Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel)

by Aileen Harkwood

  She did her best to remain calm, make sure every word that came out of her mouth sounded non-judgmental. “You did,” she said. “When I went to find you in the fields. You told me you were standing by three graves. I heard you thinking they were for Jamie, Starr…and me.”

  “I thought you were dead, because I’d been too slow to get to you, or get you out of that chamber of horrors in time. I felt the connection between us let go. It was my fault it did.”

  “Like it was your fault Jamie and Starr died?”

  “You don’t know anything about that.”

  “So tell me.”

  Instead, he slid out of bed, stalked naked to the hospital room’s closet, grabbed a pair of jeans someone had hung from a pants hanger inside and yanked them on, commando-style. Were they the jeans he’d had on when they brought him in? She would have expected them to be tossed because of the blood. These fit him though, tailored to him by his own body after repeated wear, they sheathed his powerful legs and hugged his narrow hips and reminded her of the first time she’d seen him, bare-footed and bare-chested attempting to reach and save her from abduction.

  Unlike that first defining moment of their relationship, he now avoided her eyes.

  Self-inflicted anger animated him so that every movement had a swift start and jerked to a hard finish.

  Stupid, she caught one of his stray thoughts. How could I be so stupid?

  “Jack?” she said.

  He patted his jeans pockets looking for something, and when he didn’t find it in any of them, he immediately scoured every open surface in the room, nightstands, tables, chair seats.

  “The coin,” he said. “Where’s the coin?”

  “What coin? Jack I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A knock came at their door, and Gavin stepped in, closing it behind him. Frantically, Lara grabbed for and pulled up the bed sheet to cover herself.

  “Good to see you two up and around,” Gavin said.

  His mood was all business, nor did he display the least amount of embarrassment at having walked in on them. Jack flicked a look at Lara, pure male possessive behavior, but didn’t seem to realize he’d also revealed how protective he could be where she was concerned. A split second later, he rooted around in the bottom of the closet for his boots, a pair of socks and a shirt, all of which he pulled on hastily.

  “Taylor?” Jack asked Gavin.

  Lara blinked at the blunt change of topic. Her discussion with Jack back at his cabin seemed light years in the past. She struggled to remember the name and why it was important.

  “Still missing,” Gavin said.

  Right. Dreamrunner stuff they won’t tell me about.

  Jack grunted at this news. It was impossible to infer much from the sound. “And the status of evacuations?”

  “On hold,” Gavin said.

  “So we’re just going to sit around here with our thumbs up our collective asses?”

  “It would appear that way,” Gavin said. “The more time that goes by without an attack by the Greys, the more confident the higher ups are that the Greys don’t know where we are, or even have enough intel to lead them to us.”

  “You go along with this?”

  “No. I confess. I’m not so sanguine. I don’t consider time a predictor of failure for the Greys. They’re relentless. They’ll keep beating at this until they get what they want. At this point it would be foolish to assume there was only one piece of useable information on Taylor’s phone.”

  “But do they still have him? Or is he dead?” Jack said.

  “My gut says, no. The Greys still have him.”

  “Yeah, but in what shape? Is he in any condition to tell them anything useful?”

  “Don’t know.” Gavin turned to her. “Lara, are you sure you were only shown the one photo?”

  “I was shown lots of photos,” Lara said. “Whole stacks of photos.”

  Gavin’s attention pivoted to Jack, alert and, if she wasn’t mistaken, suddenly alarmed. “What? Did you know about this?”

  Jack sighed. “She’s talking about the photos of terrorist attacks. Your team must have recovered them from the cell where she was kept.”

  “Oh. Yes. Those. But we haven’t been sure how they figured into the Greys’ plans,” Gavin said.

  “They don’t,” Jack said, before she could answer for herself. He’d become awfully high-handed all of sudden. “They have nothing to do with The House.”

  “Is that right, Lara?”

  “They were trying to convince me that your society was responsible for bombings and other terrorist acts around the globe.”

  “I see.”

  “I was terrified, because I thought they somehow knew about my nightmares.”

  Gavin looked down at his feet, pursuing an awkward, momentary silence.

  “About that,” he said at last. “The embassy you saw being bombed. I owe you an apology.”

  Lara immediately sat up straighter and leaned forward.

  “I’m fairly confident you have a dismal view of who we are, the Society, and what we do,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought we are a bunch of moral Neanderthals who can’t get off our paranoid asses to help anyone besides ourselves.”

  “I…uh…no…” Lara fumbled for what to say to this, especially since Gavin had chosen almost the exact words she’d been thinking about him when he’d introduced himself during her rescue. How odd.

  “You’d be right,” he said. “Some of the time. Some of the time we have to put ourselves first because doing otherwise would jeopardize the lives of other innocent–”

  “Children,” she finished for him. “And others who are vulnerable. I understand now. You have them nearby somewhere. We’re at The House.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “However, I didn’t take your warning lightly. I reached out to a friend I have in the State Department.”

  “And?” Jack asked. He was fully dressed. He also took a step closer to Lara and Gavin, who stood at the end of the bed. “Did you find the building she described?”

  “The person I spoke with recognized it immediately as a strategic compound in the Middle East, where U.S. operations are coordinated throughout the region. The barriers you saw had been moved aside for a street celebration. They moved them back into place as soon as they were warned about a possible suicide bombing.”

  “So the little boy, the American soldiers, none of the others in the street were blown up?”

  “No,” Gavin said, but didn’t elaborate.

  “That’s great!” Lara said, relieved and overjoyed. “I can’t believe it. That’s incredible. Oh, my God!”

  “Wait, Lara.” Jack cautioned her. His brows drew together. “There’s something you’re not telling us,” he said to Gavin.

  “The bomb still went off.”

  “What?” both she and Jack said.

  “I’m sorry. Early intel was that the U.S. compound you saw in your dream was the bomber’s original target. When it became unavailable, he moved on to another. The car bomb took out the street in front of a local police station. Same blue Mercedes, different location, different victims.”

  Lara sat back, stricken. Instantly she discovered Jack holding her good hand, rubbing it comfortingly between his own. She was grateful, but it didn’t diminish the horror rushing in a cold wave up the back of her neck.

  “Then what good am I?” she said.

  “Your gift is an important one,” Jack said.

  “Really? Because to me it looks like I just destroyed a whole lot of lives with my gift.”

  “You weren’t the one who drove a bomb into a crowded street and blew himself to Allah,” Gavin said.

  “I might as well have been,” she said. “Who knows? By telling you, I might have altered things so that more people died than would have been killed if I hadn’t interfered at all. Grey Man had it right, except you aren’t the people murdering people. It’s me. I’m the one.”

  “Don’t
go there, Lara,” Jack said. “You can’t take on blame for something you didn’t do.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Like you don’t blame yourself for whatever happened to Jamie and Starr?”

  “You told her?” Gavin said.

  “He hasn’t told me anything,” Lara said. “He almost died in there, in the fields, because he thought he had to guard their graves, but I’m not supposed to know who they were or anything else about them.”

  Gavin glanced from Jack to Lara and back, his expression hard to define. Was he intrigued by their argument? Puzzled by Lara’s outburst? Both?

  “Their graves?” he said. “Why would they have graves in the fields?”

  “Ask him,” she said. “He put them there. Oh, and one for me, too.”

  Jack let go of her hand.

  “Gavin,” Jack said, manner stiff, “Do you know if Rafe is around?”

  “I believe he’s still here. He stopped in yesterday to see how you were doing, but you were otherwise occupied.”

  Making love, he means, Lara thought.

  As before, Gavin showed no embarrassment. His “otherwise occupied” made it sound like Jack had been in the middle of a meeting, not having wild, passionate thank-God-you-aren’t-dead sex with her. Was Gavin as casual about the subject as he seemed, or merely a cold person at heart?

  “Good,” Jack said. “I’m certain you’re busy, Gavin, but I’d like to be brought up to speed. I’ve been out of it for too long. Rafe can fill me in.”

  Before Lara could say anything more, the two men were gone, leaving her behind, naked and alone. The sheets on his side of their bed had already cooled.

  Chapter 31

  Jack didn’t return, nor did she hear from him for the rest of the day. Lara got out of bed, showered in the tiny private bath attached to their room and dressed in clothing she recognized as having last hung in her own closet, back at her condo. Not only did she have a choice of several outfits, but in a suitcase on the floor she found three pairs of her shoes, though not her favorites, underwear, and every piece of jewelry she owned, which wasn’t much, granted, but still important to her. Equally precious was the small, seashell encrusted wooden box tucked into one corner of the airport-style roller bag. The box contained her most precious memories, snapshots of her parents and brother, Pieter, who had died serving in Iraq, plus mementoes from her family’s lives together.

  “I hope I picked the right things?” Poppy’s soft rasp announced her presence behind her in the room.

  Lara stood up, turned around, and almost had to bend down again to meet Poppy’s gaze. Though she was likely in the range of 4'10" to 4'11", thoughts of signs reading YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE THIS COASTER came to mind. She fought back the image as uncharitable, especially since her eyes were tearing up over the incredible thoughtfulness this hopefully new friend of hers had shown.

  “You did this?” she asked, hugging the shell box tightly to her chest.

  “Yes. Well, Rafe helped.”

  “I haven’t met Rafe yet.”

  “You will. He’s about the closest thing Jack has to a friend.”

  “Jack’s not popular around here, I take it.”

  “Not for lack of people wanting to be a part of his life,” Poppy said. “He just doesn’t let them in.”

  “I’ve found that out,” Lara said, somewhat sourly. She was thinking of Jack’s sudden abandonment of her an hour before.

  “Don’t hold it against him,” Poppy said. “Please don’t. He needs you. The problem is he thinks you don’t need him.”

  “I haven’t said anything like that to him.”

  “No, you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. We’re Lost Ones, you and me.”

  “And Jack doesn’t like Lost Ones?” Lara asked. “If he doesn’t, why does he do what he does?”

  “Wow, you sure are a jump to conclusions sort of girl, aren’t you? That’s not it at all.”

  “Okay, enlighten me.”

  “Jack thinks he’s death to Lost Ones and other innocents. He doesn’t want to make a mistake with you.”

  “What and accidentally kill me? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Jumping to conclusions again, Lara,” Poppy said. “He’s afraid he can’t protect you well enough.”

  “I think I can handle myself, thank you.”

  “Clearly. The fact that you survived the Greys’ torture speaks volumes.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll tell him.”

  “Oh, that should go over smoothly.” Poppy adopted a sweetsy, singsong voice. “Thanks, honey, but I can protect myself better than you.”

  “No,” Lara said. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “No? I guarantee you that’s what he’ll hear.”

  “Then what?”

  “Show him you have faith in him. Show him you know how fucking brilliant he is at his job.”

  That shut Lara up despite herself. There was nothing she could say to counter or argue that. Jack needed faith. According to Poppy, Jack didn’t have the faith he needed to let the world embrace him. She would have to help him find it.

  “But why? Is he like this, I mean,” she asked. “Who are Jamie and Starr and what happened to them?”

  “Sorry,” Poppy said. “I’m not about to move myself into his dog house. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

  Lara nodded, put the shell box on the room’s small, cottage-style dresser.

  “Thank you for this,” she said. “It means a lot.”

  “I’m glad,” Poppy said. She paused and Lara could tell she’d stopped herself before adding something else.

  “What is it? Lara said.

  “You know you’ll never be able to go home again, right? Back to your old life?” Poppy gestured at the box and the clothes, jewelry and shoes. “That’s it. That’s all you’re going to get to take away with you.”

  Lara nodded again, but mechanically. She heard, already understood why she couldn’t go back, but wasn’t ready to take it in.

  “You grabbed what I would have grabbed if my place was on fire. And then some,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Poppy said. She headed for the door, but paused when she gripped the handle. “You’re the right one for him. Exactly the right one.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s been five days since you and I last talked.”

  “Five days! But Jack and I–”

  “Exactly. Jack was basically dead. You went in there and spent almost four days in the fields bringing him back to us. At one point we thought you’d both stopped breathing. In the end, however, you emerged whole and healthy. You healed him. Miraculously. Not me. Not the doctors. You. I love Jack, but I can’t say with absolute confidence that I would have gone that far.”

  Lara’s stunned look remained seconds after Poppy left the room.

  A nurse with a wheel chair was her next visitor, taking her down to Dr. Matthews for an appointment to check the progress of her last surgery. After that it was off for another round of tests, plus a stop to schedule appointments with a Society-mandated psychiatrist who would help her with what would likely be a whopping case of PTSD in the weeks, months, and years to come, plus the first of some sort of dreamrunner orientations. Lara would have loved to walk the corridors on her own, but was secretly grateful to be ferried around by others. How did Jack, a man who had only days before needed a ventilator to breathe, just get up out of bed, throw on his clothes and gallop back to work? Meanwhile being pushed through hospital corridors fatigued her so much she began to slump in her chair an hour into the day.

  Exhaustion got the better of her emotions. Inexplicably, she became cross at the smallest delays or inconveniences. She’d been rescued from the Greys. She was alive. She wouldn’t lose her hand. She should be delirious with relief. Happy. Laughing.

  Instead, she could barely muster enough energy for lunch. Her hand hurt like an SOB and no reasonable amount of meds would shut off the pain signals. S
he refused the stronger ones she was offered. She didn’t want to be out of it when she saw Jack again.

  By three, however, when she returned to their room, Jack wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen or heard from him once. She mentally reached out, hoping to snatch even one of his stray thoughts, but nothing.

  Face it. He’s staying away for a reason.

  She changed into a tank and silk short pajamas, climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Her greatest desire was to shut out the world and forget about her hurts, both physical and emotional for the next few hours. Her conversation with Poppy this morning had given her a lot to think about, but she was sick of thinking. She wasn’t even sure if half of what Poppy had said truly applied to Jack. His rationale for staying away could be a lot less complicated than what Poppy implied. He might have woken from his ordeal, been happy to have sex, but after a chance to sleep on it, realized the massive error he’d committed, and decided to head for the exit.

  Eventually, her thoughts and anxieties wore down. Warm and safe, she drifted off.

  Lara picked her way over the hundreds of bodies that scattered the ground, smoke and a noxious chemical that burned her eyes still rising into the night air. Only a few of the bodies were complete, with arms, legs, a head. Most were pieces, many no longer recognizable as human.

  Her gaze settled on the scorched stuffed animal peeking out from under a little girl of no more than four- or five-years-old. A toy dog with blue fur, pink felt tongue stitched to its cheery-eyed face, and the little girl with no arms to cuddle it.

  No. Not again! Why this dream?

  It was her third time for the nightmare. She felt no closer to grasping its importance, or less, if it predicted an actual future. She’d had dreams that didn’t come true. She always had. She might, as she understood now, be a dreamrunner with a specific skill, running toward violent tragedies, but she wasn’t infallible. Her “success” rate ranged from 70- to 80-percent.

  More than two weeks had passed since she’d first dreamed of these poor, dead souls, yet nothing had occurred anywhere in the world during that time that resembled or matched its senseless destruction. Did it mean the dream was just that, a nightmare concocted from a blend of unresolved fears buried deep within her subconscious?