Rebecca York - Solid as Steele

Mack rolled down the window and pulled up beside a man in jeans and a plaid shirt who was standing on the shoulder and staring toward the cop cars. “What’s going on?”

“Guy found a woman’s body.”

Jamie had been hoping against hope not to hear that news. Now she dragged in a sharp breath as the words slammed into her.

“A local resident?” Mack asked.

“Don’t know. The cops have been asking if we know a Lynn Vaughn. That must be her name.”

Jamie felt a shiver go over her skin as her worst fears were confirmed. She’d been with Lynn Vaughn in her dream. She’d been afraid someone had killed the woman, and now she knew for certain it was true.

“You know her?” the guy asked, looking from Mack to Jamie and back again.

“No. We just happened down this road. I guess we’d better go back the other way,” Mack answered easily, giving nothing away before he rolled up the window, made a U-turn and got them out of the vicinity. He kept going toward the road where they’d exited the highway, then turned into the parking lot of the country store they’d passed earlier. After finding a parking space, he cut the engine and turned to Jamie.

His face looked grim. “I thought maybe the dream came from your imagination,” he said.

She lifted one shoulder. “Even after I gave you a name, and you confirmed that she was a real person?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe that’s what you wanted to think, but I knew something had happened.”

“You dreamed about a murder that turned out to be true….”

Somehow she managed to keep her voice even as she said, “I was hoping it didn’t end that way.”

His eyes boring into her, he said, “People don’t dream about a murder one night, then find out the next day that it really happened.”

Jamie swallowed, wishing that Mack would stop using the word murder like a bludgeon.

“Tell me exactly what you dreamed.”

She’d deliberately been vague with the details of the nightmare when she’d told him about it. Now she knew she was going to have to be more specific.

“Jamie?”

She stared straight ahead, her hands folded one on top of the other in her lap. “In the dream, I wasn’t myself. I was that woman, Lynn Vaughn. She was in a…I guess you’d have to call it a funhouse.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did you ever go to a haunted house on Halloween when you were a kid? Like maybe something set up by a local charity to raise money? They had a bunch of spooky stuff to give the kids a fright, but everybody knew it was all for fun.”

“Yeah.”

“It was like that, only it was serious.” She clenched her hands together as she remembered the experience and the place. “It was dark and enclosed. There was scary music. A musty smell. Hallways with things set up to startle you, like witches jumping out. But some of it was a lot worse. One place had a trapdoor where she tumbled through and ended up on a slide that took her to the basement. She landed hard on the cement floor and hurt her shoulder.”

Jamie winced, remembering the pain.

She hated dredging up more details, but Mack was staring at her with an expectant look on his face, so she gulped in a breath and let it out before she went on.

“The light was weird. Someone had worked hard to make the place into a creep show. In one section, there were horror movie posters. Dead-end hallways. Spatters on the floor that looked like blood.

“At first she was alone. But she kept hearing a man’s voice coming from hidden speakers. Then he was there. With her.”

Details came fast and furious now.

“He was wearing black clothes, a black cape, a hood, boots. His face was a mask with a skull. He was talking to her, telling her she was going to pay for what she’d done to him. But he was also telling her that if she could find her way out, he’d let her go. Then she came to a place where she could go right or left. She didn’t want to go on, but he forced her to choose.

“When she did, bright lights went off in her face so she could hardly see, and he came at her with a knife. I don’t think it would have mattered which way she went.”

Jamie rushed on, wanting to get the recitation over with. “He slashed at her, and I felt her pain. Then everything went black. I was hoping she’d fainted, but I was afraid he’d killed her. I guess he did.”

She said the last part with a little hitch in her voice as she turned to Mack, seeing the set lines of his face.

When he spoke, it was like he hadn’t listened to anything she’d said. “Explain to me how you knew about what was happening to Lynn Vaughn.”

She sighed, deep and loud. “It’s what I said the first time. I dreamed about her.”

“That’s all? You didn’t talk to anyone about her? Get some information from someone?”

“It was a dream!” She heard her voice rise.

“Just a dream. Out of the blue?”

The question made her want to open the door, jump out of the car and run down the road to get away from her interrogator, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get very far. Mack would catch up with her and drag her back.

Instead, she raised her chin. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she said, “I used to have bad dreams when I lived in Gaptown. I’d have a nightmare and it would turn out to be true.”

Before he could demand an example, she went on quickly. “It started when I was nine. I dreamed that Peggy Wickers, a girl in my fourth-grade class, was in an automobile accident. I woke up crying, and my mother came in to calm me down. She was angry that I’d gotten her up in the middle of the night. She told me it was just a nightmare and to go back to sleep. I lay there the rest of the night, thinking about it. Then in the morning, Peggy didn’t come to school and the teacher told everyone about the accident.”

She stopped to catch her breath, then went on. “I’d have dreams like that off and on. Sometimes one every six months, sometimes it wouldn’t happen for a year. It was always something bad, and it always turned out to be true. It stopped when I moved to Baltimore, and I thought I was over it. Then last night, it happened again. I think it’s because it was happening here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“It’s a pretty strange story.”

“Why would I come up with something so weird if it wasn’t true?”

“You tell me.”

She exploded with an unladylike curse. “I told you everything I could.”

“Why did you call the Light Street office in the middle of the night?”

She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d awakened wishing her husband were lying beside her in bed. Instead she said, “I was upset when I woke up. I was hoping to talk to Jo. She wouldn’t have put me through the third degree.”

“She would have been remiss if she hadn’t questioned you.”

“She wouldn’t have acted like I was part of a murder conspiracy!”

Mack sighed. “Okay.”

“So you finally believe me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Jamie heard herself saying words she thought she would never utter. “Why don’t you drop me off at my mom’s house. I’ll catch a ride home on my own.”

“We can visit your mom, but then we’re going to try and figure out what happened to Lynn Vaughn. Where’s the house?”

Feeling trapped, she gave him the address. Maybe she could slip out the back door and call one of her old friends in town while he was having a nice chat with the family. That thought made her bite back a sharp laugh. Yeah, Mom and Clark were going to charm the pants off Mack.

She felt her stomach knot as Mack put the address into his GPS. Apparently going to see Mom was as threatening as being questioned about a murder.