See Me in Your Dreams Read Free Page B

until the girl's image multiplied
on several monitors.
    "... and
then we have a story we see every day," Skelly intoned in an authoritative
voice. "Teenagers vanishing from their homes. But did Cheryl Leighton run
away as the police report indicates, or was she the victim of foul play as her
father, real estate magnate Tyler Leighton, wants us to believe?"
    Sitting
through the first two stories and myriad commercials of the half-hour program
was the most difficult twenty minutes Keelin ever spent. She kept telling
herself she was mistaken. There could be no connection. She'd imagined it.
    But Cheryl
Leighton had disappeared...and her dream had been of a runaway, the setting
some unknown American city.
    On edge, she
watched footage of the girl and her father at some kind of building christening
ceremony, as Skelly explained, "Two nights ago, fourteen year old Cheryl
Leighton disappeared from the North Bluff home she shared with her widowed
father. So far in the investigation, the police have turned up no evidence of
foul play."
    Then, before
that same home, a mansion on a bluff overlooking the lake, her father spoke to
the camera. "Cheryl wouldn't have run away," Tyler Leighton insisted.
"She had no reason. She was a happy kid. A normal kid. She wasn't involved
in gangs or drugs. We had a great relationship. We never even fought."
    But a flash of
something unsettling in his pale blue eyes put a lie to those words, Keelin
thought. Something he wasn't saying.
    Why did he do it? Why? Now that I know, everything is
ruined...
    Fragments of
the dreams whirled through Keelin's head. She replayed them to the best of her
ability. In her mind, the girl was fiddling with her bracelet, taking succor
from the familiar sound of the tinkling charms, when Keelin caught sight of the
very same bracelet on the monitor. Her eyes widened as the proof transfixed
her.
    Then his image returned to the screen. The
father. The reason the girl had run.
    "All I
want is my daughter back," he was saying grimly. "Home and safe. I'll
do anything to make that
happen."
    And Keelin
realized she would do anything, as well. This couldn't turn out like the last
time. Dear God, she would never be able to live with herself if something
desperate happened to Cheryl Leighton.
    But how to go
about finding her?
    Putting her
trust in a cousin who had no idea of what he was dealing with, she cornered
Skelly directly after the taping, insisted they return to the privacy of his
office where they could talk without being overheard.
    The moment the
door was closed behind them, she said, "I know you'll find this hard to
believe, but I have a connection to the Leighton girl."
    "What
kind of a connection?"
    "The kind
I sometimes get through a dream."
    "A
dream," he echoed, settling a hip on the edge of his desk.
    She'd seen
that look before. Mocking disbelief. Not that she could blame him. Pacing to
assuage her nerves, she told Skelly what she had to. Only the minimum. Not the
details of her worst night terrors. She focused on the current situation,
briefly capsulizing both incidents.
    "In the
past, the dreams have always been connected to someone I knew or at least
met," Keelin then told him. "This was different. I thought maybe it
was just a simple dream because I had no idea of who the girl was. Or where she was, for that matter. Now I
know the big American-looking city in the second dream obviously is Chicago,
because Cheryl Leighton is the girl." She indicated her wrist. "That
unusual bracelet she was wearing in the news footage...I saw it twice
before."
    Unable to
discern if Skelly believed her or not, she tensely waited for his reaction.
    That he said
"You know this sounds absurd" didn't thrill her.
    "The
dreams are not something I asked for or want, Skelly...no more than Gran did. It's
part of her inheritance...at least for me."
    He scowled.
"Dad did say something about his mother being considered a bit fey."
    "You
don't have to believe, Skelly. Just help me. Help Cheryl