Lay Me Down (2 page)

Frustration zapped along her nerves. This was so stupid. Steve-o had a death wish, and she was going to have to stay by his side or her ex-boss would do the deed and get bragging rights for his murder. And she really wanted to do the honors herself.

She got out of the car and stretched, yawning hugely, dead center in the hotel’s elaborate entrance while Steve came around the car. Hand on her elbow—
so
going to die—he led her into an opulently designed, massive foyer.

She’d heard about The Wake, the hotel known for round-the-clock Rêves. Very exclusive. The décor evoked the surreal sensibility of the dreamwaters—proportions all larger than life, yet slightly warped, colors vivid red and purple. Erotic shadows of figures lurked in corners, shifting depending on the position of the patron, to beckon a dreamer deeper. Even though the foyer was enormous and grand, it swallowed sound rather than making it echo and overlap.

The registration desk banked an entire wall far off to one side and was manned by no less than twenty uniformed, smiley people. The place was supposed to be booked solid for a couple of years.

“This way,” Steve said, tugging her toward the slightly bigger desk with gold lettering—V.I.P.—emblazoned on the front. He was such a cop.

Scowling, she allowed him to lead and then folded her arms on the high desk and put her head down.

“My wife and I would like to check in.”

Maisie snorted and lifted her head again to address the clerk. “Do
I
look like his wife?”

The ruse was ridiculous.
Just look at him.

During the drive, Steve had taken off his tie and gray suit jacket, and he’d opened the top button on his white dress shirt, but that’s about as chill as she’d ever seen him. She guessed the rest of him might be attractive to some women, if they could get past what a jerk he was. He had a good body, and his green eyes were sort of pretty, if they weren’t always looking right into her, trying to find out her secrets. Good voice, too. Altogether he was a decent enough package to make someone’s parents happy, he was just too ordinary and uptight for her.

The clerk paused, glancing back and forth between them, expression blank.

“We’re deeply in love,” Steve said. “The King Suite, please.”

The clerk’s expression warmed. “Mr. and Mrs. Coll?”

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

Maisie groaned. Maybe she was in a nightmare. That’s what it was. She was trapped in a nightmare, sleeping soundly on her sister’s sofa.

“We were expecting you. Thank you for selecting The Wake for your stay. Walk with me to your private elevator. I’ll take you up personally.” The clerk held a large black portfolio in one arm.

Private elevator?
Maisie pressed her lips together, considering.

Steve dared to take her elbow again, but she allowed it. Seemed Chimera had sprung for a good room.

They walked to an inconspicuous tuck in the wall, which turned out to be a short hallway terminating at an elevator. An attendant waiting outside straightened at their approach. He used a key in the wall, and the elevator doors slid open immediately. The interior was a deep gray velvet-and-leather box, spacious, but clearly intended for private use.

Maisie stared at herself in the mirrored panel that flanked the closing doors. She looked like hell. Sleep would’ve helped, but it wouldn’t erase the fear in her eyes. No amount of effort, no drug, no silly joke would.

She’d seen evil. Her instinct was to run away, not toward, though really nowhere in the waking world was safe. At least Jordan would be okay. Graeme would simply have to cut his losses where Big Sis was concerned, because she was off limits and safe among the Chimera.

Maisie had no such luck. He’d said she knew too much, had seen too much. And she had.

She glanced at Steve, the Chimera who’d said he wanted to help her, and found him blandly watching her looking at herself in the glass.

Rat bucket. Definitely.

The elevator opened into a large room with a sweeping view of the dirty blue, late-afternoon Vegas skyline. Maisie stepped inside, glancing around to note the stainless-steel kitchen, the luxe sunken living room, and the spiral stairs to the second floor.

Okay. Maybe she could be Mrs. Steve for a day before killing him.

The clerk put the big black portfolio on a circular table in the middle of the atrium and opened it to display menus, spa brochures, and tickets. “Our personal shopper has filled the closet. The dedicated Rêve room is on the second floor of your suite. If you need assistance, a Rêvellier is always available to assist you. There’s a private poker game at midnight tonight, but I can secure an invitation, if you’re interested. Your reserve covers the minimum. Per your request, I’ve made reservations for dinner at seven at Coquin. If there is anything else you need, feel free to call down.”

Maisie wandered deeper into the suite to find a glass wall separating the living space from a roof pool. She loved swimming. Had been on the high school team before Mom died.

When she turned around, Steve was standing a pace behind her. The clerk had gone.

Maisie lifted her eyebrows high to show how impressed she was. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

“We may need a dedicated Rêve, and this one is hardlined into the Agora.”

Maisie’s eyebrows dropped and she made a face. The Agora was the aggregation of all the Rêves, the commercial shared dreams, under the purview of Chimera, who policed them. Kept people from misbehaving. But really, weren’t dreams meant for mischief?

“So what now?” she asked.

“Now you make contact with your people.”

“They’re not my people. And no.” Graeme was very unhappy with her at the moment.

“It’s the reason we’re here: to unequivocally extricate you from their company.”

“I can take care of that on my own. I
have
been. I don’t need you to do it for me. I never asked for your help.”

His lips parted in silent surprise, a small victory for her. But, shit, he recovered. “Yeah, you did. You even said those words—
Can you help me?
”

Ugh. She hated people with good memories. “I meant with information, not taking over my life.”

“Maisie, they’re never going to let you go. You’re too valuable.”

The man was misinformed. “I was a courier. I delivered shit, that’s all.”

His green eyes went hard. “Maisie, one in five million people can cross from Rêve to Rêve on their own. Maybe one in ten million can cross into someone’s personal dreamspace without being invited or brought in by that individual.”

He made her stomach hurt with his statistics. “You did it,” she said. He’d infiltrated her dreams to find her once before.

“I’m special, too,” he said, deadpan.

“And Rook.”

“I recruited him, just like I’m trying to do with you.”

“Jordan?”

“I imagine, once trained, your sister will be able to as well.”

Maisie opened her arms wide. “Then there’s got to be even more.”

Because Steve’s odds—one in ten million?—meant, yeah, Graeme would have a hard time replacing her. And the man liked his packages delivered on time, or else he got a little…unstable.

The money had been good, though.

“Aptitude like yours is
very
difficult to come by,” Steve said. “Chimera can offer you refuge from those who would force your cooperation.”

God, not the pitch again. She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to be one of you, man.”

The dream police. The very concept was offensive. Dreams were free space. Happy space. Dreams were where she could be herself. And herself wasn’t some anal marshal telling people what they could and couldn’t do in wonderland.

She had other plans, had just made a small misstep, that’s all. But she could figure it out. She would.

“Well, it’s not even an option if you’re still involved with these people.”

“I don’t get what’s in it for you if you know I won’t join up.” Because she was being perfectly honest here. Her sister was the rule follower. The joiner. Not her.

“For starters, your current bosses will be out one very important component of their efforts to set up business in the dreamwaters. They’ll be limited to Rêves, where Chimera can manage them, not spreading like a suffocating oil slick.” He cocked his head. “Unless you plan to go back to them?”

“No,” she said defensively. No amount of money was worth the horror of that last delivery. It was, to borrow Steve’s word,
oily
. Nothing would wash it away. The memory made her heart beat faster, the drive to run almost compulsive.

Except now she was trapped. Graeme wouldn’t cut her loose because he had no one else to do her job.

The suite’s phone rang, and Steve stepped to the side of the sofa to pick up the receiver. “Yes?”

Damn it. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shaking. She didn’t know what to do anymore. Graeme was going to kill both of them.
Two rat buckets to go, please.

“Who is this?”

Maisie zeroed in on the call. Steve was looking at her again with his trademark serioso intensity that made her skin crawl.

“You can speak to me,” he said. “Ms. Lane is under new management.”

Incredulous, she turned away. Her eyes were welling and she didn’t want him to see. Steve just didn’t get it. Evil that big and bad would squash him—and her—like a bug.

They should run. Or since they just happened to be in Vegas, they should party hard, because this was the last day they’d be alive.

“No, that’s not what’s going to happen,” he said.

A harsh laugh escaped her. Either Steve had a really big package down his trousers or he had zero clue about whom he was dealing with. She had to come up with a plan. Her brain just wasn’t working so well at the moment. Again, sleep deprivation. Asshole.

“We’ll meet you at six in front of the Bellagio fountains. We have dinner reservations tonight so we can’t be long.”

Zero clue. As in zilch.

Steve listened for a last second, said, “We’ll see,” and then hung up.

When he didn’t immediately offer information, Maisie turned, uncrossed an arm, and made an impatient gesture. “Well?”

“We’re meeting a Mr. Graeme at six. You have just enough time to shower and change. Coquin has four stars, so I’d recommend you wear something nice.”

Steve was insane. “Graeme’s going to kill us. You know that, right?”

“Not tonight, he won’t,” he told her. “Definitely not before we eat.”

CHAPTER TWO

Steve popped the lock to the bedroom door and opened it to Maisie’s scream. “I’m not dressed!”

“I gave you a five-minute warning.” If ever there was a flight risk, she was it.

But instead, the room was thick with humidity and sweet with shower scent. She stood in thigh-high stockings, thong, and demi-bra. All black. Her dress was laid out on the bed. Heels spilled from a box on the floor. She still wore no makeup, but she’d twisted her dark pink hair into a tidy bun.

“
Obviously,
I need one more minute.”

He stepped away, but left the door open. The humidity followed him, but it was not the reason he was suddenly so hot.

“I like to be on time,” he said, leaning on the wall outside her door. His tone sounded irritated, but it was directed at himself. Just because she was younger and wilder than the woman he occasionally saw, didn’t mean he wasn’t…
attracted
was the wrong word.
Bothered
was more like it. She was beautiful in her own unmanageable way.

Work in the dreamwaters was inherently sensual, and even misfit couples weren’t immune to the intensity of the milieu. This
bothersome
feeling would be amplified when they took their work darkside.

Nevertheless, Maisie was an inappropriate sexual partner for him on many levels. He had the self-awareness to know he needed distance, and the self-control to keep it. Further, he knew that it was his isolation, a necessary personal choice, that made her nearness disturbing. Maisie was not his first female recruit, and wouldn’t be the last, either.

She stepped out in a trim black sheath that stopped just above the knee. “It’s your funeral.”

He blinked. Then took a second look. All black, though she was a woman of so very many colors. No dramatic makeup, those bright gray eyes somber. All she needed was a hat with black netting that came down over her face.

His irritation evaporated, and he didn’t fight the laugh that replaced it.

The woman had eschewed her natural fashion sense and had dressed for a funeral—probably his.

“Maisie, you’re a pain in the ass, but you’re not boring.”

“I like to be prepared,” she said.

“I appreciate the gesture.” He motioned toward the elevator. “However, I don’t think you give me enough credit.”

He was more than capable of handling this. He was a monster inside, after all.

Worry shadowed her eyes. She’d been alone with this problem for a long time. Had no idea how bad it could get until she was in too deep to get out.