Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Yes, please,” Winter said.

  She tried to think through a plan. She was accustomed to running away but in the past she had always been alone when she set out into the darkness late at night with her pack on her back. Tonight she had to deal with Alice.

  Mentally, she started a getaway list. Even using cash, she would probably need an ID to buy bus tickets. It wouldn’t be hard to find a street person and pay him or her to purchase the two tickets to Los Angeles.

  The seventy-five bucks would not last long. They would have to use some of it to buy Alice a backpack. A suitcase, even one with wheels, was a problem on the streets, an environment where you needed to keep both hands free.

  When the cash ran out she could always raise more doing the psychic-dream-reader routine. It was amazing how many people would pay twenty or thirty bucks to have someone tell them the meaning of their dreams.

  She sat back in the seat, mind churning with plans. Alice huddled close beside her and lowered her voice to the barest of whispers.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “My aunts will find us. They’ll take care of us.”

  “Sure,” Winter said.

  No need to make the kid confront the truth tonight. Alice would find out soon enough that no one was coming to save them. They were on their own.

  “If anyone asks, we’re sisters,” Winter said. “Got that?”

  “Okay,” Alice said again. She gripped Winter’s hand. “Are you a witch?”

  Winter watched the lights of the house on Marigold Lane disappear into the night and wondered if Tyler the Creep was dead.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Four months ago . . .

  The dreamer followed the burning footprints through endless halls of fire. He knew his quarry was there, hiding in the shadows of the flames. From time to time he came across ghostly traces of Quinton Zane, faint clues that assured him he was not hallucinating.

  The dreamer was ever vigilant. He followed every seething print, every trace of Zane, no matter how faint.

  Tonight was not his first trip into the maze. He came this way often and not always in pursuit of Zane. He frequently hunted other killers in the same maze. On those occasions he was almost always successful. He was, after all, very good at what he did. But the calm he experienced in the aftermath of a successful search for a killer other than Zane never lasted long.

  There would be no rest until he found Quinton Zane.

  The dreamer was not oblivious to the risks he took in the fire maze. He was well aware that he paid a high price for his refusal to turn back from the hunt. But he could not abandon the search even though he feared that with each journey into the nightmare the probability of getting lost in the halls of flames increased.

  The sense that time was running out drove him. He could not stop now, even though he was grimly aware that one night he would go too far . . .

  The dream ended when the screaming started.

  That was pretty much the story of his life, at least when it came to his relationships with women, Jack thought. But this time things were supposed to have a different ending. Then again, he’d hoped for a different ending last time, too. They said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

  “Dr. Lancaster. Jack, wake up. Wake up. I’ll have to call security if you don’t wake up right now. Please, you must wake up.”

  Jack pulled himself out of the dream with a monumental effort of will. The urge to plunge back into the fiery maze had grown markedly stronger in recent months. It was getting harder to wake up.

  But Dr. Margaret Burke was staring at him with the same expression of shock and poorly veiled fear that he’d seen on the faces of other women. The difference this time was that Margaret was not sharing his bed. She was the director of the sleep clinic that had provided him with the bed he had been occupying tonight.

  He groaned when he realized he was no longer in the bed in question; no longer attached to the beeping, buzzing monitors. He was standing on the far side of the small room.

  To buy himself a little time he went to the table and picked up his eyeglass case. He opened the case with great precision, removed the steel-framed glasses and put them on with both hands.

  When he was ready he took a deep, steadying breath and risked a quick glance at the mirror on the wall.

  One look was enough to confirm what he had already suspected. He was a very scary sight.

  His hair was sticking out at wild angles. The shapeless hospital gown he had worn to bed had come undone, exposing way too much skin. Electrical leads that had connected him to an array of instruments and monitors dangled from the various places on his body where they were still attached with sticky tape.

  Even if he ignored his eyes, he had to admit that he looked a lot like a modern-day version of Frankenstein’s monster. Make that Jack of the walking dead.

  He was never sure which frightened others the most—the sleepwalking or the weirdness in his gaze when he woke up. He had been informed by more than one bed partner that he looked flat-out crazy when he surfaced from the fire maze dream. Evidently he emerged with the vibe of a man who saw visions.

  The modern world did not have a lot of room for people who hallucinated, let alone for those who could do it on demand.

  It took a minute to regain what he knew Margaret would consider a normal expression. The glasses helped mute some of the effect. That was why he had taken the time to put them on even before he secured the hospital gown.

  Margaret was at the door, one hand wrapped around the knob, ready to bolt to safety. She clutched her small computer as though it were a Kevlar vest.

  After extensive research he had selected her clinic primarily because Burke had impressed him with her published papers on sleep disorders and her stated interest in exploring the phenomenon of lucid dreaming.

  “Sorry,” he said. He raised a hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead and came away with two electrical leads. Annoyed with himself and the whole damned situation, he tossed the leads aside and looked at Margaret. “I told you that if I dreamed the fire maze dream I might not be able to control it or the sleepwalking. You said you could help me.”

  Margaret made a valiant effort to regain her professional composure, but she maintained her white-knuckled grip on the doorknob.

  “I thought I could deal with your unusual problem,” she said.

  “You mean you thought it would be interesting to run some experiments on me. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” He swept out a hand to indicate the sleep clinic. “I was just a lab rat as far as you were concerned. You were probably planning to write up my case for some journal.”

  “That’s not true. Your dreams are unique, Dr. Lancaster. I’ve never met anyone who experiences lucid dreaming the way you do. But that nightmare you just had—”

  “I told you, it’s not a normal nightmare—assuming there is such a thing. It’s a lucid dream that I constructed from scratch. I use it to do my work. But the maze keeps getting bigger. More convoluted. I’m losing control of it. I need to find the center.”

  “Do you even realize just how crazy that sounds?” Margaret’s voice rose. “You’re an academic, Jack. You’ve taught college-level classes on the subject of the criminal mind. You wrote a couple of books. Surely you understand that what you’re describing is some sort of bizarre obsession. With fire, no less. I’m afraid it will only get worse, and if that happens you may become—”

  She stopped very suddenly.

  “May become what?” he asked quietly. “Dangerous? Paranoid? Mentally unstable? Is that what you were going to say?”

  “Look, I really wish I could help you, but you need another kind of doctor. This is way out of my league. The truth is that the scientific study of dreams has not adv
anced very far. There is still so much we don’t know. I would strongly suggest that you consult a psychiatrist, someone who will have a better idea of what kind of meds might help you.”

  “Been there.”

  He risked another glance in the mirror. He thought his eyes looked normal now. He hoped they looked normal. But they were his eyes, he reminded himself, so it followed that, naturally, they would look okay to him. The question was, what did Burke see?

  She frowned. “You’ve tried medication therapy? You didn’t mention that when you consulted me.”

  “Because it didn’t work.” He ripped off a couple more stray leads and went to the small closet that held his clothes. “Looks like we both wasted our time. I’ll get out of your lab.”

  “Dr. Lancaster. Jack. I’m sorry. I really hoped that I could diagnose your sleep disorder and help you overcome it.”

  He opened the closet and took out the white button-down shirt he had hung there earlier that evening. It was one of a dozen white button-down shirts he owned. He only bought white shirts. That way he did not waste time figuring out which shirt to wear. White worked with both of his dark blue business suits and it worked with any of the six pairs of khaki trousers that constituted most of the rest of his wardrobe. He also owned four ties.

  He found life complicated enough as it was. He tried to simplify wherever possible.

  “I told you, I’m not looking for a diagnosis,” he said. “I’m looking for a way to get better control of the damned dream. I can’t make it work the way I need it to work anymore.”

  “I realize that when you go into a lucid dreaming state you are aware that you’re dreaming,” Margaret said. “I also understand that you feel as if you are manipulating some aspects of the dream.”

  “I don’t feel as if I’m manipulating elements of the dream, I do manipulate them.”

  “A lot of people experience that sensation from time to time,” Margaret said. “That’s the definition of a lucid dream. The experience usually occurs when an individual is just starting to wake up. There is a very short period of time during which you realize that you are still dreaming. But what you’re describing—this fire maze—that’s more in the nature of a . . . uh—”

  She broke off, flushing a dull red.

  “More in the nature of a hallucination?” he finished. “A vision? I’m aware of that, Dr. Burke. I’m going to get dressed now. If you want to stand there and watch, that’s up to you.”

  Margaret opened her mouth but evidently thought better of whatever it was she had intended to say. Without another word, she jerked open the door and hurried out into the hall.

  Jack waited until the door closed.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He ripped another lead off his chest and tossed the hospital gown aside.

  Margaret Burke wasn’t the first woman to flee a bedroom that happened to have him in it. Going forward he would resume his long-standing policy: Always sleep alone.

  He found his precisely folded white undershirt on a shelf in the closet. He unfolded it and pulled it on over his head. All of his undershirts were white. They worked well with the twelve white button-down shirts.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Several weeks ago . . .

  The man who had once been Quinton Zane watched the fire from a safe distance. The vehicle was fully engulfed now, a blazing torch that lit up the desert night. The flames riveted him. They filled his world, obliterating the view of the glittering lights of Las Vegas in the distance.

  He was alone. There was no traffic on the empty stretch of road at this hour. There was no need to suppress or conceal the electrifying excitement that flashed through him. He did not have to pretend to be appalled. There were no other witnesses to the spectacle. He was free to savor the glorious act of destruction.

  Fire aroused all of his senses. Fire ignited an overwhelming sense of euphoria and sent shock waves of power through him. Fire was the most potent drug he had ever known; infinitely more satisfying than sex or cocaine.

  Running a successful con was the only thing that even came close. True, he got a rush in that moment of triumph when he closed down a project and walked away with the money. It was gratifying to see the stunned expressions on the faces of the marks who were left to deal with the financial wreckage and the shattered lives. But not even a billion-dollar con could provide a thrill that was remotely close to the one he got from fire.

  If he were normal—one of the weak members of the herd—he would probably worry about the quirk. But he wasn’t normal. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t a part of the herd. He was the predator they feared but never recognized until it was too late.

  The flames were starting to fade now. He should probably leave. There was always the remote possibility that someone might notice the fire and decide to investigate. He did not want his rental car to be observed driving away from the scene.

  Still, he hesitated. He could have stood there on the side of the road and watched until there was nothing left but blackened metal and a body that was burned beyond recognition. The thing about fire was that it had such a wonderfully cleansing effect. It could wipe out anything, including the past.

  But he had not come this far only to start making mistakes. He forced himself to turn around and walk back to his car. Mentally he ran through the details of his grand project, making certain he had covered everything. It would probably take the authorities a while to announce a positive identification of the body. But soon they would conclude that the remains found behind the wheel of the burned-out Mercedes were those of the registered owner, Jessica Pitt. They would be right.

  Jessica had been stunningly beautiful, smart and ambitious. Each of her three divorces had left her wealthier than the previous one. But, like everyone else, Jessica had craved something so desperately that she had believed him when he had promised to deliver it. She had, in turn, given him exactly what he needed in order to carry out the important first steps of the project.

  Jessica had been quite talented, not only in bed but in far more crucial ways. He had enjoyed their time together but he no longer needed her. In the course of their relationship she had learned too much for her own good. He could not allow her to live. He was ready to move forward.

  Jessica Pitt was just one more fiery sacrifice on the altar of his greatest project.

  He got behind the wheel of the rental and drove away from the fire, into the night.

  The exhilarating rush of excitement that had accompanied the explosion and fire was already evaporating. When it was gone he was left with only the old, familiar rage, one of the few emotions he could experience fully. He opened himself to the sensation. He knew that the inferno that burned at his core was the source of his strength.

  He focused his attention on the next step in his plan. He had understood from the beginning that the smart way to pursue his objective was the tried-and-true strategy of divide and conquer. It had always been clear that when the time came to make his big move, Jack Lancaster would have to be taken out first.

  Most people would have said that Jack Lancaster was the least dangerous of Anson Salinas’s foster sons. Lancaster had spent a portion of his career in the academic world. These days he wrote books for a living. He did not have any military training and he had never worked as a cop. He could probably pull the trigger of a gun—hell, anyone could pull the trigger of a gun—but there was no indication that he owned a weapon, let alone that he was proficient with firearms.

  Lancaster was not a martial arts expert like his foster brother Cabot Sutter. He lacked the profiling experience and the connections with the FBI and certain clandestine government agencies that his other brother, Max Cutler, possessed.

  Lancaster had never even managed to hold a teaching position for very long, and he had never married. Over the years his name had popped up in the supposedly private online records of various psychia
trists and sleep disorder experts. There had been no clear diagnosis or even a detailed description of his problem. The term delusional had been used in some of the notes, however.

  Whatever his sleep disorder was, it had evidently been enough to keep his personal life limited to a series of short-lived affairs. A year ago one ex-lover had even gone on social media to label him crazy.

  But the man who had been Quinton Zane knew the truth about Jack Lancaster. A little over twenty-two years ago he had seen that truth in Lancaster’s eyes.

  Lancaster had been a twelve-year-old kid at the time but it had been clear even then that when he became a man he would not merely be dangerous. He would be downright scary.

  So, yes, Jack Lancaster had to be the first of Anson’s sons to go down.

  And he would go down in flames.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Present day . . .

  Winter Meadows contemplated the hands of the client because it was distracting, even for a pro like her, to watch Jack Lancaster’s face while he did his kind of meditation.

  Jack did not close his eyes the way most people did when they sank into a self-induced meditative state. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the small chunk of black obsidian that he held. He focused on the stone as though it contained secrets and visions that only he could see.

  Which, of course, was true, because Jack was not meditating. He was dreaming.

  Technically speaking, he was in a lucid dream, a kind of dream that took place in the uncharted territory between sleep and the waking state. She had encountered lucid dreamers before—she’d had a few lucid dreams herself. Many people experienced them from time to time. But Jack’s ability was highly unusual. He could dream on demand and he dreamed with purpose.

  He had removed his steel-framed glasses at the start of the session and stowed them in a case. He should have looked more vulnerable, or at least more approachable, but the opposite was true. Without the lenses to mute the impact, his vivid green eyes exerted a compelling attraction—at least they had that effect on her. She found it difficult to look away. She did not want to look away. They were the eyes of a man who saw beneath the surface; a man who knew how to look deeply into things that other people never thought twice about. The eyes of a man with a mission.