Shoving aside the bedroll, he walked naked to the stream, hunkered down, and drank deeply from the cold water. He stood and gazed at the opposite bank for several moments and then turned to make his way up to the top of a ledge some fifty yards away from his camp.
The moon dangled a sliced pumpkin's smile above him. The dark, clear sky reflected in the water's sparkle below him. Plunging into the lake with a clean, smooth dive, Jack ate the water with his hands for several minutes before he made his way to the surface. This high up the lake was an arctic bath and his teeth clacked and chattered uncontrollably. He climbed from the lake, shook himself dry like a wet dog, and crawled back into the sleeping bag.
A kaleidoscope of images whirled in his thoughts, but nothing made sense yet. His human-mind wasn't prepared to dissect the dream. His animal-mind couldn't. He couldn't tell yet whose sight he was about to invade. The killer? His victim? A third party?
Jack downed more red pills, sprawled on his back, and stared at the stars until his eyelids drooped once again. This time he smelled the enemy before he heard or saw him. His nostrils filled with rotting decay and he exhaled sharply like a dog wheezing out a bad scent. Then he heard a bestial growl as he sniffed out the trail.
Himself or his prey?
He felt the hideous intent of the killer. Tasted the thick desire that spurred him on. Smelled the lust that propelled his dark needs. Then he saw a man peer through a peephole, light candles, adjust a camera lens. He glimpsed the border of a red ripple of cloth. Through the man's eyes, he descended concrete steps in a fast gallop, opened a car door. Saw a pretty redhead with pale, freckled skin that glowed in the evening light. Heard a muffled word. "Baby?"
And saw the front of a house, the lighted number clearly visible – 2776.
But what street? Turn, damn it, Jack mouthed silently to the man whose mind he now inhabited. Pass a mirror. Cast a reflection. Let me see your face.
But the man rushed into the house carrying the pale-skinned girl, her fiery curls dangling down his back. Jack could feel the slight weight of her, how easily she flopped over his shoulder, how supple and pliant her body was. As he passed the entryway, he glanced down, saw the envelopes lying on the wooden surface of a half-circle table. Yes, there!
Occupant, 2776 Mitchell Avenue.
Now he passed the table and climbed the stairs, entered a bedroom and deposited the girl on sheets the color of spilled wine.
Spilled wine. He jerked out of the vision. Something else, he thought, not the red-headed girl. Why did the image of spilled wine strike such terror in him? He saw deep-piled carpet, a dark red stain. Momentarily the image vanished and Olivia stood at an open door, her perfect mouth a round oval of surprise. He sensed her surprised gladness and then… darkness.
A threat to Olivia? But he could see nothing else through the black-out curtain of his mind. The image remained stubbornly hidden.
Instead, the original vision returned and he felt eager carnality as he stared down at the helpless redhead. The man's lechery rippled through Jack. A white, hot flame erupted in his head, pierced his right eye with a jolt that roused him awake. He clutched the side of his temple, dug the heels of his hand into the eye socket, and writhed on his bed roll until the pain eased.
He jerked upright, his body clammy with sweat even though the night temperature had fallen again. Shivering, he pulled a jacket over his shoulders. When he was half-way warm, he crouched again at the water's edge and drank his fill, then returned to camp and climbed into his bedroll, hoping for another vision.
Nothing happened. In the morning he packed up his gear and set off on the long walk back to the clearing at the base of the mountain where he'd parked the Blazer.
Someone was in danger. But he had no way of knowing who, how, or even when.
As he hiked down the mountain, he had plenty of time to think about how he'd gotten himself into the mess of Invictus life.
Graduation night nearly twenty years ago. The sheer shock of returning to the Morse house only to find Roger's body had gone. The broken beer bottle gone, not even a shard left on the steps. The puddle of blood from his laceration gone, not even a stain on the cement sidewalk.
His seventeen-year old self had stood dazed and wide-eyed at the spot where a half hour before the broken body had lain. Jack remembered thinking that he must've been wrong. That he hadn't heard the loud snap of the neck, that he hadn't been strong enough to kill a man nearly twice his size, and that in a drunken stupor, Roger had stumbled back into the house.
Cautiously, Jack had pushed open the door and crept inside.
He counted at least five of them.
Burly figures dressed in black gear with masked faces and armed with some bad ass kind of guns that Jack couldn't identify but knew instinctively were deadly enough to blow a giant hole in him. Instinct made him turn and run, but two of them blocked his escape. He felt a sharp prick at his neck and then… nothing.
That was the beginning, Jack thought, of a long descent into the murky realm of Invictus.
Now, fueled by the insight of his latest dream and the possible address of the killer, Jack stowed his gear into the rear of the Blazer and started to climb into the vehicle. At that moment another vision slammed unexpectedly into his brain, doubling him over with pain. He fell to his knees and clutched his temples.
Olivia. Olivia, bruised and bloody and cold. Scrabbling barefoot on gravel and mud. Pitch black night. He swiped at the sweat on his forehead. Olivia was in trouble, but where and how? God, was the image past or future or present?
He must've blacked out for several minutes for when he roused himself, the slice of agony in his head had subsided to a dull throb. He slid behind the wheel, dazed by the multiple visions and their confusing implications. The first visions had given him an address. Whose? The Dead Language Killer's? Had Olivia somehow been caught up with the killer?
As Jack drove the forty miles from the foothills, the address he'd seen in his dream-vision thrummed through his mind: Occupant, 2776 Mitchell. He made a decision. This part of the mission belonged to him alone. He saw no point in sharing the information with Slater. The visions were iffy at best and the address could mean a lot of things – a benign slice of the present, a memory from the past, or the killer's address. As yet he had no idea.
When he reached the base of the mountains, the sun had long ago pushed its pinkness over the Sierra Nevadas. Arriving at Slater's guest house, he grabbed his laptop and went straight to work. He waited impatiently for the address check to come through the reverse directory.
Chapter Twenty-one
When the world righted itself again, Olivia opened her eyes. She was cold. Her hips were numb. Pitch surrounded her. Thunder rushed through her temples and lingered as a throbbing pain behind her eyelids. Her shoulders ached as if someone had tried to jerk her arms out of their sockets. She realized she was bound to a hard folding chair, her arms tied behind her.
As the black shadows sharpened into gray shapes, she had a sense of a wide open space. A breeze slid over her bare arms and legs with ghostly fingers. She tried to rub her forehead, but her arms pulled against the restraints. She shuffled her feet. They were free.
The light weight of her bedtime clothing reminded her that she'd gone to her back door to answer a knock she'd thought was Jack's. She'd flung open the door without checking. A bright light had flashed in her eyes right before the crushing blow to the side of her head.