Double Cross [2] by Carolyn Crane Read Free Book Online Page A

out.”
    “Well, you weren’t there.”
    “I don’t need to have been there, Justine, to tell you what Otto will and won’t do.”
    “You can’t predict everything about a person from seeing their psychology.”
    “Yes. I can. It’s simple pattern recognition. Otto will do what he needs to do to stay in control.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    Packard smirks.
    “Unfortunately, Packard, pretending you’re a psychic won’t make you a psychic.”
    “Seeing psychology is better than being a psychic,” he says.
    “Are we done?”
    “You, for instance.” He sits back. “One of the things about you is your tendency to insulate people from the reality of who you are. You hide the hard things. The things you think people won’t like.”
    “I am so tired of your pop psychology insights. Maybe it works on the thugs and thieves you live off of—”
    Packard turns his gaze on me. It’s not that he wasn’t looking at me before, of course, but it’s different suddenly—like his gaze is burning a laser dot into my forehead. “Remember how you hid all those truths of your life from Cubby? Not just being a disillusionist, but all kinds of things.”
    It’s here that I get a very bad feeling.
    “You have the same sort of relationship with Otto. Which is why, even though this bit about the dream invader conferencing our sleeping minds together is somethingOtto would desperately want to know, you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him.”
    A guess, but of course he’s right. I feel the heat rush to my face.
    “Fear. Guilt. It’s inevitable with you,” he continues. “You feel responsible for her compromising us in the first place, and you feel guilty about the feelings you still have for me—feelings that might be reinvigorated in the dream memories—and you think he can’t handle that.”
    “His friend was just shot, for Chrissake.”
    “Waiting for the right time, are you? Or maybe you’re just hoping the problem goes away so you’ll never have to tell him, because you need to be perfect for him. Because you’re worried that the real you will disappoint him.”
    This is like a shot to my gut, but I gaze at the ceiling as I sip my juice, pretending boredom.
    “You’d be right, of course. Reality always disappoints Otto,” Packard continues.
    “Yeah, it does disappoint him, because he has a vision for something better, and he’s working tirelessly to make it come true.”
    Packard smirks. “With the help of me doing his dirty work. And by extension, you and everyone else. It’s our darkness that makes Otto’s brightness possible.”
    “Why am I even talking to you? I didn’t invite you here.”
    “The information about the glasses is good. That’ll help.”
    “Tons of people wear glasses like that.”
    “I’ve got psychics moving through the city looking for anybody whose thoughts they can’t read. Glasses helps narrow it down.” He rests his arm along the back of the couch. “He’s going to want to know. About our little secret.”
    “You better not tell him. It’s for me to tell him.” I’m thinking of Otto’s hatred of being kept in the dark. I should tell him.
    He smiles. “Fine.”
    I squint suspiciously. “Or maybe you
want
me to tell Otto about the dream invasion thing. Maybe that’s what this is all about.”
    He raises his eyebrows. “The plot thickens.”
    “Screw you.”
    His eyes sparkle. “In your dreams. Sort of. We didn’t quite get to that, as I recall.”
    “Not even in the same ballpark.”
    “Not that same ballpark at all,” he says. “A kiss with the right person simply can’t be compared to the drudgery of sleeping with the wrong one over and over.”
    I don’t correct his assumption that Otto and I are sleeping together.
    “Not the same,” he says. “Not at all.”
    I put down my OJ and stand. “You think you’re charging up that memory? Is that what you think? You are going to be so sorry when I dream about my experience of eating chocolate