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  He headed toward their Jeep, leaving tracks in the damp ground that would be covered in frost come sunrise.

  “Pack it up,” Jeff said when Donovan fell in step beside them.

  “Is the council sending in a new surveillance team?” the younger lieutenant asked. Questioning his superiors was a breach of protocol, but Richard approved of his enthusiasm to understand tactical command strategy.

  “No.” Jeff’s unfriendly stare discouraged additional questions as he and Richard opened their doors.

  Donovan’s hands snapped behind his back. He silently awaited further instruction.

  “Manned surveillance at this site is shut down,” Jeff said. “Leave your equipment here, battle shields in place.”

  “Battle?” Donovan blurted. He checked himself this time, his “at ease” posture becoming more rigid. His gaze dropped to the ground.

  “We’re to assume we’re under psychic attack until further notice,” Richard answered, cutting the kid some slack. “Monitoring the center’s stronghold won’t buy us anything until we know how they’re projecting center programming into Sarah Temple’s mind.”

  “We have to assume they aren’t doing it from here,” Jeff added. “And we can’t send in a team to confirm until we can weaken the complex’s strategic advantage.”

  Donovan nodded, his eyes narrowing as he absorbed the information. “Identify plans, alliances, weapons,” the newly trained Watcher recited, “before attacking an adversary.”

  It was the progression of tactical warfare all Watcher recruits were taught. Battles could be lost along the way without conceding defeat, as long as an army’s priorities were clearly defined and set and implemented, regardless of the enemy’s progress toward their own goals. It was the same logical path Richard had tried to follow while he worked with Sarah. Except she’d never been his opponent, and logic had never been all she really needed from him.

  “Report back to the bunker once you’re done here.” Richard slid behind the wheel, leaving Donovan to disengage his team and eradicate the evidence that anything besides woodland creatures had set foot on the surveillance site. “The council needs you for a new objective.”

  Jeff’s door shut soundlessly. After Donovan moved on, he pinned Richard with a hard stare.

  “They would know we’re coming tonight?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Richard started the Jeep and reversed into the path that in less than an hour would be erased as if it had never existed.

  “And who are ‘they’ exactly?”

  Richard accelerated. “A wolf, a child, and a homicidal ocean,” he said, wincing at the ludicrous sound of the only answer he had to give.

  “You believe the child Sarah is hearing is real now?” Jeff asked when they’d reached the main road.

  “The Temple prophecy predicted another psychic force emerging from their line.”

  “Only vaguely. A prophecy can be twisted to mean damn near anything.” Jeff shook his head. “The damage the center’s done to Sarah’s mind is basic battle tactics—whittling away at a target’s resistance until they cultivate the means to attack an opponent’s operations from within.”

  “What if it really is a child, not the center, calling for Sarah?”

  “Does it matter? Her mind’s clearly been programmed to project a new Dream Weaver matrix, whoever she’s dreaming about. If that’s allowing someone to keep tabs on our activities, all of it undetectable to any of our sensors, we’re fucked. You’re going to have to come up with something more before you face the council.”

  “It’s as if the presence I sensed was deliberately trying to drive Sarah over the edge. If she’s their link to us, what would they gain by unraveling her consciousness?”

  He kept his speed to five miles beyond the limit instead of rushing back to Sarah, who was still sleeping off the effects of the nightmare and the drugs that had finally secured her and Madeline’s recovery. But the sounds and sensations and shadows he’d touched in Sarah’s mind were still calling to him.

  “What if the person pulling all our strings is Sarah herself?” Jeff asked.

  “There was another consciousness there. Someone pushing her toward the instability we’ve assumed was merely a breakdown.”

  “A wolf, a child, or an ocean?” Jeff snorted. “That should be easy enough to sell to the council.”

  “Sarah’s mind is still our best resource for unearthing the government’s plans.”

  And it remained their greatest threat, because she refused to access the memories that would help them understand what had been done to her mind.

  Richard had to get himself tasked to lead the ad hoc recon team the council was sending to the small mountain town where the Temple twins had grown up—even though the exercise felt like even more of a trap than assaulting the center’s complex would be. He’d need leverage to convince the elders that his and Sarah’s presence was essential to the mission’s success. That taking her back home was the key to unlocking the past’s hold on her mind. He’d need Jeff’s help getting the team in and out intact, once they had boots on the ground.

  The Jeep’s tires ate up the miles between them and the bunker, speeding Richard closer to a confrontation with Sarah he couldn’t put off any longer. He checked his rearview for signs of life in the night’s darkness. Satisfied that they were alone, he killed the Jeep’s lights and slowed to take the rural highway’s next turn. Without braking further, he guided the Jeep to the right of the guardrail that had been erected to protect motorists from the steep drop into the icy river yawning two hundred feet below. Skill and familiarity and extrasensory awareness enabled him to navigate the path down the ravine. Jeff braced a hand on his roll bar, trust implicit in his otherwise-relaxed posture.

  “You really think Sarah’s going to open up to you now?” Jeff asked as they reached the riverbank and headed for one of two concealed bunker entrances that accommodated motor vehicles. Two others existed, catering to different modes of transportation. “I nearly had to shoot her to get her talons out of you.”

  “I’ll convince her.” Richard’s eyes narrowed as he relived the feel of her hands closed around his neck and the rush of betrayal that had screamed from her mind. “The only way for me to protect Sarah and the Brotherhood is to finally push deeper into her mind.”

  “God help us all.” Richard’s top lieutenant sounded genuinely nervous for the first time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the magical, unguarded place that revealed itself just before waking, Sarah drifted within a dream she’d tried to banish forever. A fantasy that had begun inside her coma. It had tempted her to hold on. To want more. To believe that even someone like her could deserve a second chance.

  It was a dream of being held. Being accepted. Being wanted and cherished and needed for nothing more than who she was. All that she was, even the parts that would always be broken. It had meant everything—the promise of someone clinging to the good she couldn’t feel inside herself.

  The illusion had bloomed to life with his first touch. She’d let herself crave the perfection of it, even though she’d known it couldn’t last. In her fantasy, her failures melted away and she finally stopped running. She’d been drawn to the light he’d promised. Light that was beyond her closed lids now, demanding that she see, as reality took a stronger hold.

  Panic shook her as the present returned. Rage. Loneliness. Until the fading dream taught her how to hate once more. How to hate him—Richard—for continuing to ask her to believe. For saving her with promises that he’d abandon again when she needed him most.

  He was holding her, just beyond waking, with his muscled arms wrapped around her and his powerful mind coaxing her from the darkness. She could feel his heart beating. She could sense his determination to bring her back to a world where dreaming had never been more dangerous. Sensitive hands rubbed warmth into her body—warrior’s hands that could soothe as easily as they could maim or kill.

  The recovery drugs released more
of their hold. Sarah told herself to push away. But he was already easing off the bed. When she realized her hands were clinging, she made herself let go.

  Memories attacked as he moved out of reach. The sound of his voice telling her to hate him, fight him, to do whatever she had to, to come back to him. She found herself sitting on an exam table in the bunker lab he’d built to contain and repel psychic energy. It was a near replica of the room the center had kept her in. He’d no doubt assured his council that the lab’s precautions would protect them from whatever was still wrong with her. And for a while he’d been right. For a while, she hadn’t been able to connect to other minds beyond the lab’s walls.

  A child’s cries shrieked to her from somewhere beyond her nightmare. Beyond the bunker. Beyond the woods that cloaked their location. Evil was building within Sarah, no matter what anyone did to stop it. And she could sense Richard’s awareness of it. His acceptance. His determination to fix her all over again.

  “Nothing about you is inherently evil.” He walked across the dream lab, dressed in the dark fatigues the Watchers wore inside the bunker and on night missions. “Stop punishing yourself for your past.”

  There was a lethal edge to him when he shed his lab coat. A predatory alertness, a ruthless drive to protect, always crowding Sarah no matter how much distance she kept between them.

  “Is that why your council has me locked in here again?” she asked. “Because they trust the goodness in my soul?”

  “Your ocean dream was being driven by a consciousness beyond yours. Until we know by whom and why, you’ll either be in here behind the lab’s shields or accompanied by someone who can help you control your response.”

  “Namely you.” Her voice stumbled over the words, her stomach knotting.

  He handed Sarah a sports bottle filled with one of the electrolytic concoctions she choked down after every dream she and Maddie explored. She began to drink, making herself ignore the way his short military haircut accented the strong lines of his face even better than the longer style he’d worn while masquerading as an eccentric scientist.

  “Tonight was an out-of-control projection someone else triggered.” He gave a quick nod of approval as she continued to drink. “I suspect by using the programming Tad Ruebens embedded in your mind before his death. Until we can tell the council more, that’s the best I’ve come up with.”

  Sarah took several more swallows. She concentrated on keeping down the mint-flavored liquid as she fought a psychic and adrenaline overload worse than she’d ever experienced. Her straw hit bottom. Richard handed over a new bottle. When half of the orange goo inside was gone, he made eye contact. His latest potion rumbled in her stomach.

  She caught him inhaling slowly and releasing his breath in time with hers. His energy flowed with unnerving ease through their restored telepathic connection, enhancing her recovery without overpowering her thoughts. The tightness in her diaphragm eased with his help, mocking her weak attempt to settle her nerves on her own.

  She held his stare through it all.

  He blinked first and looked away.

  “Your elders must be thrilled that the center’s influence over me isn’t quite as finished as you’ve insisted it is,” she said. “Are your men planning a lynching for Maddie and me, or will a symbolic burning at the stake suffice?”

  “If the council decides to neutralize your legacy, placing you in a chemically induced vegetative state will be effective enough.”

  Sarah shuddered. She stared at his jaw, at the late-night shadow of his dark beard, anywhere but into his understanding, unyielding gaze.

  “I’ve met with them briefly,” he said. “A full report is scheduled for tomorrow. You disengaged from the vision when you realized your sister’s life was in danger. Your control over your presence in a dream matrix has grown strong enough for you to manipulate your dreaming identity on your own. That’s progress I’ve been able to spin to our advantage for now, because it leaves us a chance to turn your programming against the center in the future. Whether or not we have anything more to bargain with depends on you and what we manage to accomplish next.”

  “I almost killed you when I broke the dream link.” She turned until her legs were hanging over the side of the bed. The room danced around her. “I’ve killed before because a voice in a dream told me to. Is more of that what you’re hoping to accomplish?”

  The screams in Sarah’s mind grew louder. She set the empty bottle aside. She tunneled her fingers into the snowy white blanket wrapped around her, clinging to the moment instead of falling back into the nightmare still calling to her.

  “Ruebens’s programming is clearly still driving your dreams.” Richard was beside her, yet still keeping his emotional distance. “But you fought him at the center in every nightmare. You ran from him, then from me, when you thought I was part of his plan for Dream Weaver. You fought his programming again tonight, and this time you succeeded. You pulled yourself back on your own. Understanding how you did that, re-creating the phenomenon, will go a long way toward convincing the council to continue our work here in the lab.”

  Succeeded?

  Re-creating the phenomenon?

  She scooted farther away, rejecting the impulse to lean into Richard’s warmth. She wanted to laugh like the loon she was until she couldn’t stop. Until she couldn’t breathe. Until she found the release, the silence, her dream ocean’s desolate floor had offered.

  “My mother’s dead because of my legacy,” she said. “My father, too, even though a slippery road and an eighteen-wheel semi took care of him as much as the mess my powers had made of our lives. Everything evil that’s happened to my family began with me. My sister was hurt again tonight, because of me. And let’s not forget the innocent hosts the center experimented on because you let them use me. How many people have suffered because there’s no way to stop what I’m becoming? And none of it would have happened, if—”

  “If I hadn’t infiltrated the center and pulled your mind back from your coma,” Richard finished for her. “You had no choice but to play out the hand you were dealt, Sarah.”

  “And when exactly do I get a choice? When do I start living on my own terms, instead of being forced to answer your endless questions, and to wait for your council to decide to ‘neutralize’ me and Maddie?”

  His raven black eyes concealed secrets he’d never share. He’d once again buried the haunting tenderness she’d sensed when she first woke in his arms. Only duty remained. Honor. And whatever version of the truth suited his purposes.

  “You have no choice tonight,” he said. “You won’t, until your mind is fully under your own control. And the only way to do that is to face the memories you’re avoiding, so we can safely trigger more of the Dream Weaver programming driving your visions.”

  Sarah glanced at the bruises her fingers had left on his neck.

  “How’s that plan working out for you so far?” she asked.

  “We’d have a better shot at averting another disaster if you’d let yourself trust me.”

  It was an unforgivable suggestion. She didn’t dignify it with a response. Richard was suddenly looming over her, his hands clenched in the blanket beside hers.

  “You’ve refused for a month to commit to our work together. But you called out to me when you were out of options in the dream.” He sounded as shocked as she’d been when she realized what she’d done. “Then you nearly died. Because a part of you wanted to believe the voice telling you to give up more than you’d let yourself believe in me.”

  The tremor of fear in his voice didn’t make it to his expression. He was too disciplined for that. Logical scientist and brutally trained warrior, the last thing Colonel Richard Metting would let dictate his behavior was honest-to-God emotion. But Sarah was more than terrified enough for both of them.

  She had wanted to die. Anything was better than failing again. Anything was preferable to the soundless, emotionless nothing of another coma, and giving Richard’s elders
the satisfaction of banishing her there.

  “My mind’s disintegrating and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, regardless of what happened in my past.” Her voice was paper thin. “That’s the price I paid for trusting you the last time.”

  “I infiltrated the center to protect you.”

  “I was a pit stop on your crusade to protect the world, and your council’s mission to control the psychic realm before groups like the center can stake their claim.”

  “The center would have continued to develop Dream Weaver with or without me. The Brotherhood had to stop their weapons testing. I protected you as best I could. I’m doing everything I can to help you now.” The hollowness of his argument twisted between them. “But you don’t want help, do you? In fact, you’re so gun-shy you’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep all of us away. Your stubbornness will be a death sentence if you don’t get over the Brotherhood’s involvement in what the center did to you. Keep hating me if it gets you through what we have to do next. But wake up and stop fighting by yourself, Sarah. Work with me. Trust my experience. Let me in.”

  Sparks snapped in his dark gaze.

  “I need Maddie, not you.” She needed anything but feeling Richard’s thoughts reaching for hers while she fought the nightmare’s call. “I’ll work through my memories with her. We’ll come up with something to tell the council tomorrow. Some way to prove Trinity’s real and worth letting the dream take me under again.”

  She’d debriefed with her twin after every dream link they’d shared since coming to the Watcher’s bunker. Only this time, Maddie hadn’t been there when Sarah woke. This time, it was Richard and his unrelenting Watcher’s logic bearing down on her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

  “That the dream’s been in control from the start?” She shuddered. “And if I had?”

  “I would have—”

  “You would have told your precious council, who were already looking for a reason to put my sister and me out of our misery.”