Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel)

by Aileen Harkwood

  “She dreamed,” he said. “Not a run. A nightmare.”

  Grey Man looked away, training a murderous expression on the far wall. He lifted his phone and spoke into it again.

  Two words. “False alarm.”

  He hung up.

  Kit Guy removed the last of the bandages. Lara couldn’t look. He turned her hand one way and another, examining the injury.

  “Nothing in that box,” he gestured at his kit, “is going to fix this.”

  He dropped her hand in her lap, directly in her field of view.

  Numb, Lara gawked at what she saw.

  She may have had all her fingers and her thumb, but her palm was gone. Hollowed out. The middle of her hand was an open crater. Almost nothing was left of her muscles and tendons to connect the digits. Arteries and veins brutalized. Even areas of bone had been sheered away. It was a wonder blood flowed to her fingers at all. The whole mess was swollen and angry red.

  “This needs surgery,” Kit Guy said. “Or she’s going to lose the hand.”

  “She doesn’t need two hands to run,” Grey Man said.

  “I don’t think you understand. It’s already infected.”

  “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “It’s not only her injury I’m talking about. The wound is septic.”

  “Look,” Grey Man squatted down again, put a hand on Kit Guy’s shoulder and commanded the man’s complete attention. He smiled and spoke congenially, but Kit Guy shrank from his touch. “I don’t think you understand. We’re pressed for time. We, I, would really appreciate your help.”

  Suddenly nervous, the medic answered. “Yes. Yes. Of course.”

  “Good.” Grey Man patted the man’s shoulder softly. “Good.” He rose to his feet. “I know you have something in that kit to cover it. Some type of fake skin. Put it on the wound and wrap it up again.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Kit Guy reached into his kit.

  Consumed solely by the sight of her hand, Lara didn’t follow his actions.

  How much longer will I have it? Is this one of the last times I’ll see my hand?

  A needle stuck the side of her neck, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she collapsed backward onto the cement.

  Chapter 18

  Jack drove, not back to his hotel room in Alexandria, but west toward Frederick, Maryland. He stopped only long enough to grab a take-out burger from a diner on the edge of the city before he continued south and west into West Virginia, crossed the northern tip of Virginia and then back into rural, mountainous West Virginia again.

  During the entire trip, his mind was on Lara.

  His mantra held. She wasn’t gone. He harbored no doubts. In the same way he shared an empathic bond with her when she was near, able to detect the emotions swirling about her, he’d know if she were dead.

  What are they doing to her?

  Over and over again, the worst scenarios Jack could imagine looped through his thoughts. Offshore-style torture methods, a panoply of mind-altering drugs, brainwashing, the playbook of covert techniques the Greys could apply was staggering. More than once over a drink, he and Gavin had discussed the probability that their enemies had already captured Lost Ones in the past and attempted to use them to target the Society. Lara was the first case they could verify as such. It was also the first instance of the Greys possessing a photo with the potential to breach society defenses. In Lara, Jack had witnessed firsthand the effectiveness pain and drugs had to break down a captive. The question was what happened to her when they added brainwashing to the mix? If Lara survived long enough—and Jack knew it in his heart she could outlast most finders, perhaps even himself against the Greys—it wouldn’t be long until they began a re-education program on her. So far, she had no knowledge of the Society, but he suspected that would quickly change. What would she be told about dreamrunners?

  “My guess?” Gavin had said. “They’ll indoctrinate any Lost One they get their hands on. Convince them they need to hate their own kind.”

  “How do you counter that?” Jack had asked.

  “You don’t. Or you can, but not easily. Because their very survival, whether they live or die, is tied up in accepting that indoctrination, you’ll have a psychological fight on your hands with any Lost One you try to rescue from the Greys. It will be like trying to free someone from a cult. Can you ever trust them not to run back to their captors?”

  Remembering that conversation weighed heavily on him as he drove into the setting sun.

  Jack, for all the Lost Ones he’d found over the years, had always maintained a safe emotional distance. From everyone. He had no close friends. No relatives left anymore, close or otherwise. Because of who he was, and the mistakes he’d made in the past, two deaths in particular for which he was responsible, he’d decided years ago that separateness was integral to doing his job. His job was everything. He built the wall to keep others out and nothing had come close to taking it down before finding Lara. He’d seen her a grand total of three times, yet something in her connected to something in him. It was as simple and basic and dangerous as that.

  Jack’s destination was a lonely piece of land in the Alleghenies not even Gavin knew he owned. He’d bought the property years ago from a doomsday prepper whose wife had finally convinced him that should the end of the world ever arrive in their lifetimes, it would be safer not to attempt traveling the great distance from the city to such a remote location, potentially being killed by angry mobs or asteroids along the way. Instead, they would shelter in place.

  What the husband had given up was a ramshackle Civil War Era log cabin, under which was a small, yet relatively luxurious rammed earth home, with two bedrooms, a standard-sized kitchen and bath. Jack bought it knowing a crisis might come one day when he’d need his own untraceable safe house. One built off-the-grid, completely underground and without windows, fit the bill nicely.

  Gavin may have opted to write off Lara as a victim of circumstance, soon to be psychologically ruined beyond redemption, but Jack was certain his boss would eventually come to the same conclusion he’d reached two days ago. They couldn’t afford not to go after Lara. The Greys may have wanted information about the Society, but the Society needed to learn as much as they could about the Greys in turn. Everything they thought they knew about their greatest enemy boiled down to half-assed guesses. Were they an offshoot of the government, operating out of Homeland Security, as many suspected? If so, was their mission sanctioned by higher ups? Or were they a bunch of overzealous agents who had gone off the reservation, using knowledge they’d gained through their employment, though not necessarily government resources, to pursue the Society? Perhaps they weren’t affiliated with the government at all, but instead a private group adopting CIA-like tactics. What did they want with the Society? To eradicate it? Or capture and take advantage of as many of its members as they could?

  Top priority was finding and recovering Taylor before it was too late, and the damage caused was irreparable. Gavin expected Jack to use his next run time to search for signs of the agent in the fields. He’d tasked him with that specific duty, stressing that the safety of all at The House depended on it.

  He would likely throw a fit the moment he realized Jack was no longer at the hotel in Alexandria. What Jack was about to do, make an unauthorized run straight into Grey territory, went against everything he’d been taught as a dreamrunner. Never endanger the Society’s secrets by exposing yourself, your identity, or your abilities to outsiders.

  Jack well understood the need for this hard and fast rule, probably more than any other person in his unit. He also agreed it was important to find Taylor and his cell phone. No one, however, was closer to that information right now than Lara. So far two very skilled runners had failed to track even a hint of Taylor’s dream signature in the fields. What made Gavin think Jack would have any better luck finding him? Lara, on the other hand, had been shown at least one photo presumably downloaded from Taylor’s phone. If there were more images
on that phone, odds were good they’d be shown to her, as well, especially after the Greys found out the Virginia tidewater safe house was no longer accessible.

  Jack mulled over these facts and scenarios as he drove, coming to a single inescapable conclusion. Lara was the key to this whole mess, and he didn’t trust the bureaucracy back at The House to realize it in time to avert catastrophe. Finding her, rescuing her, and from her the potential knowledge she had about the Greys and Taylor’s missing cell phone, was their best and only chance at saving themselves.

  That’s right. Rationalize your actions. You know you’d go after her no matter what. She’s yours.

  The soul deep, resonating thought startled him so much he almost missed a hairpin turn on the one-lane road leading to his property. He had to jerk on the wheel to keep his tires from leaving the crumbling, ill-kept pavement.

  She belongs to you and you to her.

  If he found her in time, and brought her safely home to her own people, if she didn’t freak out once she grasped who she was and what her future entailed, would Lara ever feel the same about him?

  It doesn’t matter. Saving her is your job. What does or doesn’t happen afterwards is something to worry about later.

  A mile farther on, he came to the boundaries of his property, turned in and parked. His journey wasn’t over. He still had a hike to the cabin. Jack wouldn’t have been able to afford the purchase if it hadn’t been for the previous owner’s extreme case of paranoia. Having spent tens of thousands grading in an easement to the cabin in order to access the site and build the home beneath it, he’d abandoned it to the elements for 15 years. Trees had grown up in the middle of the road, while other parts of the drive had washed away in heavy storms, rendering it impassible and the cabin virtually landlocked, surrounded by vacant land belonging to others. Apparently, the owner had believed the derelict look of the road would camouflage his well-maintained survival pad, rendering it less obvious to those angry mobs he was so terrified would visit.

  Jack beat his way through dense underbrush, sometimes having to grab onto and use dogwood and hickory saplings to pull himself up a slope that was more cliff than hill. Finally reaching the cabin, he accessed a biometric security panel beside the door. The reader would let him and no one else into the dwelling.

  From the outside, the building appeared uninhabitable and tiny, white chinking falling out of the gaps between logs in several places. Even the roof leaned sideways. Inside, Jack had retrofitted the small building to be watertight and secure. A wall of shelving at the back of the pantry opened onto a stairway that led down to the real home below.

  It had been months since he’d spent time here. He checked each room, making certain all was secure, and turned on the radiant heat in the flooring. It would be half a day before the system brought the heating coils to something approximating warmth, but the rammed earth house naturally maintained a constant, livable, if not cozy, temperature. He’d stockpiled enough food in the kitchen to keep a party of four going for weeks, yet wasn’t hungry, so he took the bedroom closest to the stairs. He pulled off his shirt and shoes, lay down on the bed and tried to get some rest.

  Only a few hours had passed since the end of his run to Lara’s condo. As much as it killed him to wait, he’d recently been schooled on his personal limits. He’d push them when he could, and hard, but he also had to respect them, not just for his sake, but for Lara’s as well. He wasn’t the only one who had just made a run. She had, too. His plan called for her to run as soon as he found her. He had to give her time, hope that the hours and energy he’d spent trying to heal her paid off and that she got better, not worse. From a runner’s perspective, she also needed time to recoup her psychic strength before she ran again.

  The question was, would the Greys let her rest? What were they doing right now? Using psychological torture? Hurting her? Shooting her up with something nasty and experimental that could kill her? Was anyone even remotely interested in giving her medical attention before the infection in her hand spread and she died?

  Throwing off a deep growl of frustration he got out of bed and began to pace the home’s central corridor, back and forth, minutes turning into hours.

  A quarter mile from the cabin, two people took up positions watching the door and the deteriorated easement leading in and up to the dwelling. Neither spoke to the other, their attention trained solely on the job at hand. When dusk arrived and no one entered or left the property, one of the pair lowered his binoculars and pulled a satellite phone out of his jacket, punching in a number from memory.

  A click marked the call being picked up on the other end.

  “We’re here,” he said. “Looks like we’re settled in for the night.”

  He listened for a response.

  “No. No one.”

  Waited again.

  “No. Don’t worry. We have enough to blow the whole cabin three times over.”

  Silently, he ended the call, slipped the phone back into his jacket and took up his binoculars again.

  Chapter 19

  Energetic and determined, the little boy on the bike pedaled and pushed his way along the sandy road between mud-walled houses despite the fact that his back wheel had no tire. Ingenuity in a region with few resources had led the boy to fasten cut up chunks from a discarded automobile tire to the bare rim as a substitute. The solution didn’t work particularly well, but the boy didn’t seem to notice.

  He wore a loose shirt and drawstring cotton pants, both in shades the color of the dirt in the road, but carried a bright red book bag slung over his shoulder. So lengthy was the strap it hung to his thighs, beating against his slight body with each pump of the bike’s pedals. In shape, the bag resembled the zippered rectangular totes airlines used to give to passengers on intercontinental flights during the 1960s. This was a new bag, however, something of which the boy was obviously proud. A small cartoon animal decorated the side, possibly a rabbit, wearing a baseball cap, the bill turned rakishly to one side. The cartoon and the bag were Japanese.

  Smiling and waving to another small boy sitting on the curb a few feet away, he reached down, grabbed the body of the bag and held it up for his friend to see. His bare feet eased up on the pedals as he did this and he sailed past a dull blue Mercedes pulling into the curb at a building with an American flag flying out front. Barricades stood stacked to the side, blocking the sidewalk, but not the building itself. The bearded man in the sedan watched the boy approach. His gaze was as dull as the sand-stripped finish on his car. He smiled slightly when he saw the boy, but the smile and whatever thoughts prompted it slid away. He looked down at the device in his hand and pressed a button.

  The Mercedes exploded.

  Lara, standing under the awning of a tiny market across the street, cried out, seeing the boy literally evaporate in the blast. One second he was holding up his bag, the next a fine red mist injected itself into a larger mix of flame and black smoke boiling outward from the point of detonation. It was a crowded street. American soldiers and dozens of people in proximity to the bomb were torn apart, limbs blown off, assorted pieces of shrapnel from the car taking out others nearby. Lara stumbled back, bumping up against the market’s front wall, while pieces of rubber and metal and burning leather flew at her. She threw up her arms, crossing them in front of her face and in a strange contradictory moment of self-interest noticed that her injured hand was whole again, as if her injury had never occurred.

  Something thin and sharp lanced her arm.

  The needle jab was nothing compared to the searing fire that ripped its way through the nerves in her arms and legs from the drug the syringe contained. Freed from the dream of a terrorist bombing, she was brought to excruciating wakefulness.

  The cell. Always the cell when she woke. She’d already been roused once since the degrading experience with the water hose. More pills had been shoved into her, but they came with something more substantial to drink, a thick, syrupy juice with a medicinal tang. It had mad
e Lara want to gag.

  This time, waking meant a return to the one nightmare she couldn’t escape. Grey Man stood over her.

  “Miss Freberg,” he said, “Glad to see you up and around. Tell me, are you finally ready?”

  “Ready?”

  “To get me what I want.”

  She lifted her head off the floor and turned her face to look up at him.

  “The room,” she said.

  “The location of the room.”

  Lara didn’t care where the room was. She reminded herself of her earlier vow not to help these people in any way.

  Resist. Let them do what they will to you. You’re going to die anyway.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. You proved that to yourself last time, didn’t you?” He gestured at her injured hand.

  Her gaze drifted toward it. Healed in her dream, it remained bandaged and damaged here, the swelling increasing once again.

  “You know how to do it,” he said.

  She flicked a glance at the man with the syringe standing not far off, the same person who had manned the torture cart when she’d arrived here.

  “Do what? Hallucinate? You’re in charge of that.”

  Grey Man kicked her in the side. She curled into a fetal position, doing her best not to whimper. He shoved the photo of Jack’s bedroom in her face.

  “You will go there again.”

  “Why? All the windows are covered and he has the door locked from the inside.”

  Lara realized her mistake too late.

  How could you be so stupid?

  She’d just betrayed Jack.

  He noted her stricken expression. The remorse and fear.

  “He, Miss Freberg?” the Grey Man said. “You spoke to one of them?”

  He accented the word them, made it sound dirty.

  “Let me give you some education on the man you met on your last run.”