Falling Awake (27 page)

“Maybe.”

“Hmm.” She studied her toes. “Why not just kill me? Or you, for that matter?”

“Two words: Jack Lawson.”

“Ah, yes. He is the eight-hundred-pound government Bigfoot in this thing, isn’t he?”

“He’s that, all right. As it stands now, Lawson thinks I’ve got some serious psychological issues. He believes that I’m cracking
up slowly but surely because of what happened a few months ago and the way it affected my dreaming. At the moment, he’s still convinced that Scargill is dead.”

“But if he decides otherwise . . . ?”

Ellis closed the drapes and turned to look at her. “If you or I get killed in the course of this investigation, it’s a sure bet that Lawson will decide that maybe I was right all along. He won’t quit until he gets answers, and he’s got the resources to rip Scargill’s cover, whatever it is, to shreds.”

“I see.” She swallowed. “Presumably Scargill knows this?”

“He does.” Ellis turned back to the window. He braced one hand on the wooden frame. “You know, Albert Gibbs’s death raises a question that’s been bothering me for a while.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve always wondered how Scargill finds all the losers he uses. And how he got so damn good at manipulating them. Hell, if he’s still alive, he’s only twenty-two years old. You don’t learn tricks like that until you get some mileage under your belt.”

She drummed her fingers on the sofa cushion, thinking about that. “I couldn’t begin to guess how he locates them but as far as motivation goes, I imagine most of them would have been happy to do whatever he wanted if he paid them enough money.”

“Not necessarily. A guy like Gibbs, who needed cash for dope, maybe. But not some of the others. Not McLean, the demented fool who kidnapped his ex-wife and hauled her off to his compound in the mountains. A couple of the other kidnappers didn’t strike me as being particularly interested in money, either. They
were too lost in their own delusional worlds to pay much attention to mundane things like cash. None of them demanded ransoms. All of them had other motives for the abductions.”

She tilted her head back against the cushion. “Where are you going with this, Ellis?”

“Maybe I’ve been missing something in the profiles of the people he uses. I need to look at those guys from another angle.”

“What other angle?”

“The way I do potential investors and start-up entrepreneurs before I decide whether or not to fund their projects. I need to find out if there are any connections that I’ve overlooked.”

He swung around and went to his briefcase. She watched him take out a small computer.

“While you’re doing that, I’ll take a look at some of Belvedere’s research reports.” She sat forward and scooped up the nearest stack of papers. “I know how he worked. Maybe I’ll spot something you missed.”

“Good idea.” He sat down at the counter and powered up the computer. “I’m getting that nasty feeling you get when you know you’ve missed something important in a Level Five dream.”

a
n hour and a half later, Isabel closed the file she had been reading and tossed it onto the coffee table. Collapsing back against the sofa cushions, she removed her glasses and absently stroked Sphinx, who was a warm, heavy weight on her lap. The big cat purred contentedly.

“Some enterprising soul could probably make a fortune selling Belvedere’s papers as a cure for insomnia,” she announced. “I think he was so determined to be taken seriously that he deliberately wrote the dullest, most boring, most academic-sounding prose possible.”

“That was my impression when I was reading those files earlier.” Ellis studied the computer screen, looking impatient.

“Got anything?” she asked.

“Maybe. I told you all of these guys did time at various jails and prisons.”

“Yes.”

“Turns out that at least three of them spent some time in a place called the Brackleton Correctional Facility back in the Midwest. I’m checking to see if any of the others did stretches there, too. It’s going to take a while.”

“I thought you said Scargill used people who lived in various places around the country. They didn’t all come from the same region or even the same state.”

“That’s true. But it’s not unusual for overcrowded or under-funded prison systems in one state to ship prisoners off to another state to serve out their time.” He punched a key. “It’s possible these guys all went through the same facility.”

“Would they have been there at the same time?”

“No.” His mouth hardened. “That’s the bad news. All of them did time in recent years but none of them did it at precisely the same time. I checked that out a few weeks ago. There’s no way they would have been behind bars together, unfortunately. That would have been too easy. Still, if I can link them all to the same prison, I might be able to find other connections.”

She studied the intense, focused lines of his body. It was getting late and he had made no mention of returning to the Seacrest Inn to sleep. Was he planning to spend the night here? If so, he had not mentioned it. She was pretty sure she would have remembered a comment like that.

Idly, she continued to pet Sphinx. “Is this how you always work?” she asked. “Fill your head with as much information as you can get about the crime and then go into a Level Five dream state to try to get some insights?”

“Yeah.” He hit another key and then got to his feet, rotating his right shoulder in a familiar way. “Never figured out a more efficient method. What about you?”

“Same process. That’s why it was so frustrating working with Dr. Belvedere’s mystery clients.” She made a face. “I could never get all the information I needed to give a really good interpretation. I had to wing it on several occasions.”

“Your work is brilliant, even when you don’t have a lot of context,” Ellis said. “It’s no wonder Lawson wants to bring you into Frey-Salter.”

She smiled slightly. “Not going to happen. Think he’ll sign a contract with me once he’s convinced that I’m serious about going independent?”

Ellis was amused. “I don’t think he’s got any choice. You can name your own terms. My advice is to make him pay top dollar for your services. That’s what Beth does.”

She rubbed the spot directly behind Sphinx’s ears. The cat purred louder and seemed to grow heavier and warmer on her lap. “I like the sound of that.”

Ellis studied Sphinx. “Think cats dream?”

“Who knows? If you accept the traditional Freudian view that dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment, a way of living out the sort
of fantasies that we repress when we’re awake, it doesn’t seem likely. After all, cats pretty much do what they want to do. They don’t have a lot of problem with repressed fantasies.”

“They do seem to act on their Inner Cat urges whenever they feel like it, don’t they?”

She nodded, looking down at Sphinx. “The same thinking would apply to the classic Jungian theory, too. Jung held that dreams are a product of some collective unconsciousness featuring various archetypes and metaphors.”

Ellis studied Sphinx. “Can’t see a cat bothering with archetypes and metaphors.”

“Then, of course, you’ve got your modern neuropsychologists. Some of them think animals do dream but others are convinced that dreaming is a cognitive function that develops as the brain grows and develops. They point to the fact that there’s little evidence to suggest that babies dream, and they claim that the dreams of very young children are generally quite bland. They think that dreaming gets more intense and more coherent as children mature. That idea leads to the speculation that animal brains probably lack the cognitive capacity to dream.” She stroked Sphinx. “At least in a way that we would recognize as true dreaming.”

Ellis smiled. “Dreaming may be a human thing, huh?”

Sphinx flicked his tail in an annoyed fashion but he did not bother to open his eyes.

“Maybe.” Isabel scratched Sphinx’s back at the base of his tail. “Then you’ve got another group of neuropsychologists who are
very big on the activation-synthesis theory. It holds that dreams are merely the result of random signals sent from the most primitive part of the brain stem during sleep. The brain is designed to organize whatever data it receives so, even in sleep, it tries to connect what are essentially dots of meaningless static into coherent images, no matter how strange or bizarre.”

Ellis shook his head. “I’m not buying that theory.”

She chuckled. “Me either.”

“So, bottom line here is that we still don’t know if animals dream.”

“Nope. More to the point, there’s a great deal that we don’t know yet about the nature of our own dreams.” She wrinkled her nose. “Take lucid dreamers, for example.”

“Funny you should say that.” Ellis reached out to turn down the lamp beside the sofa. “I was just thinking that there is one lucid dreamer that I would very much like to take right now.”

Energy shimmered invisibly in the room. Isabel caught her breath. Her hand stopped moving on Sphinx. The world seemed to go into slow motion, taking on an all-too-familiar dreamlike quality.

“I thought we were supposed to be working,” she managed.

“I think we both need a break.” Ellis lifted Sphinx off the sofa. “Take a walk, cat.”

Sphinx gave him an evil look, hoisted his tail into the air and stalked off toward the kitchen.

Isabel smiled, her insides warming under the heat in Ellis’s eyes.

He lowered himself onto the sofa beside her, removed her
glasses and set them on top of the report she had been reading. She blinked a couple of times, refocused and touched the side of his face.

He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, urging her to open her mouth for him. When she did, she felt the edge of his tongue gliding along her lower lip. With a soft little sigh, she gave herself up to the embrace, turning so that her breasts were comfortably crushed against his chest.

He tugged her pullover off over her head and unfastened her bra. She unbuttoned his shirt with fingers that had started to shake.

Ellis fell backward onto the cushions, taking her with him. He kept one foot on the floor and raised his other knee. She wound up draped along the length of his body, cradled between his thighs. Somehow her clothes melted away.

“Tell me your dreams,” Ellis said against her throat. “The ones where we make love.”

She could hardly breathe. “What do you want to know?”

He slid his hand down the length of her spine and squeezed her derriere. “I want to know what I do to you in your dreams.”

She was suddenly on fire from head to toe and it wasn’t from passion. She had never been so embarrassed in her entire life.
He wanted her to tell him the details of her erotic fantasies.
She had a feeling he was not talking about the costumes she scripted for him.

“Tell me,” he coaxed, fingertips sliding up and down her spine.

A series of vivid dream fragments flashed through her brain. Words failed her. She couldn’t talk about any of those things out loud.

“Do I touch you like this?” He traced the curve that divided the twin globes of her bottom.

She dropped her head onto his chest. “Ellis.”

“Or like this?” His fingers moved lower. “You can just whisper the answer in my ear.”

“Mmmph.” There must be something she could say that would sound more seductive, more sophisticated, something a tango dancer would say, but she was rapidly losing the ability to think, let alone speak clearly.

“How about this?” He eased one finger slowly into her, probing gently.

“Ellis.”

“I take it the answer is yes?”

She could feel the firm, solid shape of his erection through the fabric of his trousers. Reaching down she unzipped him carefully and took him into her hand. His breathing roughened perceptibly.

She put her lips to his ear. “Definitely a yes.”

“Keep talking,” he said in a voice that was starting to grow hoarse. “As you can see, I respond well to positive reinforcement.”

“I noticed.” She tightened her grip on him. “That feels good.”

“How about this?”

“Yes.”

“And this?”

“Oh my, yes.”

And then she told him her dreams.

Some time later, he told her his.

e
llis emerged from the bathroom zipping his pants. He walked back into the living room where Isabel was still sprawled on the sofa, a chenille throw covering her hips.

She yawned, opened her eyes and studied him through half-lowered lashes. “Is it morning yet?”

“Not even close.” He finished fastening his pants. “Eleven-ten.”

“Just as well, because I’m exhausted.”

“I’m not exactly ready for a marathon, myself.” He reminded himself that he had work to do. But it was hard to resist the contented, relaxed sensation that had seeped into his bones. “Got to tell you, I thought my late-night fantasies involved some fancy gymnastics, but yours make mine look like a walk in the park.”

“Hah.” She gave him a smug smile and curled herself into a more comfortable position, pulling the chenille throw over her mostly nude body. “After trying out a few of yours, I don’t think I could even take a walk in the park, at least not for another week or so.”

He surveyed her from her elegantly arched feet to her tousled hair. She looked incredibly sexy lying there, still damp from their lovemaking. The scent of spent passion lingered in the atmosphere. He could feel himself stirring, growing hard again.

He reached down and patted her bare shoulder. “The good news is that we’re both Level Fives. Between the two of us, we should be able to dream up plenty of interesting positions and techniques.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she agreed demurely. “I haven’t even started dressing you yet.”

He laughed. “You want me to get dressed before we do it again?”

“Wait until you see the wardrobe I’ve been working on for you.”

“Wardrobe?” He was getting curious now.

“Never mind.” She stood, tightened the throw around her breasts and kissed him lightly on the mouth before sauntering off toward the bathroom. “I’ll explain everything when the time comes.”

“Sure. Fine. I’m flexible.” He enjoyed the sight of her hips swaying seductively as she sashayed into the hall. “Just as long as this wardrobe you have in mind doesn’t involve any of those
little leather thongs designed for the male anatomy or see-through briefs. I don’t do leather or see-through stuff.”