The Lost Night Jayne Castle Read Online

  OTHER TITLES By JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

Copper Beach

In Too Deep

Fired Up

Running Hot

Sizzle and Burn down

White Lies

All Night Long

Falling Awake

Truth or Cartel

Light in Shadow

Summer in Eclipse Bay

Smoke in Mirrors

Dawn in Eclipse Bay

Lost & Establish

Eclipse Bay

Soft Focus

Eye of the Beholder

Wink

Sharp Edges

Deep Waters

Absolutely, Positively

Trust Me

Grand Passion

Hidden Talents

Wildest Hearts

Family unit Human

Perfect Partners

Sweet Fortune

Silver Linings

The Gold Gamble

Past JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS AMANDA QUICK

Crystal Gardens

Quicksilver

Burning Lamp

The Perfect Poison

The Tertiary Circumvolve

The River Knows

Second Sight

Lie by Moonlight

Look Until Midnight

The Paid Companion

Late for the Hymeneals

Don't Look Dorsum

Slightly Shady

Wicked Widow

I Thee Wednesday

Seduction

Affair

Mischief

Mystique

Mistress

Deception

Desire

Unsafe

Reckless

Ravished

Rendezvous

Scandal

Surrender

With This Ring

BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE

The Lost Night

Canyons of Night

Midnight Crystal

Obsidian Prey

Night Light

Silver Master

Ghost Hunter

After Glow

Harmony

After Dark

Amaryllis

Zinnia

Orchid

K. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Grouping

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, Us • Penguin Group (Canada), xc Eglinton Avenue E, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a partition of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Republic of ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a sectionalization of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books Republic of india Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Bulldoze, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, Due south Africa • Penguin Red china, B7 Jaiming Eye, 27 Due east Tertiary Band Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, Prc

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2013 past Jayne Ann Krentz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in whatsoever printed or electronic class without permission. Delight exercise non participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Information

Krentz, Jayne Ann.

Dream eyes / Jayne Ann Krentz.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-one-101-60914-9

1. Psychics—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.R44D74 2013 2012027313

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and whatever resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Frank, as always, with love

Acknowledgments

A very special thanks to Stephen Castle, a course director for the National Clan of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), an instructor trainer for the Public Safety Diving Association (PSDA) and an instructor trainer for TDI. He owns AAI Neptune Defined, Las Vegas, and he is cavern/cave–certified. I am grateful for his technical assistance and advice. Too, I'one thousand proud to say, he is my brother. Really, it is just so useful having an expert in the family. Whatever errors in the text are mine, all mine.

Contents

Also by Jayne Ann Krentz

Title Folio

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

One

2

Three

Four

Five

Six

7

Eight

9

X

11

Twelve

13

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Xviii

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Xx-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

20-five

Twenty-half-dozen

Twenty-7

Twenty-eight

Xx-nine

Thirty

Thirty-1

Thirty-2

Xxx-iii

Thirty-four

Xxx-five

Thirty-vi

Thirty-seven

Thirty-8

30-nine

Forty

Forty-1

40-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Twoscore-seven

Forty-eight

One

The dead diver was wedged like a bone in the stone throat of the underwater cave they called the Monster. The body—nevertheless clad in a tank and regulator, fins, buoyancy compensator and mask—shifted gently in the subtle electric current. One gloved hand rose and roughshod in spectral warning.

Plow back.

Merely for Judson Coppersmith at that place was no going dorsum.

The locals on the island claimed that the flooded cavern creature swallowed divers whole. The adrenaline junkies who were foolish enough to ignore the signs exterior at the entrance never got far within the uncharted labyrinth of underwater passages. The smart ones turned dorsum in time. Just the explosion in the dry department of the cavern had sealed the aboveground exit and canceled that option. His merely promise was to effort to swim out to the sea through the Monster.

In that location was no darkness as dumbo and relentless equally that of the interior of an underwater cave. But the clarity of the water was surreal. The beam of the flashlight sliced through the deep night like a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, pinning the body.

He swam closer and took stock of the expressionless man'southward equipment. Relief swept through him when he saw that the killers had not bothered to drain the victim's air tank. He stripped information technology off the bloated trunk, tucked it under one arm and helped himself to the diver's flashlight too. Throughout the process, the dead eyes stared at him reproachfully through the mask.

Sorry, pal, but your gear is of no utilise to you now. Non sure information technology will do me any good, either, but it will buy me a footling fourth dimension.

He eased by the body and focused the sharp calorie-free on the twisted stone passage. The urge to swim forward as quickly as possible was almost overwhelming.

But impulsive decisions would kill him equally surely as running out of air. He forced himself to migrate for a few seconds.

There it was, the faint but steady pull of the current. It would either exist his lifeline or the false lure that drew him to his death. He slipped into the stream of the ultra-clear water and allowed it to guide him deeper into the maze.

The islanders claimed that there was an leave to the body of water. That had been proven years ago by a uncomplicated dye test. A coloring agent poured into the cavern pool had emerged a short distance offshore. Just the isle was riddled with caves, and no i had been able to find the underwater leave point. Defined had died trying.

Information technology was getting difficult to breathe off the first tank of air, the one he had grabbed when he had been forced into the water. It was almost empty. He took it off and gear up it down on a rocky ledge with keen intendance. The last thing he needed now was to stir up the sediment on the floor of the cave. If that happened, he would exist forced to waste precious time waiting for the electric current to clear out the storm of droppings. Time meant air usage. He had none to spare. There was, in fact, a staggeringly high probability that he would non accept enough air regardless of how carefully he managed the one article that meant life or death.

He slipped on the dead man's tank and waited a beat out, drifting upward a petty. Sometimes in a flooded cave the electric current was stronger toward the roof of the tunnel.

One time again he sensed it, the faint, invisible tug that urged him deeper into the flooded labyrinth.

Former later on—he refused to expect at his spotter considering in that location was no betoken—the flashlight began to go dark. He used it as long equally possible, but the beam faded rapidly. The countless night closed in around him. Until now he had never had a problem with darkness. His paranormal night vision allowed him to navigate without the aid of normal light. In other circumstances, the natural para-radiations in the rocks would have been sufficient to illuminate his surroundings. Only the foreign aurora that had appeared in the cavern and the explosion that had followed had seared his senses, rendering him psychically blind. There was no style to know if the effects would be permanent and not much indicate in worrying about information technology at present. The loss of his talent would non matter if he did not make it out of the flooded catacombs alive.

He fumbled with the flashlight that he had taken off the trunk, nearly dropping it in the process of switching information technology on. The chill of the h2o was making him clumsy. The thin 3mm suit he wore provided merely limited protection. Although the island was in the Caribbean, he was in freshwater here in the cavern, and the temperature at this depth was unpleasantly cold.

10 minutes afterward, he rounded a bend and saw that the rocky corridor through which he was pond narrowed drastically. He was forced to take off his tank and push it into and beyond the asphyxiate point. He barely managed to clasp through after it. The nightmare scenario of getting stuck—unable to go frontward or back—sent his heart rate climbing. He was suddenly using air at an fifty-fifty faster rate.

And then he was on the other side. The passage widened once again. Gradually, he got his breathing back under control. But the harm had been washed. He had used upward a lot of air.

He got the first clue that the current was guiding him in the right direction when he noticed that the once crystal-clear water was starting to become somewhat murky. It was an indication that he had reached the point where the freshwater of the hole-and-corner river was converging with seawater. That still left a lot of room for things to get wrong. It was entirely possible that he would discover the exit only to find out that he could not fit through information technology. If that happened, he would spend his final minutes as a condemned human being gazing upward through the stone bars of his prison cell at the summertime sunlight filtering through the tropical sea.

The second flashlight slowly died, plunging him into absolute darkness. Instinctively he tried to heighten his talent. Nix happened. He was still psi-bullheaded.

All he could practise now was try to follow the current. He swam slowly, his hands outstretched in an attempt to ward off a close encounter with the rocky walls of the cave.

At one point, to keep his spirits upward more than anything else, he took the regulator out of his rima oris long enough to taste the water. It was unmistakably salty. He was now in a sea cave.

When he perceived the start, faint glow infusing the endless realm of nighttime, he considered the possibility that he was hallucinating. It was a reasonable assumption, given the sensory disorientation created past the absolute darkness and the fact that he knew he was sucking upwards the concluding of his air. Perchance this was the mysterious bright light that those who had survived almost-expiry experiences described. In his instance, it would be followed by for-real death.

One affair was certain. If he survived, he would never again take the lite of a summer twenty-four hour period for granted.

The pale glow brightened steadily. He swam faster. Nada to lose.

Two

You're too late," the ghost in the mirror said. "I'yard already dead."

At that place was no accusation in the words, just a calm argument of fact. Dr. Evelyn Ballinger had always been logical and even-tempered in life, reserving her deepest passions for her piece of work. There was no reason why expiry would give her a personality transplant. But knowing that did nothing to atmosphere the terrible sense of dread and guilt that chilled Gwen Frazier's blood. If only she had opened the electronic mail last night instead of this morning time.

If only. The two most despairing words in the English language.

She crossed the cluttered, heavily draped room that Evelyn had converted into an part. All of the rooms in the business firm were dark. Evelyn had never liked sunlight. She claimed it interfered with her work.

Gwen's movement through the room stirred the nevertheless air. The crystal wind chimes suspended from the ceiling shivered, producing an eerie music that seemed to come from across the grave. The audio raised the hair on the dorsum of Gwen's neck.

In the doorway behind her, Max, Evelyn'south burly gray cat, meowed plaintively equally if enervating that Gwen fix the situation. Simply there was no fixing death.

The body was crumpled on the flooring beside the desk. Evelyn had been in her early seventies, a large, generously proportioned woman who had been caught in a fashion fourth dimension warp like so many others who resided in the small town of Wilby, Oregon. With her long gray pilus, voluminous tie-dyed skirts, and crystal jewelry, she had been a model of the proudly eccentric look that Gwen privately labeled Hippie Couture.

Evelyn'southward blue eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Her reading glasses lay on the flooring. A photo had fallen beside one mitt. The pinhole at the meridian of the motion picture indicated information technology had come from the corkboard over the desk-bound. There was no claret or obvious bruising on the torso.

"No sign of an injury, you'll notice," the mirror ghost said. "What does that tell us?"

"Always the teacher," Gwen said. "You can't help yourself, can you?"

"No point changing at present, is in that location, beloved? I repeat my question. What does the lack of an obvious injury bespeak?"

"Could be natural causes. You lot were seventy-two years old, a type two diabetic who insisted on eating all the wrong foods, and y'all were absentminded when it came to taking your meds. You refused to lose weight, and the only exercise you got was an occasional stroll down by the river."

"Ah, yes, the river," the ghost said softly. "You won't forget the river or the falls, will you lot, love?"

"No," Gwen said. "Never."

She knew in that location was no hope, simply she fabricated herself check for a pulse. At that place was only the terrible chill and the utter stillness of decease. She got slowly to her feet.

"This scene looks dreadfully familiar, doesn't it?" the ghost said. "Brings to listen what happened ii years ago."

"Yes," Gwen said. "It does."

"Another person connected to the study is expressionless by what appears to be natural causes. Scrap of a coincidence, don't you think?"

Gwen looked at the vision in the mirror. The ghosts were always wispy, smoky images—never abrupt and clear like photographs. For the nearly function, the specters sh

e encountered were strangers, simply she had known a few of them all also well. Evelyn Ballinger had at present joined that short list. Evelyn had been both mentor and friend.

"I'm sorry," Gwen said to the ghost. "I didn't see your eastward-mail until this morning. I called y'all right away. When yous didn't answer your telephone, I knew something was wrong."

"Of grade you did, dear." The ghost chuckled. "You lot're psychic."

"I got into the car and drove down hither to see yous. But it's a iv-hr trip from Seattle."

"Y'all mustn't arraign yourself, dear," the ghost said. "There is zero y'all could have done. Information technology happened last night, as you lot can see. I was working here in my role. You remember that I was always a night owl."

"Yep," Gwen said. "I remember. Your electronic mail to me came in around two o'clock this morning."

"Ah, yes, of course. You would take been asleep."

But she hadn't been comatose, Gwen thought. She had been walking the floors of her small condo, trying to work off the disturbing images from the dream. It had been two years since Zander Taylor's death, simply each summertime in tardily Baronial the nightmares struck. Her talent for lucid dreaming immune her to command the dreams to some extent, but she had not been able to dispel them. Each time she dreamed the terrifying scenes from that summer of death, she came awake with the same unnerving sense that information technology had not ended with Taylor going over the falls.

"I was up," Gwen said. "Merely I wasn't checking e-mail."

She stepped back from the body and dug her telephone out of her tote. Max meowed once more and lashed his tail.

"I'g sorry, Max. There's nothing I can practise. It's too late."

Max did not look satisfied with that response. He watched her intently with his greenish-gold eyes.

She concentrated on punching in the emergency number and tried non to look at the mirror. Talking to ghosts was non a expert thing. It made other people—potential lovers too as friends—extremely nervous. After all, in that location were no ghosts. She was really talking to herself, trying to make sense of the letters that her odd form of intuition picked upwards at the scenes of vehement decease.

She usually went out of her style to avoid such conversations because she constitute them incredibly frustrating. There was, after all, very lilliputian she could exercise for the dead. That was the task of the police.

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