Falling Awake

get started in my new Level Five dream consulting career. My brother-in-law, Farrell Kyler, has kindly offered me gainful employment. I have accepted that offer.”
    Actually, she had thrown herself on Farrell’s mercy and begged for the job but she saw no reason to go into the sordid details with Ellis. It was probably not a good idea to let a potential client know that you had financial problems.
    Ellis was still smiling. “Teaching a motivational class oncreative dreaming? I don’t believe it. Everyone knows this motivational seminar stuff is a racket.”
    “No, not everyone knows that,” she said, spacing each word very precisely. “A lot of people take the power of positive thinking quite seriously and with good reason. Motivational seminars work for people who are motivated enough to make them work.”
    “There’s something a little circular about that reasoning.”
    His amused disdain infuriated her.
    “You know what most folks would call a man who gets paid by a secret government agency to solve crimes in his dreams?” she asked very sweetly.
    “A sharp con artist with a really good racket?”
    “You got it. I don’t think you’re in any position to call my brother-in-law’s business a scam, do you?”
    “Point taken.”
    She inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “Let me know if you decide you want to become a Wright Dream Analysis client.”
    He smiled again, very slowly and very deliberately. It did odd things to her insides.
    “Don’t worry, Isabel. I’ll get back to you.”
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6
    t ango Dancer.
    She had turned out to be exactly as he had imagined. Sexy, smoldering, mysterious, fascinating. Just the way she appeared in his dreams. Maybe it was those green-and-gold dreaming eyes.
    He needed to report to Lawson. He also needed to do some thinking. He could feel everything in his carefully ordered world starting to shift and change. It was like being in the middle of a Level Five dream that had taken an unpredictable turn.
    He’d had a plan when he moved back to California eight months ago, a plan that definitely involved Isabel Wright. But it did not include this shattering reaction to Isabel in the flesh.
    Ellis walked out of the lobby of Kyler, Inc., got into the Maserati and drove a couple of miles beyond the Roxanna Beachcity limits to the abandoned amusement park. He had discovered the fenced and gated collection of aging thrill rides, funhouses and concession stands the day before, when he turned off the main highway to take the old road into town. Amusement parks never failed to resonate with something deep inside him.
    Roxanna Beach Amusement World was situated on a bluff above an empty stretch of windswept beach. It was a relic of a bygone era. There had been a time when small boardwalks and amusement parks with their roller coasters, Ferris wheels and carousels were common features along the California coast. But few had survived into the twenty-first century. The huge theme parks had come to dominate the thrill market.
    He halted the Maserati in the empty parking lot, got out and walked across the cracked pavement to get a closer look at the skeleton of the roller coaster. He stood there for a long time, listening to the surf pounding the beach and tasting the salt-laden air.
    The memories of his first roller coaster ride stirred the way they always did when he saw one of the scream machines. It had been a blustery spring day. He had to stand on his toes to make it past the sign that specified how tall a kid had to be to ride the coaster. His father bought the tickets, much against his mother’s wishes. She watched anxiously, afraid that Ellis was much too young for such a major thrill ride.
    “It will give him nightmares,” she said in low tones to Ellis’s father.
    “No it won’t, he’s a big boy. Besides, I’ll be right there beside him. He can handle it. Isn’t that right, son?”

    “Sure, Dad. I’ll be okay. I’m not scared.”
    He insisted on sitting in the front car. When the safety bar was lowered into place he felt a thrill unlike any other. He could still feel that first lurch and hear the ominous clank-clank-clank of the chain lift as it carried the train of cars to the top of the first hill. He could also hear his father’s warning.
    “There’s no going back now.”
    He had loved every second of that wild ride. Ellis threaded his fingers through the chain links, remembering. The feeling of being scared witless while