Falling Awake

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “The excitement doesn’t seem to have affected Dave and Vincent. I think they were asleep before I turned out the hall lights.”

  “They’re young,” Ellis growled. “At their age, they can sleep under any circumstances. Give ’em a few years. That’ll change.”

  She smiled against his shoulder. “You’re not that much older than they are.”

  “Sometimes it feels like centuries.” He stroked her, his hand gliding down her side to her hip. “I have, however, discovered one thing that makes me feel about twenty-three again.” He nibbled on her ear. “Hell, even better than I ever did at twenty-three.”

  “Really?” She curled her fingers in the crisp, curling hair on his chest. “What’s that?”

  “You.” He tightened his hold on her. “In fact, you make me feel a lot of things I had forgotten I could feel. Things I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel. I love you, Tango Dancer.”

  “Ellis.”

  Joy, as radiant and sparkling as the rarest of jewels, shimmered through her. It drove out the cold residue left behind by the violent events of the evening. She reached up to catch his hard face between her palms. “I fell in love with you months ago, soon after I started analyzing your dream reports. Couldn’t you tell?”

  “I hoped all that advice you tacked onto your reports meant that you felt something. Why do you think I moved out to California?”

  “You moved out to the West Coast because of me?”

  He smiled wryly. “I had a long-term plan to get to know you, see if you felt the same way about me that I felt about you. I wanted to find out if I could be part of your life.”

  She was delighted. “You planned to court me?”

  He cleared his throat. “I never thought of my plan as a courtship. Not exactly.”

  “Of course not,” she said, dismissing that clarification with an airy wave. “You were probably thinking in terms of an affair, right?”

  “It did cross my mind,” he admitted.

  “You told yourself that you would have an affair with me because anything more than that involved serious risk,” she said gently. “You’ve spent a lot of time and effort avoiding that kind of risk because you learned long ago what it’s like to experience a great loss. Anyone who went through the kind of trauma that you went through when you were twelve is bound to be very, very careful.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “When you love, you take risks.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “But we both know how to do that, don’t we?”

  “Yes.” He seemed vaguely amazed by that simple observation. He closed his hand more snugly around her waist. “As I said, I had a plan. But I got distracted.”

  “Your shoulder.” She traced the wound with her fingertips. “I know you went through a lot of pain—”

  “The shoulder was the least of my problems,” he said. Moonlight glinted on his cheekbones, casting the rest of his face into deep shadow. “The real issue was Lawson and his growing conviction that I had developed a bizarre fixation with finding a dead man. I was starting to wonder if he was right. Maybe I had gone off the deep end. Then you got fired and took off for Roxanna Beach and everything started to change.”

  She smiled and arched beneath his hand, loving the scent of him. “I was waiting for you, you know.”

  “Just like I’ve been waiting for you all my life.”

  He moved on top of her and kissed her until she stopped shivering from the aftermath of violence and trembled with passion instead.

  afterward, she felt Ellis relax as if his climax had turned off a switch somewhere inside him. She was glad the heated lovemaking had proved to be the tonic he needed to allow him to sleep. Unfortunately it did not have the same effect on her.

  She closed her eyes, willing herself to sink into oblivion.

  Nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Mmmph?” Ellis tightened his arms around her to stop her wriggling. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t sleep. I know he’s out there. I can feel him breathing.”

  “Who? Scargill? Dave? Forget ’em. They’re fine.”

  “No, not them. Better let me up. He’s not going to go away. I can’t stand the thought of him just sitting there and he knows it.”

  Reluctantly, Ellis released her. She pushed the covers aside, got to her feet, went to the door and opened it.

  Sphinx was on the other side. He rose, stalked past her into the room, heaved himself up onto the bed, settled at Ellis’s feet and went to sleep.

  Isabel got back into bed.

  “Everything okay now?” Ellis asked.

  She smiled into the darkness, loving the feel of his arm wrapped around her and the heat of his body enveloping hers.

  “Like a dream come true,” she said.

  41

  i found Maureen Sage, aka Amelia Netley’s personal dream log in her car last night.” Ellis lounged on one of the stools in front of the kitchen counter, one hand curled around a mug of freshly brewed green tea. “Got a chance to read some of it this morning. Turns out she was a Level Five herself, but she kept it a secret because she thought it would give her an edge.”

  “That was the doc, all right,” Vincent muttered. “She was always looking for an angle.”

  Ellis nodded. “Amelia-Maureen was fascinated with what she saw as the potential power of extreme dreaming. She was obsessed with her plan to get control of Lawson’s government-funded dream research program. She went to work for him and saw her opportunity when he was at a bad point in his relationship with Beth. She dazzled him for a while with her expertise in psychopharmaceuticals, and seduced him. But in the end he canceled her experiments with CZ-149 and then he canceled their affair.”

  The kitchen was crowded this morning. Isabel listened to the debriefing with only a small part of her attention. Mostly she was focused on the task of fixing scrambled eggs, toast and soy sausages for three large human males and one big feline of the same gender.

  It had seemed so easy at the start, she reflected, cracking the last of a full dozen eggs into a bowl. I’ll just whip up some breakfast. You all just drink your orange juice and tea while I get this on the table. No problem. Be ready in fifteen minutes. Hah.

  It wasn’t until she realized that between them, Dave, Ellis and Vincent were going to go through a full jug of orange juice that she knew she might be in for more than she had bargained for when she volunteered to cook breakfast. Good thing she had bought an extra carton of eggs and a large loaf of sourdough bread in anticipation of feeding Ellis.

  The men took up a lot of space. They did not simply sit or stand, rather they lounged, leaned or sprawled around the counter. The fourth male, Sphinx, watched the proceedings from his perch atop the wide windowsill. He did not seem perturbed by the commotion. Isabel knew that was because he had decided to tolerate the new arrivals.

  She was relieved to see that Vincent looked a little healthier this morning. He was still very wan and washed-out from the effects of the CZ-149 withdrawal but he was no longer shivering uncontrollably. Dave was quiet and a little sad but he seemed calmer, as if he had begun to come to terms with his grief.

  “According to the dream log,” Ellis continued, “Amelia-Maureen couldn’t understand why Lawson ended the affair. After all, she was several years younger and a lot prettier than Beth. In addition, she was very, very smart and she and Lawson were both dedicated to the same kind of research. They made a perfect team in her view. She just could not deal with the fact that he did not want her.”

  “It was right after the affair with Lawson ended that she went to work on me,” Vincent muttered. “She set up those special kidnap cases and used her knowledge of Lawson’s and Beth’s operations to make sure they got to me. At the same time, she approached me secretly and started giving me the injections of CZ-149.”

  Ellis’s brows rose. “That stuff had the effect of making you believe your own press,
I take it?”

  Vincent grimaced. “Along with anything else she told me. But she understood real quick that you were standing in her way, Cutler. Not only were you suspicious about the string of kidnappings I was busily solving so brilliantly, you had Lawson’s ear.”

  Dave downed what had to be half a pint of orange juice and looked at Vincent. “She convinced you that Ellis had gone rogue and that only you could stop him because Lawson refused to see the truth?”

  “Like I don’t have better things to do with my time than go rogue,” Ellis said.

  “Don’t forget she was giving me regular fixes of that damned dream drug,” Vincent said, sounding pained. “She told me I tolerated it well and that it would make me—” He stopped suddenly, flushing.

  “An even better dreamer than me?” Ellis drank some tea and lowered the mug. “The only thing that’s going to make you as good as me is experience.”

  “Yeah, well, it sounded like a great idea at the time,” Vincent muttered.

  “Don’t worry, Vincent,” Isabel said bracingly. “Ellis told me you are very, very good. Someday you are going to be a legend back at Frey-Salter, too.”

  Vincent appeared somewhat cheered by that prospect. Ellis looked amused.

  Isabel tossed a handful of fresh chopped parsley into the huge mound of creamy scrambled eggs she was preparing. “Sounds like Amelia-Maureen craved what every serious researcher craves, namely unlimited funding and the freedom to conduct her work without interference. And she was prepared to go to any lengths to reach her goals.”

  “Her notes in the dream log imply that she was, in part, inspired by her work at Brackleton,” Ellis said. “She did a lot of her early experiments on the inmates with a primitive version of CZ-149. She discovered that she could control her subjects to a certain extent if she gave them hypnotic suggestions while they were under the influence of the drug. She also found out that the stuff worked best on people who were inclined toward lucid dreaming. She never got any Level Five subjects at the prison, but she got a couple of Threes and a Four. Those experiences made her aware of the potential of the drug.”

  “How did she learn about Lawson’s agency?” Isabel asked.

  “She didn’t, not at first. But she was well connected in the world of dream research and she certainly knew about Frey-Salter. She applied for a job after the Brackleton project was shut down, and Lawson grabbed her. After she got her security clearance and found out just what went on at the agency, she was ecstatic.”

  “Must have looked like a dream job for a while,” Isabel said dryly.

  “Yeah, but it all came apart after the affair with Lawson ended,” Ellis said. “When he transferred her out of the agency, she set out to gain control of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research. That’s when she realized just how useful her old Brackleton subjects would be.”

  “Those poor men.” Isabel sighed. “None of them were very stable. They never stood a chance against her.”

  “Why was she so determined to keep her identity hidden while she was at the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research?” Dave asked softly.

  “Two reasons,” Isabel said. “The first was Ellis. She realized that he was going to persist in his investigation of Vincent. She knew that if he turned over enough rocks, he might figure out the connection to one Maureen Sage.”

  “So she made Maureen disappear and created a new identity for herself.” Vincent grimaced. “She was really good with computers.”

  “Certainly good enough to get past the rather shallow employment background checks that were the norm at the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research.” Isabel poured more tea. “The only people who had to go through serious background checks there were the ones who worked on Lawson’s secret projects. Namely me and Dr. B.”

  Dave wrapped both hands around his mug of tea and studied her. “You said there were two reasons why Amelia took a new identity. What was the second?”

  “The second reason she wanted to keep a low profile, at least at the beginning, was because she knew the center depended on Lawson’s funding,” Isabel explained. “She was afraid that if he discovered she intended to go into competition with him, he would cut off the money.”

  “Which is exactly what he would have done,” Ellis said knowingly. “Lawson doesn’t take kindly to rivals and competitors, inside or outside the government bureaucracy.”

  Isabel nodded. “Yes, well, just imagine Amelia-Maureen’s surprise when, after she went to all the trouble to seduce Randolph and get rid of his father, one of Randolph’s first official acts was to fire me. She knew that without me, Lawson would quickly lose interest in funding the institute.”

  “But she had to be careful about how much she told Randolph,” Ellis said. “She didn’t want him to understand the real connection between the institute and Lawson’s operation any more than Lawson did. She wanted to stay in the shadows. She certainly did not want Lawson to discover that his ex-lover had changed her name and was about to become the person who would be manipulating one of his most vital assets: Isabel.”

  “Hah.” Isabel was incensed. “What made her think I could be so easily manipulated?”

  “It was a big mistake on her part,” Ellis assured her. “In fact, it was the one that led to her downfall. Because after you took off for Roxanna Beach, everything went wrong for her again.”

  “Very true,” Vincent agreed. “Before she could figure out how to get you back, Gavin Hardy disappeared. She knew he must have found something interesting on Belvedere’s computer. She reasoned that it probably had to do with the anonymous clients.”

  Isabel made a face. “She must have freaked when she realized that you were one of them.”

  “She sure did.” Vincent swallowed more orange juice. “I made the mistake of telling her I had contacted Dr. Belvedere personally. I probably blabbed about the meetings with him after one of those extra-heavy doses of CZ-149. At any rate, not only was she really angry, she was afraid that if you and Cutler discovered that there were three anonymous clients, Cutler would start asking even more questions and maybe conclude that I was Number Three.” He looked at Ellis. “As you just said, Cutler, it’s a small world when it comes to extreme dreamers.”

  “She had good cause to be worried,” Isabel said. “Ellis did jump to the conclusion that you were the third client.”

  Vincent exhaled wearily and picked up his tea. “I didn’t realize that she murdered Hardy. She never told me that part.”

  “Of course not,” Isabel said soothingly. She moved another tall stack of toast onto the tray at the bottom of the oven to keep warm. “She didn’t want you to find out she was killing people because she knew that you were, at heart, still one of the good guys.”

  Vincent’s hungover expression eased a little. He looked at Ellis. “I take it there is no next-generation version of CZ-149?”

  “No,” Ellis said. “Lawson killed the program.”

  “Yeah, well, what can I say?” Vincent shrugged. “I believed the doc. I was pretty damn desperate by then.”

  “Desperate enough to contact Dr. B. secretly,” Isabel said, setting plates of scrambled eggs, soy sausages and toast in front of each man. “I take it he couldn’t help you, though.”

  “Useless.” Vincent perked up at the sight of the massive quantity of food. He grabbed his fork. “Like I said last night, all he could tell me was that the red tsunami was a blocking image of some kind. I had already figured out that much for myself.”

  Dave tried a bite of eggs. “What was last night all about? I mean, aside from getting rid of the three of you?”

  “It’s obvious from her dream log that Amelia-Maureen was nothing if not adaptable.” Ellis ate some toast. “She changed her plans to fit the changing circumstances. Her goal last night was to set the stage at the amusement park to make it look like Scargill and I had both gone mad. She picked the Roxanna Beach Amusement World because she knew that my gateway dream involves a roller coaster. It was no big secret back
at Frey-Salter. She assumed that using that backdrop would help convince Lawson that I really had fallen victim to a weird obsession of some kind.”

  “She intended for everyone, including Lawson and his rivals, to believe that you two killed each other and burned down the old park, taking me and an innocent bystander, Yolland, with us,” Isabel concluded.

  “Even if that plan didn’t have the effect of destroying Lawson’s personal empire, it would certainly have created enormous problems for him,” Vincent pointed out. “She would have, in effect, cost Lawson three of his best dreamers—Ellis, me, and you, Isabel.”

  “Make that four dreamers,” Dave said in a flat voice. “She also killed my sister, remember. Katherine was a Level Five, too.”

  There was a short, heavy silence.

  Vincent looked at him. “I’m sorry about Katherine,” he said quietly. “I really liked her. I swear I had no idea that Amelia had contacted her using my game-playing identity, convinced her to bug Lawson’s phone and then murdered her in cold blood.”

  “Katherine left a clue,” Dave said quietly. “Ellis and I assumed initially that it was a message telling us that you were the killer. But we misinterpreted it.”

  “That was the one murder we know of that Amelia-Maureen handled personally,” Ellis said. “According to her dream log, she couldn’t locate an ex-con from the Brackleton program in the Raleigh-Durham area and she didn’t want to waste any time importing one.”

  “So she shot Katherine in cold blood, herself,” Dave whispered.

  Ellis looked at him. “In those last moments of her life, Katherine was thinking very fast and very clearly, like the trained agent she was.” His words were rough with genuine admiration. “She couldn’t find a way to tell us the name of her killer but she knew that if we kept looking for you, Vincent, we’d find Amelia-Maureen. So she pointed us toward you.”

  “She was right,” Isabel said quietly.

  Ellis kept his attention centered on Dave. “Katherine is the one who will become a legend back at Frey-Salter.”

  Dave blinked quickly several times. Moisture glinted in his eyes. Then he nodded, not speaking.