She was quiet for a moment, then she murmured, “My dad used to do that all the time.”
He stilled, moved his hand away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you say something? If it bothers you—”
“It doesn’t bother me.” She took his wrist and guided his hand back to her hair. “It makes me feel loved. Like I finally got something right by choosing you.”
A tight burn spread through his chest. “I do love you. And if I could find a way to keep you locked up here, keep you tucked away from everything bad that’s happened in your life, I’d do it. I swear I would.”
She ran her fingers across the stubble on his cheek and pulled him close for a kiss. Afterward, her mouth stilled and her forehead settled against his for a long moment. Then she sat up. “You’ve done something a lot more important than keep me locked away from my past. You’re helping me figure out how to live with it.”
He sat up, too.
“I’m sorry for keeping the truth about David Benson from you. I’m sorry for giving you trouble about Isobel this week. And I’m sorry for getting so crazy earlier. I’m worried that after tonight you’re going to think I’m not strong enough to face the hard stuff.” She laced her fingers with his. “But whether we hit a snag in our relationship or some other part of my past rears its head, I think I’m strong enough to face it.” Her gaze locked on to his. “And I think I’m strong enough because of you.”
Touched beyond words, he pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“When my family was murdered, it took everything I had just to exist. The pain was so, so raw, you know?”
He nodded but had a feeling he didn’t have a clue what she’d been through.
“Maybe that’s okay for a while,” she went on. “Maybe that’s how you get through tragedy. But the thing is, I never moved on. I couldn’t because I never trusted anyone. Not with all of it. Certainly not with the dream part. Then you steamrolled in and now . . .”
She wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Anyway, I should have told you the truth about David. And I should have known Isobel wasn’t a threat to what we have.” She paused and then looked up at him. “Don’t doubt that I can do this. I’m strong enough to get where I need to be if you just give me a chance.”
He pulled her onto his lap. “I’ve never doubted your strength,” he said. “I think about it all the time. Especially when I try to imagine a little girl hiding while the unthinkable happened to her family. I know I can’t even come close to understanding what that was like. But you’re not that little girl anymore. And you’re not alone.”
“I know.” She kissed him. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
“I think we both may have ended up lucky,” he whispered. “And you know what else? We’re both about to get even luckier.”
***
Familiar with the sounds of Jordan dreaming, Ty opened his eyes when he heard a noise. He was disoriented; the bedroom didn’t look or feel right. He blinked. They were still on the mattress in front of the fireplace. He felt for Jordan. The spot next to him was empty. He sat up.
Jordan had rolled off and lay on the cold wooden floor.
Beauty had curled next to her, trying to keep her warm. The dog whined, and Ty realized it had been Beauty and not Jordan he’d heard.
He laid a hand on Jordan’s arm. Her skin was cold. “Babe.” He rubbed his eyes, trying see a little better. It was still dark outside. The only light was a faint glow from the fireplace embers and the small nightlight shining in from the bathroom. He could see just enough to know Jordan was asleep. And maybe dreaming.
Beauty turned her head toward him and whined again. A louder, more urgent sound this time.
“Jordan.” He tried to keep his voice low and soothing, which was always in opposition to everything he felt when trying to figure out if she was dreaming or just asleep. The first time he’d seen her dream, he’d tried to shake her awake and then restrain her. She’d fought him. Hard. And then she’d been wildly unsettled when she woke.
Since then he tried to be gentle when waking her. Still, he hadn’t found the right way to get the job done with a minimal amount of stress for both of them.
He smoothed his fingers up and down her forearm and realized just how cold her skin felt. Oddly cold. Eerily cold. He’d touched dead bodies that weren’t as chilled. And if she were dreaming, she wasn’t thrashing around like normal.
Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe she’d rolled off the mattress and gotten cold.
Beauty let out one yelping bark and stood.
He put one hand under Jordan’s legs and one under her back and slid her onto the mattress. Then he covered her with the blanket they’d shared earlier. He even grabbed another one from the bed and threw that over her, too. But something still wasn’t right. Jordan slept like a cyclone most nights, tossing and turning, even thrashing violently when a dream came. He’d never seen her like this, stone still. Hell, he couldn’t even hear her breathe.
That realization had him panicking. He raced to the wall switch and flipped on the overhead light. Still she didn’t move. “Jordan, wake up. Come on, right now.” No movement.
Beauty barked again.
“Jordan, goddamn it, wake up.” Was it just his imagination, or had her lips taken on a bluish tint? He yanked back the blanket and looked at her fingertips. Slightly blue. Scared beyond reason, he picked her up, tugged her limp, naked body into his lap and wrapped his arms around her.
“Jordan Delany, wake up. It’s Ty. Come back, Jordan,” he ordered, shaking her. Beauty started barking in earnest and turning in panicked circles on top of the mattress.
“I know you’re dreaming, goddamn it. So wake up. You’re scaring Beauty.” Hands on her shoulders, he shook her hard enough to make her head jerk back. “Wake the fuck up,” he hollered.
Chapter 12
Jordan heard a dog bark. And she heard Ty. Kind of. But her heart was still with the girl dying in the snow.
Hailey.
“Wake the fuck up.”
The words bellowed like a foghorn. Her head snapped back and her eyes opened, but her vision was blurred as if she was just under the surface of a thin pool of water. And holy hell, her lungs hurt.
“Breathe, damn it! Breathe.” A piercing bark and Ty’s angry words penetrated the odd zone she was trapped in.
He’d strangled her. The tall blond kid with curly hair and pretty hazel eyes had strangled the college girl. Hailey.
“Take another breath. That’s right, just keep breathing, baby.” Ty pulled her close, pressed his warm cheek against hers, and her eyes fell shut again.
Hailey had been crushed when the boy knocked her to the ground. She’d fought him, all the while trying to understand how the person she loved, her David, could hurt her so badly. She’d peered into his eyes, scanned every part of his face. Then Hailey had stopped fighting. An odd sense of relief had washed over her.
And Jordan had no idea why.
“Open your eyes so I know you’re okay,” Ty murmured.
But it was Beauty’s commanding bark that made Jordan’s eyes spring open.
“Thank God,” Ty grumbled. “Fucking Christ.”
Beauty pounced on her stomach. If she hadn’t taken a deep breath before, she did now, when the dog spring-boarded off her gut. Ty scooted her back on the mattress and dropped his head in his hands.
The loss of his warmth spurred a deep shiver. She longed to crawl back onto his lap, but he looked . . . She wasn’t sure. Frustrated? Maybe even angry?”
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“No, Jordan, I’m not okay.” He sprang up off the mattress and stomped into the bathroom.
Beauty crawled next to her and nudged her arm. She curled around the dog. “I’m okay.” She ran her nails up and down Beauty’s belly. “You’re such a good girl, aren’t you?”
Jordan wanted to be curled around Ty. Didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon. She wondered what watching
one of her dreams was like.
Ty came back into the room, irritation evident in his every movement. “Why don’t we put this mattress back up on the bed?” He helped her up and they lifted the mattress back on the box springs. His words were curt and much different from those of the warm Tyler McGee she had fallen asleep with.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”
He let out a long sigh. “Not mad. Disturbed maybe. But not mad.”
“I can’t help having them. I’ve tried to warn you—”
“I don’t care that you had a dream. It was the not breathing part that threw me. Has that happened before?”
“Pretty much everything has happened before.” She shrugged. “I’ve woken struggling to breathe, or lying in the floor. Once I woke up lying in the middle of shattered glass. I’d bought a cute little lamp for the nightstand, but it was made of crystal.” She smiled. “Now I stick with the brass ones.”
He ran his hands through his hair, then tilted his head back as if life’s answers were scrolled across the ceiling. “Was it my case you were dreaming about?”
“Yes.”
“Then you need to stop dreaming about it.” He dropped down on the bed. “We arrested David Benson yesterday. It’s over.”
She sat next to him and bumped her shoulder against his. “I don’t think so. If I’m still dreaming about Hailey and David, there’s a reason for it. Why don’t you get ready for work and I’ll try to sort through this.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss. “I’m sorry for getting upset. I’m exactly where I need to be.” He kissed her again and then asked, “What did you mean that you’d sort through it? How do you do that?”
She shrugged. “I’ll journal it, try to get down as many details as I can.”
“You have a dream journal?” The shock in his tone said it was just one more thing she’d failed to share. “Where?”
She nodded at the nightstand at her side of the bed.
He went to it and opened the drawer. After fishing around for a second, he pulled out a beat-up spiral notebook. “Is this it?”
She nodded.
“Okay, then. Let’s do this.”
***
Ty let Beauty outside and made coffee. He grabbed some cookies and headed back to the bedroom. By the time he crawled under the covers next to Jordan, she was dozing again. He kissed her forehead “Wake up, sleepyhead. I brought you coffee and breakfast in bed.”
She sat up, scooted back against the headboard, and eyed the package of Oreos he’d tossed on the comforter. “When I brought you breakfast in bed, there were eggs and bacon.”
He adjusted a couple pillows and leaned back. “Don’t be jealous because I make a better breakfast than you. Oreos should be a required food group—you know it, and I know it. The world needs to stop with all this protein crap.”
“Ah, yes.” She smiled. “Who needs nutrients, anyway?”
“Exactly. Eat your cookie, then we’ll do this.” He picked up her journal. “May I?”
She shrugged. “You probably won’t be able to read most of it. My handwriting isn’t great after a dream. It’s just notes, nothing that will make sense to anyone but me.”
“Maybe not. Still, I’d like to see it.”
After a moment, she nodded.
He opened the notebook and flipped through the pages, studying the dates and information. “This is incredible.” He looked over at her. “How many cases do you think you’ve solved?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure how much to attribute to being a good investigator and how much is because of the dreams. Either way, I’ve got a pretty good track record.” She grabbed a cookie and twisted it apart. “I was the second-youngest person to make detective in my precinct. The youngest female. That pissed off more than a few guys.”
“I bet.” Ty grinned and turned to a blank page. “You know, you could tell me about the dream and I could write for you.”
She glanced at the journal and swallowed down a bite of cookie.
Usually Ty was pretty good at sensing her moods, but her silence made him worry that he’d overstepped or treaded on sacred ground. “I don’t have to. I mean I was just offering.”
“No, that would actually be good.” She picked up the pen and handed it to him. “Start with the date and time of the dream, just like you would when you’re talking to a witness. If I don’t know who the victim is, or where the crime happened, I jot down a little of the surroundings, time of day, temperature, anything that might shed light. Since you already have that info, we’ll skip it.”
He watched as Jordan closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths.
“It was unbearably cold,” she started. “The ground was covered in snow. I don’t know what time it was. No one else was around, so I’m guessing it was late. Like really late, after everyone else is already where they’re going to crash for the night.”
Jordan tossed down the cookie and went on. “She was trying to get home, and I wasn’t sure why at first, but she stopped and looked around. She looked down the street, debating, I think, then she decided to cut through some kind of a park or field, or something like that.”
The ravine. Ty knew exactly what Jordan was describing.
“She was about halfway through this field thing when she heard sounds, like footsteps crunching in the snow behind her. When she turned, there was nothing. She started walking and heard the sound again, only this time she figured it was coming from the cluster of trees to her right. She picked up the pace, had almost started to run, when he called her name.”
Watching Jordan recall the vision was remarkable. It was like skipping to the end of a book before the whole mystery had unfolded.
No, it was like watching a playback of the mystery as it unfolded.
She opened her eyes and looked down at the journal. “Um, cowboy? In order to log this dream, you need to actually write down the details.”
“Shit. Sorry.” The only thing on the page was the date and time. “I was just watching and . . . It’s like you go somewhere else when you do that. I can’t decide if it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen or completely terrifying.”
“Yeah.” She laughed. “I’ve debated the same thing myself.” She took the pen out of his hand, then grabbed the journal. “I’ve got this. I’ve done it many times before.”
“I can help, I swear I can.”
Jordan held up a hand to quiet him and closed her eyes again.
“Hailey turned around, and the thing is, she was relieved to see him. She even said his name. Then she hurried to him and hugged him. The weird thing was, she pulled back right away. I think it may have been the smell.”
Jordan opened her eyes, but still seemed focused on the memory. “I remember feeling my nose burn and clog, which is usually a sign that a victim is trying to make me aware of an unusual odor. And he didn’t return her hug back, which bothered her, too, I think.”
Ty watched Jordan scribble down thoughts and impressions without even looking at the paper:
She said his name—David
Abnormal smell
No response from the hug
Impressed that she could home in on the dream and still write, Ty didn’t try to take back the job. She ran through the next few events, talking and sporadically writing. Her breathing became labored when she recapped Hailey struggling with David.
“But when he grabbed her hair, she knew.”
Jordan’s hand became increasingly unsteady. Ty eased the pen and pad out of her hands and began to write.
“With quick, violent deaths, most people never come to the realization they’re about to die,” she said. “Even as their car is spinning out or they’re looking down the barrel of a gun, their mind is always working on how to fix the situation. But once he hit her and fell on top of her, Hailey knew she wasn’t walking away. Still, I can’t help feeling that she was fighting more to understand what was happening than she
was to escape.”
Jordan wasn’t asleep, her eyes were open, and she was talking while analyzing the dream. But if Ty were a betting man, Jordan wasn’t seeing him, their bedroom, or the damn dog that had jumped up on the foot of the bed. If he had to lay money on it, he suspected Jordan was more in Hailey’s world than his right now.
“He hit her across the cheek and there was rage in his face—so much rage—and still she just kept asking over and over, ‘what have I done?’ and ‘what happened?’ When he put his hands around her throat and leaned in to choke her, getting as close as lovers do, it was like a switch flipped inside her. All at once something made sense and she stopped fighting, as though she’d instantly made peace with what was happening.” Jordan turned and focused on Ty. “And that reaction is driving me nuts because it makes absolutely no sense at all. What the hell did she see?”
Ty felt his pulse hammering away, and again he’d failed to write a lot of what she’d said. Now she was staring at him as if he might have something to add. But after she’d shared this incredible thing she could do, he had no clue what to say.
“I’m sorry, Ty. I know a part of you still thinks he’s innocent. I don’t know why he did it, but he did.”
Ty nodded. Every piece of evidence pointed to David Benson. Now Jordan’s dream confirmed that he was the killer. “So much for my instincts, I guess.”
Jordan picked up his hand and laced her fingers with his. “We’re not perfect, Ty. Just because we’re cops, that doesn’t mean we have all the answers. Not even me, and I’ve often got more insight than other cops. Still, I don’t always get things right.”
“Are they ever wrong? The dreams, I mean. Because the ones you’ve told me about have been very accurate.”
She sat up straighter, tilted her head as if deep in thought. “The dreams are never wrong, but sometimes I am.”
“Jordan . . .” He tapped her cheek and turned her face toward his. “What is it?”
She told him about Ben Steele. About believing that he’d been the killer when in truth he’d been determined to save his partner’s family.
Dream Caller (A Dream Seeker Novel Book 3) Page 14
