“You were sleeping quite soundly.”
“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Can I go back to sleep now?”
“I have a theory,” she said. “It’s just a theory, mind you, but there is a certain logic to it.”
“I’m going to have to listen to this theory before I get to go back to sleep, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.” She was clearly having trouble containing her excitement. “I think that because you are a strong talent, yourself, you have a kind of immunity to me.”
He raised a finger to silence her. “Now there is where you are wrong, Dream Eyes.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I am anything but immune to you. Just the opposite.”
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her until she stopped talking.
Twenty
Sometime later, he opened his eyes again when he felt Gwen slide out of bed. He knew she was trying to be discreet about it. Probably headed for the bathroom, he thought. But when he saw her put on the robe and lean down to pick up the map that had fallen to the floor, he realized something else was going on.
He levered himself up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”
“What?” Surprised, she glanced back at him. “Yes, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. A few minutes ago, I woke up and decided to try the road trip dream again. I went back to the start, back here to Wilby, and I saw a pattern.” She moved to the table and spread the map out across the surface. “But it was all wrong.”
Her urgency got through to him. He shoved aside the covers, sat up and reached for his pants. Zipping his fly, he crossed the room to the desk.
“Tell me about the pattern and what’s wrong with it,” he said.
“I assumed going into the dream that this was a map of towns and places that Evelyn intended to visit for research purposes. But there are too many towns marked.”
“There are only a half-dozen circled.”
“Yes, but that’s about four, maybe five too many. You see, Wesley operates with a tight budget. He doesn’t like to pay for airfare and lodging for a scouting crew to check out the location unless it promises to be good. It’s highly unlikely she would have selected six towns for the next episode of Dead of Night. And if she was working on a big project involving multiple locations, I think she would have talked it over with me and probably Wesley as well.”
He flattened his hands on the table and examined the six towns. “You’re thinking that there’s a connection between these locations? Some paranormal significance?”
“No, well, not exactly, at least not in terms of legends about haunted houses or paranormal vortexes. In my dream, Evelyn told me to go back to the beginning. That was my intuition reminding me that this is the same kind of pattern that she and I uncovered after Zander Taylor went over the falls.”
Judson’s senses stirred. “The two of you were able to identify some of the locations of his previous kills. You concluded that he had targeted people who claimed to be psychic.” He flipped the map over and looked at the six names that had been written there. “I need fifteen minutes on my computer.”
TEN MINUTES LATER he shut down the obituary page of the newspaper he had been studying and checked off the last name on the list that Ballinger had made on the back of the map.
“That’s it,” he said. “Six towns, six deaths, all by natural causes, all within the past eighteen months or so. The names of the deceased match the names on the map. But if someone has started killing again with the camera, there’s one big difference this time.”
“What?” Gwen asked.
“None of the victims was a practicing psychic, real or fake. According to the obituaries, none of them was making his or her living by claiming paranormal talents.”
“I don’t know why the pattern is different, but someone is killing again, the same way Zander Taylor did—by paranormal means.” Gwen drummed her fingers on the table. “Evelyn somehow stumbled onto the truth.”
“The murderer realized she was tracking him so he killed her?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Judson thought about it. “He took her computer and cell phone, hoping to get rid of any traces of her research that might lead the cops to him.”
“He couldn’t have known about the map and where it was hidden,” Gwen said. “Either that or he was unable to get into the mirror engine to retrieve it. I told you, not everyone can handle the psi in that machine. But this doesn’t make sense. Why the change in pattern?”
“We know that Taylor is dead,” Judson reminded her. “Different killer, different pattern, different kind of prey. But there will be something that these six victims had in common, trust me. We just have to find the common thread.”
“Whoever he is, he must be one of the locals here in Wilby,” Gwen said. “Someone who knew about Zander and decided to emulate him. Maybe a copycat killer?”
“Maybe. In addition to the likelihood that the killer is a local, we know one other thing about him.”
Gwen looked up from the map, understanding heating her eyes.
“The killer has enough talent to work the camera,” she said. “We’re looking for another psychic.”
Twenty-one
Elias Coppersmith arrived in a massive, shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows. Gwen stood with Judson inside the lobby and watched the big vehicle glide into a vacant slot in front of the inn.
“Your brother, Sam, drives a black SUV, doesn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes. Why?” Judson wasn’t paying much attention to the question. He was watching the SUV.
“Just curious,” she said. “Because you drive a black SUV, too. Same brand, I believe.”
“Company discount,” Judson said.
More likely something in the DNA of the Coppersmith men that inclined them toward large vehicles endowed with the souls of trucks, Gwen thought. Other rich guys drove flashy red Ferraris and Porsches.
From inside the inn, it was impossible to see the occupants of the vehicle, but she was mildly surprised when the passenger door opened. A big, lean, silver-haired man who could have been cast in the role of the town marshal in a classic western movie climbed out.
“That’s Dad,” Judson said. “He’s early. Must have left Seattle at zero-dawn-thirty. Wonder who’s behind the wheel? He probably picked up someone from Coppersmith Security before he left.”
“Your father is so paranoid about that geode that he brought an armed escort?”
“Trust me, knowing Dad and his opinion of Hank Barrett, it’s not just the escort who will be armed,” Judson said.
She thought about the pistol strapped to Judson’s ankle and wondered if going about armed was another Coppersmith family trait.
“I’d better go out and let him know he’s got the right place,” Judson said. “I’ll be right back.”
He crossed the lobby with a few long, easy strides, pushed open the glass door and went outside.
Gwen studied the family greeting scene through the lobby windows, firmly suppressing the faint, wistful sensation that fluttered through her. There was no big male hug exchanged between Judson and Elias, she noticed. But the bond between father and son was so strong that she could sense it even from where she stood. The power of a close-knit family, she thought. There was nothing else like it.
At that moment, the driver’s-side door of the SUV opened. A lithe, elegantly slender, good-looking man with platinum-blond hair cut in a crisp, military style alighted from the cab with a dancer’s grace. He was dressed head-to-toe in fashionable and very expensive black—black turtleneck, black trousers, black loafers. Gwen knew that all of the attire came with designer labels.
Delight spilled through her. She had family, too. The only difference was that her brother wasn’t related by blood.
She rushed through the lobby, burst out of the doorway and flew across the parking lot.
“Nick,” she called. “What are you doing here?”