“Did you lock your bedroom door when you finally turned in?”
“Hm, well, considering I am the one who communicates with unworldly souls, I’m pretty sure you locked the door to my guest bedroom, and you probably pushed that one-hundred-year-old dresser across the room to bar the door also.” She was surprised when he chuckled and told her that he’d thought about it, but the dresser was too heavy. His deep chuckled seemed to echo in the kitchen. “You do know that I’m leery of you, right?”
“I just want answers, then I’ll be gone,” he said.
“I get that you have a ton of questions, but kidnapping me wasn’t the smart thing to do.”
“First, I didn’t kidnap you, sweetheart, and second, you’d already checked out remember? Now, if I hadn’t come there on the pretense of the two of us catching up for lost time, well, then you would’ve left, and I’d been stuck in that sanitarium with more questions. Besides, I wanted to get out of that hotel fast, like before they came after you.”
Valerie almost choked on a sip of coffee. “What? Who would come after me?”
“The folks at Bryland, who must know I’m missing by now,” he said in a serious tone.
Valerie realized he was correct and thought it would be pointless to give him another earful of the harm he could’ve done to himself. She’d already done that on the drive to the airport in Maine and again while they waited on their flight to Dulles. It was a moot issue now.
“Let’s hope the folks at Bryland hold off a day or so. In the meantime, let’s finish eating, then we’ll talk, but don’t ask me again if I’m in cahoots with the men who shot you, because the answer is still, no.” Leaning in closer, her expression matched how serious she was. “What question are you dying to ask?”
“Are you a big boss that you can take off to travel around looking for me, or was that a lie also?”
“I often travel as part of my job, and for your information, I’m a Procurement Officer for the Department of Education. I’m responsible for overseeing and administering funding.”
“Ah, so you’re a treasurer or financial officer who shells out the money, right?”
“Something along those lines.” Valerie bristled because she’d begun to feel like a failure at her job, at least the part of shelling out less money, or none, with the reductions.
“I sense I’ve struck a nerve.”
“Just something I need to deal with on the work front,” she said. Since they had finished eating, Valerie suggested they go into the living room, and when he assisted her from the kitchen stool, she was once again struck by the warmth of his skin. “Are you feeling okay, really?”
“I’m good and so was breakfast, thank you,” he said, leaning forward, and planted a kiss on her startled cheek before picking up his coffee mug.
Before going into the living room, Valerie showed Cade the first floor and basement level of the house. She appreciated his comments about the renovations and suggestions for the unfinished basement. Returning to the first floor, they sat in the living room. She sat on the couch across from Cade, who opted for the side chair facing her.
He glanced around the elegant but comfortable living room and foyer. “I think I was too overcome by motion sickness when we arrived to notice that you have a really nice home, and by the way, thank you for the change of clothes. You know my size, huh?”
Valerie snorted at his teasing wink. “No. The t-shirt and sweatpants belonged to an ex. They were in a bag of clothes I’m donating to a shelter since he chose not to collect them. I thought you’d be asking me more pertinent questions by now.”
“Okay, how did you know to find me in Maine?”
Here we go, no turning back now.
She stared into her coffee mug. It felt so odd to be explaining something so personal and rarely discussed with anyone—much less a virtual stranger. Carefully weighing and choosing her words, she began describing her gift to him, hoping that he would understand. She told him about her ability to transport herself while in a transcendental dream state and how her visions allowed her to connect with some people on a subconscious level. She talked about her childhood and how she was able to sense others’ feelings and emotions even then. How her family perceived her gift as a peculiar ability they tolerated and indulged.
Occasionally, Valerie would glance over at him to gauge his reaction, but he kept his face impassive. Although he appeared relaxed, she did notice as she talked, his eyes flickered between disbelief and interest, and he didn’t interrupt her.
When she got to the part where she had initially connected with him, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, giving her his full attention. “I didn’t know you were in a coma. Several times when we were together…” She squirmed self-consciously, boring a hole into the bottom of her coffee mug with her eyes, “uh…you—we…were quite affectionate,” she said, hating the embarrassed flush creeping up her neck. “By then, I felt motivated to get involved and was compelled to go to Bryland and see you in the flesh…so to speak, just to make sure you were real.” When she sat back, her shoulders slumped, having finally let loose the tension she’d been holding inside.
She expected him to double over laughing and call her dingbat or worse. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. He did neither. He simply stared at her at first.
“Listen, I don’t want to say that I believe in your gift or not,” Cade stated dubiously. “But something has happened to me that I simply can’t explain. I remember being shot, and I’m positive you were there…and then poof, you weren’t. I recall hearing a woman’s voice calling out to me. Then the next thing I remember is seeing you wearing a pair of tight jeans that I thought were particularly sexy and wearing a green sweater. I know I’ve held you in my arms, and I’ve touched you and kissed you, and yet I honestly can’t say that I’ve never met you before.” Cade pushed up from the chair and began to pace the hardwood floor.
“Cade, have you ever had a feeling of déjà vu or had an eerie feeling hit you that caused the hair on the back of your neck to stand up?”
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s how this is for me. I don’t know what I’m going to see when I go into a trance. All I know is that I transcend or go to other places. That first time you connected with me was right here.” She poked her finger into the couch cushion. “I couldn’t stop what was happening, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of the road watching you.”
He stopped pacing. “Okay, so you see, Valerie, that’s just it. We’re completely sound and rational. I mean aside from all the crap I’ve been through, and you, well, you seem normal, aside from your whole transporting or teleporting thing, but…” Cade held his palms up.
“Don’t say I’m crazy because I’m not,” she snapped. “Because if you believe that, then you’ll have to acknowledge that I took a big risk by coming to Maine to find you, and like you said, we’re strangers. We don’t know each other, Cade.”
“Why did you go to Maine? I mean, come on. That seems like a crazy thing to do based on a dream or inter-galaxy jaunt, don’t you think?”
Valerie picked up the TV remote from the coffee table and turned the set on. Accessing the menu, she pulled up the saved news broadcast showing Cade’s family. She’d watched it several times before making the decision to find him. Before pressing the play button, she suggested he sit down. “Cade, I’m not crazy. If anything, I am too giving, too understanding, and sometimes too caring, and it’s cost me plenty. But in your case, I saw this and felt compelled to do something.” She pressed the play button then.
Cade sat on the opposite end of the couch, then watched and listened as the news reporter spoke about a family desperate for information on a missing loved one. Not getting the connection, he glanced at Valerie briefly before turning back to the TV and then zeroed in on an older, distinguished woman. He’d seen her before, perhaps in his dreams. She had several tissues balled up in her hand each time he saw her. His eyes were drawn
to the small photo inset that suddenly zoomed out and almost filled the large TV screen. He felt as if something heavy had just landed onto his head, and the air whooshed from his lungs. That feeling Valerie spoke about hit him, and yes, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. When the segment ended, he turned to her. “Oh my God…th-that’s me? Is that my family?”
Seeing his fear, disbelief, and sorrow etched across his handsome face, Valerie feared for his mental well being. She prayed that the shock of seeing his family didn’t trigger another episode. She had to tread carefully. “Yes, and yes, Cade, this is the broadcast I saw after I’d been seeing you in my dreams. I hadn’t seen this broadcast before, and when I connected the two, I had to do something. I couldn’t let that family…your family go on like that. I don’t know them, either. But they don’t know if you’re dead or alive, and as you can see for yourself, they’re worried sick.” When he reached for the remote and replayed the broadcast three more times without saying a word, Valerie remained silent as he processed what he was seeing. She watched his eyes fill brightly before his tears fell. Inching closer to the end of the couch where he now sat staring at the blank screen, she wiped his tears away with her fingers. “I’ve told you all along, I only want to help you. I want to help you return to your family.” When he turned the TV off, she picked up her cell phone from the coffee table and held it out to him. “I have the telephone number. You should call them,” she implored.
Cade shook his head no. “I see their faces so heartbroken, but I don’t feel a connection to them. Yes, I recognize my face on the screen, and God knows I feel empathy for what they’re going through, but I just can’t,” he said, putting his hand over hers until she returned the cell phone on the table.
“What? Why not?” Valerie demanded incredulously.
“Because the person who shot me obviously meant for me to die for a reason,” he retorted. “What if that person is still after me? What if I go to that family—my family? Will I be putting them in danger if that person comes after me to finish the job?”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Valerie
After two hours and the second pot of coffee, Valerie told Cade everything she remembered about the shooting on the road. She also told him about seeing him at other times, like in a hotel room. When he confessed to having more and more flashes of memory, she was hopeful. When she thought she couldn’t answer another question, he came up with one more.
“So, you never saw me on the road after I was shot?”
“No, you ran to the railing. Those men rushed back to the truck, joking how they were still going to get paid because there was no way you could have survived and that your body would resurface soon.”
“Damn. It was a paid hit, then,” he said. “I remember a cold metal railing and having to hoist myself up over it. After that, everything goes black.” He closed his eyes.
“I called out to you, but it was so foggy and the noise from…”
“I heard a foghorn, then I remember seeing you. Was there a foghorn?”
“Yes, there was. It sounded off a couple of times, and that’s probably why you couldn’t hear me. It was loud, and that’s when I realized I was standing on an overpass. I heard the water slapping below it.”
“I heard a horn of some kind, and that water was freezing cold. Then the last thing I saw looked like a big, black mountain, and I must have grabbed hold of it. I just know I was moving with it, and it smelled like death or hell.” Cade sank into the back cushion of the couch. It was unthinkable and totally nuts to believe her, but he had too many unexplainable memories of her not to think her so-called gift could be true. “I know exactly how it feels to kiss you, Valerie, and I know how your body leans into mine in a slow dance. I know how you feel in my arms.” Turning to her, his eyes were full of meaning. “You mentioned seeing me in a hotel. What were we doing there?”
Valerie didn’t want to get into another intimate conversation. It wasn’t anything she wanted to feel because it wasn’t practical or smart, for that matter. In her dreams, that was safe, but not here in the real world where there were consequences for one’s actions. Problem was knowing that didn’t stop her from remembering how it felt to kiss him, either. And, yes, it felt wonderful being in his muscular arms with those strong hands massaging her back, sending delicious slivers of delight up and down her spine.
“Um…yes, the hotel…you were typing on the laptop computers when I first saw you. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing.”
“Hum. How many computers was I working on?” he asked.
“Three.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, you were dressed in a very nice suit, and the hotel room was actually a penthouse suite. It was very elegant with several rooms, a well-stocked bar, a dining area.” Valerie hesitated, wavering if she should tell him about her aunt’s crystal. When he gestured at her with a wave of his hand, she decided to tell him.
She bit her bottom lip before her confession. “Cade, it doesn’t always happen that I can transcend someplace in my sleep, sometimes it just happens, but whenever I wear my aunt Ruby’s crystal pendant, I seem to be propelled to go wherever you were. This is a first for me.” She explained the powers of the crystals and her aunt’s gift and how she came to possess it. “It’s like I could be just sitting here on the couch watching TV or working, but if I put the crystal on, I’m suddenly pulled into a trance and you’re there. There’s a connection, or maybe it’s just that my focus is clearer. I can’t explain it any better than that, except to say the level of clarity with you seems more defined and real, almost spiritual.”
Cade stood up and began to pace again as he processed what she said. “My memory is all over the place now, and I can’t tell what I’ve dreamed about or what’s real, but I know I’ve been inside of a penthouse suite. I want to say I may have been stealing something because it felt like a sneaky, covert action. I don’t know if I ever got what I went there for, and if I did, what happened to…but I’m pretty damn sure that’s why I could’ve been shot,” he mused.
Valerie shot up from the couch. “Oh no. Are you some kind of undercover spy or something?” It was a scary thought that sent a chill throughout her body.
Reaching for her, Cade grasped her wrists to still her. Lifting an amused eyebrow at her, he tried to dispel her fear. “Undercover spy, like James Bond? Come on, Valerie, really?” His chuckle was meant to lighten the moment, despite how close to the truth her description might be. “I don’t think I’m a spy, but I do know how systems, processors, and programs work on a systematic level,” he said. “That’s how I was able to get to my electronic medical records that are digitally stored off the premises of Bryland.”
“So you’re a hacker? That’s as bad as being a spy.” Valerie wrung her hands together.
“I wouldn’t think that.”
“Well, it was nighttime, and you were dressed for a party in a penthouse suite, Cade, so I don’t think you were there servicing those computers. It was like you were tampering with them, and I do recall seeing a green bar in the middle of the screen. Whoa, wait a minute. Who stays in expensive, elegant penthouse suites in DC hotels?”
“I would say someone important, like a dignitary or politician, right?”
Valerie slid from his grasp to the couch. Her mind tumbled over what he’d said, and a disturbing thought permeated her brain. He was holding something back; possibly he was holding a lot back. She glared up at him with a tight face. “You remember a lot more than you’ve told me, don’t you?” she said. He sat back down on the couch beside her…too close for her comfort, but close enough that if she decided to sock him in the jaw for lying to her, she could do it without much effort. “At least give your host and current provider the courtesy of being honest, Cade.”
“I deserve that,” he said. “Okay, everything I’ve told you is the truth, and yes, my memory has been returning for several days. Actually, since you showed up at Bryland
, but not everything because I don’t recognize my family. I don’t know where I live or if I have kids or a girlfriend, stuff like that. I don’t know who shot me, but I may have an idea why I was shot.”
“Why?”
“I stole evidence to get the source of a money trail, and I had to hack into some computers to do that, and that’s not to say I’m a hacker for profit, at least I hope I’m not.”
“A money trail…evidence? How much of a money trail are you talking about?”
“Millions,” he said. “Yes, it could very well be trillions of dollars…stolen money.”
“What?”
“Yes, and now I don’t know if I succeeded or not, and those assholes who shot me assume I’m dead. If they find out otherwise before I can figure out if I found the evidence leading to the money trail, then I put everything and everybody at risk—me, my family, and you,” he said.
“At risk my foot! You mean killed right along with you, don’t you?”
***
Cade
“Unfortunately, yes.” Shaken by his own words, Cade reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of white pills, then swallowed one with the last sip of his now-cold coffee. “Listen, Valerie, you came to me either by some virtual transporter beam, or you flew in on gossamer wings, I don’t know, but I didn’t intentionally involve you in this. And I wouldn’t have intentionally jumped off that freaking, six-story hotel rooftop if I didn’t have to.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he shot Valerie a wide-eyed look. “Where’d the hell did that come from? I jumped off a rooftop? What the hell. Uh-uh, no freaking way. Did I do that?”
“How would I know? But considering the pain you inflicted on my arm and shoulder on the airplane, I’d say you definitely have a fear of heights. My goodness, this is sounding more and more like a James Bond movie to me,” Valerie said with a nervous laugh.
Finding Cade (Dream Catcher Series Book 1) Page 20
