I Dream of Danger Page 14

  He shrugged. “Dunno,” he mumbled. And he didn’t. He had no idea what was in Catherine’s briefcase and he didn’t care. And yet, his eyes slid back to the corner.

  Another slap to the back of his head he barely felt. “Nick,” Mac growled.

  Catherine rolled her eyes. “Stop that, Mac. You’re not helping. Step back.”

  And Mac stepped back.

  Amazing. Even with everything roiling inside him, Nick marveled at Mac’s obedience. Nobody gave Mac an order, ever, except their former captain, Lucius Ward. Ward was still too sick to give orders so Mac was still God. He was 6’4” of pure muscle and meanness who turned into a house pet when his wife spoke.

  Catherine didn’t stop to savor her victory. Mac had more or less rolled over for her the instant they met, so she didn’t fully appreciate having a killing machine like Mac obey her. She walked to the corner, stuffed everything back into the briefcase, and brought it over to Nick.

  His eyes followed her every step of the way.

  She replicated the spill of documents on the table in front of Nick.

  He greedily eyed everything, unable to take his gaze off perfectly ordinary pieces of paper and some glossy brochures.

  “Nick.” Catherine put her hand on his once more. It was a deliberate move and not even Mac objected. Catherine had some kind of secret power, some woo-woo thing that scared him and everyone else because it wasn’t woo-woo. It was fact. If she touched you, she knew what you were feeling. And lately, terrifyingly, if she touched you, she knew what you were thinking.

  Must be scary shit to be married to someone who could walk around inside your head but Mac looked pretty happy about it.

  “Nick.” Catherine’s hand tightened and Nick tore his eyes away from the briefcase. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened. What has you so upset?”

  “Upset.” A sound came from his throat that was more an animal sound than a human one. “Upset is spilling soup, missing a train. Elle’s in danger. I’m not upset about that, I’m scared out of my fucking mind!”

  He was sweating like a pig, heart pounding erratically. He felt like a machine that was broken and shaking to pieces.

  “Okay. Okay. Calm down. You’re not helping her by panicking.” Catherine put her other hand around his. Nick wanted to snarl at her, but with his hand encased in hers he actually felt his heart rate starting to slow. Something was working. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  His heart gave a huge pump. His voice rose. “She’s in trouble. She somehow contacted me after all these years and she’s in trouble! In danger!” His gaze slid back to her briefcase. It glowed, as if in a spotlight.

  “No, Nick.” Catherine’s voice was soft but firm. “You’re not telling me what happened, you’re telling me your reaction. You were sleeping? Nick!” Her voice sounded like a slap. “Look at me!”

  He slid his eyes to her, reluctantly.

  “You were sleeping?”

  “Yes.” He had to force the word out through a tight throat.

  “Something woke you up?”

  “Elle! She woke me up! Oh God, she . . .”

  Catherine gave his hand a shake. “Focus hard, Nick. You’re not helping Elle at all. She’s in trouble and she might die because you can’t focus on anything but your feelings. I can feel you—you are one big wave of panic and fear. That is not going to help Elle. You can only help her if you remain calm and focused. Forget your feelings. Focus on the situation. Focus on helping Elle.”

  Fuck. She was right.

  Focus.

  Nick took in a huge gulp of air.

  He hardly recognized himself. He’d been a Ranger, he’d been Delta, he’d been Ghost Ops. No one had ever had to tell him to focus. He was nothing but focus. Brutal and unyielding. On a mission, he was pure cold steel.

  Now he was trembling, sweaty, mind flying into a million tiny pieces.

  “Come on, Nick.” Catherine looked serious, frowning. “Help me here. Help me help you.”

  His eyes slid back to the briefcase. It gave him something. Some sense of calm, a point to focus on.

  “Let’s go back to the beginning. Look at me, Nick.”

  Damn. His eyes swiveled. “Looking.”

  “You were sleeping. Were you dreaming?”

  Had he been? Yeah. He’d been dreaming of Elle. Of the last time he’d seen her. And goddamn if it hadn’t been a wet dream. He’d woken up with a hard-on that he lost the second he got the danger message. No way was he going to say he woke up with a hard-on. Not in front of Catherine. Or Mac or Jon for that matter.

  “Nick? Dreaming?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Of her? Of Elle?”

  “Yeah.” His jaws clenched.

  “Was there something different about the dream?”

  He was checking her briefcase, but swung his head to her at the words. “Different how?” He couldn’t help himself, help his suspicious tone.

  She kept her voice soft. “Do you often dream of her, of Elle?”

  No! The word was right there, in his mouth, filling his mouth. No, of course he didn’t dream of Elle. That would reveal a weakness. A man was weak in sleep, couldn’t control himself. So, no, he didn’t dream of Elle. He didn’t dream of anything, fuck you very much. His dreams were his own goddamned business.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She nodded. “And this one had a different flavor?”

  Well, he’d woken up with a woodie, if that’s what she meant. He’d woken up in a sweaty panic.

  “Close your eyes, Nick.”

  “What?” Christ. Time was this big heavy thing swirling around a drain. Elle was in danger, in danger right now. He didn’t have time for this shit!

  Nick shifted on his feet. He wanted to pull away from Catherine, run for the door, but . . . he couldn’t free himself.

  He was strong. He’d been strong all his life. He’d been in the military for almost half his life and every single fucking day he’d trained for combat. He was a shooter. He’d shot several million rounds in his life. His hands were strong. Once he’d tested at 180 pounds on the grip-strength test. He could crush Catherine’s hand in a nanosecond.

  Except . . . he couldn’t. He couldn’t pull free from her.

  “You are scared and you want to spring into action.” Catherine’s eyes exerted a pull as great as her hand. He couldn’t look away from her. “But you have no idea where to go. I’m trying to help you, Nick. If Elle sent you a message, she also sent you the way to find her. So you need to listen hard to what she tried to tell you. Now close your eyes.”

  There was no way to disobey her. He closed his eyes.

  “Clear your mind,” Catherine said. “There’s only Elle, and the message she sent you. That’s all there is in the world. She’s in trouble and if she called for help, there’s a way to find her in her message. So think carefully. You were dreaming about her. And you heard a cry for help. Think back to that cry.”

  Nick nodded, thought back.

  “You were dreaming about her, about Elle. Then the dream changed, correct?”

  He nodded again. Exactly. That was exactly it. It was as if Catherine had been there.

  “All of a sudden, it lost that dreamlike feeling and become real. Something you could touch and feel.”

  “Yes.” That had been exactly it.

  “You woke up and felt the danger.”

 
His eyes opened. “Yes.” All over his body, every cell prickling with it. Even before he heard the words, the call.

  “Did you see her?”

  Did he? Nick dug deep. There was this huge overlay of sweaty panic. He had to get rid of that, try to remember. His jaw clenched. “Yes, I think—I think I did.“

  Another squeeze of his hand. “What did she look like?”

  “Older.” The word popped out as the images in his head suddenly coalesced. “Tired. Scared. She had— She had her hair all in her face,” he said suddenly. “Short hair. Chin length. She always wore her hair long—” A sudden flash of memory of Elle’s hair trailing over his stomach like a pale waterfall nearly killed him. “But it’s short now. All in her face, messy-like. She’s bleeding—” Mouth dry, he tried to swallow. “From a cut. It’s deep. She’s— She’s worried about it. But not because of the cut itself. There’s something else about the cut, but I don’t know what.” He found himself rocking in distress. “I’m not understanding this.”

  “Okay,” Catherine suggested gently, “don’t worry about the cut right now. Put that aside. Is she sitting or standing?”

  What the fuck difference did it make? Still— “Sitting,” he said, decisively. Suddenly, the knowledge was there, in his head. A picture of Elle, face in her hands, shoulders sloped in despair. The despair colored the air around her, was deep and dark. Oh Elle. “She’s sitting on the floor, back to the wall.”

  “What’s the room like?”

  He hadn’t even thought of that. Everything had been centered on Elle, in danger. He concentrated harder. “Not a—a house. Or at least her house. I don’t get that impression. Everything feels cheap, slightly dirty. Not like her at all.” The last time he’d seen her, she’d been absolutely broke, but even then everything had been clean. Threadbare but clean. The place she was in felt dirty and downscale.

  “What is she seeing, Nick?”

  He screwed his eyes more tightly shut. What was she seeing? He had no idea.

  “Dunno. Walls. A bed. But— it feels strange to her, not familiar.”

  “Like a—a hotel?”

  Jesus, yes! “Yeah, like a hotel. Or . . . she’s on the first floor. Maybe a motel?”

  “Do you have a sense of what it looks like from the outside? If it’s an unfamiliar place, she’ll have noticed more about it than her own home, which would be so familiar to her. So think. Reach in through the scream for help to see if there’s more information there. There will be. You just have to find it.”

  Damn. Catherine was making sense. But it had been like one huge powerful pulse, strong enough to wake him, to panic him, but no hidden messages.

  Nick waited, sweating, then shook his head.

  “Think back to the dream. Just before it faded. Can you try to remember what was there before that beacon lit up to call you to her? I’m sure there was an image that must have bled into the beacon. When she called for help, it must have been part of the call. That’s the only way it would work. Any call that strong, to wake you up from a distance, would have information in it. Hidden, maybe. Or rather the beacon call was so strong you can’t perceive the other data in it.” She looked swiftly at her husband, then at Jon, the team cybergeek. “Think of it as—Jon, what do you call it when information is hidden but not encrypted in a computer message?”

  “Steganography.” Jon was watching everything soberly. His default emotional mode was manic, teasing, but he wasn’t teasing or facetious now. He was dead serious.

  “Steganography, right.” Catherine turned back to Nick. “Think of it as what you’d call intel hidden in a message. She’d have some sense of where she is in the call for help if you got the sense that she wasn’t home. If she were home, that would be background noise for her. But if she’s away from home, on the run, that would be part of the emergency call.”

  Put that way . . .

  “Think back. You got this call. What did it feel like?”

  What did it feel like? It felt like shit—Elle in danger and he didn’t know how to help her. “Like Elle threw a rock at my head. The way you do at a window. Then screamed for help.”

  Catherine was listening to him with every fiber of her being, concentrated wholly on him, holding his hand. “That feeling you had. The feeling that she wasn’t in her home, in a familiar environment. That came from her, from Elle. She wasn’t beaming that at you, but it was in the message. She must have come to the place from somewhere else. So, in your head, try to spool back, as if it were a tape on rewind. Just slide your finger from right to left in your head. Picture it, Nick. Sliding your finger, going back in time.”

  Her voice was almost hypnotic. Her gray eyes were glowing as if a lightbulb had lit up behind her eyes.

  “Back, Nick,” she murmured. “Slide it back. I’m there with you.”

  He slid it back. Back . . .

  Catherine’s eyes dimmed. She tightened her hand on his. “I’m reading you too much, Nick. You’re like a foghorn while I’m trying to listen to music. Calm down, cool it. You’re deafening me.”

  Nick didn’t have to look to know that Mac and Jon were exchanging glances. No one ever had to tell him to cool it, ever. He was nothing but cool. Cold as ice. Elle was the only thing that had ever wiped away that cool. He had shed tears exactly once in his lifetime—sitting on the edge of Elle’s bed back in Lawrence, knowing she was gone forever.

  And now.

  Knowing she needed him and being unable to help because he was a mess inside.

  “You are a cool, calm, still lake,” Catherine said. “Emotionless, inert.”

  He was a cool, calm, still lake. Emotionless, inert.

  “I’m feeling it,” Catherine said softly. Her hand on his glowed with warmth. She was somehow reading him. Reading Elle through him. “Fear. Not yours, Nick. Hers.”

  “Panic,” he said and swallowed.

  “Yes.” Catherine’s eyes were closed now, her voice a whisper so low he could barely hear her. “Panic. She’s on the run. Running away from . . . I can’t tell. Men in black suits, with—” She stopped, the dreaminess in her voice gone. She looked over to Mac and swallowed. “I’ve been around you guys long enough to recognize it. She’s being pursued by men wearing combat gear, fully armed, with nightvision.”

  Nick froze. He could almost hear Jon and Mac stiffening with attention. Catherine had just described soldiers. Or if not soldiers, then elite corporate security. Either way bad news. The worst news possible. Trained men gunning for one woman.

  Calm, still as a lake . . .

  “Men are coming for her, outside her house.” Catherine breathed in and out, somehow glowing once again.

  Nick picked up. He was getting images, flickering as if in an old-time movie. Fragmented—there and not there. Yet somehow he could follow because there was the essence of Elle there, and he could follow Elle to the ends of the earth.

  Nick spoke. “Those guys in combat gear, they’re coming fast. Coordinated. But she’s been warned. She’s somehow wounded, in her arm. There’s pain that she is blocking out. She grabs her bag and runs out and down, down—down a set of stairs, past the ground floor, down . . . There’s a long dark corridor, very long. She runs to the end of it, goes up the stairs, out into a backyard. She cuts across a number of yards; she knows where she’s going. She runs as fast as she can until she stops. Clings to a lamppost. The street is—anonymous. Just normal houses, not too rich, not too poor. She runs again,
as fast as she can, down dark streets with nothing remarkable to identify them. The houses are getting poorer, though. The streets are darker. She’s afraid. It’s a bad part of town. But I don’t know of what town. She stops, winded. She’s looking at a building. Very shabby, faded green façade. There’s a neon sign, VACANCIES. The first A and the E are burned out. I can’t make out the name. She’s feeling—not safe so much as anonymous. She signs in, pays in cash, leaves a false name. Have no idea what it is. She fades in and out.”

  “Did you get a sense of where she is, Nick? Where this hotel or motel might be?”

  Nick’s free hand clenched. Well, fuck. If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, twiddling my freaking thumbs, I’d be on my way to her, wouldn’t I? But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t speak disrespectfully to Catherine. First, because Mac would flatten him. Second, because he liked Catherine. And third, because she was trying to help. “Don’t know.” A shudder ran through him at his own words. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, but you do,” Catherine said, her voice gentle. Nick’s hand jerked in hers. “Listen to your body, Nick.”

  What the—

  “Your body is talking to you. Listen to it.”

  His eyes popped open, slid over her face to the briefcase. Slid back. Nope. His body was telling him jack shit.

  Catherine let go of his hand and pulled her briefcase toward her, pulling out a wad of paperwork, a sheaf of what looked like lab reports and some glossy thick paper, brochures of some kind.

  For some reason, her movements fascinated him. He watched, almost enthralled.

  “This has been calling to you. You haven’t been able to take your eyes off it. There’s something here that is of importance.”

  Catherine began methodically placing the paperwork in neat piles all along the ten-foot-long table filled with holographic monitors that served as command central.