Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  “The sleeper wakes,” Doc said.

  His voice thundered in Eslin’s ears. Her throat constricted and her stomach rolled ominously. She swallowed hard and clutched at her splitting temples.

  “The sleeper barfs,” she croaked hoarsely and groaned. “Oh, my God, my head.”

  “Here, this’ll help.”

  Through the roaring in her ears Eslin heard water slosh, then started as something cool and wet pressed against her forehead.

  “Can’t leave it there long, though,” Doc said. “Don’t want to loosen your bandage.”

  “Bandage?” Eslin echoed faintly. “What bandage?”

  It took him several long seconds to answer.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “I remember going to bed….” Her voice trailed off as she realized that was all she remembered.

  “Somebody broke into your house,” Doc told her quietly, “and whacked you over the head with your tea mug. You’ve got four stitches here”—he paused and Eslin felt a light pressure against her hairline and heard the stiff crackle of gauze—”and a mild concussion.”

  “It doesn’t feel mild,” she said, swallowing thickly.

  She said nothing else, just lay there savoring the cool dampness seeping into the bridge of her nose. Quicker than she’d expected, it took the edge off the slicing pain and the nausea. Her senses began to register other things then, the rough weave of the sheets beneath her, distant, muffled sounds, and the faint tang of antiseptic in her mouth and nose.

  “I’m in the Harwood, aren’t I?” she asked.

  “Yep. With your own private nurse—me.”

  Smiling weakly, Eslin cautiously opened her eyes.

  “How come you’re not in uniform, Nurse Fitzsimmons?”

  “Because when emergency admitting called me a little after four this morning and told me you’d just arrived in an ambulance, I threw on the first thing I could find and hotfooted it down here.”

  “Who called the ambulance?”

  “Gage.”

  “What?”

  Eslin’s eyes opened wider in surprise. “He told the police that he couldn’t sleep, that he went for a drive, and when he found himself in your neighborhood and saw all the lights on he assumed you were up and stopped in. Do you remember any of that?”

  “Give me a minute,” she said, her head throbbing hard.

  It took a couple minutes’ meditation to ease the tension out of her body, but as her muscles relaxed, so did the sickening throb in her head. A brief flash of the dream she’d had—the green pool, the voice calling her name—flickered through her mind along with a shuddery recollection of the shadow that had followed her home, of waking and sitting up in bed.

  “I screamed,” Eslin told him slowly. “I thought just in my dream—but do you suppose Gage heard it?”

  “If he is telepathic—and I’d bet my couch on it—then he very well could have. Fascinating—a psychic scream.” Doc said thoughtfully, then went on. “The police didn’t buy his story, and neither did I, frankly. Three o’clock in the morning is rather an odd hour to take a thirty-mile drive.”

  “They didn’t arrest him, did they?”

  “No. Just took him down to the station and called Ethan to identify him.” Doc chuckled. “He didn’t have any identification on him, and I believe they initially thought he’d stolen Ethan’s Lincoln.”

  “Sounds like he left Roundtree in a hurry,” Eslin said pensively.

  “As he would have if he’d heard you scream,” Doc answered, his voice sounding thoughtful again. “However he ended up at your house, I thank God that he did. Mild as the concussion is, the longer you’d lain unconscious—”

  “It’s all right, Doc.” Eslin smiled as he abruptly bit off his sentence. “I work in a hospital remember? I know that the longer you’re out after a blow to the head the greater risk you run of going into shock.”

  Thank God indeed that Gage showed up, she thought.

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “No,” Eslin admitted.

  “Whoever broke into your house did so to leave you a message,” Doc told her quietly. “Rather an ugly one, I’m afraid. The police detectives who’ve been poking around your house since five o’clock this morning have pretty well decided that you must’ve wakened and surprised him in the act of setting fire to the dossier on Marco Byrne and Ganymede’s photo album. It wasn’t a big fire. He let it bum just long enough to char them up, then he put it out.”

  “That’s sick.” Eslin breathed shakily, her head beginning to throb in earnest.

  “It’s also a warning with an unmistakable signature.”

  “Signature?” She echoed.

  “Marco Byrne.”

  Another flash of memory stirred in Eslin’s pounding head: flame, smoke, and the acrid smell of burning paper.

  “I get it now,” she said in a quavering voice. “B-y-r-n-e,” she spelled, “and b-u-r-n.”

  “ ‘The burning of your barn was a warning to cease all efforts to find Ganymede,’ “ Doc said, quoting from Marco Byrne’s letter. “ ‘If you don’t, I will know.’ A fascinating way to get his point across.”

  “I wouldn’t call it fascinating.”

  “It is when you consider that fire is the age-old symbol of purification as well as destruction.”

  “That’s even sicker,” Eslin said, and shivered.

  “Absolutely. Marco Byrne is a very sick young man.” Doc paused and sighed heavily. “And very dangerous.”

  “Purification as well as destruction,” Eslin repeated slowly. “Why doesn’t that make sense to me? What needs to be purified? What do the pyrotechnics have to do with stealing Ganymede? I don’t see the connection—or am I missing something?”

  “You’re not missing a thing. It doesn’t make sense to me, either, although I don’t doubt that there’s a method to his madness.”

  “Do you think he is, Doc?”

  “Do I think he’s what?”

  “That he’s mad?”

  “Oh, yes, as a hatter.”

  Another shiver raised the hair on Eslin’s forearms.

  “The blow was dangerously close, you know,” Doc went on gruffly. “An inch or two lower and you’d be in the morgue. It’s quite possible the intruder meant to kill you.”

  “But why kill me?”

  “Perhaps to make an example of you, to show that he means business—perhaps he sees you as a threat, perhaps he’s afraid you can find Ganymede. Any way you figure it, Eslin, things have gotten out of hand. I could kick myself for not seeing the potential for violence in this case, for involving you in the first place.”

  “It’s not your fault, Doc,” Eslin said gently. “You can’t see into the future.”

  “I can far enough to know that it’s way too dangerous for you to remain here. I’ll open the condo on Maui. You can go there for a couple of weeks—”

  “I’m not going anyplace,” Eslin replied firmly. “I’m staying right here until I find Ganymede—and Marco Byrne.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Eslin. You were lucky last night, extremely lucky, but you’re no match for a madman.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she repeated. “I know you’re worried, Doc. So am I. No, truthfully, I’m scared to death, but I’m staying. How do you think I’d feel—how would you feel—if I were to bail out on Gage and Ethan and one of them got hurt or”—Eslin couldn’t bring herself to say the word killed—”or worse?”

  “I’d feel terrible,” Doc replied curtly. “I don’t know that I’d blame myself, but—”

  “Yes, you would, and so would I.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, and when he did, his voice sounded old and tired.

  “Ethan said he’d understand if you want to drop the case.”

  Eslin smiled. “And I’m sure he meant it.”

  “But you aren’t going to, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Eslin,” Doc sighed in defeat. “If yo
u can keep your lunch down I’ll dismiss you, take you home to pick up your things, and drive you out to Roundtree.”

  “You aren’t suggesting—”

  “No, I’m not, but Ethan is. He has enough security people staked out around the stables to protect Fort Knox. Besides, there’s safety in numbers.”

  It made sense, scary sense, but sense nonetheless, so Eslin didn’t argue. What was the point? She’d known she’d go back sooner or later, though this wasn’t quite how she’d imagined it.

  “This is … Wednesday?”

  “Yes,” Doc said.

  “Has Ethan heard anything more from Byrne?”

  “No, nothing yet, but the forty-eight hours aren’t quite up.”

  “There’s a viper in the Roundtree bosom, Doc. There must be. Somebody told Byrne I was still on the case.”

  “I agree and so does Ethan.”

  “What do you suppose Byrne is up to? He did nothing for six weeks, now all of a sudden he’s stepped up the pace.”

  “I have no idea what he’s up to. I do know that time is as much our enemy now as Byrne. We’ve got to find him fast.”

  Despite the worry and concern so heavy in Doc’s voice, Eslin smiled at his plural pronouns.

  “Our problem?” she echoed. “When did this get to be our problem?”

  “When he sent a thug to your house,” he replied gruffly.

  “I’m sorry.” Eslin raised her left hand from the bed sheet. His fingers closed warmly around hers.

  “That’s enough gloom-and-doom talk for now, and you need your rest.” Doc squeezed her hand. “I’ll check on you later.”

  With any luck I’ll sleep without dreams, Eslin hoped wearily as she closed her eyes. The thought triggered a murmur in her mind, a flash of green water and the reflection of the funny, hump-shaped mountain.

  “Doc?” she called urgently. “Doc, are you still here?”

  “Yes, Eslin.” His voice came from the direction of the door. “What is it?”

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “I need some books from the public library. Picture books, you know, those glossy, coffee table type things?”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  “On Mexico. As many as they’ll let you check out.”

  “Why Mexico?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “Ganymede?”

  “Maybe,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Just maybe.”

  Chapter 15

  When doc puffed through the door two hours later with an armload of books on Mexico, Eslin removed the cool cloth from her forehead and pressed the electric bed control. While the mattress moved her up into a sitting position, she held her breath and opened her eyes. There was still a dull throb in her temples, but no nausea, and she reached eagerly for a book off the pile Doc dumped on the foot of her bed.

  Thirty-five minutes later, on page forty-two of a book titled A Pictorial Guide to Mexico, she found what she was looking for. A shiver of excitement and recognition ran through her, and her right hand trembled a little as she laid her index finger on the name.

  “Bingo,” she said, tapping her fingernail on the photograph. Tugging his glasses off the top of his head, Doc sprang out of the green vinyl chair he’d drawn up to her bed and leaned over her right shoulder. Neither of them said anything for a few moments; they simply stared at the gray, humped mountain looming beyond a flat, desert city skyline.

  “ ‘Saddle Mountain,’ “ Doc said, reading the caption beneath the photograph, “ ‘outside Monterrey, Mexico.’ “

  “Call Ethan,” Eslin told him. “Tell him to send someone down there. He’ll find something in Monterrey—I don’t know what, but something.”

  “I’ll get him,” Doc said, reaching for the beige Trimline sitting on the table beside the bed.

  Eslin held the book open against her raised knees, her heart pounding as she gazed at the photo and the dream replayed itself in her head. She sat there, still and pensive, seeing Saddle Mountain as she’d seen it then, a murky reflection in deep green water.

  “Ethan, this is Gerald Fitzsimmons,” Doc said. “Eslin may have a lead for you…. Yes, yes, I’m here with her now…. Monterrey, Mexico…. Hell, I don’t know where it is, either, northern Mexico, I think. Anyway, dispatch one of your detectives down there PDQ. You’ll find something there, Eslin isn’t sure what, but something, she said…. Yes, I’m driving her out this afternoon…. Yes, sure, you’re welcome…. G’bye.”

  “Well?” Eslin asked, closing the book as Doc hung up the phone.

  “He’ll have someone down there this afternoon,” he said, smiling as he parked his glasses on the top of his head.

  “Good.” She felt suddenly tired and stretched her legs out as Doc took the book from her and moved the stack from the bed to the table.

  “Sleepy?” he asked, and she nodded with a weak smile. He bent over her and gazed steadily into her eyes; first her left, her right, then her left again. “I think we can count on your waking up again, so go ahead and take a snooze. I’ll be back in an hour or so with your lunch.”

  He squeezed her hand, and Eslin let the bed down as he walked across the room and the door sighed shut behind him. She yawned, closed her eyes, but couldn’t fall asleep. Her body was tired, but her mind simply refused to shut off.

  “The blow was dangerously close, you know. An inch or two lower and you’d be in the morgue.”

  If Eslin hadn’t dreamed snatches of her own old age, hadn’t seen herself with grand and great-grandchildren clustered around her arthritic knees, Doc’s solemn pronouncement would have terrified her. Not that it didn’t give her a qualm of unease; it did, and in an effort to reassure herself, she focused her mind on the image she’d seen in her dreams of her own distant future, tried to make out the features in the faces ringed around her. She’d never felt compelled to do so before, but concentrated every ounce of will she had to do so—until she realized she was looking for gray eyes and curly dark hair. She stopped herself then and opened her eyes.

  Only once before, when her mother lay dying, had she wished that dreaming things really could make them happen. She wished it again now, briefly, then sadly let the image go. Just because Gage had come to her rescue didn’t mean he loved her. He’d responded to her psychically, had heard her scream and had come because he’d been compelled to come. He’d lied to her about seeing the lightning and the barn on Saturday night, and she had no doubt that he’d lie about this too. As long as he continued to deny his psychic abilities there was no point searching her future for sons and grandsons who looked like Gage.

  But when she fell asleep, she dreamed about him anyway. There was nothing horrific or erotic in her dreams, they were just lovely, soft dreams with lots of smiles and laughter, adoring gazes and hand-holding. He even gave her flowers, although she couldn’t remember what kind when she woke up, alone, thank God, with tears streaming down her face.

  She wasn’t sobbing, just crying, an inexplicable sadness for what might have been but could never be welling up inside her as she used the corner of the sheet to dry her eyes. She wished she’d seen Gage smile, just once really smile, or that she’d heard him laugh; then she sighed a shuddery breath, rolled over on her right side, and slept again until Doc shook her gently awake to eat lunch.

  Chapter 16

  Eslin slept without dreaming almost all the way to Roundtree. She awakened beside Doc as he turned the BMW off the two-lane county highway onto the wide private road, and two casually dressed men rose out of lawn chairs situated near the gateposts in the high stone wall surrounding the stables. One put down a red plastic Thermos lid, the other laid a magazine on the seat of his canvas chair and stepped smiling up to the car as Doc eased on the brake.

  Must be the security guards, Eslin thought, huddling deeper into her camel stadium coat as she remembered why they were there.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the one with the magazine said as Doc rolled down hi
s window. “May I have your name, please?”

  “Fitzsimmons,” Doc answered. “Gerald Fitzsimmons.”

  “And this is Miss Hillary?” he asked, leaning closer to the car to look at Eslin.

  “Yes,” Doc confirmed.

  “Could you tell me, sir,” the guard said, “Ganymede’s winning time in the Kentucky Derby?”

  ‘Two minutes, two and five-eighths seconds.”

  “You’re expected, sir.” He straightened, signaled his partner, and the electric gates hummed open.

  “Doc,” Eslin said, as the BMW purred up the drive, “that’s the wrong time. Ganymede won in two minutes flat.”

  “Yes, it’s the wrong time, but it’s the right password.”

  Guards and passwords. Eslin shivered again and slid down in her seat as the trees overhanging the white-railed fences lining the road closed over the top of the car. Sunlight and shadow dappled the windshield and her side window as she turned her head to the right and wondered how many guards were out there watching Doc’s BMW glide up the road.

  As they pulled up in front of the house, the doors opened and Ethan, wearing the most casual outfit Eslin had ever seen him wear, green corduroys and a checked shirt, strode out to meet them. Either he’d been watching, she guessed, or the guards had walkie-talkies. She puzzled for a moment over the slim Mexican boy who was following Ethan sullenly across the drive. She didn’t remember him until she got out of the car and saw the gauze pad taped to the side of his neck. He was Ramón, Josefina’s son.

  “I’d ask you in for coffee, Gerald,” Ethan said, a disconcerted smile on his face, “but I’m afraid you might not get out alive.”

  Eslin didn’t look at Doc, she didn’t have to to feel his pain and disappointment.

  “Never mind, Ethan, I really haven’t time,” he blustered bravely. “I’ve two patients waiting and a consultation at five. So if you wouldn’t mind…” He left his sentence unfinished and popped the automatic trunk release.

  “Of course. Ramón?” Ethan gestured at the boy and followed him to the trunk.