The Devil's Dream: Book One (5 page)

He would figure those
things out on his ride to Daytona.

Rally wasn't a liar;
she jumped on the phone as soon as they were done and blabbed
everything she knew. He didn't expect anything else and he loved her
for it. She hadn't married him because of his mind, and when Hillman
died, it hadn't been the chance of getting him back that kept her
with him for the few years after. To Rally, Matthew was wrong, and if
he succeeded their son would be an abomination.

That was her choice and
he couldn't do anything about it. His, though, was to get his son
back. Their son. Maybe when Hilman was here, talking again, maybe
then she would be convinced. Either way, it was nearly time for him
to begin. Time for him to find the people he needed. Time to take
them and build.

* * *

Matthew would have
liked to steal a cop's car. To find a cop working at a convenience
store and take it while the officer was inside. The old Matthew would
have done it. Stalked a cop all day if need be, and then when he saw
an opening, stole the car and perhaps killed the police officer. Just
for the messaging: that none of them were safe. That if he wanted to
get someone, he would, and there was nothing anyone could do about
it.

Acting like that had
been selfish. Childish even. Killing cops for their cars did hold
reason, but that reason was secondary to Matthew's goals. Just
killing cops was about his pride, his anger, his revenge. It left him
no closer to speaking with Hilman, no closer to reclaiming his lost
family.

All that was done. It
created risks he didn't need, even if they were small, and it did
little to bring his Hilman back.

Matthew left the hotel
room carrying his key and walked outside into the parking lot. The
sun still hadn't quite risen above the horizon, but its glow could be
seen and birds chirped from the power lines. Soon the world would
wake and the hunt for him would begin again, if it had even stopped
for the night. Matthew went to one of the cars in the lot, an old
Impala with the paint coming off the roof. The good thing about being
in Florida was the car theft: rampant. A car missing in a motel like
this wouldn't be put on anyone's radar outside of the local police
department.

Matthew tried the
handle, but luck wasn't on his side.

"Alright then,"
he said, turning around and heading back into his hotel room.

Within a few minutes,
he had the television completely apart and lying on the bed. He
sifted through the parts inside, looking for the pieces he needed.
Finding them, he walked back outside, leaving the key and the
disassembled television lying on the bed. His pocket jingled a bit as
he walked, the metal instruments bouncing off each other. The sun had
risen a bit more, but no one stirred in the hotel. The one light in
the parking lot flickered on and off, not casting a wide enough glow
to brighten much outside of a narrow radius. It didn't take Matthew
long to get in once he was at the car. He jiggled his new tools
around in the right places first on the door and then in the
ignition. The car started, sounding like a rusty can with nails
shaking around inside.

That was fine; He
wouldn't need it for long. Just to get him a few miles down the road
to the beach.

* * *

On the fifth call—not
ring, but call—someone finally answered. Allison wouldn't have
stopped calling even if it meant she walked around with the phone on
her ear all day and night. She was going to get in touch with this
guy.

Jeffrey Dillan.

She read his book the
night before, downloaded it and then stayed up all night consuming
it. She was actually impressed at the depth and the truth he wrote
with. He hadn't shied away from anything, finding fault in everyone,
finding love in them too. She searched for more books by him, but
couldn't find anything besides newspaper articles he'd written before
he published
The Devil's Dream
.

Now the prick wasn't
answering his phone. He knew what was going on and Allison knew this
was his correct number. She could have probably given the phone call
to someone she managed, but having Dillan feel snubbed in their first
interaction probably should be avoided.

"Jesus Christ,
what?" The voice came over the phone.

"Mr. Dillan?"

"Yeah, you got
him, now can you tell me why you needed to call a million fucking
times?"

"This is Allison
Moore with the F.B.I. I'd like to speak with you if you have the
time."

"I don't," he
said and the line went dead.

Allison pulled the
phone away from her face and looked at it, almost not believing what
just happened.
Okay,
she
thought and dialed again.

"Goddamnit. Woman.
I don't have the time to speak to you," Dillan said after the
first ring.

"That may be true,
Mr. Dillan, but if you need me to make the time for you, I can get
you under protective custody within an hour and you'll be right next
to me. Given that you're nearly a national treasure because of your
book and the fact that you might be number one on Brand's list to
kill, I don't think that would be much of a problem. Then, stashed
away in the hotel room we provide for you, you'll have all the time
you need to talk to me."

The line didn't go dead
but no voice came back through.

"Does that sound
better?" Allison asked.

"Don’t think you
can just grab me like some in bullshit novel. I don’t care about
all of your surveillance techniques or whatever else you have, you
understand that? I’m rich. As fuck. You know what that means? It
means my voice shouts louder than the normal jokers whose rights you
violate. It means I’ll have more lawyers knocking down whatever
door you sit behind than you can possibly imagine. So don’t
threaten me, ever. Now, what do you want?"

"I'm going to need
to be in contact with you, perhaps daily. As I'm sure you're aware,
Matthew Brand escaped and I've been assigned the case. That means,
just so you understand the magnitude, that there are approximately
one-hundred and fifty thousand state and federal officers looking for
him right now, and I'm in charge of them all. I think that you might
have as much information about Brand as anyone else and I'm going to
need that information. Access to your notes. Access to you. Around
the clock even."

Laughter came through
the phone.

"I destroyed the
notes on Brand years ago, and as far as access to me, I'm actually
about to take a vacation. You're more than welcome to come along, as
your voice sounds like you'd be pretty decent in bed, but I won't be
able to make it out there to Phoenix to speak with you people."

"That's really the
way you want to take this?"

"How about we take
it this way? This is your phone number, right? I can call you back on
it?"

"Sure."

"My lawyer will be
calling you back within five minutes."

The line went dead for
the second time on Allison.

"Can I talk to
Mom?"

Jerry turned the wheel
of his SUV and the vehicle rounded the street corner slowly.

He hated the question.
If he never heard it again, his life would be much happier. Allison
left two days ago and Marley kept asking
Can
I talk to Mom?
It's not that he didn't want her calling;
the reason he hated hearing the question was because of the answer.
No, she couldn't. It was something they had agreed on when Marley was
born. They couldn't let her think that she could talk to her Mom
whenever she left, because Allison wouldn't be able to answer all the
time.

Allison called once a
day, at the same time, and the whole family was able to speak with
each other. Marley seemed to understand that a year ago when Allison
had left, but things were different this year. At ten, she was
questioning.

Jerry slowed the car
down and then stopped at a red light. Another ten minutes and he
would drop her off at school. Hopefully there she would forget about
her Mom for a few hours and then Allison would call tonight.

Except Jerry didn't
want that. At all. He didn't want to tell his daughter no, that she
couldn't speak to her Mom and had to wait for the appointed time. He
didn't want his daughter to stop questioning the rules laid out
before her. What
he
wanted
was for Allison to start paying attention to her family more than her
job.

"You want to call
her?" He asked, looking to the passenger seat.

"Can I?" A
smile bloomed across her face.

Jerry looked forward
again, the light green. He pressed the accelerator and the car rolled
into the intersection. What was the harm in her calling?

"Do you think
she'll be busy?" Marley asked.

The harm was that
Allison would be busy. That Mom wouldn't answer and that light in
their daughter's eyes would dim as quickly as it ignited. The harm
was that he was about to actively, for the first time, go against
something Allison and he had agreed on ten years ago without
consulting her.

"You miss her
don't you?"

Marley turned from
looking at Jerry to staring out the window. She was quiet for a few
seconds.

"Yeah. I mean, I
know she's busy and she's doing something good for everyone, but I
just want to talk to her for a little bit. I just want to tell her I
love her."

Jerry gripped the wheel
a little tighter.

"Sure, babe. We
can call her. I'm sure she wants to talk to you too."

He pulled his phone out
and dialed his wife's number.

* * *

Allison looked down at
her vibrating phone.

Jerry.

She thought it more
likely to see the President's name on her caller ID than Jerry's when
she was out on assignment. Something had to be wrong. The lawyer
could leave a message.

She hit answer and put
the phone to her ear.

"Hey, is
everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything
is fine. Marley was just asking to speak with you."

She said nothing,
letting the understanding that her family was alright sink in, her
heart relinquishing its increasing pace.

"You're kidding,
right? You can't be serious."

"I am." It
was all he said and Allison knew Marley was right next to him.

"Put her on,"
Allison said, feeling like she would curse if she spoke with Jerry
any longer. She listened to the rustling as the phone changed hands.

"Hey, Mom!"

"Hey, honey, how
are you?" She asked, her voice automatically changing tone.

"I'm good. Me and
Dad are just heading to school."

"Dad and I, babe."

Marley sighed. "Dad
and I. What are you doing?"

"I'm talking with
someone about the bad guy I'm chasing. Why didn't you wait until I
could call this evening?"

"I don't know, I
just asked and Dad said yes. It's not okay?"

Allison closed her eyes
and turned her head down toward the desk. "It's okay, it's just
I'm really busy right now trying to find this bad guy. That's why we
normally wait until the evenings, right? So that I can hear about
your day?"

"I guess,"
her daughter said, the excitement in her voice almost completely
drowned.

"Okay, babe, I
have to get going, but I'm going to call you tonight. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine.
I love you," Marley said. Allison thought Marley might be near
tears, but that might be what needed to happen to make sure she
didn't ask again. She couldn't call during the day. She had to
understand there were certain times they could talk.

"I love you too.
Can I talk to Dad again?"

More rustling.

"Hey," Jerry
said.

"We're going to
talk tonight about this."

"Fine."

"Love you."
Allison said, only habit making the words come out.

"Love you too."

She placed the phone
back down on the desk and waited for it to tell her she had a voice
mail, that or for Dillan's lawyer to call now. There were things she
needed to be doing beyond talking to her daughter, like waiting on
this call. Making Jeffrey Dillan and his lawyer understand the
importance of his commitment to this investigation was almost at the
top of Allison's list.

A number she didn't
know popped onto her phone's screen.

"Agent Moore."

"Hi, Agent Moore,
my name is Frank Stone. I'm Jeffrey Dillan's lawyer. He said I would
be calling, I believe. How are you doing today?"

Allison immediately saw
a fat man in her mind, someone sitting behind a large desk with a
wall of scholarly books next to him. She saw his chin shake as he
spoke, and knew that the last time he'd done any serious exercise was
probably in the nineties. His voice sounded like all that fat had
done nothing to shake his confidence, but actually built on it, as if
his greatness was validated by his ability to eat while the rest of
the world starved.

"I'm well, Mr.
Stone. He did say you would call, right before he hung up on me. It's
important to me that both of you understand he will be helping with
this investigation, regardless of what I have to do to make it
happen."

Frank Stone laughed.

"Calm down for
just a second, Agent Moore. You haven't even heard what he's willing
to do yet and you're already talking about injunctions and such."

"Go ahead."

"Well, it's pretty
generous, actually. He's willing to help, over the phone, of course,
because he has had his current vacation scheduled for quite some
time. In exchange for access to his notes and his mind, all he's
asking is access to what you know as well. Things that you find out
about Brand. What the doctors may have discovered about him while he
was behind The Wall. Where he's at, what he's doing, et cetera. He
wants to know the case, and not the case that you'll be feeding the
media, but what is actually going on."