Chapter Four
It starts out as it always does, brisk movement and muffled voices. Gage Pantere strains his ears, trying to make sense of the voices and sounds around him. As usual, the voices were unfamiliar, the words indecipherable. He tries opening his eyes so he can look around and gain his bearings, but his eyes are covered with something that prevents him from opening them. He is trapped in darkness behind his own lids.
His lips feel dry and cracked, his throat parched. Needing a drink, he tries to move his body to an upright position, but like there’s a slab of cement pressing down on him, he cannot move. His torso, head, arms, and legs are tethered to the bed where he lay. He has no range of motion…his body is tied down and useless to him.
Panic takes over as he realizes he has no idea where he is, how he got here, or what is happening to him. His voice is a mere whisper and no one responds to his attempts to ask questions. He feels as if his mind is in a thick fog, and his body is buried in quicksand. After some time has passed, someone removes the bandage that holds his eyes closed. Blinking wildly, he tries to open them, giving them time to adjust to the extreme brightness of the white room he finds himself in. When he’s finally able to open them fully, he sees a shadow move, and his vision floods with a florescent green color that becomes fluid in front of his eyes. It’s like an acid trip…all of his senses flood with that strange green color moving and sliding as if inside of a lava lamp.
Out of nowhere, his arm feels cold and he finds himself crying out in agony. His entire body is in such excruciating pain that it takes his breath away. His body’s frozen one moment and on fire the next. The heat is so intense he wants to run and jump into an icy pool to put out the flames, but he cannot move. Every muscle, bone, and sinew is uncontrollably expanding and contracting, pulling, and stretching beyond their limits. He feels as if his blood is boiling. He wants to scream out, he wants to die. But just before he’s about to pass out, the face of an angel floods his vision and he awakens with a start, gasping to fill his lungs with air.
Sitting straight up, he looks around. He is in his own bed, covered in sweat and shaking uncontrollably. He pushes himself to the edge of the bed and places his bare feet on the hard, cool floor. Running his damp fingers through his long, dark hair and pushing it out of his face, he stands, crosses the room, and switches on the bathroom light.
Standing before the mirror, he can’t hide the haunted look he sees in that pair of bright green eyes peering back at him. Examining himself, he runs his hands over his face, his outstretched arms, down his chest, and along the length of his legs. Using his fingertips, he traces the dark tattoo etched over his rib cage. He is alive. There is no pain and his body looks and feels normal.
Pushing the nightmare out of his mind, he jumps in the shower, allowing the cool water to beat down over his body, and washing the remnants of the terror away. Climbing back into bed, he lays there, watching the sun come up.
The same nightmare has been plaguing his sleep for quite some time. He has no idea where it comes from or what it means. He assumes, like a child who is afraid of the monster under the bed, that over time, it will just go away. I mean, aren’t bad dreams supposed to be brought on by stress? In his line of work, stress is definitely a factor, so he chalks it up to job stress and chooses not to analyze it…
Until two months ago.
Standing in the airport in Tampa, Florida, returning from a job overseas, he looks up and sees her standing in line, waiting to board the flight he’s just disembarked.
The angel from his nightmare is standing before him.
He stops…frozen before her, just staring, with his carry-on in hand. She looks up from reading her book and stares back at him. That same face from his dream, with the pale full lips, large aquamarine eyes, dainty nose, high cheekbones, and beautiful, long, blonde, flowing hair looks back at him. She smiles and his breath catches. Is she real or is he hallucinating?
He wants to ask her if she knows him, but he must have been holding his gaze too long, for she averts her eyes back to her book and takes a few steps towards the door to the gate. Before he can get his wits about him, the angel has boarded the plane and is gone.
Who is she? He has to find out who she is and why she is plaguing his dreams. So, walking up to the ticket counter, he discovers she is on a nonstop flight from Tampa to New York. Taking down the flight number, he heads out of the airport to his car, and then home.
Pulling out his laptop, he spends the next several days doing one of the things he does best. Tracking! He will track her down and find out everything about her, which is easy to do in his line of work.
He starts by hacking into the airline’s passenger manifest for flight 949, then eliminating anyone who didn’t pick up the flight in Tampa, and all male passengers. From there he uses the government data base to pull social security numbers, tax records, birth certificates, driver’s license photos, passports, and any other private records he can find on the remaining passengers.
Finally he discovers her name, Katrina Jameson. Her father, a state senator from New York. She dances ballet with a New York based company and lives on her own with her eight year old golden retriever, Max. She was engaged at one time, but her fiancé died in Afghanistan, flying missions for the Air Force. She hasn’t dated since.
Apparently, when he saw her in the airport in Tampa, her company had just completed an engagement at the Sarasota Ballet and was returning home.
When Gage is finished, he has a complete dossier on Katrina’s life. He knows everything about her, right down to her blood type. He knows who her family and friends are, her doctors and dentists, where she took swimming lessons, horseback riding lessons, ballet and piano lessons, and even where she went to school as a child. Every cold and injury she has ever had, boys she’s dated, cars she’s driven, and every address she’s ever lived at. She graduated from the Carnegie School of the Arts, majoring in dance and music.
Still, he needs to know more. There was nothing in the information he gathered that gives him a clue as to why he was dreaming about her. According to the information he compiled, they’ve never met before and he definitely isn’t the type that goes to the ballet. Hell, they’ve never even been in the same city at the same time until he saw her in the airport in Tampa.
What the hell is going on?
How can he see her in such detail in his dreams?
This woman doesn’t just resemble the angel that appears to him, she is the angel. Not one detail of her face, her skin, her bone structure, her eyes and lips is even slightly off from his dream.
An urgent need overcomes him.
I have to find her. And then what? What the hell am I going to do once I find her? I have no idea. All I know is…I have to try.
He books the next flight to New York.