Before I Wake (2 page)

It was good for business to accept drinks from customers. It created a feeling of camaraderie. It kept them buying. Kept them drinking. Kept them from leaving to spend money in one of the other seedy bars in town.

Sometimes Arden Davis would simply open beers and let them pile up in front of her, or dump them when the customer wasn’t looking. Other times, like tonight, she would do her best to keep up. Five so far, with two waiting. She would have a headache tomorrow.

The man doing the buying was someone new, someone she hadn’t seen before.

That’s how it was. The bar drew a lot of locals, but it also drew single men, usually salesmen, on the road and lonely, stopping for drinks and a bed, maybe even sex if they got lucky.

The man buying her drinks was attractive.

She didn’t know his name.

His hair was gray, cut close to his head.

He had blue eyes. Amazing eyes. Intense blue eyes that made her uneasy and a little bit excited at the same time.

When he’d first appeared, she thought he was about forty, dressed in a black suit that was out of place in the dark bar. But then, when he was near enough to slide onto a bar stool, she realized he was younger. One of those guys who’d gone prematurely gray.

The tiny desert town of Artesia was located in southern New Mexico, halfway between Roswell and Carlsbad on Highway 285. On the east side of town was the Aztec Oil Refinery rising out of the desert floor, all black grime and dull metal, towering over everything, producing heavy, petroleum-laden fumes that permeated the town unless the wind was out of the west.

You got used to the smell and the dullness the fumes left in your head.

There was no reason for anyone to stop in Artesia unless forced by an overheated engine or exhaustion. Back in the seventies the town had experienced a brief flutter of unwanted glory and attention when David Bowie came to film
The Man Who Fell to Earth
. The production company had been looking for a desolate landscape and an atmosphere of bleak alienation. They found it in Artesia.

Months ago Arden Davis was cruising for a new life when she took what she thought would be a shortcut to El Paso and ended up in Artesia.

Rent was cheap. The air had been out of the west that day, and the local one-stop Holiday Motel was advertising for a bartender. It seemed like destiny.

“What time do you get off?” the gray-haired man asked.

There were five other people in the bar: two guys playing pool, three people sitting in a booth, keeping the jukebox busy with belly-rubbing country tunes. “I stop serving at one o’clock,” Arden said. “And kick everybody out at half past.”

He nodded and ordered another drink for both of them.

The portable phone rang. Arden caught it on the second ring, lifting the receiver to her ear. It smelled like cigarette smoke and somebody else’s breath.

“Arden?” the voice at the other end said. “It’s me. Harley.”

Harley Larson. Like her, he’d been recruited for Project TAKE. Through a Killer’s Eyes. They’d been FBI special agents not many years out of the academy, and it had been an honor to be invited to participate. It had been exciting as hell.

“I’m going back to West Virginia,” Harley said. “To the Hill.”

Something heavy landed in the pit of Arden’s stomach, and her heart began to hammer. She hunched her shoulders and slipped through the swinging metal doors that led to the kitchen and privacy.

“Why?” she whispered.

“They need my help solving a recent homicide.”

For a period of about ten years, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit had been the star, the darling of Quantico. Profiling and the rise to fame of profilers like John Douglas and Robert Ressler, men who’d gone on to write books and inspire movies, had been the rage. Police departments sent officers to the FBI training grounds to learn the ropes. But as time went on, it was found that profiling had its limitations, and many trainees couldn’t put into practice what they’d learned once they returned home. Even the biggest names within the Behavioral Science Unit were making fairly serious mistakes with serious consequences.

So they bumped things up and started Project TAKE.

“Don’t go,” she begged.

“Hey, you should come too,” Harley said with a smile in his voice. “It’ll be like old times.”

“I could never do that.” She tried to hide her panic by taking comfort in the awareness of a landscape of dead neon and a lonely road a few steps away. A foreign, stark world of sorrow that made her chest ache and somehow also made her feel a little bit alive.

New Mexico was so far from West Virginia. So damn far. Almost another planet. Certainly another life. “I could never go back.”

I can breathe in this place. At least I can breathe.

“Everything okay in there?”

The gray-haired man. She’d forgotten about him. She’d erased him. That’s what she did. Erased people.

Like she’d erased her brother, Daniel.

How long had she been talking to Harley?

Time for her often refused to move in a normal way. It moved so
slowly
. And so
fast
. She finally understood why some people left Christmas decorations up all year. Why take them down when the damn holiday was just going to come squealing around the corner again?

“I have to go,” she told Harley.

“Be careful,” he said. “There are bad people out there.”

She told him good-bye and disconnected.

By twelve thirty, she and the gray-haired man were the only ones left in the building. “Would you like to come to my room?” he asked, not wasting any time. “Have a drink? Talk?”

She gave him a smile. “I’ll lock up early.”

She was drunk. Lonely. Not staggering-around, slurry-speech drunk, but feeling no pain, which was always a good state to be in.

Arden didn’t bother to count the evening’s earnings, leaving it in the register. The man helped refill the beer cooler and carry the dirty glasses to the sink. If she wasn’t too hung over, she’d wash them tomorrow morning before Linda came in for the early shift.

She shut off the lights. She locked up and turned on the alarm. Together she and the gray-haired man in the dark suit left the bar and headed in the direction of the motel rooms.

His room.

The Holiday had two floors, all with orange doors that faced out. A sprinkling of cars dotted the parking lot, most from out of state. A few families on their way to Carlsbad Caverns. The others salesmen, on their way to El Paso.

At night Artesia seemed different, magical. It was so silent, the sky a vast blanket of black velvet with more stars than Arden had ever seen in her life. In the far distance, the oil refinery twinkled like a Christmas tree.

Inside the room, the man locked the door, then slid the chain into place. He didn’t turn on a light.

That was okay.

Dark was good.

He pulled the curtain open a few inches so light from the parking lot washed away some of the shadows. “Have a seat.” He motioned to one of the two striped chairs at a round table with a pole lamp running through the center.

The room smelled like stale cigarettes, with a hint of old body odor. The man looked even more out of place in the cheap motel room than he had in the bar. As alien as David Bowie had most likely looked in the little town.

Arden rubbed her nose and made a mental note to suggest the owner get some kind of plug-in air fresheners. Holding the door open with a chair while the maid cleaned just wasn’t cutting it.

She expected the man to remove his jacket and tie. Instead, he sat down across from her at the little brown table.

Maybe he really
did
want to talk.

Silence grew around them. “Do you have anything to drink?” she finally asked.

“I think you’ve had enough.”

What?

She stared at him. Or tried to stare. A rectangle of light cut across the table, enough to illuminate his hand, which rested on the smooth surface, but cast his face in deeper shadow.

No wedding band. But that didn’t mean he was single.

“Do you do this often, Arden?” He sounded disapproving. “Go to rooms with men you don’t even know?”

What was happening here? She sat up straighter, trying to shake off the alcohol. “That’s none of your business.”

Through a haze, it suddenly occurred to her that he wasn’t drunk. He was sober and alert.

Predatorial.

Her neck hair tingled, and she thought of Harley’s warning.

She dropped a hand to her ankle, feeling for the little Smith & Wesson she used to wear. Not there.

He’d called her Arden. Had she told him her name?

Something is very wrong here.

In one swift motion, she jumped to her feet and lunged for the door. Before she could get the chain free, he was there, his hand on hers, his grip hard and forceful.

Arden jabbed an elbow into the man’s stomach, and slammed a heel down on his foot. He let out a grunt and threw his weight against her, pinning her to the door.

She would at least leave a mark on him. Something for the police to see, to question. She reached up to rake her nails down his face. She would dig deep. She would scar him.

His next words stopped her.

“I’m FBI,” he said through gritted teeth, his voice edged with pain. “FBI.”

A chill moved up her. “Show me your ID.”

He remained pressed against her. While her heart thundered in her chest, she heard and felt him fiddling with his jacket. Suddenly something was slapped against the door above her head. A leather ID folder. The kind she used to carry.

She could barely make out the logo. She couldn’t distinguish his photo or name. “I can’t see it.” But she knew he was telling the truth.

“You’ve seen enough.” He released her and stepped back, returning the case to his jacket.

Her legs were weak. She collapsed in the chair, her heart continuing to race.

“Why didn’t you just tell me who you were?” She struggled to appear outwardly cool. “Why did you trick me into thinking you were interested in me?”

“I told you the truth. I wanted to talk. In private.”

“Oh, come on. You plied me with drinks.”

He let out a laugh. “Plied?”

She should have known he was FBI. It couldn’t have been more obvious. “I have nothing to say to you or anyone from the Bureau.”

He dropped into the seat across from her. “We want you back, Arden.”

The way he said her name gave her a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach.

How had things suddenly taken such a turn? “Who are you?” she asked as she stared hard at his undefined shape, unable to make out any features. She reached up and turned on the light attached to the table.

Sharp angles. That prematurely gray hair. Blue, blue eyes.

“Just think of me as a relative,” he said. “Uncle Sam. Your friendly recruiting officer.”

“I’m done with the Bureau.” First they came for Harley; now they were coming for her.

She had no logical reason for the terror and unease that gripped her, but she knew she couldn’t go back.

“They aren’t done with you.”

Was he someone she’d once known?

The FBI liked to play little games, and secrecy for the sake of secrecy seemed to top their list.

You could have known him once.

Had she?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Her memory had been adjusted. Tampered with. Erased.

“We just want you back,” he said calmly, practically.

Arden tried to imagine herself in another location other than where she was. The thought scared the hell out of her. “I’m busy. I have a life.”

Tomorrow they were getting a new beer cooler. The following night the punk karaoke guy was coming from Las Cruces. Probably wouldn’t go over well in Artesia, but Arden had been looking forward to it for a month. “I’ve promised friends I’d help them move this weekend.”

“Do you really have a life here?” He sounded smug. “Have you told any of those friends about yourself? About what you used to do? Who you used to be?”

“I don’t want them to know. I don’t want that old life to contaminate my new one.”

“Then how can they really be your friends? If they don’t even know who you are?”

“I’m not an agent anymore.” Why had she even tried to explain anything to him?

“How can they be your friends when they will never know the most important facts about you?” he asked. “Never know what imprinted and continues to imprint your life?”

She knew the life she’d built for herself wasn’t real. It was cardboard. Full of props that she’d clung to for their very bland familiarity. Boring was what she craved, needed, embraced. Give her boring any day of the week.

“It’s like having company every night,” the guy she worked for had told her when she accepted the bartending job. “You just talk to people and get them drinks. What a great job. Pretty soon the locals start treating you as if you’re family, and you get worried if they don’t come in. You call their house to see if everything’s okay. Yessirree, we’re one happy family around here.”

Maybe the idea of family had appealed to her. She didn’t have a family. Well, there was her brother, but he hated her.

“We need your help,” the man told her.

She let out a loud, sarcastic laugh. Her heart had settled down now that the initial shock was over. “
My help
?” Was he trying to arouse her patriotism with verbal propaganda, or was it simply naive flag-waving on his part? Then again, maybe he knew better but was just doing his job.

“Being a lab rat was fun for a while,” she said, “but it doesn’t appeal to me anymore.”

“You were a lot more than a lab rat. You know that. And the program has been tweaked. Perfected.”

What difference had it made in the end? she wondered. Dead was dead.

“They no longer use Cottage 25 or the tanks.”

The tanks…
Jesus
. She didn’t want to think about them.

The idea behind Project TAKE had been straightforward. Using sensory deprivation and something called psychic driving—a term coined by the late Dr. Ewen Cameron of the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal—test subjects were inundated with information about handpicked serial killers, mass murderers, spree killers, in an attempt to make them see the world through the killer’s eyes, thus making them a crucial component in determining a killer’s next step before he made it.

At the Webber Research Institute on the Hill, subjects were saturated with every shred of info that could be dug up on a specific killer, including the most trivial childhood stories supplied by relatives and often the incarcerated killer himself. Information about girlfriends, schools, cars. Home life. The whole package.

In Cottage 25, under the watchful eye of Dr. Phillip Harris, subjects were locked in isolation chambers and fed the recordings of the confessions of madmen. The killers took them by the hand and walked them through their own personal landscapes of death, beckoning them to join their cult of evil.

Adopt him. Accept him as your own personal savior
, someone in the program had joked.
Get to know the guy inside and out
.

At least that had been the plan.

Shortly after the project began, many of the carefully screened test subjects dropped out, some after only a few hours of isolation. The ones who remained experienced sleep irregularities, along with spatial and tactile shifts, lack of concentration, and the big one: memory loss.

Instead of stepping into a killer’s mind, they’d stepped out of their own and lost a little of themselves.

She and Harley had stayed. She and Harley had become poster children for the project. Arden had remained out of sheer stubbornness. Harley… She didn’t know what had driven him. Maybe a desire for fame. Because wasn’t it every profiler’s dream to catch the big one?

“We’ve been watching you,” the agent said bluntly.

His unapologetic admission made her feel uneasy and exposed.

“We know everything you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t think I want to get involved with such Big Brother mentality.”

“You can’t keep on like this,” he told her softly in a concerned voice that suddenly made her throat tighten and her eyes burn.

“What do you mean?” she asked, struggling for self-control. “I’ve found my niche here.”

“You’ve been playing a role. Can’t you see you’ve done nothing more than step into someone else’s life?”

“How do you know what I’m thinking? Feeling? And isn’t stepping into a life what it’s all about? Isn’t that what I was taught to do?” She’d learned her lessons well.

“I familiarized myself with your file,” he said. “I know who you used to be, and I know who you are now.”

“What’s wrong with striving for a new kind of contentment? I look at other people doing the same thing. They’re happy.”

“They are nothing like you. They will never understand you.”

In her mind, the flimsy cardboard life receded like a TV show she may have once been addicted to, all the while feeling guilty for the addiction because she recognized it for the fluff it was.

Escapism.

It had been okay for a while. But lately she felt what was left of her identity slipping away. In the middle of the night she would wake up with a sense of panic. Who was she? Who was Arden Davis? What if this really became her life?

She’d wanted to get as far away from who she’d been as possible. But when confronted with the thought of the drudgery and bleakness never ceasing, of her circumstances never changing, the novelty wore thin.

The scent of the gray-haired man seemed familiar, in the way the compressed paper of an old record album found in a cellar was familiar, yet distant.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“No.”

His answer came quickly. Had there been a flash of something in his face? Or was it just her imagination, another false reality?

Somehow familiar, yet not. He reminded her of someone she’d once known from a time she’d forgotten. A time that had been erased from her memory. Not out of cruelty, but to give her a chance at a normal life, because painful, guilt-ridden memories crippled. And now here was the FBI, begging her to come back.

They called it bleaching. Untested, experimental, done only to her, because she’d wanted it. What they didn’t know, what she’d never told anybody, was that the bleaching hadn’t quite been able to silence the killer’s voice inside her head.

Since she’d left the study center in Madeline, a small town in a remote area of West Virginia, a few shadowy memories had returned. Blurry hints of what had been, the bad things she’d seen. She was afraid that one day the memories would all come back.

She didn’t try to remember.

She didn’t want to remember.

She wanted to be content. She wanted to be one of those people who didn’t think, only reacted. Who went to happy hour for beer and free chicken wings. Who laughed at tedious jokes. She wanted desperately to be that person, but all along, in the same way she could never get used to the desert and the refinery puffing out its choking smoke, she knew she’d failed.

Laughter.

Parents.

Family.

Not her. Someone else.

Blood. So much blood.

How many liters in a man? A woman? A child?

“That gray hair… Where’d you get that gray hair?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“I’m not here to talk about me.”

“I’ll bet you were hiding in a dark closet, went for the chain above your head to turn on the light, but grabbed a cadaver’s hand instead.”

That got a little burst of laughter from him, followed by a reluctant smile. He reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small folder with an airline logo.