“Can I get you some water?” Tony asked, still holding me tightly.
I shook my head. “I’ll get it. I think I’m just going to get up.” I glanced at the clock, which read four twenty-two. “I doubt I’ll get back to sleep anyway.”
“I’ll get up with you,” he offered. “We can curl up on the sofa in front of the fire and wait for the sun to make its way over the horizon.”
“You don’t have to get up with me. You had a long day yesterday, and we’re going to have a long day today. You’ll be exhausted if you don’t go back to sleep.”
“I want to get up with you. I’ll make us some coffee, and once we wake up a bit, I’ll rustle up something for breakfast.”
I appreciated the fact that Tony always got up with me when the nightmare returned, which had been happening more and more frequently as of late. The interruptions to my sleep pattern had been taking a toll on me, and I knew Tony was worried about my overall health.
“I feel like these dreams have a purpose,” I said to Tony after he handed me a cup of freshly brewed coffee. My cats, Tang and Tinder, curled up on the sofa with Tony and me, while my dog, Tilly, and his dog, Titan, curled up in front of the fire and went back to sleep.
“What sort of purpose?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve considered the fact that my subconscious mind knows something important that my conscious mind has blocked. I suppose the dreams could be my subconscious needling me to pay attention to something I otherwise might not have.” I took a sip of the coffee before I continued. “Another explanation is that I’ve developed psychic powers in the past few months, and I’m channeling something which has already happened or will happen in the future.”
“I’m not sure that you’ve developed psychic powers in the past few months, but I do think the whole thing we went through at Christmas with Star and your father might have left a deep impression you haven’t fully dealt with yet. Maybe the dreams are simply your way of figuring everything out.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps. It does seem like things have grown increasingly complicated since we found the first photo of my father.” I laid my head on Tony’s shoulder. “To be honest, I feel like we’ve only exposed the tip of the iceberg. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s like I know somewhere deep inside that something truly horrific is going to happen, and when it does, I’m going to realize I should have seen it coming. When this horrible thing happens, I’ll realize that if I had seen it coming, I would have been able to stop it from happening.”
“It sounds like you are taking on a level of responsibility that perhaps is not yours to bear.”
I turned my head and glanced at Tony. “Isn’t it? I feel like, in some cosmic way, everything that has happened since we found the first photo is my fault. I know that Star hired a detective and went looking for answers to her past independent of my searching for answers to my past, and logically nothing I did or didn’t do would have changed the outcome of that situation. Still, I can’t help but feel at least partially responsible for what happened. I know it isn’t logical to feel this way, but none the less, it’s how I feel.”
“I can see that you are becoming even more stressed than you were when you first woke from the dream. Maybe we should talk about something else for a while,” Tony suggested.
“That would be nice, but I’m much too distracted to think about anything else right now. I can’t help but wonder if my dad is still alive. I know he was here in December, and that he was alive and well then, but he had very bad men after him, and we haven’t heard a word from him since. I really thought after everything that happened, we would hear from him. The fact that we haven’t has me terrified.”
“I’ve heard from him,” Tony said.
I raised my head off his shoulder. “You’ve heard from him? What do you mean you’ve heard from him? Have you been keeping things from me?”
He nodded his head slightly. “I wanted to tell you that he’d contacted me, but he asked me not to. He convinced me that telling you would put you in danger.”
“Telling me what?” I demanded. “I am right here in the middle of this. I have the right to know what is going on.”
Tony flinched. “I don’t disagree. It’s just that…”
“Just that what?” I screeched. I supposed that the sleep deprivation I’d been experiencing might have led to a slight overreaction, but my emotions were high and my need to express myself strong. “What possible reason could you have for keeping this from me? You know I’ve been having the nightmares. You know how worried I’ve been.”
“I do know, which I guess is why I decided to keep things to myself until I could look into them further.”
“I don’t need you to protect me. I need you to include me. I need you to be honest with me.”
Tony took a deep breath. He hugged me tighter as if he feared I’d flutter away. “I know. I’m sorry. I should have told you what was going on.”
“So, tell me now.”
He let out a long breath and then began to speak in a voice riddled with hesitation. “A few weeks ago, I received an encrypted email from an unknown server to an account I own that is totally secret and has only been used for a single purpose a long time ago. I knew right away that the email had to be from your father since no one else in my life has the skill required to get into this particular account. I responded to the short message, and we began a dialogue, which led to him ask me for a favor.”
“Favor? What kind of a favor?”
“He wants me to track down three people, all women.”
“Women?”
“Apparently, Star wasn’t the only baby produced by Henderson and his human engineering team back in the nineteen eighties. According to your father, Ivana Kowalski wasn’t the only mother he helped escape.”
“So, he’s looking for the other children?”
Tony nodded. “He’s looking for the other mothers who escaped, but most likely the other children as well. Although, these children are no longer children, and are in fact, all over forty by this point. He wants me to track down these individuals and then inform him of their whereabouts.”
I couldn’t help but frown. “My father seems to be very capable. Why doesn’t he simply track them down himself?”
“He told me he’s hesitant to search for these women on his own since he is being watched. The last thing he wants to do is inadvertently lead Henderson to these individuals.”
I slowly shook my head. “No. This feels wrong. You haven’t found any of these women have you?”
“Not yet,” Tony admitted. “Your dad didn’t give me much to go on. In fact, he gave me almost nothing to go on. But I have been doing some digging.”
“What if the email isn’t from my dad? What if it’s from someone associated with Layton Henderson who wants to harm these individuals and is using you to find them?”
Tony pulled away just a bit. “I did consider that, but it seemed as if this individual knew things only your dad would know. I really think the emails are from him.”
“No. He wouldn’t ask for help. My dad never asks for help, even when he clearly needs it. Besides, if the emails really are from my dad, why exclude me?”
“I told you. He wants to keep you safe. I want to keep you safe.”
I got up from my place on the sofa and began to pace around the room. “I don’t think that is what’s going on. I think the person behind the emails told you not to involve me because he or she knows that I would know stuff about my dad that you wouldn’t know. Things he should know that I could use as a test to prove his identity.”