Falling Awake

most vital assets: Isabel.”
    “Hah.” Isabel was incensed. “What made her think I could be so easily manipulated?”
    “It was a big mistake on her part,” Ellis assured her. “In fact, it was the one that led to her downfall. Because after you took off for Roxanna Beach, everything went wrong for her again.”
    “Very true,” Vincent agreed. “Before she could figure out how to get you back, Gavin Hardy disappeared. She knew he must have found something interesting on Belvedere’s computer. She reasoned that it probably had to do with the anonymous clients.”
    Isabel made a face. “She must have freaked when she realized that you were one of them.”
    “She sure did.” Vincent swallowed more orange juice. “I made the mistake of telling her I had contacted Dr. Belvedere personally. I probably blabbed about the meetings with him after one of those extra-heavy doses of CZ-149. At any rate, not only was she really angry, she was afraid that if you and Cutler discovered that there were three anonymous clients, Cutler would start asking even more questions and maybe conclude that I was Number Three.” He looked at Ellis. “As you just said, Cutler, it’s a small world when it comes to extreme dreamers.”
    “She had good cause to be worried,” Isabel said. “Ellis did jump to the conclusion that you were the third client.”
    Vincent exhaled wearily and picked up his tea. “I didn’t realize that she murdered Hardy. She never told me that part.”
    “Of course not,” Isabel said soothingly. She moved another tallstack of toast onto the tray at the bottom of the oven to keep warm. “She didn’t want you to find out she was killing people because she knew that you were, at heart, still one of the good guys.”
    Vincent’s hungover expression eased a little. He looked at Ellis. “I take it there is no next-generation version of CZ-149?”
    “No,” Ellis said. “Lawson killed the program.”
    “Yeah, well, what can I say?” Vincent shrugged. “I believed the doc. I was pretty damn desperate by then.”
    “Desperate enough to contact Dr. B. secretly,” Isabel said, setting plates of scrambled eggs, soy sausages and toast in front of each man. “I take it he couldn’t help you, though.”
    “Useless.” Vincent perked up at the sight of the massive quantity of food. He grabbed his fork. “Like I said last night, all he could tell me was that the red tsunami was a blocking image of some kind. I had already figured out that much for myself.”
    Dave tried a bite of eggs. “What was last night all about? I mean, aside from getting rid of the three of you?”
    “It’s obvious from her dream log that Amelia-Maureen was nothing if not adaptable.” Ellis ate some toast. “She changed her plans to fit the changing circumstances. Her goal last night was to set the stage at the amusement park to make it look like Scargill and I had both gone mad. She picked the Roxanna Beach Amusement World because she knew that my gateway dream involves a roller coaster. It was no big secret back at Frey-Salter. She assumed that using that backdrop would help convince Lawson that I really had fallen victim to a weird obsession of some kind.”

    “She intended for everyone, including Lawson and his rivals, to believe that you two killed each other and burned down the old park, taking me and an innocent bystander, Yolland, with us,” Isabel concluded.
    “Even if that plan didn’t have the effect of destroying Lawson’s personal empire, it would certainly have created enormous problems for him,” Vincent pointed out. “She would have, in effect, cost Lawson three of his best dreamers—Ellis, me, and you, Isabel.”
    “Make that four dreamers,” Dave said in a flat voice. “She also killed my sister, remember. Katherine was a Level Five, too.”
    There was a short, heavy silence.
    Vincent looked at him. “I’m sorry about Katherine,” he said quietly. “I really liked her. I swear I had no idea that Amelia had contacted her using my game-playing identity, convinced her to bug Lawson’s phone and then murdered her in cold blood.”
    “Katherine left a clue,” Dave said quietly. “Ellis and I assumed initially that it was a message telling us that you were the killer. But we misinterpreted it.”
    “That was the one murder we know of that Amelia-Maureen handled personally,” Ellis said. “According to her dream log, she couldn’t locate an ex-con from the Brackleton program in the