That night he spent what proved to be the first of many nights in the home of strangers.
The only roller coasters he rode these days were in his dreams.
He turned away from the silent relics, took the phone out of his pocket and punched in the number.
“How did it go?” Lawson demanded without preamble.
“Not quite the way you hoped it would. She’s willing to continue consulting for you and me but she doesn’t want to go to work at Frey-Salter. She’s setting herself up in business.”
“The hell she is.” Lawson was clearly stunned. “She’s just a naive little dreamer who’s been stashed away in a small office at a low-rent lab for the past year. Before that she bounced around between one downwardly mobile job and another. The closest she ever got to a professional career was working for some phony psychic hotline operation. What does she know about operating a consulting business?”
“Looks like we’re going to find out,” Ellis said.
“Forget it. Out of the question. I told you, I want her brought into Frey-Salter. Can’t have her running around out there on her own.”
“She’s not interested in your offer. By the way, she’s figured out that she was consulting for some secret government research facility that is experimenting with extreme dreamers.”
“Martin Belvedere told her about me and my agency? That SOB. He swore to me he never said a word—”
“She worked it out on her own. She’s smart, Lawson. And she’s a Level Five herself, remember.”
“Huh. Think she’s talked to anyone about what she knows?”
“No. She is well aware of how important confidentiality is to you and she’s interested in having you as a client. She won’t go to the media with her story.”
“What’s her objection to coming back here to work?”
“Seems she didn’t like having all of her requests for case briefings ignored or declined. She wanted more of what she calls ‘context.’ She also wanted to know the results of the investigations.”
“Those cases were confidential.” Lawson’s voice rose. “She had no need to know.”
“Look at the situation from her point of view. She got all of the questions but she never got any of the answers. She said it was frustrating. Said she needs closure.”
“Closure? Sounds like some kind of pop-psych babble.”
“Most of the dream reports we asked her to look at were pretty bad,” Ellis reminded him. “She said the anxiety of never knowing the outcomes gave her nightmares.”
“She’s a Level Five. She’s supposed to be able to deal with a few bad dreams.”
“You know what? I think she’s right about you, Lawson. You are a control freak.”
“Maybe so, but I’m a control freak with a serious budget. Without me, Isabel Wright will have a real short client list. Does she get that part?”
Ellis smiled to himself. “Yes, but she doesn’t seem to be worried about it. Got herself a day job to tide her over until her consulting business kicks in.”
“What kind of day job? Don’t tell me she’s gone back to answering phones at the Psychic Dreamer Hotline.”
“No. She’s training to be an instructor in her brother-in-law’s motivational seminar business.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s crazy,” Lawson bellowed. “Why would she want to do something like that when she could be back here working at Frey-Salter?”
“Gee. I don’t know. It’s curious, isn’t it? Maybe it’s got something to do with not being cooped up in a tiny, windowless office and not having to take orders from a control freak who only tells you what he thinks you need to know.”
“I’m glad you’re finding this so damned amusing, Cutler. Because I’m not. Listen up. I hired you to bring her in. Stop messing around out there and do your job.”
“You want my advice?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re going to get it,” Ellis said. “Deal with her the way you did with Martin Belvedere. Pay her well. She’ll respect your demands for confidentiality.”
“I don’t want another independent. I want Isabel Wright working here at Frey-Salter where I can, uh—”
“Control her?” Ellis offered.
“Where I can keep an eye on her,” Lawson amended.
“Forget it. Not going to happen.”
“You sound a little too damn cheerful about all this,” Lawson muttered suspiciously. “What are you up to?”
Ellis opened the door of the Maserati and got behind the wheel.
“I’ve been thinking that I need to broaden my perspective and maybe take a more positive approach to life,” he said. “Maybe I’ll sign up for a course of motivational seminars.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Isabel’s going to be teaching a class called ‘Tapping into the Creative Potential of Your Dreams.’ Who knows? Maybe I’ll pick up a few pointers.”
He ended the call before Lawson could finish sputtering.
7
vincent Scargill dreamed . . .
He stands on the high cliff, poised for the dive into the vast blue depths of the sea. He will plunge down beneath the cool, shimmering surface, counting each breath he takes underwater until he reaches the sparkling clear place where the currents carry the dream images.
But as he watches from the top of the cliff, a great wave rises out of the ocean. It is huge, a vast wall of water that dwarfs the cliff top where he stands. He knows it will crash over him, crushing him, drowning him, making it impossible for him to dive into the clear currents below.
As the tsunami bears down upon him he sees that the waters have turned blood red . . .
“Vincent, wake up.” The firm voice summoned him from the dreamscape. “Wake up, Vincent.”
He tried to resist, reluctant to abandon the attempt to dive into the dreamscape. It was his only hope of escaping this place that had become his prison.
But in the end, he had no choice. The voice had broken through the fragile barrier that separated a high-level lucid dream from wakefulness. Once pierced, there was no going back through the veil. He would have to reconstruct another dream and that was not easy to do these days.
He had made progress since the terrible morning when he nearly died in the explosion at the cabin, but not nearly enough. The head injury had healed within a few weeks but the damage that had been done to his dreaming capability was far more extensive than either he or his companion had realized. He could no longer access the gateway dream, the one that took him into the extreme dreaming state.
He opened his eyes. His companion was bending over him, watching him closely.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” He sat up on the edge of the sofa and glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. He had spent two hours trying to get into the dream state. “All I get is that damned red tsunami. Maybe if I took a higher dose I could get past it.”
“Perhaps, but we must be very, very careful. An overdose might destroy your Level Five capability altogether. Too much might kill you.”
Rage surged through him. He shoved himself to his feet and went to stand at the window. “This is all Cutler’s fault. He did this to me.”
“I know, Vincent. Trust me, we will find a way to enable you to dream again.”
He brooded on the strip of palm trees that lined the avenue below the condo window. He had spent a large portion of the past few months in this place and he hated it.
He had few memories of those first weeks following the explosion. His dreams had been blurred and fragmented. Eventually they began to clear, however, and he believed that he was regaining his Level Five ability. In an effort to speed up the process, his companion began giving him increasingly large injections from their small supply of CZ-149, the experimental dream-enhancing drug produced back at Frey-Salter. But the stuff was not helping much. If anything, the tsunami was growing larger and more vio
lently crimson with each dose.
A few weeks ago, desperate, he had slipped out of the condo while his companion was gone and contacted Martin Belvedere personally. He knew he could trust the old man to keep quiet. All Belvedere cared about was his research, and Vincent knew he could offer him an interesting case study.
He met with Belvedere in a small café near the Center for Sleep Research. The location had been Belvedere’s choice. They sat together in a cheap vinyl booth drinking bad coffee while he gave the old man his recent dream reports and told him about the head trauma that had impacted his Level Five abilities.
Belvedere made copious notes and then he took the information back to his office to study. They met again two days later at the same café. But all the old man had been able to tell him was that the giant red wave was a “blocking” image that prevented him from accessing the gateway dream. Hell, he had already figured that much out for himself.
“I can’t take this any longer.” He gripped the windowsill so tightly all the blood was squeezed out of his knuckles. “That damned tsunami dream is making me crazy.”
His companion tapped the tip of the pen against the desktop. “There is one other approach we can try. I just learned about it this evening. That’s why I woke you.”
He turned swiftly. “What approach?”
“In the past couple of months Frey-Salter has come up with a new version of CZ-149. They’re calling it Variant A. My informant says it doesn’t appear to have the side effects that the earlier version of the drug has. I’m told that the initial tests have gone very well.”
“Get it.”
“That’s the problem. I almost didn’t tell you about it because, to be honest, I don’t know how to get it. There is only a very limited supply at the moment. Most of it is under tight security at Frey-Salter. Lawson gave the rest to the agent who is field-testing it for him.”
He went cold. “Which agent?”
“Ellis Cutler.”
“Bastard. Bastard.”
There was a dull thud. Pain crashed through his fist. He looked down and realized he had just struck the wall beside the window with such force that he had knocked a hole in it. Bits of painted wallboard lay on the carpet at his feet. There was blood on his hand.
Rage as red and fierce as the tsunami of his dreams washed over him. He looked at his companion through the crimson mist.
“Where is Cutler?”
“A place called Roxanna Beach.”
He started toward the door.
“Vincent, wait. You can’t risk exposing yourself. Lawson thinks you’re dead. If he gets even a hint that you’re still alive, he will hunt you down. He has the resources to do it. You know that. You won’t stand a chance.”
He stopped at the door. Some of the red tide ebbed from his brain. He was shaking and sweating now. He rubbed his temples, trying to think.
“I have to get the new drug,” he said.
“I understand. But first we need a plan.”
8
randolph stared at the tall, thin man standing in front of the desk, so stunned by the news that the high-priced, forensic accountant had just delivered that he could not immediately react. Webber had to be wrong.
“Th–that’s impossible,” Randolph finally got out. He was horrified to hear himself stutter. Whenever the old childhood speech problem returned, it was a sure sign that he was under enormous pressure.
Amelia Netley said nothing but her fine jaw clenched more tightly. She continued to stalk back and forth in front of the windows as she had been doing for the past few minutes, her arms folded beneath her elegant breasts.
“I’m afraid it’s a fact, Dr. Belvedere.” Webber tapped the file against his palm and looked grim. “It took a lot of time and some very creative work to follow the money trail, but there’s no doubt in my mind that what I just told you is the truth. I can see this comes as something of a surprise.”
“Surprise? It’s a frigging bombshell. Give me that file.”
Webber handed it to him. “It’s an extremely sophisticated financial setup. I had to dig deep to understand it.”
“My father was not at all sophisticated when it came to business.” Randolph slapped open the file. “He couldn’t have done this himself.”
Webber nodded thoughtfully. “Then it must have been the clients who went to such extraordinary lengths to conceal the payments.”
“But why would they want to hide the fact that they were contracting with the center? It makes no sense.”
“I don’t know. I can tell you that one of them is a fairly small player. But the other, Client Number One, has obviously dropped some big bucks into the center over the course of the past several years. As you can see, the amounts got even larger in the last twelve months.”
Randolph stared at the figures on the page in front of him. “Forty-seven percent of the total operating budget of the center has been coming from Client Number One for two decades?”
“The figure shot up to fifty-seven percent of the total income this past year.” Webber leaned over the desk to point to another row of figures. “You will notice that Client Number Two came on board about a year ago. He doesn’t do anywhere near the same volume of business as the other one, but he is definitely a significant account.”
“This is unbelievable,” Randolph whispered. “B–between the two of them, these two anonymous clients accounted for over s–sixty percent of the center’s gross receipts for the past year.”
“Right. The rest of the income appears to come from a mix of small grants from some nutritional supplement manufacturers, sleep research foundations and a couple of small-time inventors who hired Belvedere to test various types of sleep aids.”
“Th–th–this is a disaster.” Randolph sagged into his chair. “Over sixty percent of the center’s funding is coming from two unknown sources. It doesn’t make any sense. What services was my father providing to them?”
Webber cleared his throat. “I’m still working on that. The records are all very vague. But as far as this past year goes, I did discover that the bulk of the billing for both accounts appears to have been connected to one particular department here at the center.”
Randolph’s stomach knotted. “Which one?”
“The Department of Dream Analysis.”
Amelia’s jaw clenched.
A great sense of impending doom settled on Randolph. He could almost hear Amelia saying I told you so. He made a fist with one hand to stop the tremor.
“Isabel Wright,” he muttered. “I c–can’t believe it. Who would pay that kind of money for some silly psychic dream analysis?”
Webber raised one scrawny shoulder in a mild shrug. “The pharmaceutical companies are rolling in cash. Maybe a couple of them decided to spend some of it on dream research. It might explain the secrecy. They’ve got a lot at stake when it comes to protecting their proprietary R and D data.”
Randolph shook his head. “No sane, sensible corporation that has to show its shareholders a p–profit would throw several million dollars at a low-profile research facility like the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research just to fund investigations into my father’s ridiculous psychic dream theories.”
Webber pursed his lips and canted his head an inch or so to one side. “I suppose one or both of the anonymous clients might be wealthy eccentrics or religious cults with a thing about dreams.”
“I told you there was something strange going on with the funding here, Randolph.” Amelia stopped in front of the window, her brittle tension clear in every line of her body. “And I told you that it probably had something to do with your father’s personal research interests. I also told you that meant that the extremely healthy cash flow was very likely connected to that ridiculous Department of Dream Analysis. Didn’t I tell you that?”
He knew she was angry but he was, nevertheless, taken aback by the impatience and raw fury he saw in her face. They had been lovers for weeks. In the bedroom Amelia was far and away th
e most inventive woman he had ever met. But in the days following Isabel Wright’s departure from the center, she had shown another side of her nature.
When he had refused to believe that Isabel Wright and the Department of Dream Analysis might be important to the long-term financial future of the center, she had insisted on bringing in a forensic accountant to take a deep look into the center’s books.
“I d–don’t understand,” he said, utterly bewildered.
She crossed the office and stopped in front of his desk.
“Try to stay focused here, Randolph,” she said. “I’ve been telling you for the past few days that it is absolutely critical that you persuade Isabel Wright to return to the center before those two accounts, whoever they are, realize she is gone. Now do you understand why?”
He pulled himself together and tried to concentrate. “How did you know that my father was doing so much business through that little department?”
“I kept my eyes open.” She threw up her hands, exasperated. “I paid attention. I did the math. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that there was no way Martin Belvedere could possibly have made the overhead and paid the excellent salaries here at the center with the funding he got for the routine sleep research projects. I knew there had to be some other source. Given your father’s eccentricities, I concluded that other source was probably linked to Isabel Wright’s dream analysis work.”
He felt cornered. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Amelia planted her hands on the desk. “Exactly what I told you to do. Call her. Tell her that you made a mistake and you want her to come back to her old job. Tell her that you will make her dream come true.”
He went blank. “What dream?”
“Promise her that you will appoint her head of the Department of Dream Analysis.” Amelia looked knowing. “That’s what she wants more than anything else. Don’t worry, once she’s back here, I’ll take charge of that department. She can have her fancy title, but I’ll control her and the interaction with those two well-heeled clients.”