Falling Awake (10 page)

“Sure, Dad. I’ll be okay. I’m not scared.”

He insisted on sitting in the front car. When the safety bar was lowered into place he felt a thrill unlike any other. He could still feel that first lurch and hear the ominous
clank-clank-clank
of the chain lift as it carried the train of cars to the top of the first hill. He could also hear his father’s warning.

“There’s no going back now.”

He had loved every second of that wild ride. Ellis threaded his fingers through the chain links, remembering. The feeling of being scared witless while knowing all along that he was perfectly safe because he was strapped into his seat and his dad was right there with him was the most exhilarating experience he’d ever known.

Later the three of them had eaten cotton candy and popcorn and played some games in the arcade. He went home stuffed and happy. Contrary to his mother’s fears, he did not have any nightmares. In fact, he entertained himself for quite a while reliving the exciting ride in one of the startlingly clear story dreams he was just beginning to learn how to create.

That first ride had set the pattern for all future Cutler family vacations. He and his father researched roller coasters from one end of the country to the other, selecting the most exotic and most exciting scream machines, and then planned trips around them. They became experts on the subject.

Together they savored the differences between the classic woodies and the elaborate steel roller coasters. They compared the amount of “airtime”—those glorious moments when you
came up out of the seat and floated—delivered by the various machines. They discussed and charted the nuances of twister designs with their shrieking, high-speed turns and the out-and-backs with their steep hills and valleys.

And then, one afternoon when he was twelve years old, he was called out of class to face a small room full of very serious adults. They told him that both of his parents had been shot dead by a madman who walked into the restaurant where they were eating lunch and randomly murdered seven people before turning the gun on himself.

That night he spent what proved to be the first of many nights in the home of strangers.

The only roller coasters he rode these days were in his dreams.

He turned away from the silent relics, took the phone out of his pocket and punched in the number.

“How did it go?” Lawson demanded without preamble.

“Not quite the way you hoped it would. She’s willing to continue consulting for you and me but she doesn’t want to go to work at Frey-Salter. She’s setting herself up in business.”

“The hell she is.” Lawson was clearly stunned. “She’s just a naive little dreamer who’s been stashed away in a small office at a low-rent lab for the past year. Before that she bounced around between one downwardly mobile job and another. The closest she ever got to a professional career was working for some phony psychic hotline operation. What does she know about operating a consulting business?”

“Looks like we’re going to find out,” Ellis said.

“Forget it. Out of the question. I told you, I want her brought into Frey-Salter. Can’t have her running around out there on her own.”

“She’s not interested in your offer. By the way, she’s figured out that she was consulting for some secret government research facility that is experimenting with extreme dreamers.”

“Martin Belvedere told her about me and my agency? That SOB. He swore to me he never said a word—”

“She worked it out on her own. She’s smart, Lawson. And she’s a Level Five herself, remember.”

“Huh. Think she’s talked to anyone about what she knows?”

“No. She is well aware of how important confidentiality is to you and she’s interested in having you as a client. She won’t go to the media with her story.”

“What’s her objection to coming back here to work?”

“Seems she didn’t like having all of her requests for case briefings ignored or declined. She wanted more of what she calls ‘context.’ She also wanted to know the results of the investigations.”

“Those cases were confidential.” Lawson’s voice rose. “She had no need to know.”

“Look at the situation from her point of view. She got all of the questions but she never got any of the answers. She said it was frustrating. Said she needs closure.”

“Closure? Sounds like some kind of pop-psych babble.”

“Most of the dream reports we asked her to look at were pretty bad,” Ellis reminded him. “She said the anxiety of never knowing the outcomes gave her nightmares.”

“She’s a Level Five. She’s supposed to be able to deal with a few bad dreams.”

“You know what? I think she’s right about you, Lawson. You are a control freak.”

“Maybe so, but I’m a control freak with a serious budget. Without me, Isabel Wright will have a real short client list. Does she get that part?”

Ellis smiled to himself. “Yes, but she doesn’t seem to be worried about it. Got herself a day job to tide her over until her consulting business kicks in.”

“What kind of day job? Don’t tell me she’s gone back to answering phones at the Psychic Dreamer Hotline.”

“No. She’s training to be an instructor in her brother-in-law’s motivational seminar business.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s crazy,” Lawson bellowed. “Why would she want to do something like that when she could be back here working at Frey-Salter?”

“Gee. I don’t know. It’s curious, isn’t it? Maybe it’s got something to do with not being cooped up in a tiny, windowless office and not having to take orders from a control freak who only tells you what he thinks you need to know.”

“I’m glad you’re finding this so damned amusing, Cutler. Because I’m not. Listen up. I hired you to bring her in. Stop messing around out there and do your job.”

“You want my advice?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going to get it,” Ellis said. “Deal with her the way you did with Martin Belvedere. Pay her well. She’ll respect your demands for confidentiality.”

“I don’t want another independent. I want Isabel Wright working here at Frey-Salter where I can, uh—”

“Control her?” Ellis offered.

“Where I can keep an eye on her,” Lawson amended.

“Forget it. Not going to happen.”

“You sound a little too damn cheerful about all this,” Lawson muttered suspiciously. “What are you up to?”

Ellis opened the door of the Maserati and got behind the wheel.

“I’ve been thinking that I need to broaden my perspective and maybe take a more positive approach to life,” he said. “Maybe I’ll sign up for a course of motivational seminars.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Isabel’s going to be teaching a class called ‘Tapping into the Creative Potential of Your Dreams.’ Who knows? Maybe I’ll pick up a few pointers.”

He ended the call before Lawson could finish sputtering.

v
incent Scargill dreamed . . .

He stands on the high cliff, poised for the dive into the vast blue depths of the sea. He will plunge down beneath the cool, shimmering surface, counting each breath he takes underwater until he reaches the sparkling clear place where the currents carry the dream images.

But as he watches from the top of the cliff, a great wave rises out of the ocean. It is huge, a vast wall of water that dwarfs the cliff top where he stands. He knows it will crash over him, crushing him, drowning him, making it impossible for him to dive into the clear currents below.

As the tsunami bears down upon him he sees that the waters have turned blood red . . .

“Vincent, wake up.” The firm voice summoned him from the dreamscape. “Wake up, Vincent.”

He tried to resist, reluctant to abandon the attempt to dive into the dreamscape. It was his only hope of escaping this place that had become his prison.

But in the end, he had no choice. The voice had broken through the fragile barrier that separated a high-level lucid dream from wakefulness. Once pierced, there was no going back through the veil. He would have to reconstruct another dream and that was not easy to do these days.

He had made progress since the terrible morning when he nearly died in the explosion at the cabin, but not nearly enough. The head injury had healed within a few weeks but the damage that had been done to his dreaming capability was far more extensive than either he or his companion had realized. He could no longer access the gateway dream, the one that took him into the extreme dreaming state.

He opened his eyes. His companion was bending over him, watching him closely.

“Are you all right?”

“No.” He sat up on the edge of the sofa and glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. He had spent two hours trying to get into the dream state. “All I get is that damned red tsunami. Maybe if I took a higher dose I could get past it.”

“Perhaps, but we must be very, very careful. An overdose might destroy your Level Five capability altogether. Too much might kill you.”

Rage surged through him. He shoved himself to his feet and went to stand at the window. “This is all Cutler’s fault. He did this to me.”

“I know, Vincent. Trust me, we will find a way to enable you to dream again.”

He brooded on the strip of palm trees that lined the avenue below the condo window. He had spent a large portion of the past few months in this place and he hated it.

He had few memories of those first weeks following the explosion. His dreams had been blurred and fragmented. Eventually they began to clear, however, and he believed that he was regaining his Level Five ability. In an effort to speed up the process, his companion began giving him increasingly large injections from their small supply of CZ-149, the experimental dream-enhancing drug produced back at Frey-Salter. But the stuff was not helping much. If anything, the tsunami was growing larger and more violently crimson with each dose.

A few weeks ago, desperate, he had slipped out of the condo while his companion was gone and contacted Martin Belvedere personally. He knew he could trust the old man to keep quiet. All Belvedere cared about was his research, and Vincent knew he could offer him an interesting case study.

He met with Belvedere in a small café near the Center for Sleep Research. The location had been Belvedere’s choice. They sat together in a cheap vinyl booth drinking bad coffee while he gave the old man his recent dream reports and told him about the head trauma that had impacted his Level Five abilities.

Belvedere made copious notes and then he took the information back to his office to study. They met again two days later at the same café. But all the old man had been able to tell him was that the giant red wave was a “blocking” image that prevented him from accessing the gateway dream. Hell, he had already figured that much out for himself.

“I can’t take this any longer.” He gripped the windowsill so tightly all the blood was squeezed out of his knuckles. “That damned tsunami dream is making me crazy.”

His companion tapped the tip of the pen against the desktop. “There is one other approach we can try. I just learned about it this evening. That’s why I woke you.”

He turned swiftly. “What approach?”

“In the past couple of months Frey-Salter has come up with a new version of CZ-149. They’re calling it Variant A. My informant says it doesn’t appear to have the side effects that the earlier version of the drug has. I’m told that the initial tests have gone very well.”

“Get it.”

“That’s the problem. I almost didn’t tell you about it because, to be honest, I don’t know how to get it. There is only a very limited supply at the moment. Most of it is under tight security at Frey-Salter. Lawson gave the rest to the agent who is field-testing it for him.”

He went cold. “Which agent?”

“Ellis Cutler.”

“Bastard.
Bastard
.”

There was a dull thud. Pain crashed through his fist. He looked down and realized he had just struck the wall beside the window with such force that he had knocked a hole in it. Bits of painted wallboard lay on the carpet at his feet. There was blood on his hand.

Rage as red and fierce as the tsunami of his dreams washed over him. He looked at his companion through the crimson mist.

“Where is Cutler?”

“A place called Roxanna Beach.”

He started toward the door.

“Vincent, wait. You can’t risk exposing yourself. Lawson thinks you’re dead. If he gets even a hint that you’re still alive, he will hunt you down. He has the resources to do it. You know that. You won’t stand a chance.”

He stopped at the door. Some of the red tide ebbed from his brain. He was shaking and sweating now. He rubbed his temples, trying to think.

“I have to get the new drug,” he said.

“I understand. But first we need a plan.”

r
andolph stared at the tall, thin man standing in front of the desk, so stunned by the news that the high-priced, forensic accountant had just delivered that he could not immediately react. Webber had to be wrong.

“Th–that’s impossible,” Randolph finally got out. He was horrified to hear himself stutter. Whenever the old childhood speech problem returned, it was a sure sign that he was under enormous pressure.

Amelia Netley said nothing but her fine jaw clenched more tightly. She continued to stalk back and forth in front of the windows as she had been doing for the past few minutes, her arms folded beneath her elegant breasts.

“I’m afraid it’s a fact, Dr. Belvedere.” Webber tapped the file
against his palm and looked grim. “It took a lot of time and some very creative work to follow the money trail, but there’s no doubt in my mind that what I just told you is the truth. I can see this comes as something of a surprise.”

“Surprise? It’s a frigging bombshell. Give me that file.”

Webber handed it to him. “It’s an extremely sophisticated financial setup. I had to dig deep to understand it.”

“My father was not at all sophisticated when it came to business.” Randolph slapped open the file. “He couldn’t have done this himself.”

Webber nodded thoughtfully. “Then it must have been the clients who went to such extraordinary lengths to conceal the payments.”