Falling Awake

to enhance dreaming but it had some unpleasant side effects.”
    “What kind of side effects?”
    “In regular subjects it produced a kind of hypnotic trance. In Level Fives the results were extreme dreams that were so real the subjects could not distinguish them from waking life. It made them highly suggestible.”
    Her brows snapped together in a disapproving frown. “I hope you didn’t let him experiment on you.”
    “Not a chance. I’m too old for that kind of thing.” He tore off a chunk of crusty sourdough and dipped it into the little bowl of olive oil. “I leave the experiments to Lawson’s new recruits. They’re young and eager.”
    She gave a mock shudder of relief. “I’m very glad to hear you didn’t fool around with that CZ-149.”
    “How did you find Belvedere?” he asked.

    “He found me.” Her eyes sparkled with laughter. “He called the Psychic Dreamer Hotline one night when I was on duty. Turned out he called it every few months just to see if, by chance, they had accidentally managed to hire a Level Five. Naturally I thought he was just another kook at first. But we talked. One thing led to another. We met. He tested me and then offered me a position at the center. I grabbed the opportunity.”
    The waiter returned to set down the entrees.
    “Belvedere wasn’t a Five, was he?” Ellis asked.
    “No, like your friend Lawson, I suspect he was a strong Four. But he developed the lucid dream scale and postulated that it probably went as high as five.”
    “So, in all the time you worked for Belvedere he never brought another Level Five into the center?”
    “Not while I was there.” She hesitated. “But he said something once or twice that made me think he had located another extreme dreamer a few months before I arrived. I got the impression that the person was a male. Later I worked it out that he had probably referred him to Client Number One.”
    A cold chill settled in his gut. “Scargill.”
    Had to be, he thought. Lawson had brought Vincent Scargill into Frey-Salter a little over a year ago. He had said something about Belvedere having come across him online.
    Isabel paused, fork in midair, and gave him a politely inquiring look. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I think the name of the dreamer was Vincent Scargill,” he said aloud.

    “Did you work with him?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Is he still with Lawson’s operation?”
    “He’s dead. Or so they say.”
    She lowered the fork. “What are you talking about?”
    “It’s a long story.” He picked up his knife. “It is also one of Lawson’s biggest secrets. He’d have my head on a platter if he knew I’d even mentioned Scargill to you. Do me a favor, pretend you never heard the name, okay?”
    “Okay. But I have to tell you that when I found out I’d missed having the chance to work with another Level Five because Dr. B. had turned him over to another lab, I got a little depressed for a while. Martin Belvedere treated me well enough in his own way but he was always off in his own world. There was no one else I could talk to about my work. It was rather lonely at times.”
    Ellis looked at her and felt the blood turn to ice in his veins. She had come that close, he thought, to having a killer as a colleague.
    He sent up a silent message of gratitude to the spirit of Dr. Martin Belvedere. It had very likely been nothing more than chance that had caused the old man to send Scargill to Frey-Salter rather than bring him into the center. Or maybe the old man had had some qualms about Scargill. Whatever, it had been a near thing. The world of high-level dreamers was a very small realm.

12
    t he fast-moving winds had blown themselves out by the time Ellis bundled Isabel back into the Maserati two hours later. Rain continued to fall in a soft, steady pattern that transformed the lights of Roxanna Beach’s boutique commercial district into colorful jewels.
    He drove the six-block strip of restaurants and shops, trying to think of a way to delay the inevitable. He did not want to take Isabel home but he sure as hell could not invite her back to his room at the Seacrest Inn. That would be way too tacky on a first date.
    First date. There, he’d finally admitted it to himself. He had been thinking of this evening as a date since the moment he decided to ask Isabel to have dinner with him.

    “What made you decide to leave Lawson’s agency?” Isabel asked.
    He considered his answer while he turned a corner and drove