Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (11 page)

She considered it for a minute, but she didn’t have any money or any idea of where to go. “You got some sort of witness protection? New identity for me?”

Rice looked miserable. “No. I’ve avoided making the kind of connections that would be able to help you.”

“Fulsom?”

He shook his head.

Liza felt impotent and lost and furious about it all. “You said you were here to help me, but all you’ve done is bring me out here to tell a mermaid an unofficial version of my dreams. How exactly were you planning to help? Or did you just want me to talk to your mermaid?”

“I have an idea.” He was so calm she wanted to punch him in the nose. “If you’d sit back down and listen, I’ll explain it to you.”

“I’ll stand, thanks.” She didn’t want to sit back down and be swayed by those stormy grey eyes or the concern she heard in his voice.

“I think you should lie,” he said, looking out at the ocean and not up at her. It annoyed her that he wouldn’t look at her, like maybe he wasn’t telling the truth. “Touch the bodies and pretend to cooperate, but lie about what you dream. They’re already skeptical, since they don’t believe your mermaid dreams, so they should be easy to put off.”

“Why do you believe?” She sat back down next to him, her feet sore from waiting tables, but she didn’t look at him.

“What?” he asked, his voice a bit hoarse, like he’d just woken up. She could feel his gaze hot on the side of her face, but she ignored it. She looked out at the dark ocean, glimmering and shifting in the moonlight. The smell of the salt stronger here and the sound of the waves crashing behind them, almost obscuring their lowered voices.

“Your bosses don’t believe in my dreams, but you do. Why?”

“You said you’ve tested your dreams before.”

“Your bosses know that, right? It didn’t make them believe.”

“No.” He stared out at the ocean again and she almost screamed in frustration. What was with this guy that he couldn’t answer a simple question?

“So. Why. Do. You?”

He started to stand. “Maybe I was wrong to bring you out here.”

“Sit back down.” She waited until he did what she asked. “I’ll stop asking why you believe in me and just accept it, if you don’t walk away from this conversation. I fucking hate it when people do that. If you don’t want to tell me something, just say you don’t want to tell me something, and we’ll move on.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that I don’t have an answer. I’m a rational person first, I don’t believe in going with instinct, and rationally I shouldn’t have told Mellita what you’d dreamed, but I just felt I had to. Just like I feel that your dreams are real.”

“Okay, thank you. Now, I’ll do what you say and I’ll lie about my dreams, because I agree that I don’t want to be touching dead bodies every day. I’m a gut girl, Rice. I believe intuition outweighs logic 99.9% of the time and my gut is telling me to trust you.” Other parts of her were telling her to jump on his lap and kiss him silly, but she had learned long ago not to let those parts lead her decisions. “But, even if I convince them my dreams are shit, they’re still going to want to study me, right? What does that mean for me?”

Rice was back to looking out at the ocean and his shoulders tensed. “I’m hoping you can convince them you’d make a good agent.”

“A good agent?” Never in her life had Liza had any desire to be a spy or a superhero, much less a government agent. If she had any fault, it was that she was too honest and too compassionate, not the best traits for that line of work. “I really don’t think–”

“The people I work for are good people,” Rice said, but his tone suggested he didn’t entirely believe it and Liza shivered. “But they fear what they don’t know. In the past, when they’ve found fae they can’t explain, they’ve sent them to a testing facility in West Virginia. I’ve heard that the compensation for that move is excellent, but I don’t think—”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long do they have to stay up there? How long does the testing last?”

He rubbed his face. “No one knows. No one’s ever seen them again.”

Her chest tightened and she thought she might cry. She never cried, at least not in front of strangers. “Shit. They’re going to kill me.”

She’d expected him to deny it, or to laugh at her, or to tell her this whole night was a huge practical joke, but the look in his eyes reflected the fear she felt. She wanted to run, to scream, to escape from the horrible nightmare her life had become. She looked at him, so safe in his job and in his world, and she realized how easy it would be to blame him, to focus her anger on him and to stop feeling this horrible fear and loss. She shoved him as hard as she could and he slipped off the roof and into the water with a loud splash.

*SLOANE*

Sloane’s shock at being submerged in the water didn’t last long. Once he’d accepted that he was no longer on the roof and how he’d gotten in the sea, he found the dark water comforting. The silence allowed him to think clearly and figure out how to convince Liza to go along with his plan without making her think his bosses were evil. Being so near her did bad things to his brain and he had a hard time focusing on the conversation instead of how warm her hand felt in his or how much he wanted to keep touching her, to taste her.

Shouts from above interrupted his thoughts and he looked up to see Liza leaning over the side of the roof, staring down at him. He supposed he’d been under water longer than normal for an air-breathing human. Still, he couldn’t help staring at her for a few moments, her skin glowing in the moonlight, concern for him etched on her face. He hated the idea of causing her pain, but he much preferred her caring enough to be worried he’d drowned to the rage he’d seen on her face before she’d pushed him off the rock. Or maybe she was just worried someone might arrest her for his death. Probably the latter. He pushed himself up out of the water and accepted her help back onto the roof. The roof was slick and she wasn’t strong enough to lift him bodily from the water, but she was stronger than he expected and he wasn’t sure he’d have made it back up there without her help.

“Thanks,” he said, when he was seated next to her. “I’m sorry.” He was sorry for so much that it didn’t make sense to try to list it all.

“I guess you forgot to mention that your siren blood allows you to stay underwater for a long time.”

He grunted in acknowledgement, trying to wring out his t-shirt. He finally gave up, pulled it over his head and wrung it out properly. Liza gasped and he couldn’t help the grin that split his face. He knew better than to let her know he’d heard it, though.

“What else can you do?” she asked, her voice a bit breathy, making Sloane’s gut clench and parts of him start to stiffen. Damn, the effect the woman had on him was intense. He could only imagine what it would be like if they really got together, which was never going to happen. Even if she didn’t hate him, the two of them getting romantic wouldn’t make for a good working relationship if she agreed to a job at SPA.

“That’s it,” he said. “Being able to stay under is part of my affinity to water.”

“Right.” She sounded like she didn’t believe him, and he hated that. He wanted her to trust him, to come to him if things got bad. “Clearly, getting sent up to West Virginia to be a lab rat is not a viable option. So what’s your plan?”

“What can you do?” he asked. “You need to be able to offer them skills and be enthusiastic about being an agent.”

“I can defend myself, I’ve had years of self-defense classes, and I… um, I’m not scared of much. I’m willing to do anything, but… Look, is this really my only option? I don’t see this being the job for me.”

He wished he could tell her something different. He wished he could give her life back, but he couldn’t. “Listen, it’s going to be okay. You’re tough and you’re brave and you’ll be fine. Just tell them you want to be an agent, you want to help other fae. Lie about the bodies you touch, and work this case with me.”

“Wait, what? What case?”

“The mermaids.” He realized he hadn’t told her about that, yet, and he blamed it on the way she was looking at him, her gaze dropping to his bare chest and abs every so often, like she couldn’t help herself. If she was… If this whole situation wasn’t… but she was and it was. “Fulsom’s agreed to lay low and allow us to figure out what’s going on with the mermaids. If we do that, and I work up a stunning report of what a great agent you’ll be, it will guarantee you a job.” He knew it was weak, but it was the best he could come up with.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to get you or Fulsom in trouble…”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time. But my boss love initiative, especially if we solve the case.” He wasn’t as confident as he hoped he sounded, but he didn’t know what else to do to help Liza.

She nodded. “I’ll think about it, okay.”

They walked back down the beach together, no longer holding hands, and Sloane missed her touch. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to take her hand, but he held back. If he couldn’t have all of her, having just part of her was becoming too painful. They didn’t talk, Liza clearly lost in thought, and Sloane looked out at the ocean, letting it fill his senses and calm him. The ocean would always feel like home to him. As much as he hated his job, he’d always be grateful it allowed him to live so close to the sea.

When they got back to the restaurant, Liza turned to him, her cheeks flushed. “Listen, thank you for offering to help me. I appreciate what you’re risking and I don’t blame you for interrogating me.” She smiled. “Although, your bad cop act could use some work.”

“I was off my game,” he said, his voice a bit gruff. She looked so beautiful, and it touched him that she was forgiving so easily the fact that he’d ruined her life. He hadn’t forgiven himself, yet.

She chuckled and it was a good, bubbly sound. “Sure you were. Anyway, thank you.” She turned and started to walk away from him. Sloane took a moment to enjoy her rearview yet again, before he realized what she was doing.

“Where are you headed? I’ll walk with you.”

“I’m staying with a friend tonight, so I’m taking the bus. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll wait with you.”

She nodded like she’d expected him to say that, and started walking. He wondered if the ‘friend’ was a ‘boyfriend’ and tried to figure out how to ask, before he reminded himself it didn’t matter, she could never be his.

“Normally, I’d go home, but my surprisingly repressed roommate is having what I hope is life-changing sex and I don’t want to interrupt.”

He wondered if she was so frank with everyone and tried to think of a response, but couldn’t get past thoughts of her and life-changing sex. “Good for him,” he finally managed.

“Yeah, he deserves it. He’s a great guy.”

“It was good of him to show up and get you out of there today. It’s not an area in which many lawyers are willing to tread.”

“Really? I hope I didn’t get him in trouble.” She sounded genuinely worried and he was awed by her ability to worry about others when she was neck deep in her own shit. They reached the bus stop and sat on the bench together.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Right, okay, good.” The bus pulled up, astonishingly prompt. “Well, thank you for waiting with me.”

He stepped onto the bus with her, not ready to say goodbye. “I’m actually heading in the same direction,” he lied.

Once they were seated on the bus, she eyed him suspiciously. “I thought you had a car.”

He shook his head. His lack of car was a sore point with him. He’d grown up in a world, before the climate crisis, where everyone had a car. He missed the freedom of starting up the engine and going wherever he wished as fast as he wanted to go. After the climate change, manufacturing was halted and all cars that weren’t strictly electric were taken off the roads and sent to the junkyards. The cars made now were electric, manufactured with a carbon-free method that took months, and were prohibitively expensive, as were the batteries and parts. Sloane would have to be making twice what he did to afford a car. “I have use of a company car for business only. There’s a GPS on it to insure I never use it for anything else.”

Liza smiled at him, clearly not bothered by her life without a car. “So you have to ride the bus like the rest of us. How refreshing.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant by that and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know, so he sat silently next to her, enjoying her nearness and resisting the urge to touch her, to brush the hair out of her face, to press his lips to hers and find out just how soft they were. He realized he’d been staring at her when she turned and smiled at him. “This is me.”

He stood to let her out of her seat and followed her off the bus. Once they were on the sidewalk, she looked at him, a mixture of worry and confusion on her face. “You live in this neighborhood.”

He looked around at the apartment buildings and empty storefronts and decided he didn’t need to lie to her. “It’s the middle of the night, Liza. I don’t know how many blocks from the bus stop your friend’s place is, and I’m not going to let you wander the streets alone.”

Emotions warred on her face and he braced himself for her anger. “That’s incredibly sweet of you, but I am trained in self-defense, you know. I already told you that.” She started walking and he fell into step beside her.

“I don’t doubt you can take care of yourself, but I’ve seen a lot of things in my line of work… A lot of things I’d like to un-see if I could. I’m not going to risk something happening to you, just so I can avoid coming across as a creepy stalker. I’d do the same for anyone.”

“Even Fulsom?” She asked, a teasing lilt in her tone.

Sloane laughed. “Did you know troll skin is impervious to bullets?” he asked. He’d never had a girlfriend he could talk about the fae with and he loved the wide-eyed glance Liza gave him. He loved being able to surprise her. Then he kicked himself mentally for thinking of her as a girlfriend.

“Are you making that up?”

“Nope. If anyone’s shooting at you and he’s around, just get behind him.”