Within a Dream - a Short Story Read online

Her lips pressed down. “Hun, you need to sleep. Really.”

  “When Hank gets back, I’ll take a nap with him. I promise. A real nap. But run the footage. Maybe I’ll spot something that you’ll miss.”

  Maria looked as if she might refuse, but at last she sighed and hit a button. “Just fifteen minutes.”

  It looked like an ATM camera from diagonally across the street. A stream of Bostonians moved past in their autumn finery, Red Sox jackets and cell phones glued to their ear. And there, crossing the street -

  * * *

  I bolted awake in my bed, tears streaming from my eyes. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 3:01am.

  Hank’s side lay empty.

  I shook my head, wiping at my face. It wasn’t bad enough the bimbo was sleeping with my husband in real life. Now she was in my dreams, too?

  I grabbed up my cell phone, drew on my jacket, and went out to the balcony. It overlooked a rolling stream. When Hank and I had moved in here it had seemed wonderfully romantic. Now it made me think of drowning that secretary of his – repeatedly – until this whole nightmare just went away.

  Maria’s voice sleepily answered. “Suz, girl, it’s after three in the morning.”

  My voice shot out of me. “Hank’s cheating on me.”

  She shrieked, and I heard the mumble of her husband in her background. Some footsteps and after a moment she spoke again. “I’m in the bathroom. We can talk. What the Hell happened?”

  I slumped against the wall of the balcony. “I took him that tiramisu, like you said. But he wasn’t at the office. I found his car at the secretary’s house. And when I looked in the window, I saw her crimson-red lips locked around his cock.” Tears bubbled up fresh.

  “Oh, Suz, Suz, I’m so sorry. He’s a jerk. He’s slime. He’s sewage.”

  “I came home to wait for him – but I must’ve fallen asleep. And then Barbara was in my FBI dream, too!”

  Maria sighed. “Suz, that slut secretary being in your dreams makes sense. You had just seen that awful sight. She’s probably burned into your brain right now. It’s lucky you didn’t dream she was a psychotic vampire out to kill you all.”

  I shook my head. “This seemed real. I dreamt she was involved in my FBI case. That she is the one who met up with the guy I was chasing, Kevin, and tried to disrupt my sting to catch him.”

  Confusion traced through her voice. “What? I thought you were chasing after this guy because you liked him!”

  “It doesn’t seem so. He’s some sort of a child trafficker and I’m trying to bring him down. I’m working to rescue the girls. But Barbara is somehow screwing everything up.”

  Maria snorted. “Barbara is screwing everything up,” she pointed out. “She’s screwing up your entire life.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not just Barbara that’s at fault here,” I pointed out with resignation. “Hank is guilty, too. He’s a part of it.” I sat down, staring out at the river. “He’s just as involved.”

  Chapter 5

  I was parked in the far corner of the underground garage beneath Boston Common, The place was packed with cars but the only sign of life was a tourist couple in matching Miami Dolphins jackets and thick fur hats waiting in the far distance by the elevator.

  A black car slowly drove down the aisle and pulled in alongside mine.

  Maria stepped out, glanced around, and then slipped in the car with me.

  Her voice was tight. “Suz, are you sure this is necessary? We don’t want to blow your cover. Not after all these months of effort.”

  I found it hard to say the words. “Hank’s involved.”

  Maria blinked at me in shock. “What? You’re kidding. Hank’s a decent guy. And he’s a civil lawyer, handling insurance fraud. How could he possibly be involved in a Chinese prostitution ring?”

  I gave a low shrug. “He is.”

  Her frown deepened. “Did you see him on the tapes? How did we miss that?”

  I shook my head. “No. But I saw Barbara.”

  Confusion shone from her gaze. “Who’s Barbara?”

  I took in a deep breath. I knew it would be hard to explain this, but I had to try.

  “Maria, I’ve been having dreams.”

  She settled into her seat, watching me. “OK, that’s not surprising, with the stress you’ve been under.”

  “Dreams that I never left Grafton. That you and I opened up a gift shop on the common. That I married Hank, but that he was a quiet insurance agent.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “Well, we all have dreams about what might have been. About the path not chosen and so on.”

  I leaned forward. “But dreams also tend to integrate scenes from our real world. Things we might not even have noticed consciously, but that our brain is trying to sort out. It’s why someone who’s stressed about deadlines might keep dreaming about missing an important test at school. The mind’s trying to cope with the stress by presenting it in a setting with familiar images.”

  She nodded. “Right, it’s why dream journals are so popular. The dreamer can review their journal and look for common themes. Try to get a handle on what is causing stress for their brain.”

  “Exactly. And I dreamed about Barbara.”

  She bit her lip. I could see she was trying to be patient with me. “Who is Barbara?”

  Even though it was just a dream, I had trouble saying it. “In my dream, Barbara was sleeping with my husband.”

  Maria’s eyes shadowed. “Hun, it’s just a dream. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  I shook my head. “But the dream is based on reality. It’s based on things I’ve seen and heard, even if I wasn’t fully aware of them at the time.”

  Uncertainty creased her brow. “How do you know this Barbara is not just a dream?”

  I let out a long breath. “Because I saw her in the video.”

  Her eyes went wide. “In the ATM tapes?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before in real life – but clearly I had. And clearly my mind knew it was important, even if my conscious self didn’t.”

  “So what was Barbara doing in the tape?”

  “She seemed to just be casually walking down the sidewalk – but when she passed Kevin, it appears that she said something to him. He takes the next left and slips away up an alley. Whatever she said, it’s why Kevin skipped the meeting with me.”

  Maria’s face paled. “You said that, in your dream, Hank was having an affair with Barbara?”

  I nodded. “In my latest dream I had just caught the two in the act.”

  Disbelief creased her brow. “And you think, because Hank is cheating with Barbara in your dream, that maybe he is in real life, too?”

  Tension knotted in my shoulders, but I forced myself to speak. “I know it sounds a bit silly. But what else could it mean? How come I dreamed about her last night and then suddenly today I see her on that video? And it’s clear she’s interfering with our investigation?”

  Maria ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe … Maybe …”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I’m getting magical premonitions from the future now?”

  She blew out her breath. “Of course not. You had the dream first, and then you saw her on the video after that. That must mean –”

  “That must mean I’d seen her before,” I finished. “Sometime with Hank. At the time I probably didn’t even notice, consciously. Maybe I was busy thinking about my case or something else. But my subconscious noticed. It paid attention to the way they looked at each other or their body language. And my dreams bubbled that information back up to the surface. They were trying to tell me something.”

  Maria frowned. “Your dreams could be wrong, you know. They could just be dreams.”

  I tapped my cell phone. “I have that video on here. I’ve watched it a hundred times. Barbara is the woman from my dreams. The woman who is cheating with Hank. And she’s the one trying to interfere with the sting.”

  Maria hel
d my gaze. “I trust you, Suz. You’re our best field agent. What do you want to do?”

  I gave her a wry smile and reached into my pocket. “I’ve got some tranquilizers here which will knock me out in seconds flat. The best way to remember a dream is to have someone wake you up part-way through it and then listen. That way I’m still deep in the dream and I don’t have to think or write or anything. I can just tell you what I see.”

  She nodded. “If you think it’ll help, I’m willing to give it a try.”

  I took up the water bottle from the center console, doled out two pills into my hand, and then swallowed.

  I concentrated. I had kept a dream journal for many years in high school, and I knew the techniques. I knew how to, at least temporarily, snap into a ‘lucid state’ while dreaming so I could be aware of the dream.

  I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  I looked around the shop, holding my Bruins mug between my hands. Maria looked up from the counter and her brow creased. “Are you all right, Suz?”

  Something rang in my head. There was something I had to do. What was it …?

  This was a dream.

  My brow creased. Could it be? If this was really just a dream, I wouldn’t be able to remember how I got to the shop this morning.

  But I knew I had –

  I stopped. I had no idea how I had gotten here. No memory at all. All I knew was that suddenly I was standing here, looking around.

  Maria asked, “Are you all right?”

  I ignored her and walked out the front door to the street. Grafton Common was sitting opposite, as it always did.

  I turned to look at the sign above the door.

  Fripperies from Maria and Suz.

  A standard way to test for dreams was to read something and then read it again. For some reason, in dreams it was impossible to read the words twice. Something always interfered with it.

  I deliberately turned in a circle and then looked back up at the entrance sign again.

  SuzMar’s Specials.

  I looked down at the mug in my hand.

  It was a Red Sox mug.

  I drew in a deep breath, struggling to focus. This was a dream. This world I was in, with a gift shop on Grafton Common, was a dream. And it was critical that I pay attention here because … because …

  There was a noise from across the common.

  I looked over to where the Grafton Inn sat. The historic building dated to 1805 and had seen its share of excitement over the years. I could even see the bar through one bank of windows. At it was sitting Barbara, her blonde hair up in an elaborate braid, wearing an ebony Chinese dress.

  And up walked …

  * * *

  Maria shook me awake, and for a moment I had no idea where I was. Why was I in a car? Was this a garage?

  Maria’s voice was low and urgent. “What did you see in your dream?”

  The vision flooded back on me, and suddenly I knew with absolute certainty.

  “Barbara is somehow involved with the Chinese smugglers. She got her hooks into Hank at a bar and has been using him as a source to follow our operation.”

  Maria paled. “Does Hank know he’s being used?”

  I clenched my hands. I prayed to every God I knew that he was somehow innocent in all of this “One way or another, we’re going to find out. And we’re going to get those girls to safety.”

  She gave me a smile. “You know, Leonardo da Vinci once asked, ‘Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?’ It looks like your mind works in the same way. You must have seen something in your real life that you didn’t want to think about. But your mind put it in your dreams to ensure you paid attention.”

  I nodded. “And saving those girls is all I care about right now. So if Hank is involved – and this Barbara person – then I will do everything I can to find out how.”

  Maria looked to me. “What’s our first step?”

  I smiled and settled back against the car seat. “Let’s find out.”

  I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  Book 2 in this series will be coming shortly! Thank you so much for reading!

  I would love to hear feedback on this new series. I’ve wanted to write a dreams-vs-reality sequence for quite a while and I know it can be tricky to follow the changes.

  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on how I did this. I am open to any ideas for polishing the story!

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  Dedication

  To Ruth, who inspires me daily.

  To Kristine, Dianna, Michele, Sandi, Suzanne, and Tom, who offered great feedback on the dream-vs-reality challenge.

  To George and Bob, who encourage me in all my dreams.

  And, most of all, to my loyal fans who continue to encourage me in the cause. Whether you’re on GoodReads, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or my blog, together we help make the world a better place!

  About the Author

  Half of the proceeds of this book’s sales benefit battered women’s shelters.

  Please send along as much feedback and suggestions as you can. The more we can polish these worlds and characters, the more we can help the cause.

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