Falling Awake(19)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Ellis walked out of the lobby of Kyler, Inc., got into the Maserati and drove a couple of miles beyond the Roxanna Beach city limits to the abandoned amusement park. He had discovered the fenced and gated collection of aging thrill rides, funhouses and concession stands the day before, when he turned off the main highway to take the old road into town. Amusement parks never failed to resonate with something deep inside him.

Roxanna Beach Amusement World was situated on a bluff above an empty stretch of windswept beach. It was a relic of a bygone era. There had been a time when small boardwalks and amusement parks with their roller coasters, Ferris wheels and carousels were common features along the California coast. But few had survived into the twenty-first century. The huge theme parks had come to dominate the thrill market.

He halted the Maserati in the empty parking lot, got out and walked across the cracked pavement to get a closer look at the skeleton of the roller coaster. He stood there for a long time, listening to the surf pounding the beach and tasting the salt-laden air.

The memories of his first roller coaster ride stirred the way they always did when he saw one of the scream machines. It had been a blustery spring day. He had to stand on his toes to make it past the sign that specified how tall a kid had to be to ride the coaster. His father bought the tickets, much against his mother’s wishes. She watched anxiously, afraid that Ellis was much too young for such a major thrill ride.

“It will give him nightmares,” she said in low tones to Ellis’s father.

“No it won’t, he’s a big boy. Besides, I’ll be right there beside him. He can handle it. Isn’t that right, son?”

“Sure, Dad. I’ll be okay. I’m not scared.”

He insisted on sitting in the front car. When the safety bar was lowered into place he felt a thrill unlike any other. He could still feel that first lurch and hear the ominous clank-clank-clank of the chain lift as it carried the train of cars to the top of the first hill. He could also hear his father’s warning.

“There’s no going back now.”

He had loved every second of that wild ride. Ellis threaded his fingers through the chain links, remembering. The feeling of being scared witless while knowing all along that he was perfectly safe because he was strapped into his seat and his dad was right there with him was the most exhilarating experience he’d ever known.

Later the three of them had eaten cotton candy and popcorn and played some games in the arcade. He went home stuffed and happy. Contrary to his mother’s fears, he did not have any nightmares. In fact, he entertained himself for quite a while reliving the exciting ride in one of the startlingly clear story dreams he was just beginning to learn how to create.

That first ride had set the pattern for all future Cutler family vacations. He and his father researched roller coasters from one end of the country to the other, selecting the most exotic and most exciting scream machines, and then planned trips around them. They became experts on the subject.

Together they savored the differences between the classic woodies and the elaborate steel roller coasters. They compared the amount of “airtime”—those glorious moments when you came up out of the seat and floated—delivered by the various machines. They discussed and charted the nuances of twister designs with their shrieking, high-speed turns and the out-and-backs with their steep hills and valleys.

And then, one afternoon when he was twelve years old, he was called out of class to face a small room full of very serious adults. They told him that both of his parents had been shot dead by a madman who walked into the restaurant where they were eating lunch and randomly murdered seven people before turning the gun on himself.

That night he spent what proved to be the first of many nights in the home of strangers.

The only roller coasters he rode these days were in his dreams.

He turned away from the silent relics, took the phone out of his pocket and punched in the number.

“How did it go?” Lawson demanded without preamble.

“Not quite the way you hoped it would. She’s willing to continue consulting for you and me but she doesn’t want to go to work at Frey-Salter. She’s setting herself up in business.”

“The hell she is.” Lawson was clearly stunned. “She’s just a naive little dreamer who’s been stashed away in a small office at a low-rent lab for the past year. Before that she bounced around between one downwardly mobile job and another. The closest she ever got to a professional career was working for some phony psychic hotline operation. What does she know about operating a consulting business?”

“Looks like we’re going to find out,” Ellis said.

“Forget it. Out of the question. I told you, I want her brought into Frey-Salter. Can’t have her running around out there on her own.”

“She’s not interested in your offer. By the way, she’s figured out that she was consulting for some secret government research facility that is experimenting with extreme dreamers.”

“Martin Belvedere told her about me and my agency? That SOB. He swore to me he never said a word—”

“She worked it out on her own. She’s smart, Lawson. And she’s a Level Five herself, remember.”

“Huh. Think she’s talked to anyone about what she knows?”

“No. She is well aware of how important confidentiality is to you and she’s interested in having you as a client. She won’t go to the media with her story.”

“What’s her objection to coming back here to work?”

“Seems she didn’t like having all of her requests for case briefings ignored or declined. She wanted more of what she calls ‘context.’ She also wanted to know the results of the investigations.”

“Those cases were confidential.” Lawson’s voice rose. “She had no need to know.”

“Look at the situation from her point of view. She got all of the questions but she never got any of the answers. She said it was frustrating. Said she needs closure.”

“Closure? Sounds like some kind of pop-psych babble.”

“Most of the dream reports we asked her to look at were pretty bad,” Ellis reminded him. “She said the anxiety of never knowing the outcomes gave her nightmares.”

“She’s a Level Five. She’s supposed to be able to deal with a few bad dreams.”

“You know what? I think she’s right about you, Lawson. You are a control freak.”

“Maybe so, but I’m a control freak with a serious budget. Without me, Isabel Wright will have a real short client list. Does she get that part?”