Dream Walker (31 page)

“Sure. You can call me Robert if you’d like,” he said.

“Alright, Robert, so what do you want to ask Aislen about?”

Mathis so didn’t want to go there. Not now. In fact, he just wanted to forget this whole thing altogether. What was he doing this for anyway? It was none of his damn business. He should just let Jackson handle it and keep to his business on the streets. Better yet, he should drive down to the department right now and fill out his retirement paperwork effective yesterday and get on with enjoying what was left of his life. Like taking this beautiful woman out to dinner.

He looked at Sabine. What were the odds that he would be sitting here at her dining room table right now? Mathis didn’t believe in luck or coincidence or any good lord watching over him. But looking at her, he felt like he’d been handed a gift—an opportunity—and he would be a fool to pass it by. It was now or never.

“Could I get your number so I could call you and maybe take you out to dinner sometime?”

Sabine eyes opened wide.
“That’s
what you wanted to ask Aislen?”

Mathis was undeterred, “No. It’s what I want to ask you—what I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time, actually, but have never been able to muster up the gumption to do.”

“So did you come over here under the pretense of talking to Aislen, just to get my number?”

“No, ma’am...I mean, Sabine.
No!
I would never—I mean, I really did come over here to talk to Aislen. I just didn’t expect to see you...and I, I...”

Sabine reached a hand across the table and rested it on his and smiled. “Shhhhh. I know. I’m just messing with you.”

Then she reached her hand up into his breast pocket, slipped out his pen and his notepad, and proceeded to write down her phone number in it. Mathis’ heart felt like it was going to stop.

Sabine ripped out the page with her number on it. “I was wondering if you were ever going to ask. I’d love to go out to dinner sometime.”

She handed the paper to him; and just as his heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest, the front door burst open.

CHAPTER 33

Raze pulled his consciousness backward through the signal line and came out of Theta. He sat in the chaise in the Womb, chewing on what he’d learned from Blake.

All that “Ichiban” wanted was for Raze to monitor the game until Mathis entered base camp and track him until he met up with Ichiban. As soon as Mathis revealed Aislen’s address, Raze was to drive to Modesto, locate and apprehend her, then take her to a safe place to await further instructions as to where an exchange would take place.

According to Blake, Ichiban was going to make it very worth Raze’s while for assisting and completing this assignment. But because Ichiban also promised to take Blake to his
dead
father, Raze was not enthusiastic.

Grant wasn’t in any position to make Raze any offers worth his while. Everything in
both
of their lives was given to them by Infinium and The 8. Nothing about his request was tempting.

And besides, Raze already knew how to find Aislen. He didn’t need Mathis. He had access to her any time he wanted—held her like a key in his pocket.

As far as Raze was concerned, the mission was pointless. There was nothing in this for him. Mathis may be an old fart and a techno troglodyte, but he didn’t seem like the type who would throw a young woman under a bus for selfish, personal reasons.

Raze thought about convening an emergency meeting with The 8, to expose Grant for what he was—
a traitor
—and get permission to eliminate his sorry ass. But there wasn’t time for that. If Raze was wrong about Mathis and the Sergeant did feed Aislen to the wolves, Grant could just as easily have someone else run the intercept mission to bring her to him so he could have his way with her. And that was absolutely unacceptable.

Raze had no fucking idea
why
. What was Aislen to him? She was nothing, a blip on his radar, a nobody. And yet the mere idea of her, of Grant wanting her for himself, brought forth the compelling need to...to...
to what?
Raze was confused by his feelings—that he had any at all—and that they were so powerful.

From the moment he laid eyes on her, his world began falling apart and spinning out of control. The instant he channeled her frequency into his memory banks, it had surged through his veins and short-circuited all of his wiring. Her name was a constant, unavoidable hum in his head.

And Raze wasn’t the only one with an Aislen obsession. She was important to Grant, too. What did Grant need her for? Who had he been hoping would show up that night? Maybe the answer to Raze’s Aislen problem could be found in figuring out why she was Grant’s problem. He needed to know the truth, needed to figure out what made Aislen so valuable before Grant found a way to get his hands on her. All Raze had to do was pull up her signature, find her, and snoop around for the answers.

Raze surveyed The Womb. The large Qi reader on the wall was still on, monitoring his field. He couldn’t search for Aislen here. He couldn’t have her telling his secrets to Infinium.

“Womb off.”

He went upstairs into the bedroom and looked at the bed. It was situated in front of the Q, another machine equipped with a field reader that tracked people and fed their information into Infinium’s data banks.

He continued roaming through the house looking for a safe place to hunt Aislen. He realized there wasn’t a space anywhere inside the warehouse that wasn’t furnished with a Qi pad.

He had all the trappings of a successful life, the house, the car, the clothes. But they were exactly that—a trap. The Womb, his portal to freedom, only took him to places he was told to go, not places he chose. His home was virtually a prison, the Qi pads the guards. Sure they constantly monitored for intruders, but he wasn’t so naive as to think that they weren’t monitoring and absorbing everything about him as well.

Raze thought about dismantling them, but that would set off an alarm at headquarters and a half-dozen Men in Black would come bursting through his door within an hour.

There was only one space that didn’t have a reader. Raze bounded up the staircase, across the catwalk and onto the roof. Only Spiderman would have been capable of getting to his rooftop and into the house, so Infinium had not felt the need to install a reader on that door.

Raze evaluated the patio, looking for the perfect place to set up a makeshift Womb. A large, slate fountain sat at the corner, creating a continuous fall of water. If Infinium did have any hidden readers on the roof, the flow of water would cause enough of a disruption to scramble his energy field, making it unreadable.

He grabbed a cushion off one of the patio chairs and set it in front of the waterfall. This was going to be antiquated, but if it worked for yogis for thousands of years, and if both Blake and Aislen could travel without the sterile environs of The Womb, Raze surely could.

He sat on the cushion, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes. Using the same sequences that he had in the Infinium lab and in the Womb, he drifted down into the recesses of his subconscious, and then out to find Aislen.

CHAPTER 34

Aislen itched the whole drive home, on fire from head to toe. Something was wrong. She knew it.

Troy pulled up to a stop sign at the dead end of a desolate country road and leaned toward her. “Which way now?” he asked, resting his hand on her thigh.

Though it should have been calming, even exciting, his touch only exacerbated the dread that burned inside her. Apprehension choked up in her throat and she couldn’t speak, so she pointed him in the direction of her house instead.

“It’s all going to be just fine. Don’t worry,” Troy said with a smile.

Aislen smiled back weakly. How was it that he knew her so well already—understanding her feelings after they had only known each other such a short time? She should be grateful to have him there, instead of feeling and acting so uptight. Yet with each mile they got closer to her house, the more intense her anxiety became.

When they finally turned onto her street, she understood why. A strange, white truck was parked in her driveway—and her mother
never
had company. This pushed her to near hysteria. Aislen felt like she was going to jump out of her skin, or rather that she didn’t have any skin at all. She was just a ragged bundle of raw nerves exposed to the elements.

Troy barely got the Mustang parked before Aislen leapt out of it and bounded toward the front porch. Through the large, picture window, she could see her mother was sitting at the dining room table. She was busy writing something down on a piece of paper and when she was finished, she handed it over to a police officer that was sitting next to her. Aislen recognized him immediately.
He was the same police officer that had been at the hospital.

Her heart jackhammered in her chest. What was he doing at her house? Were the police the ones who were hunting her father? And what was her mother writing down for him? Was she helping him, not knowing the danger she could be putting them in? Fearing the worst, Aislen burst through the front door.

Startled, her mother turned towards the door. “Geez, Aislen, you scared the crap out of me.”

“Mom, are you okay?” she couldn’t help but shout, but before her mother could answer, she turned on the officer. “What are you doing here?”

“Aislen! Don’t be rude,” Sabine chastised. “I’m fine. And Sergeant Mathis just came here to ask you a few questions, that’s all.”

“A few questions about what?” she asked, still sounding vicious.

The officer continued looking down at the piece of paper in his hand, lost in his own world, with a stupid grin on his face. Then he folded it carefully and slipped it into his pocket. It took everything in Aislen’s power not to snatch it from him and rip it to pieces.

“Whoa, girl! Where’s the fire?” Troy said, coming into the house behind her. He looked toward the table. “Oh! Good evening, sir. Sergeant Mathis, right?” Ever polite, he walked over and shook the officer’s hand, then turned to her mother. “Good evening, ma’am. I’m Troy. I’m a friend of Aislen’s.”

“We work together,” Aislen blurted out abruptly.

“We’re friends,” Troy reiterated, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Well, that’s wonderful. It’s nice to meet you, Troy. I’m Sabine, Aislen’s mom. Though right now I hardly recognize the girl.” Sabine frowned in Aislen’s direction, as well.

Aislen didn’t have any patience for the pleasantries. “So what kind of questions?” she growled at the officer again.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Sabine asked. “This isn’t like you.”

“Nothing’s wrong! I just saw that strange truck parked out there, and I knew you were here alone, and I was worried. That’s all.”

“Okay. Well, everything’s fine, sweetheart. You can calm down.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Mathis said, finally coming out of his daze. “I’m not officially on the clock, that’s why I’m in my own car. But some things have come up in the Parrish case and I had a couple of questions that couldn’t wait. I was hoping you could help answer them.”

“Me? What does your case have to do with me?” Aislen tried but failed to keep the shrill tone out of her voice.

“Well, I already asked Mr. Kellen here yesterday, but I wanted to ask you personally. Do you ever play video games?”

Sabine laughed out loud. “I could have answered that for you.”

“No,” Aislen answered, hoping that would be the end of it.

But apparently no wasn’t good enough and Mathis tried again. “Well, do you have any friends who play? Could you have been around a friend while they were playing?”

“No,” she answered again, making no attempt to hide how stupid she thought the question was. “None of my friends play video games. This is crazy.”

But Troy had asked her the exact same questions yesterday and although it was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard, Aislen couldn’t help but wonder. Her father had told her that she had wandered into a place she shouldn’t have been. Had she wandered into a video game? Was that even
possible
? A hot tremor coursed through her.

“What do video games have to do with your case?” she asked.

“Well, Blake was allegedly addicted to a particular video game—Demesne—and when he saw you yesterday, he acted like he recognized you from the game.”

Aislen thought about where she had been when she first saw Blake. Was that Demesne? Her father had called it something else—The Stratum is what he had said. Was this game Demesne the same place as The Stratum? Aislen shook the nonsense out of her head. Trying to connect the real to the fantasy was the next step to full-fledged insanity.

“That’s not where he knows me from,” Aislen answered without thinking. Then she cringed inwardly at the slip.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go unnoticed by Mathis either. “So you
do
know Blake?”

“I don’t play video games,” she said firmly, trying to cover up her mistake.