Dream Weaver

Neither Meliana nor Johnny corrected him, but Johnny did send the man a speculative look as he walked off. “Does every guy you know have a thing for you, Mel?”

“I doubt if Nick has a thing for any female, Johnny. Rumor is he’s gay.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, darling. Why is it so cold on this floor?”

“Because the AC system’s been acting up, and until yesterday it was eighty-two degrees outside.”

“It’s sixty-two now and dropping. Did I hear your nurse friend mention coffee?”

Meliana removed her cap. “There’s usually a pot in the doctor’s lounge. Five’s warm, we can go up there.” She started for the elevator. “Did you talk to the people in Charlie’s apartment block?”

“Running the list, that would be a cat lady named Summer, a guy who makes his own vitamins, a bus driver, a stripper and two old women who’ve lived in the building since they were twenty.”

“Isn’t there a man who studies reptiles?”

“He’s in New Mexico until Thanksgiving. No sublet. Only the cat lady had anything to tell me, and it wasn’t about the writing on my windshield.”

“Please don’t say one of her cats got run over.”

“Went missing.” Johnny offered her a smile. “I’m under strict orders as an agent of the government to whom she pays her taxes to keep an eye out for a fur ball named Fluff.”

“Did you get a description?”

“I got the hell out of there. She has twenty-seven felines, Mel, in a one-bedroom apartment. Eight of them were abused by their previous owners. They don’t like men, and five of them have claws like grizzly bears.”

“At least Summer’s heart’s in the right place.” Meliana glanced back along the corridor as the elevator door slid open. “I think Nick took my disk.”

“Ella?”

“Her greatest hits.”

“Maybe he’s planning to return it to you tonight, at home.”

“And maybe you’re looking for ulterior motives where none exist. Nick’s more likely to want you than me.”

“Thanks for that.”

She pushed five, then patted his cheek. “Take it as a compliment.”

“I took the card that was attached to Lokie’s collar to the police today, but I’m not holding my breath they’ll be able to make anything of it.”

“It looked computer generated. Obviously this guy wants to remain anonymous. Would you rather go to my office for coffee?”

“Why? Do I seem uncomfortable here?”

She laughed. “You act in hospitals the way I act around open heights.”

“White-knuckled.”

She pressed seven. “I want this to be nothing, Johnny. I could’ve convinced myself it was if I hadn’t seen the writing on your windshield last night. He followed us to Charlie’s place.”

Johnny leaned against the wall while the large elevator worked its way upward. “He was warning me last night, Mel, not you.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better. And don’t say you’re trained to deal with stuff like this. No one’s ever really equipped to handle an unstable person. It’s like playing dodgeball with a bottle of nitro.”

The doors opened. Warm air flooded in and with it the smell of lavender.

“Better than disinfectant,” Johnny remarked. “How do you stand it? All the death and sickness and open wounds.”

She turned left. “You put it into perspective and remind yourself you’re here to help people feel better, to make sure they live instead of die.”

“And when they die anyway?”

“Then you try and remember the ones who didn’t.”

“Sounds like a tall order to me.” His brows came together. “Did you change offices?”

“I got a window when Dr. Morrison retired. He left his coffeemaker. It usually works.” She regarded him in mild concern as he scanned the desk, the filing cabinet and her new lake view. “I think you should go back to Blue Lake, Johnny. Today. This guy, whoever he is, probably won’t do any more than he’s already done.” She hoped.

“In other words, you think I’ll flip out if I stay in Chicago much longer.”

“The unofficial recommendation was for you to avoid work-related stress for a while.”

“It’s been six months, Mel.”

“You were undercover for two years.” And the eight brief times she’d seen him during that period had shown a marked deterioration, both in his attitude and his demeanor. He’d been less and less Johnny Grand and more and more John Garcia, cold, hard and abusive. Not to her, at least not physically, but in every other way.

“I was…” Johnny began, but Meliana set a finger on his lips and glanced at her pager.

“I have to go to the nurses’ station. Coffee’s in the cabinet under the machine. I might be a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait.”

He had that stubborn look on his face. She’d seen it too many times to bother arguing. There were other, more effective ways to get around Johnny when he dug in.

“Oh, good, Dr. Maynard, you’re here.” The desk nurse came to the counter. “Mrs. Lund’s been rescheduled for three o’clock. There’s a cyst on two that Dr. Hilton wants to go over with you, and this came up an hour ago from Main Reception.”

She handed over a padded brown envelope.

“No return address,” Meliana noted.

“At least you can figure you’re not being sued. Law firms make sure their names are front and center. Anyway, I think this was hand delivered.”

Meliana glanced toward her office. Then she thanked the nurse and took the envelope along the hall to the solarium.

There were two patients in wheelchairs enjoying the plants and filtered sunshine. Meliana kept her hand steady as she opened the flap. There was no street name on the mailing label, no stamp or express post tag. Had it come from inside the hospital or out?

Mood music played softly in the background. Several more jarring sounds thrummed in her head.

Her stomach clenched as she removed a pair of silver-white stockings, tied with a white ribbon and topped with a white bow. Attached to the bow was a small white card.

“I’m going to change my favorite color,” she murmured, and drew a curious stare from one of the patients.

She turned toward the window, breathed in and read the message.

Accept this token of my love, Meliana

Accept my love.

Accept me.

We are meant to be.

Chapter Three

Johnny returned to Blue Lake late that afternoon. He’d felt something black and ugly pressing in on him, a stream of memories and reactions he was neither prepared to handle nor capable of offsetting.

He needed to breathe, to recenter himself and find his focus. It wasn’t so much that he’d lost it—his world since he’d met her had been Meliana—but having been immersed in a seductively evil role for so long, he tended to stray into rather unpleasant areas from time to time.

He phoned Julie as he drove north.

“She’s holding something back,” he said. “She’s a good actress, but I could see it in her body language, in the way she was moving and walking.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Julie promised. “You’re only an hour away, Johnny.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. I just need a little time to chill and think.”

He ended the call and ordered himself to be steady. He could chill out over the past while he thought about the present.

What did this rose guy want from Meliana? How far would he go to get it? Was Meliana in danger?

Johnny frowned, glanced in his rearview mirror. He should have stayed in Chicago, should have taken his wife out for dinner. He could have worked on her until she’d agreed to come to Blue Lake with him.

Easily said in retrospect, not so easily done with Meliana. When she was on call or the hospital was short staffed, a bulldozer couldn’t budge her from the city.

The lakeside house was dark when he arrived. He unlocked the door, went in and switched on the first lamp that came to hand. He was heading for the fridge and a cold beer when a pair of headlights slashed across the front window.

Johnny recognized the shape of the cruiser, made it two cans and dropped onto the sofa.

“Door’s open, Zack,” he said through the screen.

“I took a chance and swung past on my way back from Woodstock.” Deputy Zack Crawford caught the beer Johnny tossed him. He looked around the tidier-than-usual main room. “Either Meliana’s back, or my mother’s been here. I’m guessing my mother.”

Johnny rested his head on the cushions. “I’m in trouble. She’s started making dinners and freezing them for me.”

“She needs someone to fuss over, and I’ve been out of town a lot lately.”

“Business?”

Zack sat on the ottoman and popped his beer. “You could say that. I’m taking a course—paramedic training. I signed up in late spring and still have a fair distance to go, but when I’m done, I’ll be able to get out of here and down to the city.”

“Why not train to be a cop?”

“Being a deputy’s what I fell into, Johnny, not what I wanted. It’s all about saving people’s lives, right? I’m tired of slapping kids’ wrists in the summer and making sure old Harry Riley gets home from the bar in the winter. Just do me a favor, and don’t tell my mother.”

“She doesn’t know?” Johnny took a long drink. “How’d you manage that?”

“I lied.”

“Good a way as any, I guess.”

Standing, Zack crossed the floor to the large side window. He had a build similar to Johnny’s, lean and rangy, with long legs and blond-brown hair. That’s where the resemblance ended. Zack’s eyes were green and his nose was slightly skewed from a bad break in high school. He brushed his hair back from a cleanly sculpted face, had a quick grin, a bad knee and a small scar on the left side of his jaw.

“What are you looking at?” Johnny asked when Zack peered around the blind.

“Just wondering if you can see Tim Carrick’s place from here. Mrs. Wilmot at the post office swears she saw him walking naked in the woods last week.”

“Tim’s the hairy guy with the beer gut, right?”

“Have you seen him around?”

“Not naked, but yeah, I see him all the time on weekends. He was loading his pickup with old crates last Sunday.”

“Strange guy.” Zack sipped his beer. “You see him up here, you think he’s a hillbilly, right? But he’s a salesman during the week. Pharmaceuticals. He walks naked in the woods, glares at everyone he meets, then takes off to the city and pushes his company’s pills on anyone who’ll listen. It’s no wonder his wife left him.”

“Was she the woman I used to hear shouting in Spanish?”

“Portuguese. Her name’s Vivianne. Meliana knew her. She was half English, half Brazilian. They watched Wheel of Fortune sometimes over at Tim’s place when Mel came up for the weekend. She took off about a year ago.”

“Back to Brazil?”

“Miami, I heard. Tim doesn’t talk about her, and most of us are too weirded out by the guy to press. Man, I tell you, I like it here, but I won’t be sorry to lose this place. Small-town dynamics and all. You’re lucky you’re FBI. People hesitate before poking their nose into a federal agent’s business.” Zack regarded his watch. “Ten-thirty. If I want out, I’d better hit the books.”

“Are you on duty tomorrow?”

“Four hours’ worth. Phil and I are pulling part-time shifts right now. Sheriff Frank got back from his Shriner’s convention in Gary today. I’ll catch you later, Johnny. Keep an eye out for Tim.”

Just what he needed, Johnny reflected, a nudist neighbor who liked to walk in the woods. A man who no longer lived with his wife. A guy with two different and distinct sides to his personality.

Disgusted with himself, Johnny got off the sofa and made a circle of the room. He shouldn’t be here. He’d given in to a moment of panic and flown. He could handle city life—he’d done it for years. Meliana had urged him to go, he’d felt the pressure building in his head, he’d caved and fled. What a wuss he’d turned into.

He gnawed on the side of his lip, glanced at his jacket, then released a breath and snatched it off the hook. Keys. Where? He searched the room twice, felt his pockets. There was nothing except an old shopping list inside.

He checked the top of the fridge, then his computer desk. He had e-mail, he noticed and gave the mouse a tap.

It wouldn’t be Mel. She preferred the phone. And his supervisors in Chicago weren’t likely to…

The thought dried up, simply vanished when the message appeared on screen. His blood turned to ice as he read it.

MELIANA’S MINE.

YOU TOUCH HER, YOU DIE.

MELIANA WAS UPSTAIRS in her home office, reviewing the file of a patient scheduled for surgery the next day, when she heard the commotion outside. Her brows went up as she checked her desk clock. Twelve minutes past midnight?

The men’s voices grew louder. She recognized them, and for a moment rolled closer to the window to listen.

“Fat lot of help you’ve been, Grand. You hang around for less than a day, then rush back up to your lakeside retreat so you can bury your head in the sand. If that’s your plan of action, you should stay there and leave the dirty work to those of us who can handle it. Man, do you think about anyone but yourself these days? Some creep waltzes in here, plants a flower in your ex’s lingerie drawer and steals some of her stuff. The cops shrug their shoulders, you take off and, meanwhile, some sicko’s running around with only his crazy brain cells functioning. It’s depraved.”

“Done yet?” Johnny asked when he ran out of breath. Meliana recognized the tone. She closed her eyes as she heard Chris’s muffled “Oomph.”

However, knowing Chris as she did, she imagined he’d given Johnny a hard shove or two to punctuate his earlier points.

No matter what he’d been through, Johnny wouldn’t use his fists unless he was pushed right to the wall. In the case of Chris Blackburn, that wall might be mere inches from Johnny’s back, but he still wouldn’t have precipitated a physical fight.

Shannon reached the front door ahead of her. Lokie, who’d been returned to her that evening, lagged behind.

“Coward,” she accused, and gave the dog’s head a scratch.

Lokie barked and sniffed her hand for a treat as she opened the door.

“Who do you think you are?” Chris demanded, red faced.

He was broader than Johnny and taller by about three inches, yet somehow Johnny’s presence always managed to dwarf him. Still, Chris outweighed Johnny by a good forty pounds. In an all-out fight, that could present a problem.

Motioning for the dogs to stay back, Meliana leaned on the doorjamb and regarded the pair of them.

“This is my house, and you’re trespassing.” Johnny pitched his voice lower than Chris. He wouldn’t shout unless it was absolutely necessary. “Go home, Blackburn.”

Chris responded by shoving him again. “This is Mel’s house. You moved out, remember? She lives here, I live two doors down and you have no business being here.”

Meliana caught the gleam in Johnny’s dark eyes and cleared her throat. “Don’t like to spoil your fun, guys, but you’re making a lot of noise for this time of night.”

“Andy wears earplugs.” Chris shot Johnny a hostile look. “He’s the only neighbor within range, and anyone in the park at this time of night doesn’t care what we’re doing.”

“I care.”

“Yeah, well, I caught your ex skulking in the bushes.”

“He’s not my ex,” Meliana reminded him. “Johnny has every right to be here, Chris.”

Johnny rested his butt on the iron rail. “Nice try, though. Now tell her what you were doing.”

Chris’s fingers twitched. “I was checking the place for perverts.”

“By sitting in the backyard and staring up at her bedroom window? He was waiting for you to go to bed, Mel,” Johnny said with contempt.

Meliana hooked his arm and drew him toward the door. “You’re like two kids fighting over a toy. Thanks for the thought, Chris, but I’m fine. You can take off.”

The look he sent Johnny smoldered. “I’ll hear if she screams.”

Meliana held fast to Johnny’s arm while Chris stalked away. “Let it go, okay? You copped an assignment he wanted. He resents you for it. Maybe it even scares him a little, seeing how it affected you. He could have been the one who almost got swept under. The outcome might have been worse if it had.”

“Blackburn’s got a granite skull. He’d have come out of it just fine.”

“Now you’re flattering him?” Meliana urged the dogs inside and closed the door. “This balled-fist stuff you guys do totally baffles me. Are you friends or not?”

“Not. One guy wants another guy’s wife, he’s no friend.”

“Remove me from the picture. Closer then?”

“Unlikely.” Johnny scowled. “Maybe. I don’t know. Are you all right?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No more roses?”

Guilt and a trace of renewed fear trickled in, replacing amusement. “Not so far.” She rubbed her palm on the leg of her jeans. “Do you want coffee?”

He hesitated. “You were working, weren’t you?”

“Homework for an op tomorrow. I’m clear on the details. Why did you come back?”

“Because I felt like a wimp for leaving.”

“You plowed a fist into Chris Blackburn’s stomach. I wouldn’t call that wimpy.”

In the kitchen doorway he stopped, brows raised. “You changed the appliances.”

“They were my grandmother’s.”

“Were?”

Meliana opened the stainless steel fridge. “She died fourteen months ago, Johnny. I was going to tell you when your assignment was done, but—well, I didn’t.”

Johnny swore, raked a hand through his hair and began to pace. “I liked her.”

“I know. There was no funeral, only a memorial service on Maui. She wanted me to have her appliances. They were brand-new, and she knew how much I love to cook.”

“Hell.” Johnny dropped onto a tall counter stool. “I should have been there.”

She pushed two plates, a knife and half a coconut cake into his hands. “Don’t beat yourself up over something you can’t change. No one expected you to come, least of all me. I knew you were FBI when I married you. Anyway—” she ran a teasing finger along the line of his jaw “—I wasn’t alone.” His expression went from blank to suspicious so quickly that she laughed. “My brother was there, and Julie flew over with me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You want me to tell you what I’m thinking right now?”

“No.” Because he wasn’t doing it, she picked up the knife and sliced into the cake. “But I think I should tell you something.”

“Good or bad?”

“You decide.” She licked frosting from her thumb. “The rose guy sent me a pair of white stockings, tied with a white ribbon and bow.”

Johnny trapped her chin. “It was this afternoon, wasn’t it? When you left your office.”

“The package was hand delivered, or at least hand placed. No one downstairs remembers receiving it. Reception said it just appeared. Probably true.”

His eyes held steady on hers. “Did you give it to Julie?”

“Not yet. I handled everything carefully—not that I think there’ll be prints.”

“Where’s the stuff?”

“Upstairs in my office.” She waited a beat, then added. “There was a card.”

“Damn it, Mel.”

She raised the cake knife. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not being stupid, and I’m not taking this lightly. I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell you first or Julie.”

“What did the card say?”

She sighed. “‘Accept this token of my love, Meliana. Accept my love. Accept me. We are meant to be.’”

Anger sparked in his eyes. “And you sat on this?”

One thing Johnny Grand had never been able to do was browbeat her. She leaned forward on her elbows and said clearly, “Yes, I did. Make a fuss, and I’ll take my cake and leave you here in the dark.”

Johnny regarded her for several long seconds, then made a sound in his throat and reached into his back pocket. “This came for me today while I was here in Chicago. I sourced it to a South Side Internet Café.”

Meliana scanned the brief message. It was more malevolent than hers and, as a result, far more frightening.

“He threatened your life.” She glanced at the living-room window, visible across the open island. “Why do I think he’s serious?”

“Because people like this exist, Mel. Always have, always will.”

“Why choose me? And you?”

“Because you’re beautiful, bright and talented. And he figures I might be in the way….” He paused, looked away. “I think.”

She was quick enough to follow his sudden shift of thought. “This has nothing to do with your work, Johnny. Anyone who might want to hurt you the way you’re thinking would simply put a bullet through my head.”

“Not everyone uses a simple approach, Mel. One guy I was involved with prefers torture to a shot in the head. His name’s Enrique Jago. If something’s illegal, he’ll take it on. He pimps his own wife to business associates. My contact thought he might have made me near the end.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think so, but I could be wrong.”

She quashed the tendrils of uneasiness in her stomach. “Why would he send me roses? It’s a form of torture, I’ll admit, but there are much nastier versions if he’s really into it.”

“He’s different with women.”

“In what way?”

Johnny leaned forward, trapped a strand of her hair and brought it to his lips. His lashes shielded his eyes as he replied in flawless Spanish, “To invoke terror in the heart of a woman is to be granted power over her. Total power. The power to choose whether she lives…” Using her hair, Johnny tugged her forward until their lips touched. “Or whether,” he whispered against her mouth, “she dies.”

The last thing Meliana wanted to do was kiss him. It would get her all tangled up again, and she still wasn’t untangled from their separation. But she let herself tumble in because that’s how it had always been between them. A quick fall followed by a fiery meltdown.

She opened herself to him, let him explore while she touched him, tasted him, inhaled him—and tried very hard not to let reason sneak in.

He slid a hand into her hair, cupped her head and held her in place while he quite literally ravaged her mouth.

Deep kisses, she thought in a daze. They numbed her mind and sent her emotions spinning out of control. Only Johnny could do this to her. Only Johnny had ever really done anything to her. Only he had ever hurt her.

She wanted to push against his chest, but she didn’t rush it. The heat of him made her want to slide in deep and stay there. It wouldn’t be a safe or secure place, but it would be exciting. And Meliana lived for excitement. Or she had once.

She pressed her palm to his heart, felt it beating hard and fast against his ribs. “Johnny, stop,” she managed, and drew back. “Just—stop.”

He did, with an effort that was visible even to her blurred mind.

He closed those stunning eyes of his and let his head fall forward. “Sorry,” he said, then gave a soft laugh and breathed out, “No, I’m not.”

In his real life he’d never been much of a liar. Meliana collected what composure she could and stepped away. When she saw the dogs staring at them with lolling tongues, she found her sense of humor and felt a smile work its way across her lips.

“We had to go and complicate a perfectly workable situation, didn’t we?”

“I did it, Mel. You just…”

“Tripped and fell against your mouth?”

“If it keeps things level, yeah.”

She hesitated a moment, then brushed the hair from his face. “Nothing’s ever been level for us, Johnny. Not then or now.”

“And we’re doing our utmost to see that it stays that way.” He flicked a finger between them. “This is why I slept at Andy’s last night and will again tonight.”

She glanced next door. “He’ll love you for waking him at this hour. Andy’s sleeping habits tend to follow the sun.”

“He got a parking ticket last week. I’ll ask Julie to fix it. That’ll square us. Can I take the cake?”

She nodded, but stopped him before he could leave. “It wasn’t your fault, Johnny.”

From the doorway, he regarded her. “Tonight or overall?”