Page 47 of I Dream of Danger
“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 cyber geek. “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 light bulb 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 night vision.”
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.
