Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel) (2 page)

Chapter 3

Every muscle in Jack Mayfield’s body bunched and strained in his attempt to project himself into the room where he sensed the woman in grave danger. He hadn’t been prepared for opposition, at least not the two men he found there with her. His vantage point from beyond the barrier was hazy at best. He couldn’t see them clearly, couldn’t tell what they were doing with, or to her, but he felt her terror.

Jack didn’t even know the woman’s name or where she lived, only that she was his to find. His duty. His mission. All the days, the hours of searching for her, picking up a scent here, chasing a flash of her there, were now wasted. She was gone. Taken. Either having been given a drug that placed her beyond his reach or, possibly, though he doubted this, having self-administered narcotics with some help.

Not yet physically separate from it in his current state, since he had yet to twin himself and create a second body here, he felt muscles cramp up back in the room where his unconscious body lay waiting for him. His anger over his own failure broke his concentration and dragged him back home to it, like a dog on a retractable leash. Unconsciously lashing outward, he woke with his fist punching the wall behind his bed. And then the paralysis set in.

Though he’d done more damage to the wall than it had done to him, his hand throbbed. Knots in his muscles, worse than any Charlie horse he’d ever felt before, twisted painfully in his calves, back, feet and hip. Unable to move, he was forced to endure without the ability to massage the cramps away or rub his aching knuckles. He’d pushed too hard this time, recklessly hard, and been yanked back with a violence that matched the risk.

An unsuccessful risk. He’d failed. Miserably.

Five minutes and he could move one leg slightly; pull the hand that had connected with the wall back to his side. Frustrated, furious with himself, he watched the seconds tick by on the clock by his bed. Another minute. Two.

At last he managed to sit up. Automatically, his hand reached for the cell phone on the nightstand and the battery next to it. After inserting the battery and powering up the phone, he tapped in a number he knew from memory. The call was picked up at the other end on the first ring.

“Well?” Gavin, his superior, asked.

“Something happened,” Jack said. “I was cut off before I could reach her.”

“Cut off? How?” Gavin voiced the incredulity Jack felt.

People with Jack’s rare ability weren’t simply “cut off” when locked onto a target. Something extraordinary had to occur to prevent or break the connection with the destination or person of his focus.

“They gave her something. An injection.”

“They?”

“Yeah. That’s right. There were two men there,” Jack said. “One was on top of her, I think. I don’t believe it was consensual, but I couldn’t see into the room that well.”

“What did you see?”

“It was night and she was asleep when they came in, which means she’s probably on this side of the globe, though she could be in the Far East if we go by where it’s dark right now. My bet is on here in the U.S., or perhaps Canada. I saw her face. She spoke to me. She sounded American.”

“She
saw
you? Then you did get partway through the barrier?”

“No. I was still stuck in the fields. I pushed, but it was only seconds after the drugs hit her system before I was bounced back here.”

Jack heard silence on the line. He knew the call hadn’t been dropped. Lack of a response from Gavin meant his boss was thinking. “She shouldn’t have been able to see you,” he finally voiced the obvious. “You sure she wasn’t just hallucinating and speaking at random?”

“She did, Gavin. She saw me. Don’t ask me how, but I know.”

“And the men?”

“Abducted her.”

“You couldn’t see into the room very well, but you think she was abducted.”

“I don’t think,” Jack said as certainty clicked into place, “I know.”

“She could have asked for the injection herself. Heroin.”

“Heroin in her system wouldn’t have kept me out. Asleep, awake, high or not, I would still be able to connect with her and run there. Unless she was put into a coma or near to it with a powerful anesthetic.”

“An overdose can lead to coma.”

“She was terrified, Gavin,” Jack said. “I could feel her fear.”

Which in itself was unlikely. Jack wasn’t an empath. Detecting another’s emotions as if they were just another sensory cue such as taste, scent, or sound, wasn’t possible for him. Or anyone else he knew, for that matter. A moment from now, Gavin would begin accusing him of mental delusions.

Amazingly, his boss assimilated Jack’s statement, for now, and moved on.

“What about the men? Did they see you?” he asked Jack.

“No. Of course not. How could they?”

Another of Gavin’s irritatingly habitual phone silences followed.

“You’ve been pushing yourself lately,” he said, perhaps half a minute later. “More than you should handle.”

Jack’s anger with himself rose to the bait. “Don’t give me that,” he said. “I can handle myself. On this and a lot more.”

Chapter 4

No one spoke to Lara. Blinded by a hood over her head, her hands and feet bound, she regained consciousness just as the two carrying her started down a long staircase. Grogginess skewed her concept of time and dulled her senses. She drifted in and out, jogged awake each time by rough handling. The descent felt endless. Around her, the air grew more and more chilled the farther down they went. She wore the long T-shirt and panties she’d had on when she went to bed and nothing else. They hadn’t redressed her while she was unconscious, an idea that elicited a shudder, yet hadn’t wrapped her in anything either. Cold soaked in, the hands and arms gripping her furnishing the only source of warmth available. Reflexively, her body attempted to snuggle into her captors’ body heat, a fact that shamed her.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she was hauled another long distance and finally dumped in a chair. The feel of it against the backs of her knees told her it was plastic, the sound of its legs scraping cement, that the chair was lightweight. Trussed up with her wrists in a zip tie behind her, she couldn’t sit back and almost fell off the chair onto the floor. One of them used a knife to cut the tie, carelessly slicing into skin as well. Shoved back into the chair, her hood was pulled off.

Pain exploded in Lara’s head at the sudden light. Her eyes, made oversensitive by the drug they’d given her, teared up immediately. Though the watery haze, she saw two blurry figures walk away, disappearing into the dark.

“Hello?” she said.

A door slammed with a heavy clang that shook the floor under her feet. She was alone.

So dizzy was she, she couldn’t be sure if she swayed to one side in the chair and then overcorrected, unable to sit up straight, or if the room tilted in her vision only. Just as she’d suspected, they’d seated her in a white, plastic chair, the type that could be purchased cheaply from a superstore’s garden center. She blinked several times, the room finally coming into focus. No windows, just a heavy metal door. Harsh light from the single exposed light bulb in the ceiling turned everything a sickly yellow.

“Hello?” She tried again.

Could they hear her from outside the room?

“Is anyone there?”

Silence.

Her mind, under the drug’s lingering influence, stalled. She sat there for an hour, perhaps two, ankles snared by the other zip tie, too weak to make efforts to remove it. Gradually, however, the fog began to lift.

Where was she? Who were these people?

Not the police. Police didn’t do kidnappings. They might take someone into custody on a flimsy charge, but they told you who they were when they did it. They didn’t drug you or put a bag over your head.

What did they want with her? Was it something specific about her, or would any hostage have served as well?

Kidnappings were usually for ransom. Why would someone take her? She didn’t have anything anyone would want. She wasn’t rich. She had no living relatives, no grandparents, aunts, uncles, or siblings. Her parents had died in a train derailment eight years ago. She knew no one famous and never had. What few friends she had weren’t close or the least influential, just people at work with whom she exchanged a few pleasantries each day. She did not hold a position of power in any facet of her life. Her employment as a tour guide for a large biopark was hardly crucial, unless you counted her duties to the adorable elementary school children she ushered around on field trips.

Was that it? Could it be something to do with the biopark? Could someone have planned mass killings and need her out of the way? Lara’s throat squeezed tight in anxiety at the possibility. Who would replace her when she didn’t show up at work today?

Mentally scrolling through the list of her fellow tour guides, she couldn’t imagine a single one of them capable of such a heinous act. They loved their jobs, just as she did, introducing young minds to the natural world around them, leading classes through the various habitats. Pay was minimal, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave it for something more lucrative because the park had become a safe haven for her. More than anything, Lara needed a sedate, positive environment by day to counter the horrific dreams of terrorist bombings and other violence she suffered almost nightly.

As many as forty kids and several chaperones on a tour might crowd into a glassed-in viewing blind overlooking the marshlands. She tried to picture how such an activity could place children at risk and came up blank. The blinds were designed to protect the wildlife on the other side of the glass, but none were remote from populated areas of the park. Shrieks of excitement typically swept through a group whenever kids spotted a “ducky,” their word for any water bird regardless of species. Amplified back into the park by the unique shape of the blinds, cries of terror or fear wouldn’t remain unnoticed for long. Besides, people who committed mass shootings usually just charged into a public place and started blasting away. They wouldn’t need to remove a tour guide in order to perpetrate such depravity.

Maybe her abduction was related to a crime. Two men had taken her, and though she couldn’t be positive, she believed they were the same two men who had left her here, locked in this room. Wracking her brain, she tried coming up with a connection. She’d never committed a crime, unless you counted jaywalking or illegal U-turns. She didn’t use, buy, or sell drugs. Had never stolen anything. Hadn’t bought anything recently she thought someone might want. She had no investments besides those in her job-sponsored retirement accounts. She couldn’t remember getting into an important argument with anyone lately. Couldn’t recall having pissed off anyone. She’d been sequestered once for a jury, but the defendant had pled out before the trial even started.