by Kim Hornsby
Jamey would be glad when Sixth Force stopped hoping he regained his ability and moved on. Having them breathing down his neck for years was fine when he was a free agent, but with a wife and new baby, Jamey wanted out from under the scrutiny of Sixth Force. Having a new jumper would be great news.
Chapter 4
Tina had to bring Kai with her to California, and Jamey understood why. She was still breastfeeding. She told him on the phone before she booked the flight that she couldn’t leave Kai but it was more than feeding. Tina was so in love with her baby, she could hardly leave him for an hour. Jamey didn’t begrudge her that. He was in love himself and as soon as he saw his gorgeous wife and sweet baby come through the set of airport doors, his heart filled with love. It was a sappy way to feel but he loved it.
After a big kiss for both Kai and Tina, the three got into his rental car and drove south to the Mexican border. Desperate for any clue to where Kevin and Rose would go with Wyatt, they hoped to pick up something, namely if they’d made it out of America. He and Tina walked up and down the lanes and even crossed the border to Tijuana on foot with Kai in his stroller. They took a taxi through the town, stopping at every little store, and all the shopping malls to show photos of Kevin, Rose and Wyatt, but came up empty every time.
The only hint of Kevin in Mexico was Tina’s reading that they wanted to cross. And that had been in less than perfect circumstances—with her hands in the sand on Malibu through a dream, over the phone. It didn’t verify that they successfully made it into Mexico.
On the second day, he and Tina concentrated their search on the U.S. side, their hours dictated by a baby’s schedule. Kai could sleep in the stroller or car seat, but when he needed to feed, they had to stop everything. It was frustrating for Jamey. The search would be much quicker on his own but he needed her for dreaming.
It wasn’t until the second night at a Best Western in San Diego that he and Tina jumped a premonition and got a hint of something that might or might not be a clue. They’d gone to sleep in their hotel room after Kai went down for the night and immediately fell into a dream together. At first, it seemed like they were only sharing a dream about Carrie entering a singing contest on TV, but then the dream took a turn and suddenly they found themselves on a wide, paved promenade around a picturesque marina. Expensive boats floated around a grid of docks. Palm trees and sunshine dotted the scene. They assumed it was San Diego until they noticed the Mexican flag flying over a burger restaurant. The signs were in Spanish. The souvenirs touted the town of Puerto Vallarta. The shopkeeper verified this district was called simply the marina of Puerto Vallarta.
They were in Mexico in Jalisco County? Shit. Was Kevin here?
They walked around, eyes peeled for a hint. The dream’s edges were fuzzy, the colors pale. It was a good sign. The dream continued for an unusual amount of time until Jamey stopped, grabbed Tina’s arm and pulled her behind a pillar outside a T-shirt shop. He put a finger to his lips to indicate silence and mouthed, “Kevin.”
Even though this was a glimpse into the future, they couldn’t take the chance that real Kevin wasn’t cognizant, or wouldn’t actually be having this dream in his sub-conscious, only to wake in a few minutes and remember seeing Jamey.
For Wyatt’s sake, they had to take every precaution and remain hidden.
***
Jamey hugged his wife, shifting them around the pillar, presumably as Kevin walked by. Then he let go, moved her aside, and watched Kevin walk away. Just Kevin. Jamey nodded to her and they took off, following. He took advantage of any cover, and Tina trailed behind, watching ahead in case Kevin turned around. She hadn’t seen Kevin since their wedding a year earlier and was surprised at how much weight he’d gained. His lean frame now supported a beer belly. She’d guess twenty pounds. His blonde hair was now pulled back in a scraggly ponytail. He looked rough. For a guy who did extreme sports, Tina wondered what happened. Ordinarily Tina would feel badly for him, but this was a man who had stolen Wyatt away from his family; she had no soft feelings for him now.
Kevin stopped at a clock tower and waited. Looking around, he checked his watch and shifted from foot to foot anxiously. Then, he was gone. Where he’d stood, no person or clue remained.
“Shit,” Jamey said. “Dude woke up.”
“Or could he be in another dream? Should we try to follow him?”
“Try it.” They walked over to the spot where they’d last seen Kevin. Tina closed her eyes to pick up a clue. She knelt and laid her hands on the pavement, but got nothing.
Just then, they heard a baby’s cry from far off. Kai was awake up top. “Time to go,” she said, grabbing Jamey’s hand. She couldn’t leave dreams without him anymore. Deserting Jamey in a jump resulted in him being lost down below, unable to get out on his own. This fact made her husband feel inadequate after a lifetime of jumping, but she couldn’t worry about that now. With his hand in hers, they crouched and jumped out, immediately disappearing from the Puerto Vallarta Marina. It wasn’t until they woke that Tina realized she’d forgotten to check the time on the clock. Damn!
The next morning, they caught a plane for Mexico. By the end of the morning they’d rented a condo facing the clock. Once inside their place, they dropped off their few belongings and went to wander the Marina, cursing that their condo didn’t have an elevator and they’d brought a stroller instead of a backpack baby holder.
They’d expected to get something like a feeling or clue when they arrived at the clock but neither Tina nor Jamey got anything when they stood at the place where Kevin would linger. Hopefully it meant that they’d arrived in Puerto Vallarta before Kevin and Rose.
After buying a video camera and tripod for their stakeout, they went back to the condo to take turns watching the clock, again cursing that neither of them had noticed the time on that clock in the dream.
***
Jamey was eating steamed tortillas and fried eggs on the balcony overlooking the marina when Milton called. He swallowed a mouthful of eggs and picked up the phone hoping his hunch was accurate. Maybe the old guy was releasing him from the army.
“I need to talk to you,” Milton said.
“So talk. I’m in Mexico. I take it you’re in the Sandbox.” There was none of the usual formality that usually came with the military and higher ranking officers. They were way beyond that now.
“Affirmative. It’s been nine months since we met at Fort Lewis. You’re becoming more of a civilian every day, Freud.” Milton sounded weary. Something was not right and Jamey kept his guard up.
“Suits me. Nothing’s changed since Fort Lewis.” He’d met Milton at the military base near Seattle just before Kai was born. Milton wanted him to do a series of tests. The psychological tests, mixed in with checking his psychic abilities were tedious and time-consuming, but he’d understood that Sixth Force needed to know his exact status. That day Milton had him try to jump a dream, but Jamey couldn’t get in. He didn’t want to. He’d been hoping he’d fail, and he did.
“When are you back stateside?”
“I’m hoping within the week.” Should he tell Milton what was going on?
“You and I need to sit down to talk. Specifically, we need to have a talk about what you can still offer Sixth Force.”
Shit. There was a pause long enough for Jamey to finally add his two cents. “Which isn’t much. I have to think you have better than my piddly intuition.” If Sixth Force was stacked with psychics, and they only needed him for dream jumping, Jamey might be off the hook with this new guy.
“No jumps still?” Milton knew Jamey had to answer truthfully.
Jamey had to word this carefully. “I think you know the answer. Aren’t I under obligation to tell you if anything changes?”
“You are, Freud.”
“And have I contacted you to say otherwise?” After their last phone call, someone must’ve confirmed that Jamey wasn’t jumping. Or, at least, telling the truth.
“Negative. You have not conta
cted me.” Milton paused, said something off the phone that Jamey couldn’t hear and cleared his throat. It sounded like he had the speaker covered with his hand, a trick that seemed beneath the head of a Special Forces unit at war. “Get in touch with me again as soon as you hit American soil. I need to set up another meeting with you. This time, in Virginia.”
“Will do.” Sixth Force was based out of Virginia. Maybe he was getting discharged. This could be his ticket out of the army. Jamey hung up the phone. Milton could be bluffing. He often began or ended conversations like this—with a tentative hint at discharge. Nine months ago they’d talked about Jamey’s abilities for what seemed like hours and although his superior officer wanted him to regain his dream jumping ability, that didn’t make it so. Heck, Jamey wanted to get back to jumping too, if he was being honest. He didn’t like Tina being the one with the ability any more than she did. It scared her. Although she seemed to be getting more used to the strangeness of being able to have this alternative life while asleep. She was adapting to increased abilities and he felt like a smaller version of who he’d always been. It felt shitty most of the time, like he’d lost the most interesting thing about him.
When he and Tina had left Afghanistan over a year ago, Milton refused to discharge him, regardless of his last jump. He’d tried to jump into a dream that ended with him in a coma for a week and Tina having to fly to Afghanistan from Seattle to rescue him. Sixth Force had not been able to bring him out of the dream. Tina had. Milton wanted the two of them as a team of jumpers, but luckily Jamey convinced Milton that Tina couldn’t enter other people’s dreams. Only his. She didn’t jump on her own and wouldn’t be cooperative if they drafted her. Then he’d told Milton the other real reason Tina couldn’t come to war. The one that kept her from being forcibly drafted. She was pregnant. Sixth Force wouldn’t get her. Even a top-secret organization with a lot of clout, like the Force, couldn’t draft a pregnant woman.
Ever since Kai was born, he’d been hoping that Milton wouldn’t come for them. Drafting her now was a possibility, and the thought often made Jamey break out in a cold sweat when he looked at his son in Tina’s arms. They’d have to give the baby to someone to look after and go to war if that happened. That’s why Jamey let Tina lie to Milton about not jumping. She wasn’t under oath and gladly fibbed to his superior officer about not being a “bat-shit, crazy-assed, psycho, lunatic dreamer.” Jeez, he loved her acting skills.
In some respects, he’d accepted the fact he’d never initiate dream jumps again. And although Milton suspected something was up between these two, he didn’t know that Tina was initiating jumps or that her jumping was as powerful and far reaching as it was. If Milton knew Tina had ten times what Jamey had, he’d figure out some way to get her.
Hearing Milton say they needed to talk made Jamey wonder if the man was going to try to recruit his wife again. If he didn’t need to contact Milton until they were back in the U.S., he had some time to consider what he’d do if Milton found out about Tina. Jamey had to think of how to keep his wife from that life, keep Kai from growing up with parents in the army or at the very least keep Tina from jumping dreams of crazy insurgents in the Middle East.
***
The day grew almost boring with one of them constantly aimed at the clock, watching for Kevin. “All we need is that one moment when Kevin walks along here and stops at the clock,” Jamey kept saying. That night, he and his wife went to sleep after talking about his conversation with Milton. He’d revealed that Milton wanted to meet him in Virginia when they got back to the U.S. and of course, Tina was suspicious and nervous. “I don’t like the sound of it,” she said.
When Jamey fell asleep, Tina pulled him into her dream. This one didn’t have the signs of a premonition and it could have just been a dream born from Tina’s hindbrain. Not a jump into someone’s dream. They’d shared harmless dreams countless times over the last year. They now called them normals. When he landed, Tina and Milton were sitting at a table, not unlike the one where he’d interrogated them in Afghanistan. Tina wore civvies, a good sign. Him too. She looked up to see him walk over to the table and then he knew.
“He’s sick.” Tina looked over to Milton. “He thinks it’s lung cancer.”
Milton nodded and shrugged. “Serves me right for all that smoking.”
If this was Milton’s dream that Tina entered, not a normal, Jamey didn’t want to reveal that the real Jamey and Tina jumped in. Milton needed to think he’d simply dreamed of Freud and Duck.
“That sucks,” Jamey said.
“You two jump in together, or what?” Milton’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean jump?” Tina asked.
Good girl. She realized she had to play dumb. He looked at Milton. “I think I know what he means, Duck. He thinks we jumped in the sack.” Jamey stared blankly between Tina and Milton.
“Let’s just ask you a few questions then,” Milton leaned forward, looking like he was having fun now. “What are your full names?”
Jamey led. “Freud and Duck.” He was trying to think about Milton’s knowledge of them. He never called Jamey anything but Freud.
“Full names.”
“James Dunn and Tina Greenly, or Green, or Dunn. Wait. Green, but maybe now Dunn. They got married. We got married. Let’s say Dunn because I’m an old fashioned guy.” He looked at Tina, who nodded her agreement.
Milton looked at them suspiciously, then leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrow. “Let’s try this. Freud, we don’t need you anymore. I have better people now who delve deeper with no risks. And before I die, I want headquarters to take out the tracking device we have in you.”
What the fuck? Milton had a tracking device on him? He had to play it cool in case Milton remembered this dream when he woke. “Affirmative.” Milton often said this, having been a soldier all his life.
“It’s right here.” Milton reached across the table and pushed on Jamey’s shoulder. “Somewhere in there. In case we needed to know where you went.” He looked like he was still looking for a reaction.
Just as Jamey was going to say something innocuous, Tina interrupted them. “And now it’s time to go outside for a smoke, Freud.” She stood, pulled Jamey to stand, and looked at Milton. “You can’t smoke because you have cancer.” With a vague look on her face, she led Jamey to the door. They were now over the portal where he came in just after Tina. She contemplated jumping out but he gave a tiny shake of the head when Milton looked away. They mustn’t leave the dream until Milton did. If they left now, Milton would guess their bluff. “Let’s dance.” Jamey said, taking Tina in his arms to slow dance away from the portal.
From the corner of his eye, he watched Milton cross to the window, his back to them. His shoulders shook as though he was crying and his right hand came up to wipe his face. Then he was gone.
When they woke, Tina reached for her husband’s shoulder and felt around. “Do you think it’s true about the tracking device?”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe. I can’t see how having a tracking device would benefit anyone. I’m not trying to skip out on my military career. He took a deep breath and thought about how owned he felt by the army already. Even before this. “I can’t exactly ask them about it, seeing we don’t dream jump.”
She ran her hand along his arm. “And Milton has lung cancer. I sensed it was serious. Should we warn him?”
“He knows. The dream wasn’t a premonition, remember?”
“I’d rather you talked to him about it, make sure he remembers the news. Hasn’t buried it in his subconscious,” she said.
That was Tina. Honorable and innocent. “And risk him knowing we jumped? Absolutely not.”
Chapter 5
When Tina recognized the lumbering walk of Kevin, he was already near the clock. She almost screamed at the startling realization that their mark had actually arrived. She grabbed her phone from the deck table and speed dialed Jamey, but it went immediately to voice mail. “No!” She left a quick
message and hung up. He was down there somewhere in the Marina. Maybe following Kevin. She checked that the camera was filming and waited for Jamey to call back.
Where was he?
Just like in the dream, Kevin was on his way to the clock tower, but in this instance, without the possibility of disappearing into the afternoon sunshine, he just might stand around for ten minutes. They didn’t know how long he’d be there, or what happened next, because Kevin had left the dream, presumably waking. She tried Jamey’s phone again and it went to message. “Jamey, pickup. Pickup. Pickup.”
Hopefully her husband would be in the shadows, watching Kevin with his phone turned off. There was no way she could run down to the marina, not with Kai napping in the bedroom. And even if she did get down three flights and over to the clock, what then? She couldn’t take him down. Or secretly follow him. That was Jamey’s department. The plan was for Jamey to follow Kevin back to Wyatt.
Tina held the phone in her hand chanting, call me call me call me when suddenly the phone rang. She jumped. “He’s almost at the clock tower,” she said.
“No!” Jamey said. “I’m on the other side of the marina.”
“Hurry!” Tina searched for Jamey in the distance, but didn’t see him. Briefly wondering what he was wearing, she remembered he’d be in the same thing he’d been wearing for the last four days since leaving Maui—cargo shorts and a white T-shirt. Nike runners. He’d be running at full speed by now. And Jamey was really fast. She’d seen him run in dreams but that was different. He had physical capabilities there that he didn’t have in real life, like jumping thirty feet. However, she’d seen him run on the beach, racing with Obi and he was speedy for a forty year old.
