Oliver squinted and blinked and shaded his eyes against the brightness, trying never to lose sight of blonde hair and blue eyes, but when his vision cleared, Cate was gone.
He expected to feel shattered again. Torn and broken and lost. But his heart still beat, and his body still drew breath. He was still standing.
He looked around for Glau, but she wasn’t there. Neither were her footprints, or his, or Cate’s. The island looked different too. The trees were smaller, the bushes thinner.
Wherever Glau had taken him, she had upheld her end of the bargain and returned him home. Oliver had been set free. His gold ring lay on the sand. He picked it up, hesitated, and then put it in his pocket instead of on his finger.
A shout reached him from across the water. Turning, he saw Nathan waving from a rescue boat bearing the Odysseus Star logo, heading directly for him.
He squared his shoulders and felt hope flood through his body. “I’m ready,” he said to the sky, to Cate, to himself.
Then he lifted his hand and waved back.
Click on the covers to visit Lisa’s Amazon Author page:
Lisa Mangum has worked with books ever since elementary school, when she volunteered at the school library during recess. Her first paying job was shelving books at the Sandy Library. She worked for five years at Waldenbooks while she attended the University of Utah, graduating with honors with a degree in English. She has worked in the publishing industry since 1997. In 2014 she was named the Editorial Manager for Shadow Mountain.
Besides books, Lisa loves movies, spending time with her family, trips to Disneyland, and vanilla ice cream topped with fresh raspberries. She lives in Taylorsville, Utah, with her husband, Tracy.
She is the author of four award-winning books: the Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello.
Follow Lisa on Twitter: @LisaMangum
Chapter One
When Alex became a cop, she anticipated nightmares. She just didn’t anticipate hers coming true.
But for the last six years, they had. All thirty-seven times. Thirty-seven attempts to stop the inevitable. Thirty-seven crime scenes awaiting her the next morning. Thirty-seven murders.
Until today. Energy buzzed through her veins and her brain. She had to get there. She had to get there. If there was any chance she could stop it this time. She. Would. Get. There.
Alex checked the dash clock. 6:44. Why’d she have to live so far from downtown? Normally it wasn’t a problem, but after this morning’s dream—
This morning’s dream had been different. First, it ended too abruptly. The victim wasn’t dead yet. Second, she actually knew the location. Hard not to recognize the iconic brick building downtown, between its century-long history as a tobacco warehouse and the ubiquitous ad campaign for its remodeled urban lofts.
Normally, she had to analyze a dream, roll it over in her mind, scrutinize, calculate, think. Today, she could jump into action— and she was.
Alex barely managed to stop in time for the last red light before the freeway entrance. The eerie half-light of dawn bled into the dark night sky. Was it this light in the dream? She might be able to make it.
The dream was different— and that had to mean something. It had to. It had to mean she could do something about it. Stop the murder.
The stoplight turned green, and Alex stomped on the accelerator, though she had to slow for the cloverleaf onramp in fifty feet.
Alex leaned into the pull of the curve, then accelerated to merge onto the freeway. Should she take the Duke Street or the Chapel Hill Street exit?
Duke would be faster. No left turns that way. She punched it to cover the next mile, mentally replaying the fragments of the dream: the sky was lightening. Sun wasn’t up. The victim, tall, slim, features obscured by a bulky gray hoodie, walked down the sidewalk, passing into the shadows where the brick warehouse bridged over the street. After a minute, Alex followed, living the dream through the killer’s eyes.
Once the shadows were the deepest, the killer attacked, grabbing the victim from behind. He struggled, and Alex watched. She could almost feel the victim’s body straining against her grasp, even as Alex’s every muscle screamed for her to let go, draw her weapon, stop this. But she was powerless, as if she were the one in the chokehold.
And then the dream stopped. They never stopped before the victim was dead.
The trees and grassy hills by the road fell away to reveal the downtown’s pervasive old brick. Alex zoomed across the last overpass, past the ballpark, craning her neck as if she could see what was happening in a tunnel half a mile away.
She had to get there in time.
The hill next to the road climbed back up to grade, the towering pines whipping past, in time to provide the exit ramp she needed.
Another mile. One more mile choked with lights and traffic and jockeying, filled with buildings that had gone from big tobacco to rundown bars to upscale ethnic eateries in her lifetime. Why did they need so many signals and cross streets? She didn’t dare flip on lights or sirens— even from this far away, that warning could change the dream, make something go wrong. Annoyance— no, frustration, anger— flared at yet another red light.
In the past, the dreams had never given enough clues to solve the murders. This time was different. This time Alex would stop a murderer before he killed.
She hoped.
The light cycled back to green, and Alex was the first off the starting line. She scanned the streets to her right. The brick warehouse bridged above one of these cross streets. Morgan or Main?
Main didn’t feel right. She sped up to get to the next light. Morgan. Had to be it. She whipped around the corner. The warehouse didn’t pass over the street; a rusting covered walkway spanned the space instead.
No, no, no. It was getting too light. It was getting too late.
Too fast, Alex zipped under the walkway— and then she saw it, thirty feet later: the building-bridge. This was it.
Blue and red flashed from the far side of the tunnel underneath. Two squad cars and an ambulance. Oh no. No, no.
Her stomach foundered. She was too late. He was already dead.
Alex fought against the defeat clawing at her rib cage, forcing herself forward. The dream was different, and that had to mean something. Just not what she’d hoped, what she’d wanted. She couldn’t prevent this murder.
This was where she usually came in anyway, after the fact. Prevention wasn’t nearly as much of her job since she’d made homicide.
She pulled into an empty parking spot on the street, checked her badge on her belt and straightened her dark brown take-me-seriously blazer for the early morning chill. Before she got out of the car, she cleared the dream off her mental list. It gave her a little to go on, but she couldn’t sit on the witness stand and say, “I had a dream.” She needed evidence now. Footprints on the sidewalk. Security cameras. Witnesses.
Alex ruffled her choppy blond bob and marched across the street. She’d expect some foot traffic, but only two uniformed officers and a witness stood on the sidewalk. The October air’s chill snaked through her jacket. Deserted downtown. Creepy.
Coming from the homicide detective who dreamed of killing people? That was rich.
She reached the sidewalk. No way would she barge in and commandeer someone else’s crime scene, but surely they’d appreciate someone offering to help. The area wasn’t cordoned off yet— unless they were done. But they couldn’t have finished collecting evidence that fast. The sky was still too dark for it to have been long, and the ambulance three cars down was no coincidence.
If nothing else, the dreams had taught Alex there was no such thing as a coincidence. Analyze, observe, then act.
The dreams were cruel that way.
The pale, freckly cop reported on his radio, while the black officer interviewed the probable witness, a tall man with his back to Alex. His navy fleece set off his deep bronze skin tone, halfway between the officers’, but that wasn’t the only reason the witness reminded
Alex of someone she used to know. Something about his stance dredged up a memory of a man she’d tried to forget.
Officer Freckle Face finished on his radio, and Alex strode up to him, pulling back her jacket to reveal the badge on her hip. “Detective Alexandra Steen. Who’s in charge?”
“Uh.” The officer glanced around. “Me?”
“Are you asking me or telling me—” Alex checked his name tag. “—Officer Pfeiffer?”
He squared his shoulders, stepping up to his authority. “Telling you.”
Good. Someone she could work with. “Want some help?”
“We’ve got it under control.”
“Lex?” came a voice to her left.
Alex froze. No one called her that, not since college, and even then, that was only one person. She whipped around to face the man being interviewed by the other cop.
Nick. Black ice coated her brain, making any thought treacherous.
Years of memories slid through her mind anyway. His easy laugh. Holding his hands. The sharp ache after they broke up, an ache that hardened into the razor-edged shard still lodged in her chest.
Of course he lived in Durham. Of course he’d come home, like she had. Of course she couldn’t run into him any other way.
And of course, he had to be every bit as handsome still— only grown-up this time. Mature. Confident, like he’d finally found direction in his life.
Business. She was here on police business. “You’re— you’re a witness?”
“No.”
Then her own surprise cleared enough for her to register the look in his eyes, hollow and stunned, and the streak of blood on his fleece. He was more than a witness. Alex glanced back at where she knew the crime scene was. Still no cordon, no other officers, no coroner. She knew the conclusion, but she didn’t dare make the leap.
The officer who’d been taking Nick’s statement cleared his throat. Alex checked this one’s tag. Harrison. “Next of kin,” he supplied.
Next of kin? Shock threatened again, but Alex muscled past it. Who was this victim to him? He didn’t have any brothers, and his dad had been out of the picture for decades.
Still, it must be someone close to him. “Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry.”
His gaze slid away from hers, and he nodded his thanks.
“You two know each other,” Harrison didn’t ask, tucking his notebook in his hip pocket.
“Used to,” Alex murmured.
Harrison eyed each of them in turn. When neither of them elaborated further, he placed a hand on Nick’s back to guide him down the street. “We should go.”
The officer was trying to be sympathetic, but Nick was traumatized; couldn’t Harrison see that? He’d lost someone close. They should question him here instead of dragging him off to the station. Assuming he lived here, of course.
Alex looked up at Nick again and their gazes met. She knew how it felt to have your world tilt beneath your feet, losing control, losing direction, losing safety. The way she’d felt when the dreams started. Or when he’d broken up with her in college.
She’d spent seven years trying to forget him— the bad and the good. But when he stood there, still stunned, and opened his arms, she had to hug him.
It was almost criminal how easily they fell into the embrace, how well they still fit together. She might’ve been obligated to hug him, but she didn’t have to hold onto him quite so tightly, trying to return that same support he’d always given her. And she didn’t have to remember all the times he’d held her before, the comfort and quiet strength he always seemed to have for her, how much she’d missed the security of his arms around her.
But remember she did.
Finally, Nick loosened his grasp. Harrison walked Nick down the sidewalk, and Alex followed, stopping at Pfeiffer’s car. “What’s your take?” she asked the other officer.
“Not much to go on yet. Victim says she didn’t see him, no witnesses so far. Maybe random street crime.”
Alex allowed a nod. Maybe, but she’d never dreamed of street crime before. Still, she needed to consider all the alternatives. The dreams demanded no less than exacting investigation, every time.
“Heard you know the next of kin.” Officer Pfeiffer jerked his head down the street after Nick and Harrison.
“Yeah.”
“Know his sister?”
Candyce? Sure, she’d grown up with them, then followed them to college.
Wait. She wasn’t— she wasn’t the victim, was she? Alex raced through the dream’s images. Tall, slim, gray hoodie. She’d assumed it was a man, but she only saw the victim’s back. Candyce was tall and still had the broad shoulders that had helped earn her a swimming scholarship.
But Candyce couldn’t be dead.
Alex glanced at Pfeiffer. “Is someone from homicide assigned yet?”
Confusion etched a furrow between his brows. “No, but—”
“Coroner, anybody? You need to get a barrier up to protect your crime scene.”
Pfeiffer squinted, more confused. “Coroner? For an assault?”
What? No. All of her dreams ended in death. Every. Last. One. No one knew that better than Alex. “What do you mean, an assault? Start from the beginning.”
Pfeiffer pointed behind her, to the scene. “Victim was walking down the street, and someone grabbed her from behind. She passed out, and the guy ran away. Never got a look at him. When she came to, she called her brother, and he called us.”
“Gotcha,” Alex said, her tone totally normal, as if this wasn’t all so very wrong. Not that it was a bad thing Candyce had survived. But Alex had never dreamed about an assault. Nothing less than premeditated murder.
Maybe the attack was bad enough that Candyce might still be in jeopardy. “How’s she doing?”
“Tough to say. Up half the night driving from Charlotte. Couldn’t get much out of her. Probably concussed.”
Down the street, Harrison packed Nick into the waiting ambulance— where Candyce must be. Only a concussion? They wouldn’t need EMTs. “You called in a bus?”
“The brother did. Treating her head wound. You know how those are.”
Sure— they bled like a B-movie bullet hole. “So she had a head wound, too.”
Pfeiffer half-shrugged and fell into a classic cop dead-pan, downplaying the injury. “More of a scrape where she hit the pavement. Enough to look bad.”
Alex turned to check the crime scene. If that dark stain on the sidewalk was blood, and Nick had it streaked on his fleece, small wonder he was worried. He could be right. Even minor head injuries could turn life threatening.
Nick could be right? It’d been a long time since she’d let herself think that.
Officer Harrison reached them. “Doesn’t seem like there were any witnesses, but we’ll start canvassing.”
Alex barely acknowledged him, the numbness finally settling in. How could Nick be right and her dream be wrong?
A blinding flash snapped the final piece of the dream into place in Alex’s mind. Alex— the killer— grabbed the guy from behind, and the scuffle began. But as the victim went limp, her gray hood fell back, revealing her hair, twisted into tiny curls. The killer jumped away from her, and Candyce crumpled to the ground, her head crashing against the sidewalk hard enough to bounce. The killer ran away without looking back, his footsteps and the dream fading into nothing.
Candyce wasn’t the target. And she wasn’t dead, not in the dream and not in real life.
No. Impossible. Six years of consistent dreams of death. They’d never changed. Never.
But they had. And Alex had to figure out what that meant. What it meant to see Nick.
She caught a glimpse of the retreating ambulance. When they’d broken up in college, she’d never planned on running into Nick again. But this morning, he was the least of her problems. Or maybe only the beginning.
Chapter Two
Six hours later, her regular work had pulled her away, but her mind kept sliding back to the dream. She was use
d to running on not enough sleep— too used to it— but this distraction was different than simple sleep deprivation.
Her computer wasn’t helping. Alex tapped one finger on her desk, waiting for the program to catch up yet again. She needed to get through this paperwork and track down Pfeiffer and Harrison. They probably didn’t have a status update on an assault case with zero leads, but one upside of her personal connection: it gave her an excuse to stay involved.
And she had to stay involved. If the dreams were changing, she needed a grip on this new angle, fast. She had to. Or she might come close to losing it. Again.
After another sixty seconds of waiting for the world’s slowest computer processor, Alex jumped to the next item on her list. Dispatch put her through to Harrison without question. Alex introduced herself and reminded him, “I was at your assault this morning. Find any witnesses?”
“Canvassing didn’t turn up anybody. Barely after dawn, so I guess that’s to be expected.”
Yeah, the residential side street had been eerily empty. “Any update on the victim?”
“I think Pfeiffer went by the hospital about an hour ago. They admitted her. Maybe her brother was right about the head injury.”
How many times did people have to say Nick was right today? “Is she still there?”
“I think so.”
Alex realized she was stabbing that one finger on her desk again and clutched a pencil to keep her hand quiet. “Which hospital?”
“Duke.”
“Okay, thanks. Keep me apprised of any developments.”
“Will do.”
Alex hung up and glanced at her computer screen. The stupid report management program had finally caught up, and she quickly finished entering her info. She called Pfeiffer and got Candyce’s room number. Her boss, Sergeant Oscarson, was occupied, so barring any mid-afternoon murders today, she was safe to do some questioning of her own at the hospital.
She managed not to grip the steering wheel too hard despite early rush hour traffic over the few blocks to the hospital parking garage. What did she hope to find? Between the element of surprise and the head wound, Candyce might never remember enough of the incident to ID the suspect— would-be killer— but Alex couldn’t leave that call to someone else. Not when it involved Candyce.
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