by MJ Rodgers
“There are tiny computer chips buried in the fibers. They’ll record your brain waves so I’ll know when you’re asleep. The ones across your eyes will let me know when they start moving. That’s called rapid eye movement or REM sleep. It’s the time when dramatic dreams take place.”
“What do you mean by dramatic?”
“We dream through most of the night. But the dreams that accompany REM sleep are those in which the subconscious reveals itself in the most theatrical way.”
“Dressed in costumes, wearing wigs?” Briana said, chuckling at the image, not really meaning to be serious.
“Sometimes in elaborate disguises,” Michael said, very seriously. “And sometimes stripped to the bare essentials. Bnana, as soon as my instruments tell me a REM dream is over, I will be awakening you and asking you questions about it.”
“How will you awaken me?”
“By calling your name. I’ll remain in the control room. There’s a two-way microphone built into the nightstand. I’ll talk to you through it.”
“And after I tell you about my dream?”
“Then you can go back to sleep. Until I wake you after the next one. You should have at least three REM dreams tonight”
“What if I don’t have any dreams?”
“You will. We all do. Most of us simply don’t remember them. Tonight you will.”
She could feel his fingers brushing lightly against her temples as he fitted the mask into place. She could feel the warmth of him, smell his scent. Her pulse took a small leap. The sudden blackness was absolute.
“Michael, if you’re monitoring my sleep all night, when are you going to get any shut-eye?”
“I’ll take a nap tomorrow. Now relax and stop worrying, Briana. Concentrate on telling yourself you’re going to have an insightful dream.”
“You can get one by willing yourself to have it?”
“Always feel free to ask your unconscious for what you want when you dream. And don’t be surprised when you get it”
She heard his footsteps recede out of the sleeping cubicle.
He was what she’d really like to dream about tonight. Not that there would be anything insightful about such a dream. She already knew how she felt. She would love to be back in Michael’s arms, melting into his kiss. Briana sighed as she turned onto her side.
The words from that silly fortune cookie came back to her. Dreams can come true.
She wondered how Michael would respond if he woke her tonight after a REM episode, expecting some insightful dream recitation, only to hear her tell him of how she’d been tearing off his tuxedo and jumping him on his own couch?
She chuckled at the thought.
Here she was facing a world without a familiar thing in it, and all she could fantasize about was the doctor she had met on awakening into it. No doubt about it. She was bonkers.
MICHAEL WATCHED the displays on his control panel, feeding in from the sleep cubicle, monitoring Briana’s brain waves and eye movement states. He knew he had more than an hour to wait before he could expect her to enter REM sleep.
He eagerly awaited her dreams. The thought that she was just missing three weeks had been one thing. But she wasn’t just missing time, she was missing her identity.
The woman she thought she was didn’t exist. And yet, whoever she was, she was more real to him than any woman he had ever known.
He remembered her telling him about her grandmother as they sipped champagne on Christmas Eve. Briana’s bittersweet memories of her grandmother had brought her alive for Michael. Whether Hazel was real, he didn’t know. But he did know that she was real to Briana.
And yet, Briana’s beauty was not real to her. Michael knew beautiful women walked around with an antenna, that unconscious air of understanding that all eyes would be on them. It was in their walk, the way they held their shoulders, the knowing smile on their lips, the artfulness of their makeup and dress, the covert glances to judge their effect on others.
Briana had no such antenna, no such air, no such awareness at all that she was beautiful. And that was astounding, particularly considering how astoundingly beautiful she was.
Whatever had happened to strip her of her memories had also stripped her of the knowledge of her beauty. Completely. Even her unconscious knowledge.
If this was a fantasy she had created in her mind, it defied all logic. Which was the most mysterious part of all Because Briana herself seemed quite logical.
Michael remembered telling Nate that very morning that the nice thing about dreams was that by paying attention to them, anyone could be helped with anything.
He couldn’t wait for Briana’s dreams to solve her mystery.
Briana’s REM state began precisely ninety-two minutes after she had fallen asleep. The dream wasn’t a long one, lasting only ten minutes. When the REM state was over, Michael switched on the microphone to her cubicle.
“Briana?”
He called her name several more times before he saw her brain wave pattern changing to wakefulness and then heard her voice saying groggily, “Michael?”
“You were dreaming, Briana. Sink back into the dream. Tell me where you were.”
Her words were soft, slightly slurred. “I was in this elaborate bedroom suite. The furniture was very ornate, ponderous.”
“Who was with you?”
“Two women. One was older, in her sixties, I believe. She was elegantly dressed. The other seemed younger—fifty, maybe. She was well dressed, too, but not quite as elegantly as the older woman.”
“Who were these women?”
“I seemed to know them, Michael, but I don’t know who they were, if that makes any sense.”
“Perfect dream sense. Go on.”
“The two women were upset at me. It had something to do with this dress the older woman had handed me. It smelled terribly unhappy—like lavender.”
“You could smell the dress in your dream?” Michael asked, more than surprised.
“Yes.”
“Was the dress a lavender color?”
“No, it was white.”
“And you’re sure it smelled like lavender?”
“Yes.”
“Why did the scent of lavender on the dress make you think of something terribly unhappy?”
“I don’t know. It just did.”
“What happened next?”
“The women were angry because I wouldn’t wear the dress. I felt upset, too. The more we argued, the more their voices sounded like barking dogs. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I ran from the room. That was when the dream ended.”
“Go back to sleep now, Briana.”
Michael turned off his microphone. He watched the monitor until Briana’s brain waves indicated she had returned to sleep. He checked the recorder to make sure he had captured Briana’s account of her dream and then leaned back in his chair, waiting for the next one.
The first dream hadn’t made much sense to him. But he knew that was normal. Most dreams didn’t make sense to outsiders. The only person who could really interpret a dream was the dreamer. Tomorrow they’d discuss all her dreams and she’d decipher their meanings.
Michael yawned sleepily.
Normally, when he spent a night in the sleep lab control booth, he had planned ahead and caught a nap the afternoon before. Or at least a good sleep the night before.
Tonight he had had neither. And he was feeling it. Still, he was determined to keep awake and alert.
Michael had frequently witnessed a sort of beginner’s luck associated with those first attempts a person made to get in touch with their dreaming mind. The first night often yielded astounding results.
This was Briana’s first night. It was absolutely necessary that he capture her every dream.
He rested his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, relaxing his muscles, putting himself in a meditative state that would allow him to become instantly alert with the start of Briana’s next REM dream.
She awakened
more easily after the second dream, and responded quicker to his questions.
“I was at the top of this awkwardly winding staircase with a deep red carpet, part of a procession. On the walls to my left were all these old family portraits.”
“Your family?”
“No. Someone else’s. The house was not mine. Thankfully.”
“Thankfully?”
Briana laughed. “It was an enormous stone structure with several dozen rooms, a crenellated roofline, a central square tower, a totally enclosed Tudor-Gothic fortress that looked like it belonged on an eighteenth-century Scottish hillside.”
“Is that where you were? In eighteenth-century Scotland?”
“No. It was contemporary time. The tuxedos and pierced ears on the men were proof of that. Although how a hunky guy who has to shave twice a day just to look marginally civilized could ever think pierced ears are sexy is beyond me.”
“The men in your dream were wearing tuxedos?” Michael asked.
“They were ushers. A full orchestra was playing the wedding march. The maid of honor and the bridesmaids had on deep red dresses with white sashes.”
Michael felt every muscle in his body snapping to full attention. He carefully kept his rising emotions out of his voice. “Were you in this procession or watching it, Briana?”
“I seemed to be behind it. Only I turned around, and when I turned back, the bridesmaids and ushers were gone.”
“Were you still at the top of the stairs?”
“Yes, but the stairs were different, steeper, and it was the older woman who stood with her back to me, the one who had tried to give me the dress that smelled of lavender.”
“In your earlier dream?”
“Yes. She was dressed differently, not nearly so fine.”
“Go on.”
“The woman was cleaning the stairs with this old canisterstyle vacuum. The cord was looping around her ankles. She didn’t seem to be noticing.”
“What happened?”
“I called out to warn her. But she didn’t hear me, because the vacuum was making so much noise. She tripped on the cord and began tumbling down the stairs.”
“What did you do?”
“I watched her fall to the bottom. I wanted to go down to her, but I was afraid. I tried to climb on the banister so that I could slide down. But the banister was too high, and I couldn’t reach it. I didn’t know what to do, and I was so scared. I started screaming something.”
“What, Briana?”
“I don’t know. The dream ended. It made no sense.”
“It will, Briana. Go back to sleep now. Your next dream is going to be even more important than your first two.”
Briana didn’t know whether Michael was just giving her a suggestion so that she would have an important dream or whether he knew something she didn’t. But she sank quickly back into sleep, suddenly quite sure she would have that more important dream.
When it came, it brought her fast awake, sitting upright in her bed, her palms perspiring, her heart pounding. She tore off the sleeping mask.
“Michael?” she called.
“Yes, Briana, I’m here. You’ve just brought yourself out of this last dream. What’s wrong?”
“I was back at the wedding, Michael.”
“The same wedding in your earlier dream?”
“Yes. I recognized it. The same house. The same full orchestra playing the wedding march. The same procession of bridesmaids and ushers.”
“Briana, were you the bride in this wedding?”
Briana took a very deep breath, willing her heart to steady. “Yes.”
“Describe everything you remember.”
“We marched through the house outside to an elegant formal English garden sitting right in the center of the house’s inner courtyard. There were thousands of pure white rosebuds, mixed with bloodred ones, adorning a series of arches. We walked under them.”
“Go on.”
“A minister and groom waited beneath a single pure white baby rose altar arch at the end of the garden.”
“For you?”
“Yes. I marched up a clover-carpeted path to stand by the groom. He was big, with brown hair. I tried to see his face, but the bridal veil was suddenly too thick. The minister was asking me if I would love and honor him. And then he said the words ‘until death do you part,’ and I answered, ‘I will,’ only I was vehemently shaking my head no.”
“You didn’t want to marry this man?”
“I don’t know what I wanted.”
“What happened next?”
“I shut my eyes tightly for a moment, and when I opened them again to face the minister, he had disappeared, and suddenly I found myself in this elegant ballroom, being whirled around to an old-fashioned waltz. And I knew I was at the wedding reception.”
“Who were you dancing with?”
“I couldn’t see his face.”
“Was it the groom?”
“I think it right have been. I was looking around as my partner whirled me over the floor. I saw a smiling man in the crowd on the sidelines of the ballroom.”
“Who was the smiling man?”
“I don’t know. He had black hair. I saw his features only in profile. He was talking with someone who didn’t seem to be responding. Then the person he was talking to suddenly turned toward me. He or she was wearing this hockey player’s mask, with nothing but black holes where there should have been eyes and a mouth. I didn’t want to look at it.”
“What did you do?”
“The music was suddenly playing too loudly. My dancing partner was holding me too tightly. I pulled away from him and ran out of the room. And then I was outside again, in the English garden, underneath the wedding arch. The minister was smiling and telling the groom it was time to kiss me. I felt his lips on mine, and the dream ended.”
“On a happy note, it seems. You’ve spent a very productive night, Briana. Your dreams have exceeded even my expectations. They are detailed and very unusual.”
“More unusual than you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t just have that dream this morning, Michael. I was having that same dream last night when you awakened me. When I kissed you back, it was because I thought I was kissing my new husband, the husband of my dreams.”
SERGEANT ELENA VIERRA was not happy. Matter of fact, she was livid.
It had taken four years for her to finally get enough seniority to have the holidays off and spend them with her kids. And what happened? At the very last minute, two of the force came down with the flu, and she got stuck with holiday duty anyway.
And on top of that, she had a terrible case of PMS.
She always snickered when she heard the experts talk about overtestosteroned men and the damage their raging hormones could do. She’d match it with the rage of a woman with a full-blown case of PMS any day.
She felt like shooting someone. And if she had to write up one more stupid, petty complaint with paper and pen because the fools who had put in the computers hadn’t had the foresight to keep even one damn typewriter for the times they went down, she was going to shoot someone.
“Sergeant Vierra,” a male voice called, cold and clipped, the voice of a man who was used to barking out orders.
The sound was akin to a nail scraping across Elena’s already irritated chalkboard ears. Maybe this would be the petty complainant she ended up shooting.
She looked up to see a big, broad man of about forty, with glossy brown hair and green eyes. He was very good-looking, and the lines of hard living on his face told her he’d been taking full advantage of it. He reminded Elena of her husband, the one she’d finally booted out after supporting him and his gambling habit for ten years, the one who had made her immune to good-looking men.
Although this one appeared to have some money. He was wearing a handmade silk suit and a platinum Rolex.
Elena rose to face him. She was five-eleven. She judged the man to be six-f
our and packing at least two hundred and forty pounds on his beefy frame.
Big, handsome, loaded.
In her twenty years on the Las Vegas police force, Elena had seen only one other to match him. And she’d seen him less than two days before. Maybe it was the holiday season that brought out these gorgeous guys.
“And who are you?” she asked.
“H. Sheldon Ayton the Third,” he said, and the sound of old money just rippled through the words.
Elena gestured to a chair in front of her desk.
“How can I help you, Mr. Ayton?” she asked, sitting down again. It was a polite platitude that she mouthed but didn’t mean.
“My wife is missing,” Ayton said as he sat.
Domestic quarrel, Vierra thought God, I hate these Why couldn’t it have been another “the Christmas lights on my neighbor’s house are so bright they’re keeping me awake” complaint?
“How long has she been missing?” Elena asked aloud.
“Since Christmas Eve.”
Elena reached into her desk drawer for the missing-persons report form, once again quietly cursing the powers that be that had left her without even a typewriter to take down the information.
“Your wife’s full name?” she asked.
“Natalie Newcastle Ayton.”
Vierra wrote. “Date of birth?”
“February 4, 1967.”
“Address?”
“Eighteen-eighty-four Ayton Court, Hamish Mountain.”
The words brought Elena forward so fast that her shin slammed into the edge of her metal desk. She ignored the pain, her eyes flying to the man’s face.
“Hamish Mountain?” she repeated with a voice made scratchy with surprise.
“Yes.” The confirmation almost hissed through Sheldon Ayton’s teeth. He wasn’t comfortable with her recognition.
Elena wasn’t surprised. Hamish Ayton had been one of the richest profligates Las Vegas had ever seen—and they’d seen some doozies. Nevada’s favorable tax laws had had him building warehouses all over the place. Then the word had gone out that Hamish was storing illegal stuff in some of them. Before they could drag his tail into court, however, he had bitten the dust.
Quite literally. Hamish’s body had been found next to one of his warehouses far out in the desert, dead by dehydration, lying next to his Rolls Royce, also dead by dehydration.
