Chapter 66
[Claire's POV]
The weight on my face was suffocating, and for a moment I couldn't breathe. Something warm and furry was pressed against my mouth and nose, and I could taste cat hair on my lips. I jerked awake, my heart still racing from the dream, and found myself staring into a pair of bright yellow eyes.
"Shadow," I muttered, gently pushing the black cat off my face. "You're going to smother me one of these days."
The cat merely stretched lazily and repositioned himself on my pillow, purring loudly as if nothing had happened. I spat out a few black hairs and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, already missing the fragments of the dream that were slipping away like smoke.
I'd found Shadow just two weeks ago near the residential building behind Riverside Farmers Market, the same area where we'd discovered the Thomas family crime scene. He was a tiny black kitten hiding in the alleyway, all ribs and defiant yellow eyes.
Something about finding him in that place of tragedy, yet seeing his fierce will to survive, had touched me deeply. I'd managed to coax him into my car with some leftover fish from the market, and he'd been my constant companion ever since. Maybe we'd both needed rescuing.
Since then, he'd claimed increasingly prime real estate on my bed. First the foot of the mattress, then beside my legs, then curled against my stomach, and now apparently my entire face was fair game for his sleeping arrangements.
I glanced at the clock: 4:23 AM. Too early to be awake, too late to pretend I could go back to sleep. The dream fragments were already fading, but I needed to capture what I could remember while it was still fresh.
Wrapping Shadow in my arms like a furry black cushion, I padded out to the living room and flicked on the desk lamp beside my computer. The cat settled contentedly in my lap as I opened MapQuest and typed in "Silverwood."
The map loaded slowly, revealing the sprawling layout of our city and its surrounding areas. I zoomed in on the outskirts, searching for anything that matched what I'd seen in the dream. Winding roads, sparse streetlights, the kind of place where someone could disappear without a trace.
"This isn't going to be easy," I murmured, scrolling through street after street of meandering paths that all looked frustratingly similar.
My phone buzzed on the desk, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. A text from Marcus: Can't sleep either. Everything okay?
I stared at the message, surprised. It was after four in the morning—what was he doing awake at this hour?
I typed back: Had another dream. The woman in red I mentioned. Trying to figure out where it happened.
My phone rang immediately.
"Claire?" Marcus's voice was hoarse, like he'd been awake for hours. "Tell me about the dream."
"I didn't see the end," I said, stroking Shadow's fur nervously. "Shadow decided my face made a good pillow and woke me up right when things were getting dangerous."
"Better than seeing someone die, I guess." There was a rustling sound, like he was moving papers around. "What did you see?"
I closed my eyes, trying to pull back the fading images. "A woman in a beautiful red silk dress and matching heels, walking alone on some kind of winding road. It was dark, with very few streetlights. She knew someone was following her, but when she turned around, the shadows were too thick to see who it was."
"Where was this?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." I clicked refresh on the map. "I'm looking at all the side roads around Silverwood, but there are so many of them, and they're all pretty similar. Lots of curves, not much lighting."
"This could be anywhere on the outskirts," Marcus said, and I heard the frustration in his voice. "Do you remember anything else? Any landmarks, street signs, anything distinctive?"
I scrolled through more streets on the map, each one as winding and isolated as the last. "Nothing specific. Just that feeling of being somewhere remote, where no one would hear you scream."
There was a pause, and then Marcus asked the question that made my blood run cold: "Claire, are your dreams... are they happening in real time? Or are you seeing things that happened in the past?"
I stopped scrolling. The question hung in the air between us, heavy with implications I didn't want to consider.
"I... I don't know," I admitted. "I never really thought about it that way. With Jade and Brandon, I assumed I was seeing things that had already happened, or were about to happen soon. But..." I trailed off.
"If your dreams are showing us things in real time," Marcus said slowly, "then right now, somewhere in Silverwood, there might be a woman in a red dress who's being hunted."
The words hit me like a physical blow. Shadow looked up at me, perhaps sensing my sudden tension, and began purring more loudly as if trying to comfort me.
"Marcus," I whispered, "what if I could have warned her? What if by waking up when I did, I missed the chance to see something that could help us find her?"
"Hey, don't go down that road," Marcus said firmly. "You can't control when these dreams come or how much you see. But what you've given us so far—it's more than we would have had otherwise."
We stayed on the phone for another hour, Marcus walking me through everything I could remember while I continued searching the map for anything that might match the setting. He asked about the woman's appearance, her behavior, the sound of the footsteps behind her. I found myself describing details I hadn't even realized I'd noticed: the way her dress moved in the breeze, the click of her heels on asphalt, the deliberate cadence of whoever was following her.
"I'll have Derek run searches for any reports of missing women matching your description," Marcus said finally. "And I'll put out alerts to patrol units in the outer districts. If this is happening now, maybe we can still prevent it."
"And if it already happened?"
"Then we'll find her and catch the bastard who did it."