Page 40 of I Dream of Danger (Ghost Ops #2)

Chapter Eleven

At noon, Nick left her at the door with a kiss and an enigmatic smile. “Go do your thing, honey,” he said.

The door slid open, he gave a little push at the small of her back and she moved reluctantly forward.

And found herself in an utterly familiar environment.

Mini electron microscopes, ELISA arrays, titrators, chromatographs, handheld MRIs…the works.

A lab. And a well-equipped one at that. It was chilled and smelled like every lab Elle had ever worked in—of disinfectant and ozone. And like every lab she’d ever been in, it spelled order and reason in a disorderly and unreasonable world.

She felt herself relaxing even before Catherine came to her with a smile and a white lab coat held over her arm.

“Hi, I hope you rested well. That was some trauma you went through.” She leaned forward and gave Elle a quick kiss on the cheek.

As before, a rush of warmth went through her at Catherine’s touch.

Catherine held out the lab coat which fit Elle perfectly. Putting on the lab coat was like putting on a magic coat of armor. Elle felt herself again, in her element again. In control again.

Catherine smiled gently and Elle had the impression she understood exactly what she felt.

“Stella said she’d send breakfast up to you and Nick. Did she?”

Elle didn’t blush. It hadn’t been in any way a suggestive comment, any kind of observation about her and Nick. Catherine simply wanted to know if Elle was comfortable, had had breakfast. Elle relaxed even further.

“Breakfast. Well. I don’t know if what this Stella sent up could really be called breakfast. Breakfast is usually coffee and yogurt, so breakfast doesn’t quite cover it. I think ‘feast’ would be a more appropriate term. And ‘delicious’ should be in there too.”

Catherine’s smile was blinding. “That’s our Stella.”

“I know you’re not supposed to tell me who she is.

” Elle cocked her head. “Jon seemed to think that I would know who she is if I heard her name. But I’m not up on trendy chefs.

As a matter of fact, since Alice Waters retired, I don’t think I know the names of any chefs at all. And certainly not a Stella.”

Catherine hesitated a beat. Big secret. “Sorry,” Elle said. “I guess that’s none of my?—”

“Stella Cummings.” Catherine dropped the name like a stone in a pond, and Elle’s jaw dropped along with it.

“Stella Cummings the actress?” A legendary actress, two-time Oscar winner, the first when she was a child.

The youngest Oscar winner ever. Considered one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Word had it that she’d been attacked by a stalker and disappeared.

Every once in a while there was a Stella sighting—like there used to be Elvis sightings—but they always turned out to be fake. “She’s here?”

Catherine took her hand, and once more that weird warmth rushed under her skin.

“Yes, she’s here. It’s a long story, but the essence is that she was in serious danger and she found refuge here.

A lot of people have found refuge here, including myself.

This is—for want of a better word—a community.

We call it simply the Haven. We grow our own food, we’re almost completely self-sufficient in terms of energy—we don’t need the outside world.

And some, including myself and definitely including Nick, Mac, and Jon, are on wanted lists. It’s a long story.”

“Nick told me some of it,” Elle said quietly.

“Good. Then you’ll understand that we want to keep our existence quiet.”

“Absolutely. I do too. Not to mention the fact that I had four men out to get me. And they would have if Nick hadn’t come.”

Catherine showed Elle to two small armchairs, a surprising addition to a lab.

No armchairs in Corona Labs, that was for sure.

But through the open door, Elle could see what looked like a small and very well-equipped infirmary, so it was possible that the lab doubled as a place where patients could talk to the doctor.

There was so much about this place that intrigued her.

They sat knee to knee, both bending forward slightly.

Something about this place—its beauty, the sense of order, the kindness she was being shown, and—let’s admit it—Nick’s presence, all relaxed her.

The usual reticence Elle felt with people she didn’t know, and often with people she did know, fell away like an old, uncomfortable garment.

Elle always gave partial accounts of herself, cutting out whole sections, and most particularly the section where she went elsewhere when she slept. Only at Corona, working with Sophie and the others, did she feel she could let her powers unfurl.

Catherine managed to make her feel as if she were wrapped in a warm bubble of trust and understanding. “About Nick,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He got what he described as a call from you at around 1 a.m. last night. It was a strong and irresistible message that he felt came from you. I can tell you that he absolutely believed you called for help and that he was in a frenzy to get to you.”

Elle nodded. The difficult part was right ahead.

She was going to have to convince Catherine that she’d somehow contacted a man who was far away.

A man she hadn’t seen in ten years. She sent him a huge SOS and managed to let him know where she was without using a cell or a Personal Communicator.

Just through the magic of her crazy head.

Any person on earth would consider her nuts.

Elle was fully prepared to undergo a long, slow process to convince Catherine that she wasn’t crazy, she just had this crazy power.

All the scientific evidence she had that she wasn’t a lunatic was back in the lab, so she had to replace graphs and videos with words.

Elle drew a deep breath. “Okay. There are a few things I’m going to have to say which you’re going to find hard to believe. Really, really hard.”

Catherine gave a faint smile. “Try me.”

Elle’s stomach hurt and she had to consciously slow her breathing down. She knew everything there was to know about the physiology of stress and anxiety. Her body was trying to give her enough oxygen to deal with an upcoming trial.

“I can astrally project. It’s an old-fashioned term for an out of body experience.

I’ve always had this…talent. Ability. Call it what you will.

When I was a child, I used to have what I thought were very vivid dreams and when I had my special dreams, I would wake up very tired.

In my dreams I roamed around Lawrence, Kansas, where I grew up.

Sometimes I’d see my father playing poker with his buddies, sometimes I’d see schoolmates or other people I knew.

The dreams increased in frequency around the time my mother died, when I was six.

Sometimes I’d have several a week. I think my father thought I was always tired because I was sad at the loss of my mother and he was right, in a roundabout way.

Nick came into our lives soon after my mother’s death, and the dreams stopped for a long time.

Then Nick suddenly disappeared and my father became ill with Alzheimer’s. It was…a bad time.”

Catherine nodded. “As you know, dementia is one of my main fields of study. It’s awful when it happens to someone you love.”

Elle bowed her head.

“So,” Catherine said, “when Nick disappeared and your father developed Alzheimer’s you…projected more often?”

She nodded. “All the time, it seemed. I was exhausted because I Dreamt all night. To me, those are Dreams with a capital D, to keep them distinct from the normal dream state, because those Dreams aren’t…aren’t normal.”

Catherine made a noncommittal sound in her throat.

“And yet—and yet I swear to you that every word is true. I have the capacity to project myself outside my body. I know how crazy that sounds, but?—”

“Oh!” Catherine’s eyes rounded with surprise. “I believe you. No question.”

“You do?” Elle felt her own eyes round with surprise.

“Yes.” Catherine leaned forward and clasped her hand around Elle’s wrist, as if it were a shackle. A warm, soft shackle. That rush of warmth began, tingly and somehow pleasant.

Catherine closed her eyes. “You’re frightened of the men coming after you.

You’re worried about your good friend.” She frowned.

“Sophie?” Elle nodded in surprise but Catherine couldn’t see her.

“She’s been taken somewhere and you have no idea where and you don’t know what’s happened to her.

Through all of this, you’re scared and also overwhelmed with joy that you’re with Nick. You have loved him…”

“Forever,” Elle said softly. “I’ve loved him forever.”

“Yes. You have loved him forever.” Catherine nodded and opened her eyes.

When she lifted her hand, it felt as if a light had gone out.

“I’m an empath. For most of my life I thought I was a freak.

Unlike you, I never thought to scientifically study my gift.

I thought of it as a curse. Reading people is not always a barrel of laughs. ”

Elle nodded. “I’ll bet.” She leaned forward in her chair. “So you—you’re working on your power. Is power the right word? We were calling them Perceptual Studies. Just to—you know—give it a name.”

“It’s not a bad name. Ultimately, your study was funded by Arka, wasn’t it?”

Elle nodded.

“We recently rescued a number of men who had been involuntarily enrolled in a series of studies carried out by Arka. Jon has hacked into their computers and I have access to all the data. I’ll enjoy going over it with you.”

“They also funded a study at Stanford that was the precursor to the Delphi Project. The Delphi Project is a study of extrasensory perception. We were coming up with some interesting theories.”