“I'll convey your displeasure.”

“Not that it will mean a damn to him. Evidently he's not someone to be intimidated. Get back to me.” Andreas hung up.

Fire!

Mama couldn't get away. She was hurt. She had to find someone to help.

The man across the street.

Help Mama. Please, help Mama.

But she knew he wouldn't help.

Time after time. Time after time.

But she had to try. She ran across the street toward him. “Please. She needs help.”

She looked up at his face.

No face. No face. No face.

She screamed.

Kerry sat bolt upright in bed, bathed in sweat. Her heart was beating so hard it was painful. It was okay. She wasn't standing on that street in Boston. She was in Jason's guest room in Macon.

Only a dream.

Only? It was the same nightmare she'd had since childhood. But she hadn't had it for months and had hoped she might be finally rid of it. It was probably Charlie's death that had triggered its return.

It didn't matter what had caused it to come back. It was here, and if she went back to sleep it would follow her. The pattern was always the same. The dream repeated time after time the moment she went into deep sleep. Sometimes it continued for days before it stopped, leaving her exhausted and drained.

Well, she couldn't lie here waiting to go back to sleep so it could pounce on her.

She tossed aside the comforter and got out of bed. Go downstairs and get a glass of milk. Sit on the porch and let the night air cool and soothe her. And maybe, just maybe, she would get lucky and the dream would fade so far away it wouldn't attack her when she went back to sleep.

Yeah, sure.

She went to the bathroom, washed her face, and then crept quietly downstairs to the kitchen. All she needed was to wake Jason and have him cross-examine her. She had told him the nightmares that had plagued her childhood were a thing of the past. Wishful thinking.

She got her glass of milk and went outside and sat down on the back-porch steps. The wood was cool against her bare legs, and she drew a deep breath of the honeysuckle-scented air. This was normalcy. This was real. That shadowy figure of her dream was only a monster figment of her imagination.

But it wasn't imagination. He was out there. He'd done that horrible thing and was still free to destroy more lives. Her fault. Her fault.

Forget him. She had to live her own life. She couldn't keep punishing herself. She was no martyr. Her mother wouldn't have wanted her to blame herself. She lifted her glass and took a swallow of milk.

The gazebo gleamed white in the moonlight. She'd have to give it another coat of paint tomorrow, but it looked pretty good right now. Laura had done a good job on the—

“Is there room on that step for me?”

She went rigid, her gaze flying to the man standing a few yards away.

Brad Silver. Anger flared through her. “No, there's no room. Not on this step. Not in my life.” Her grip tightened on the glass of milk. “And what the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night? This is private property.”

“You woke me up.” He sat down on the step beside her. “Entirely your fault. If you weren't so messed up, I'd have a much easier time of it.”

“What do you mean, I woke you up?”

“How often do you have dreams like that? I don't remember more than one or two in the last six months.”

“Why should you—” She drew a deep breath. “What are you, and what have you been doing to me for the last six months?”

“I haven't been doing anything but monitoring. I had to become familiar with you once I decided that you'd be the best choice. Travis told me that you were the one in the beginning, but I like to make my own choices.”

“Monitoring?” She moistened her lips. “You've been prying in my mind. You're one of Michael's freak friends, aren't you?”

He made a face. “I think he probably told you that I wasn't exactly normal when you called him. What did he say?”

“Controller. He called you a controller.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “You were controlling my thoughts when Charlie was dying. How did you do it?”

“Experience. I wasn't sure that I could shut down your connection and replace it with a false image. You're very strong.”

“But you did it, damn you.”

“Because you couldn't do it yourself. If you'd let Travis train you, it might not have been necessary for you to huddle in that closet like an animal in pain.”

“I don't want to hear this.”

She started to get up, but he reached out and jerked her back down. “I don't care if you want to hear it. I've been cooling my heels patiently in the background waiting for you to recover from all this trauma over your friend's death. Now I'm going to have my say and you'll listen.”

“The hell I will.” She glared at him. “Keep your hands off me.”

“I will. I've no desire to touch you.” He glared back at her. “But you will listen or I'll wake your brother and discuss both your nightmares and how I know about them. I don't think you want him to worry about having a nutcase for a sister.”

“You bastard.”

“Actually, I am. But that doesn't alter anything. It should only convince you that I'll do what I say.”

He meant it. She glanced away from him. “Talk.”

“I want you to do a job for me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She said through her teeth, “Because you're a freak and you want to make me one too. I don't want anything to do with you. I told Michael Travis that five years ago.”

“I don't have to make you a freak. You're already one. When you came out of that coma, you brought something back with you. You know it but you don't want to deal with it.”

“I did deal with it,” she said fiercely. “I use it. That doesn't mean I have to join a bunch of weirdos like you and Travis. I want to live a normal life.”

“Too bad. You joined a fairly exclusive club when you came back from that coma. Your talent is damn rare, and I need it.”

“Screw you.”

“Travis let you off the hook. He could have pressed the gratitude button after he told you how to finesse your way out of the sanitarium, but he didn't do it. He let you go your own way. Did he ever try to recruit you?”

“Recruit?”

“Wrong word? What did he say to you?”

“He said that I wasn't a freak, that the visions were telepathic, and that I had to learn to live with them as best I could. He said that I wasn't alone and that there were others who had demonstrated psychic abilities after they'd woken from comas when they were children. He and his wife were trying to search out and find and help them.”

“Because both Michael and Melissa went through it themselves.”

She nodded. “That's what he told me. He said if I'd come to their place in Virginia, they'd help me control it.” Her lips tightened. “I didn't need help. All I needed to know was that I wasn't crazy. I can handle the rest. I've built a good life for myself.”

“Even though you're crippled.”

“You're crazy. I'm not crippled.”

“You quit being a firefighter because you were afraid. Fear's a great crippler.”

“I'm not afraid.”

“Not of the fires. You're afraid to go through the hell you did when Smitty Jones died in that fire two years ago.”

“Smitty?”

“You went through school with him and you were both stationed at Firehouse Number Ten. You were very close. Lovers?”

Her lips twisted. “Don't you know?”

“I didn't intrude. I have to have some ethics.”

“Bullshit.”

“I skimmed deep enough to know it was a relationship that tore you apart when he died. Were you joined with him like you were with Charlie?”

She didn't answer.

“I think you were. But you must have managed to pull away before he died. You were lucky. Without control, he'd probably have taken you with him if you hadn't managed to break free.”