The Dream Machine: Book 6, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (23 page)

Manetti was looking at her phone when the driver stopped in front of the research facility. I reached for the handle to climb out, but she grabbed my arm.

“Hold on.”

I let go of the handle. “What?”

She was still looking at her phone. “Melanie Crawford.”

“What about her?”

She read from the phone. “She almost has a record.”

“Almost?”

Manetti nodded. “She likes the bad boys. Her ex-husband was into dealing on the side and got busted on a fraud scheme. Her next boyfriend was into social engineering and stealing identities.”

“Maybe Alison knows one of them?” It sounded like the dumbest thing I’d ever thought of, as soon as I said it.

“Or her parents.” Manetti was about to put her phone away, but then did a double-take.

“What?”

“One of her exes got picked up one time with White.”

My ears perked up. “
Our
White?”

Manetti nodded. “Hell of a coincidence.”

“No such thing,” I said. “So maybe White is the connection. Alison knows him. They’ve talked a few times.”

“It’s the most logical, for lack of a better word, explanation.”

“But what does it mean?”

Manetti gave me a look. “Maybe it means Alison’s powers are getting stronger.”

I thought about it. “Before she was just dreaming about people
she
knew. Now she’s dreaming about people that
others
know.”

Manetti put her phone away. “So we’ll ask her for details on her conversations with White. I’m guessing he planted this seed in her head.”

“Why don’t we divide and conquer? You can talk to Alison while I take a run at White.”

Manetti thought it over. “White probably knows Melanie. That makes him our best link to solving the crime.”

“Think I can’t handle it?”

She sort of smiled. “It’s not that. I’m trying to figure out who would be better with Alison.”

“She doesn’t care much for me. That’s why I was suggesting you.”

“Okay.” Manetti checked her watch. “I’ll join you in twenty minutes.”

***

We climbed out of the car. The wind was cold and the rain was colder, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

The same security guard that had admitted us yesterday was behind the front desk again. He waved us through. As we stepped into the atrium, thunder boomed again and the lights flickered. This seemed like a place that couldn’t lose power. The feds usually had backups to backups to backups. But the intermittent lights were not instilling confidence.

Alison was sitting with Betty in the atrium. She saw us but didn’t quite acknowledge our presence.

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“Yeah, thanks.” Manetti gave me a mirthless smile.

We split up and I headed to the bank of elevators. I hit the button and waited impatiently. White was on the fifth and highest floor in the building. I could have taken the stairs but I was tired. Tired from so little sleep in the last two nights and tired from the disappointment of today.

The bell dinged, and the doors split open. I stepped into the box and hit the button for five.

The overhead lights in the elevator flickered as it climbed. The digital display box switched from three to four when the lights went out and the power died.

The elevator stuttered and groaned to a stop.

“Fucking awesome.”

I waited a second, hoping it was just a temporary outage. The second became a moment, which became a gap, which became a delay. Half a minute later, there was nothing “temporary” about my situation. I cursed the federal government, not for the first time, and was left wondering how they couldn’t have backup juice.

My curse was rewarded a moment later. One overhead bulb came back on inside the elevator, barely illuminating the tiny space. The digital display was still out. But at least the elevator began its crawl to the fifth floor again. After an eternity, the bell dinged and the doors yawned open. I had to nudge them the last few inches, even.

I stepped into a dark hallway. There was one emergency light on above the nurse’s station, casting an orange glow that was barely strong enough for reading a book, let alone seeing down the entire floor.

The guard’s desk near the elevator was empty. The chair had been pushed out from behind the desk, like somebody had gotten up but hadn’t come back to it. Which didn’t really bother me.

I walked past the desk, my eyes drifting over the cell phone.

Cell phone.

It was face-up on the desk.

Which meant the guard had either forgotten it or had gotten up from the desk quickly to check something out.

The hair on the back of my neck told me it was probably the latter.

Cursing the fact that I’d relinquished my firearm, I peered down the hallway. I could barely see to the other end, where White’s room was.

“Anybody there?” I asked.

No answer.

Shit.

There should have been two guards in this hallway. One at this desk and the other in front of White’s room. What were the chances they’d both be in White’s room right now? I had no idea. Would they both go in?

I felt naked without a gun.

I took out my phone to call Manetti but the reception out here wasn’t great and the massive hurricane cycloning toward us probably wasn’t helping either.

Decision point. Go downstairs for backup or go forward.

I reminded myself that fortune favored the bold.

Quietly I slipped down the hallway. Once I reached the empty nurse’s station I could see the rest of the way. There was a dark form slumped on the floor near White’s room. The door to White’s room was open.

I rushed the rest of the way, no longer worrying about noise. If anybody was getting ready to jump me, they already knew I was there so I figured faster was better than slower. Once I was on top of the body I saw the uniform. The guard’s eyes were frozen in a lifeless stare. Up close I saw the pool of blood under his head, still seeping out of the jagged gaping wound in his neck. His holster was empty.

I jumped up and rushed into White’s room. It too was empty. A tray was facedown on the floor, macaroni and cheese spilled out onto the carpet.

The guard had been bringing White his fucking dinner.

The thunder boomed again and lightning lit up the room for a second. Signs of a struggle were everywhere. Blood had sprayed all over the tile floor and on the door itself.

White was gone.

White was
gone.

I took my phone out but still no signal. No time to waste. I hustled down the hallway for the stairs and threw open the pneumatic door. The emergency lighting in the stairwell was just as scant as in the hallway: just one bulb lit up from above and one on the ground floor. I descended into darkness fast enough to break my neck.

And then I heard the gunshots.

Everybody in the atrium was screaming.

The guard manning the front desk writhed on the floor. Two brave nurses hovered over him and tried to help, but it looked like he’d been shot in the neck and the face. The blood poured through their fingers.

“Which way did White go?” I asked nobody in particular.

Betty poked her head up from behind a cushioned chair. With a trembling hand she pointed toward the cafeteria.

“The woman cop went after him,” Betty said.

Manetti
.

I ran over to the guard. He wasn’t really moving now, but the nurses were still at it.

“He’s dying,” one of them said.

I didn’t know how to respond. I reached for his gun.

The same nurse said, “What are you doing?”

“Going after the son of a bitch,” I said. “And I need a weapon.”

She nodded as I took the security guard’s gun out of the holster.

Lightning flashed and this time the thunder followed instantly. The storm was right on top of us.

The storm.

Manetti.

Outside.

Both of us armed.

Just like in Alison’s dream.

No, I told myself. I wasn’t going to shoot her. And she wasn’t going to shoot me. Not all of Alison’s dreams were visions. It didn’t make any sense.

As if it had been reading my thoughts, the wind roared and the windows groaned against the sheer force of it while rain slicked the glass. I flicked off the safety on the gun and hurried to the front desk. I was banking on the guard having a flashlight up there and found it in the desk drawer.

I wanted to call Manetti so she knew I’d be out there, but also didn’t want to distract her in case she was sneaking up on the asshole. So I settled on a text:

Armed and coming outside.

I sprinted to the front door. I figured if Manetti had followed him out back, it was best if I got in front of him. Maybe I could ambush the guy. The wind pushed back as I tried to open the door. I could barely get it open. But I managed to make an Eddie-sized opening and slipped outside into the dark, cold, stormy night.

The rain hammered me while the trees swayed like kites in the wind. It was pitch black out. The roar of the wind was deafening. I switched on the flashlight and did a broad sweep of the area. The drive was empty. I counted a dozen cars in the parking lot. If White wanted to get away, maybe he’d hotwire a car. It was a good place to start.

I killed the flashlight. As much as it helped, it also made for a nice target. All White had to do was follow the light and squeeze off a couple. He wouldn’t have to be that good of a shot if I was moving slow and he was close enough. Maybe I could use the flashlight as a decoy—

Over the wind I heard a couple pops that had to be gun shots. My head snapped around. For all my smart thinking about the flashlight, I turned it on, crouched, and held it way over my head just in case White had a clean shot at me. I aimed it in the direction of the shots I’d heard.

The problem was I couldn’t see very far down the drive. Maybe fifty yards. There were too many trees providing cover. I pointed the flashlight at the field that ran along the drive also. Again, too many trees.

It was doing me no good to stay in this position. I was exposed against the building. Maybe Manetti was injured. I told myself again that fortune favored the bold.

I ran as hard as I could down the drive. It’d been a long time since I’d run in the rain and the pavement was slick. I nearly went down twice but managed to stay on my feet. Gun pointed in front of me, flashlight pointed out but not on, I barreled into the tree line once I was about halfway down the lane.

White was headed away from the facility on foot. Where the hell did he think he was going in this storm? Thirty minutes out in this mess and he was likely to die. But then what choice did he have? He’d killed a couple guards inside, so it was face the hurricane or face the needle. I was hoping he’d face me.

As I sloshed my way through the mess, I realized tonight would be the best night to escape. Not too many people would be on the roads, police included. It would be easy to slip away somewhere in a vehicle tonight.

But how could White have planned this? There was no way. The guy had probably just seized upon an opportunity to overcome the guard bringing him dinner, and he was headed to the roads because Manetti was up his ass. Maybe his plan was to flag somebody down and take their car. Or maybe he just had no plan. Maybe he was just running.

A dozen branches must have smacked me as I hurried through the brush. I kept the flashlight up in front of my face, hoping to ward off some of the blows.

I flicked on the light for an instant, just to get the lay of the land. I was skirting the tree line, keeping the maples and sycamores between me and the long drive. Up ahead there was a tiny clearing and—

Manetti.

She stopped running and whirled, gun in hand.

I came to a crashing halt with the light still on. Instinctively I’d raised my gun.

“Eddie!”

Ten paces separated us.

We still had our guns pointed at each other.

“Eddie, what are you doing?” She had to yell over the storm.

“Helping you find this asshole!”

“Put your gun down!”

Lightning and thunder hit us at the same time. I felt the boom reverberate in the ground.

“I’m not going to shoot you!” I was frozen in horror. Her eyes were wide in panic.

“I know! Just put your gun down!”

“Together!” I said, suddenly not trusting her and hating myself for it. She had no reason to shoot me. No reason.

“Eddie, why are you out here with a gun?”

“Because that asshole is out here with a gun!”

She didn’t blink. Her eyes and the barrel of her gun never left me. All she had to do was move her pointer an inch and I’d be dead.

“You know what she dreamed about and you still came out here?” Manetti said.

“I’m not going to shoot you!”

“Lower your gun!”

I didn’t want to. I suddenly didn’t trust her. I didn’t like the look of raw, superstitious fear in her eyes. She was supposed to be rational, like me. We had both seen things that were impossible, things that could never be, and our strength was keeping calm in the storm. Holding onto our reason and not giving in to panic or superstition.

I was surprised that my reason was quickly slipping away. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. She thought I was going to shoot her. Even though I would never in a million years, that unreasoning, blind panic made her dangerous. If she thought I was going to shoot her, maybe she’d preemptively shoot me, which meant I couldn’t lower my gun. No way.

“Manetti! I’m not going to shoot you!” I shouted.

“I believe you, Eddie!” But still she held that gun on me.

I decided to be bold. I had to put my faith in her if we were going to get out of this. “Manetti, I’m going to lower my gun. Don’t shoot me!”

“I won’t!”

Slowly I lowered my weapon and pointed it at the ground.

Manetti broke into a smile. “It was just a dr—”

A gunshot boomed behind her, and Manetti went down.