Falling Awake

“I know one of those three clients personally. He might be interested in talking to you.”
    “Hey, if he’s still big on keeping secrets, maybe I could do a deal with him, you know?”
    “What kind of a deal?”
    “Gotta think here. Maybe he’d like to know who the other two clients are or something. Or maybe he’d be willing to pay me not to sell his address to the other two.”
    “No offense, Gavin, but that sounds a lot like blackmail.”
    “Nah, it’s just business.”
    It was not exactly business as usual, she thought, and Ellis probably wasn’t going to like it. But she had a hunch that he would want to discuss the situation with Gavin.
    “Okay, I’ll call him and then call you back,” she said. “Where are you staying?”
    “Motel out on the old highway. The Breakers. I’m in number eight. I’m heading back there now. Give me a call after you talk to your client and we’ll make arrangements. I’d better give you my cellphone number because I doubt if the manager’s office is still open to handle calls. The place is sort of a dive, you know? Got a pen?”
    “Just a sec.” She fumbled with her glasses and then picked up the pen on the bedside table. “Okay, go.”
    He rattled off a number. “Call me back as soon as you can, okay?”
    “I’ll try.”
    “Thanks, Isabel.” Gavin’s voice almost throbbed with heartfelt relief. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
    The phone clicked in her ear.
    She sat on the edge of the bed, absently petting Sphinx for a moment while she pondered developments.
    Then she bent down and dug the Roxanna Beach phone book out of the drawer in the bedside table. She found the number for the Seacrest Inn and dialed it quickly.
    While she waited for him to answer, she thought about why the dream she’d had earlier disturbed her so deeply.
    It wasn’t the fact that Ellis was Dream Man. Heck, she already knew that. She had made the decision to install unknown Client Number Two in the role months ago. The only thing that had changed this week was that she now had a face to go with everything else that she knew about him.
    No, the real problem was Midnight Man’s attire tonight. In that single glimpse she’d managed to get before Gavin’s call woke her she had realized that Dream Man had not come to her in any of the usual, rakish sartorial guises she had designed for him on previous visits.

    Tonight he had been garbed, instead, in a pair of black trousers, silver gray, open-collar shirt and a well-tailored jacket woven in shades of gray and black. It was the outfit Ellis had worn that evening.
    She tried to tell herself there was nothing to worry about. It was just a dream, for heaven’s sake. But she was lying to herself and she knew it.
    Because the truth was that tonight’s dream had not been one she had orchestrated for herself as a pleasant, erotic interlude to be enjoyed on her terms in a safe, controlled state of extreme lucid dreaming. This evening’s show had been unplanned, unpremeditated and unpredictable. Her dreaming mind had come up with it all by itself after she had fallen sound asleep.
    No need to be afraid, she assured herself, at least not yet. But she should probably be real worried.

14
    i t was still raining when he left the bar. He hunched deeper into his windbreaker, the one with the logo of his favorite casino on the back, yanked his billed cap lower over his eyes, stuck his hands into his pockets and tromped across the gravel parking lot.
    The stretch of old highway that separated the bar from his motel was poorly lit. There were no streetlights or signals. The only illumination came from the neon signs above the bar and the one that announced the motel. There were no crosswalks or sidewalks, either, but who cared? There was hardly any traffic.
    The crunch of footsteps on gravel behind him startled him out of his reverie.
    “What?” He spun around and then had to grab hold of thefender of a pickup truck because he was a little unsteady on his feet.
    His first panicked thought was that the casino had sent collectors after him. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
    A figure moved out of the shadows.
    “Hello, Gavin.”
    Not a casino enforcer. The relief was so great he nearly crumpled.
    “What the hell?” He pulled himself together. “What are you doing here?”
    “You were assigned to wipe the files off Martin Belvedere’s hard drive.”
    “So what? Just doing my job.”
    “I wondered if you found