CHAPTER 2
Hells Canyon Wilderness, Eastern Oregon
She was so screwed.
Lexi sat on the ochre-colored sand and realized she wasn’t in Rock Cove. Nor was she alone.
There were two of them: the dark-haired man who’d come to her office that morning and the blond. His name was Arsen—and just what the hell kind of name was that, anyway? He looked like a surfer boy, with his sun-bleached hair, Hawaiian shirt and sandals. It was far cry from the sleek Italian suit he’d worn last week at the Coffee Universe. Marge had dragged her over to meet him. Lexi hadn’t wanted to go, but Marge said he was a hotshot intervention guru who helped people who refused to face their problems. And Marge, who was her therapist, her best friend and surrogate mother figure, believed Lexi wasn’t facing her problems.
Well, Marge was in for some disappointment.
“Did my therapist arrange this intervention hit job?” Lexi asked. “Because if she did, I’m firing her as of now.”
“Marge is concerned,” Arsen replied.
“About what, exactly?”
“Your dream problems.”
“I don’t have dream problems. They’re anxiety issues and an intervention won't help.”
“Why are you defensive?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“We’re not here to hurt you.”
Lexi shrugged as if she didn’t care about their intentions. Looked away, tense with a migraine caused by stress. She recognized Arsen’s impersonations now. Three months ago, the man had called himself Bob, a day-tourist chatting her up over shells at the Beachcomber’s Market. Then he became Mike, doing something she didn’t remember. Last week he held court in the crowded Coffee Universe and talked about interventions. Said he’d written a book. Lexi reached down and pushed her fingers into the gritty sand.
She was still in Oregon, in the Hells Canyon Wilderness. She knew this because of a psychic ability that revealed where she was and what disturbances shimmered in the environment. Marge described it as a form of post-cognition, the kind that could pick up energies left by traumatic events or moments of great passion. Lexi discovered the talent as a child. Over the years she’d learned ways to dampen her sensitivity, to shield her mind when violent imprints remained behind, and while she realized there were no disturbing energies within the vicinity, she sensed the tragedy beyond a distant ridge.
Lexi glanced toward Arsen, with his lying eyes and killer smile. He sat cross-legged on the sand, nurturing a campfire like this was one big, happy Boy Scout cook-out or something. Arsen’s partner in crime called himself Mr. Smith, but she doubted the name was real. He was raw power, male darkness, the kind of man a woman wasn’t likely to forget. When she first saw him in her office he reminded her of a waiting predator, evaluating her strengths, her weaknesses until she’d wanted to run.
Lexi’s migraine thudded. The gritty air caught deep in her lungs and she knew the predator noticed. His hard mouth curled, but not in a smile. His eyes were as volcanic as obsidian, while midnight hair lifted in the breeze. There was such a wall of isolation around him her throat ached.
But the isolation vibrated with darker emotions that slid across her skin. Lexi dragged her gaze back to Arsen.
“How did we get here?” She’d already searched the sandy terrain. No vehicle or road in sight. No nothing. The sun had risen high enough to tell her it was nearing noon, which made no sense, since her meeting with Mr. Not-Named-Smith had been at nine. And she’d been in her office in Rock Cove, not sitting in the desert on the opposite side of the State.
“Where do you think we are?” Arsen asked.
The tactic annoyed her, the way he answered with questions of his own. “We’re just above Dug Bar,” she said. “Along the Snake River, which is only accessible by whitewater raft or a seven-hour drive from where I live. That’s interesting enough by itself, but not as curious as getting into these hills. The roads are rough after the winter rains and without an off-road vehicle you’d have to hike in by foot. And I don’t recall hiking.”
She could have told him more. Eastern Oregon held generations of tears, shed through many centuries, and the psychic imprints remained behind like layers of old paint in ancient buildings.
Now those memories tasted of sun-dried grass, the spicy lavender-gray sage and a distant juniper, poignant and lonely. Lexi watched as Arsen fed more twigs into the fire. He found nothing unusual in either her description or her questions.
“Have you visited this area before?” he asked.
“No.”
“You seem to know a lot about it, though.”
“I’m sure Marge gave you a dossier.” It would have told him how she sensed imprints in the earth, read events that happened in the past and interpreted what she sensed as a collective emotional residue left behind by psychic trauma. Lexi braced for the depreciating smile, but Arsen only reached for more twigs.
“A lot of people believe in extrasensory perception,” he said.
“Which is why an intervention won’t help.”
“Then let’s talk about what will help.” Arsen tipped his head to the side, curiosity in those lying eyes. “What’s it like when you dream?”
“Fairly normal dreaming.”
“And yet your fairly normal dreaming has your therapist and good friend concerned.”
“Marge over-reacts on occasion.”
“And now you’re avoiding the answer, Lexi.”
“And you’re reading too much into it, Arsen.”
“Humor me,” he said, and settled more comfortably on the ground. Lexi shifted away and stared at the distant hills. She pushed the sun-colored hair from her eyes and noticed that the pinging of her migraine was fading. The breeze had picked up. Whispers seemed to be warning her about something she couldn’t define, and a slight tremor shook her hand.
“Are you cold?” Arsen asked.
“No.”
“Good. Because you haven’t answered my question yet.”
“About?”
“Those dreams that keep you from sleeping.”
Lexi watched a line of red ants move in her direction, a long train of mindless units working with a collective brain. Another shiver touched her. While she respected every life form, ants were intrusive.
“Are your dreams unusually realistic?” Arsen asked.
Lexi smirked at him over her shoulder. “Well, there’s a lot of energy when I dream. I live in a New Age sort of town. Spooky vibrations in the air.”
“Is this as serious as you get?”
“No, I can be worse.”
“Marge never mentioned this aspect of your personality.”
“No, I don’t imagine she did, or you’d have charged her more for your intervention.”
Arsen laughed, a rich, warm sound layered with such joy Lexi leaned into it before stopping herself. The man was irritating as hell, but so persistent Lexi found him hard to resist. If she’d ever had a brother he would have behaved the same way, and suddenly her body hurt. No, it was her heart that hurt, swelled up with all the grief and emptiness and stupid hope, and after everything, how utterly pointless was that?
Maybe she’d inherited the crazy gene after all, because what normal mother named her kid Galaxy, unless it was a big middle finger to a grandmother who’d gone by names like Moonbeam and Star Flower during periods of her life? When Lexi was seven, her mother had experienced a “great moment of realization.” She’d packed Lexi, a stuffed bear named Waldo, and a pink blanket into a paper bag and left them on her grandmother’s door step.
“You’re old enough to understand, Galaxy,” the mother said, while tears ran down the child’s face. “This is my life. You’ll be fine. I never wanted a kid, anyway.”
Lexi had survived, thrived in her grandmother’s care, and after a time her life took on the kind of lonely that only bothered her at night, when she set the table for one and realized that wouldn’t change. Lexi accepted it, called it independence and it was, but there was a cost.
Life came at a cost, and now she had what everyone wanted: freedom, with no socks to pick up. Few people were allowed close and even fewer into the space that broke a heart. Marge called it self-protection but Marge was being kind. Lexi understood the truth when the hours stretched and the silence crushed. When she feared the one bright chance for love had been squandered long ago and she would never get it back.
So, she’d made a home in Rock Cove, where people were friendly but never became friends. A small town, where excitement came from the Ooh-la-la parade every summer and the day-trippers looking for whales in the winter. Her small business combined research with her talent to read the earth, one of those New Age opportunities others dismissed. Lexi found locations for the specialty retreat market, yoga and self-help seminars. She focused on the paranormal back stories, the haunted ghost sightings and spirit mountains—and there were more of those in the Pacific Northwest than people would acknowledge. The days filled with a rhythm of their own and the nights filled with dreams, and if there were issues beyond her endless, empty life, it was because those dreams were so intense she couldn’t sleep for days.
And there you had it, the real reason Marge arranged this intervention. Lexi had mentioned that detail to her therapist, too.
The breeze picked up, catching wild strands of blond hair and tossing them into her face. She brushed the annoyance aside and stared down at the ants. The mindless machines moved forward and it was time to bring this intervention to a close.
“As nice as this conversation is, Arsen, if that’s even your real name, I want to go back to Rock Cove.”
“I can’t let you do that, Lexi.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Situations like this usually are. Complicated and messy and full of legal liability. How long have you been following me, by the way? I’ve seen you at least three times before now.”
“I was checking up on you,” Arsen said.
“Not your job.”
“Marge thought we might have a unique perspective on your dreams.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why don’t you think so?”
“My dreams are vivid.”
“How vivid?”
Lexi couldn’t answer. Instead, she leaned back, pressed her spine against the rock. Exhaustion was overwhelming. The air was warm and the sound of Arsen’s voice softened, not the words, but a male timbre until the comfort wrapped around her.
Lexi relaxed. Her resistance dissolved in front of her like mist beneath a morning sun. She felt the comfort seeping into her lungs, anxiety seeping out as she breathed. Slowly, without even realizing it, she let go of the reluctance to talk about the dreams. About why she couldn’t sleep after the night terrors tore her awake. Why there were other dreams so detailed she thought they were real.
“Have you ever been shot, Arsen?”
“Yes,” he said, so far away Lexi could barely hear him.
“So have I, in dreams. And I can tell you what it’s like, how I’m riding a bike down a dirt road. It's night, and there are trees on either side of the road. The bike jangles so loudly I worry that the noise will give me away. I have on my wool coat and the brown shoes that are too big, so I’ve stuffed paper in the toes to keep them on my feet. Only I’m afraid about the paper, too, because it might let the stupid shoe fall off my foot. The handle bars jiggle. My hands are sweaty and they slip and I pedal harder until I round a bend and they’re waiting. All I see are flashes of light. I don’t feel pain like they say; the impact knocks me to the ground with such force I can’t describe it.
“But I can tell you how it feels to fall in a ditch,” she continued. “The sharp way my legs get caught in the broken spokes. I hear the crunching of their boots and know mud is on my face—it’s cold and smells of rot. I know I’m thirteen years old and haven’t lived my life yet. I even know my name. It’s Gabrielle, and I have a little white and brown puppy I named Cammi, because it was the name of a warrior girl in an old story my meme told me, and I wanted to be like the warrior girl. But I’m not. I’m lying in a ditch and I can’t breathe. I ask why it hurts so much. And a voice says it’s because I’m not dead yet.”
Her breath came hard in her throat. Her eyes were closed and she was lost.
“Do you dream like that, Arsen?”