconnect was just the same, if not stronger. Elena stared across the living room and out past the screened porch to where the water sparkled. The dream seemed more real than her own kitchen. “Thank you again. For being here.”
“No problem.” Dorothy refreshed her own mug. “The only thing stirring last night was you.”
Elena paused with the mug halfway to her mouth. “Excuse me?”
Dorothy asked, “Do you sleepwalk?”
The words created a jarring discord in her brain. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re right. It’s none of my business.”
“No, that’s not . . .” Elena drank from the mug, set it down, and used both hands to rub her face. “Why would you ask if I sleepwalk?”
“Well, you popped up about an hour after you lay down. I thought maybe you’d heard something. I called out, but you didn’t respond.”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. Don’t suppose you remember picking your phone up off the table by the lamp there and carrying it into the bathroom.”
“I . . . What?” Elena excused herself and padded back into the bathroom. There it was, her cell phone set on the little ledge above the sink. She picked it up, turned it on, and drew up the last number dialed. The screen was blank. It showed no numbers at all. Elena did not have a landline. She used this phone all the time. But the screen showed nothing. She tried to remember if this had happened before. But her mind seemed incapable of focusing.
• • •
Reed Thompson drove her into Orlando. He waved aside her concern over his missed appointments and did not speak as she described the dream and the phone and the lingering sense of disconnect.
When she had finished, Elena asked, “Is that possible? Can you sweep a phone’s memory clean?”
“If you’re asking, could I personally do it, the answer is definitely not. I have trouble switching mine on.”
“Could anyone?”
“Theoretically, outsiders can do just about anything except make a phone stand up and bark. Just before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese perfected a new parasite software that rode a cell phone signal into any phone and turned it into a locator beacon. Since then, new programs have been designed to alert a secret listener every time the phone makes a call. It also sends a duplicate text message to a third party.”
Elena continued to rub her face, trying to press her brain into a semblance of alertness. “My head feels scrambled.”
“Can hypnotism do that?”
Even trying to remember her professional studies was a trial. “Not in principal.”
“But if the hypnotic orders seek to override something more deeply embedded, something stronger, what then?”
“I suppose . . . it might make the subject feel exactly as I do.”
“So let’s just review what we know.”
“We don’t know anything at all,” Elena groaned. “And that’s the problem.”
“Bear with me a minute. Say some unknown enemy uses the phone to send instructions, tell the dreamer what to experience. And at the end of that call, they give instructions about the next time.”
“The next time.”
“Right. They say when the subject needs to call them back. This means even if the dreamers are shielded by guards and have family sleeping in the bed with them, the enemy can still reprogram the dream state when and where they want.” Reed shook his head. “I have to tell you, it’s diabolical, but it’s brilliant.”
“What if we’re wrong? What if these dreams are a genuine warning from beyond?”
Reed looked over. “When we spoke this morning, I asked how you felt. Remember what you said?”
“Blissfully happy. And extremely sad.”
“To my mind, that’s all the warning I need. You have an external source that is seeking to implant an emotional state. And a deeper source, a real source, that is telling you what you actually feel.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Elena, there is nothing about this entire scenario that corresponds to what the Scriptures tell us.” Reed bunched one fist and softly struck the wheel in time to his words. “That is the key. That is the one eternal, unchanging element by which we must judge everything that life throws at us. Including this.”
She reached over and took hold of the fist. At her touch, his fingers unfolded and intertwined with hers. “Thank you for being here for me. So much.”
• • •
Elena shut her eyes and leaned her head against the seat back, willing herself to do whatever it took to push the night away and focus. After a time, Reed turned on the news channel. Two stories dominated the airwaves. Overnight the One World Bank concept had apparently caught fire. The same spokeswoman with her solemn tone and strong East Asian accent talked of a need for a unified response to avert the global catastrophe.
These same words were repeated by several foreign leaders, then altered slightly and mouthed by two members of Congress. Three Wall Street executives trumpeted their own versions. Pundits dissected the latest developments with ecstatic relief. The roiling markets appeared to have calmed somewhat. Portugal was apparently being dragged back from the brink of national insolvency. The New England Bank announced it would reopen its doors the next day. Gold had retreated almost two hundred dollars an ounce from its latest stratospheric high. The newscaster finished the story with the statement that yet another announcement was soon expected from the Orlando dreamers. The dreamers had become the oracle of the crisis. The world awaited whatever it was they had to say. That was fact.
The other news story was the hurricane. Hector was its name, a category four, with winds touching a hundred and thirty miles an hour, larger now than the state of Texas. The newscaster described the havoc Hector had left in its wake after brushing against the Dominican Republic. Half of the hurricane watchers and their computer models showed Hector taking aim at Cape Canaveral, which meant that in three days Melbourne would be directly in the eye of the storm. The other computer models showed it moving off to sea, bypassing land entirely. Elena wished she could feel more concern, but just then she had room only for the tempest surrounding her.
Elena did not open her eyes again until her phone rang. When she saw who it was, she
answered, “Good morning, Jacob.”
“How was your night?”
“Jarring. But pleasant.” They had agreed to be cryptic in all such open conversations. She imagined her tone was as flat and distant as his. “Agatha had the dream?”
“She did, yes.” He paused. “She’s found it very difficult to concentrate this morning.”
“I feel the same.”
“Nothing else to report from this end,” Jacob went on. “Sorry.”
“No. It’s the same here.” A few images flashed through the morning glare. A memory wavered in the heat. Something she had not recalled before just then. But she could not draw it into focus. It was like trying to read a book through the waters of a rushing stream.
“Elena?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Agatha says she’ll be in touch as soon as she has something to report. In the meantime, she asked me to tell you that she is more certain than ever. Despite everything to the contrary.”
Elena breathed a sigh of pure relief. “Thank you both.”
• • •
The SuenaMed headquarters loomed ahead of them, a molten image of commercial might. Elena squinted against the glare and the fear that filled her. “I don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“But I have to.” She looked at Reed, hoping against hope. “Don’t I?”
“The only way we can buy the necessary time is by your acting as close to normal as—”
“Nothing about this entire process is normal. The whole experience defies normal.”
Reed’s only response was to reach over and take her hand.
“I can’t be their spokesperson. I just can’t.”
“I understand.”
“But they’ll be expecting it.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll pray. Then you’ll go in there, knowing God will guide your steps. And you will listen for his guidance. And you will do his will.”
“But what if . . .”
He waited until he was certain she would leave the rest of her fear unspoken. “Let’s bow our heads.”
24
Perhaps it should have felt odd, entering what increasingly appeared to be the enemy’s lair, with neither weapon nor protection, not even her phone. Not to mention the gaggle of late-arriving reporters who tried to confront her in the lobby. She would have been mauled, except a guard rushed over. The stocky man inserted himself between Elena and the yammering reporters. He was swiftly joined by Reginald, who ushered her toward the elevators while rudely shoving the reporters away.
But all Elena could think of, as the elevator doors shut on the lobby and the din, was how much she just wanted to be certain. About the direction she was taking. About the threat. About the nation and the economy. About what God wanted her to do.
She realized Reginald had said something to her. Elena replied, “I want you to call off your bodyguards.”
“Dr. Burroughs, I’m not sure . . .” He stopped as the doors opened.
“I want them gone,” she said firmly, and strode away.
To her vast relief, the dreamers’ conference call was cut short. Several of the major television networks begged them to start the news conference early, as they wanted to carry the conference live before the markets opened. As she was rushed down the main corridor and into the jammed conference hall, Elena struggled for some way of telling a tight-lipped Rachel and the others that she would not be their spokesperson any longer. Every seat was taken. The lights from the television crews were blinding.
Then the conference room door opened, and Trevor Tenning entered. The CEO of SuenaMed wore an ethereal smile as he walked over and said, “You had the dream.”
“I did. Yes.”
“It shows.” His face appeared to almost glow. “It came to me again last night as well. Is there any reason why I should have had it a day early?”
“I don’t . . . I can’t say.”
“I understand.” He slipped into the chair next to hers and nodded a greeting to the others. “Perhaps the intention was for me to help save the bank while there was still time.”
“I . . . Perhaps.”
“Or maybe it was to emphasize a different need.” He drummed his fingers on the table, as though in deep thought. “Perhaps it is time for me to become the face before the world.”
Elena nodded slowly, watching him closely.
“You have done a remarkable job as spokesperson for our group. But I am just wondering if perhaps this was the reason why I had this dream before all the others. So that I might prepare myself for this moment.”
She knew he wanted to sound thoughtful. As though he were still working through all this in his head. But the words carried a rehearsed quality.
Elena rose from her chair and moved over to stand by the side wall next to Rachel.
This time, Trevor Tenning’s reaction was genuine. “I didn’t mean to supplant you, Dr. Burroughs.”
She waved for him to begin. “I’m fine right here.”
• • •
Elena slipped from the room as the news conference drew to a close. She was the first out the door. The corridor was empty. It was so quiet she could hear a computer terminal in an office she passed, tuned to an online news channel, playing a live feed of Trevor Tenning’s final remarks. Over a dozen people crowded into the office, listening to their CEO. They were totally silent, engrossed in what they assumed was the unfolding of an economic lifeline.
The elevator was glitzy in a slick corporate fashion, with polished bronze walls and a small flat screen embedded above the controls. The face of Trevor Tenning filled the screen. The sound was too low for Elena to make out his words, but she knew what he was saying. Trevor Tenning had spent three-quarters of an hour reshaping the same simple message. He was polished, adroit, and showing his worldwide audience a calming yet authoritative demeanor.
If she did not know better, Elena would have thought Trevor Tenning was born for this day and this role.
Elena crossed the lobby and was almost to the exit when one of the dark-jacketed guards called from the receptionist station, “Dr. Burroughs, wait, just a second.”
She did not stop or turn around. “What is it?”
“You’re wanted back upstairs.”
“Sorry. That’s not possible. I have to—” She let the doors close behind her, sealing off words she had no intention of saying.
The heat and thick humidity were a welcome change. She took deep drafts of the cloying air, as though she had spent the previous two hours holding her breath.
Reed pushed the passenger door open and called, “How did it go?”
“Fine. It was fine. Can we leave?”
He pulled away from the curb. On the radio a newscaster was recapping the interview. Elena reached over and cut it off.
Reed said, “You didn’t have to speak.”
“No.” She picked up her phone from the center console. “Have they called?”
“Not yet.” He stopped for a light and glanced over. “Elena . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it, Reed. Please.”
The light changed, and he started forward. “When the pressures are strongest and the harsh winds blow, it is hard to stop and accept that we’ve been visited by, well . . .”
She nodded slowly, and said softly to the sun-splashed window, “Miracles.”
Almost in response, her phone rang. She checked the readout and said, “It’s Rachel.”
“He was with you then, and he is with you now,” Reed said. “Count on it.”
When Elena opened the connection, Rachel launched straight in. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Driving home.”
“Don’t you realize how vital your presence is just now?”
“Your Mr. Tenning seemed to be doing just fine.”
“He isn’t usurping your position, Elena.”
“I never said—”
“You are the face the world associates with this phenomenon.” Rachel paused, and when she spoke next, her voice had risen almost a full octave. “And what on earth is this about you dismissing the bodyguards we assigned?”
“I’m making other arrangements.”
“They were placed there to protect you.”
“What right do you have to question any of my actions?”
“I . . . We’re concerned for your safety. Don’t forget the attack in Miami.”
“I’m not forgetting anything. This is my life, Rachel. It sounds to me like you’re trying to seal me off, control me.”
Rachel backed off a trace and tried for composure. “Obviously the pressure is getting to you. I would like to think your safety, the world’s safety, is our first concern.”
“I want your bodyguards out of my life.” Elena cut the connection. There was really nothing more that could be said without jeopardizing everything. The unspoken doubts lingered on her tongue, like a foul scent that drifted in from the wetlands beyond the highway. Her late best friend’s sister. A traitor to everything Elena and Miriam both held dear.
Elena toyed with her phone. She was tempted to turn it off. Reed must have understood, for he said, “Best leave it on. We’re still waiting to hear from the others.”
She looked at him.
“What is it?”
“I was just thinking how grateful I am that you have been brought into my life,” Elena said. “Thank you, friend.”
Reed directed his words toward the front windshield. “I’d like to be more than that. Your friend, I mean.”
She nodded slowly. “So would I.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Reed. Really.”
“Wow.” His smile competed with the sunlight. “That’s great, then.”
Elena studied this good and strong man, and wished she could recapture the ability to smile with such abandon. “Yes, Reed. It surely is.”
• • •
The phone remained silent until they exited the interstate, when Jacob rang. “Ah, I was wondering, well, when we could talk.”
“Hang on and I’ll ask.” She held a swift consultation with Reed, then Elena asked, “Do you have a pen?”