Falling Awake

finale.”
    “What?”
    Ellis dropped his hand and shrugged. “He needed to know whether or not Lawson bought the story. To feel safe, Scargill had to find a way to keep tabs on what happened at Frey-Salter after he disappeared.”
    She let that sink in. The implications were unnerving.
    “You think he has an accomplice in Lawson’s operation?” she asked uneasily. “Someone who leaks information to him?”
    “It’s a possibility. He uses other people when he needs them, but he wouldn’t want them to have too much information.”
    “So how do you think he arranged to figure out how his game plan was going down with Lawson?”
    “I can’t be positive, but I’ve got a feeling the message in my dream is that he did it the old-fashioned way. He bugged Lawson’s fancy, high-tech, super-encrypted phone.”

    For an instant she was speechless. “But that means that every time you talked to Lawson—”
    He nodded, his face hard. “And every time Lawson talked to Beth, Scargill may have been listening.”
    She folded her arms and thrust her hands inside the sleeves of her robe. “Was he good enough with computers to do that? What about opportunity? Could he have simply walked into Lawson’s office and messed around with the phone?”
    “To tell you the truth, I’m inclined to doubt that Scargill was that good. He was sure big on playing the online games but I never saw him take an interest in any of the serious software programs that Lawson uses for dream research and analyses. And Lawson sure as hell never mentioned anything about Scargill being a tech wizard.”
    “So?”
    Ellis’s mouth tightened. “So there was someone at Lawson’s agency who was good enough to bug an encrypted phone, someone who would have had opportunity and who might have had motive.”
    “What motive?”
    “Love.”
    Comprehension hit her in a shock wave. “Katherine Ralston.”
    “Yes. I think he used her to bug the phone for him after he faked his death. Hell, maybe he used her to change the morgue records at the hospital, too. Then he murdered her.”
    She shuddered. “You’re right. This is a really big problem.”

    Ellis was silent for a beat. “There is one bit of good news in all this.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’ve been careful about what I’ve said to Lawson on the phone in the past few days because I didn’t want him to think that I had gone completely over the edge where Scargill was concerned. He doesn’t know about my suspicions concerning the fire in your storage locker, and I haven’t had a chance to tell him about the link to the behavior modification program at Brackleton.”
    “You did tell Lawson that you were suspicious about Gavin Hardy’s death,” she reminded him.
    “Yes, but Lawson ordered me not to get involved, remember? He said he’d have Beth keep track of the police investigation and then he advised me that there was no hard evidence to indicate that Hardy’s death was anything but a hit-and-run.”
    She took a deep breath. “Okay. Assuming Scargill does have a bug on Lawson’s phone, all he knows for sure is that you’re here in Roxanna Beach because Lawson asked you to recruit me for Frey-Salter.”
    “It’s something, at least. One thing’s for damn sure. I can’t risk telling Lawson anything else about this situation until I can get him outside Frey-Salter. Same goes for Beth. Those two share everything.”
    “Except a bed, apparently.”
    “The current separation is only temporary. Sooner or later they’ll get back together.”
    She rested a hand on Sphinx’s broad head. “You said thisparticular separation has gone on much longer than usual because Beth discovered that Lawson had had an affair a few months ago.”
    “That’s right. He broke the ground rules of their relationship.”
    She looked at him, careful to keep her expression as neutral as possible. “You sound like you don’t subscribe to that set of rules.”
    “Hell, I couldn’t handle a screwy relationship like that one in the first place, much less figure out the rules.”
    She smiled. “It does sound complicated. You know, this is going to seem a little far out, but just how mad was Beth when she found out that Lawson had the affair?”
    “Real mad. Furious.”
    “Mad enough to want to try to exact some revenge?” she asked softly.
    At first Ellis seemed bemused by the question, as though he did not understand it. Then she saw understanding dawn.
    “You think Beth might have teamed up