Hidden in Dreams by Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online

get out of it. I should be done by three thirty. Do you know the convention center?”
    “I’m sure I can find it.”
    “The Peabody is directly across the street from the main hall.” He hesitated, then said, “Dr. Burroughs, if you will permit, I will wait and apologize to you in person.”
    “All right.” She tasted the lingering flavor of words not yet spoken. “Are you in contact with the other clinicians?”
    “I certainly can be. Why?”
    “I need you to ask if any of the patients experienced a faceless messenger at the beginning of their dream.”
    “I can tell you my own patient reported nothing of the sort.”
    “Their recollection might be vague. Perhaps because of this they assume it was part of an earlier dream.” Elena felt a sudden pressing need to share this image with someone else, even a stranger on the other side of the world. “A stranger in a dark suit who has no face, and whose words can’t be heard.”
    “Why are you asking me to do this, Dr. Burroughs?”
    “Because my own started that way.”
    “Sorry, you’re telling me you’ve found a patient of your own?”
    “No.” She stopped, held by a sudden fear that his ridicule might return, and be stronger still. But she had no choice. “I have had the same dream.”
    There was a sharp intake of breath. “I knew it was right to contact you about this. I knew it.” Then, “Have you seen the news about the London bank?”
    “I was just watching it.” She decided there was no reason not to add, “It was raining in my dream.”
    He huffed a single breath. “I will be waiting for you in the lobby.”
    •    •    •
    Elena cut off the kitchen lights and retreated to her bedroom. She had positioned a secondhand desk by the window, facing out over the water. She opened her laptop and drew up the picture of a page from The Book of Dreams . The images came from a book given to her by Miriam, the friend who had died the previous summer. Miriam had received the original book and five ancient copies from her own great-grandmother. The line of possession stretched back through time to the realm of myth and impossible age. The copies and the original all contained images drawn in Aramaic cuneiform. Each image was formed from a line of the Lord’s Prayer.
    Before Elena had left on her book tour, she had returned all of the books to her safety deposit box. Before then, however, she had photographed the pages so they could travel with her. Severaltimes over the long summer she had raised the images and tried to enter into what the early church leaders once called a contemplative state. The images had previously helped intensify her prayer life. But all through that weary summer, Elena had felt nothing. Just like now. The only thing that came to her through the picture was a stronger sense of the storm gathering beyond her apartment.
    Elena cut off the computer and opened the drawer by her bed. Despite the trauma she had endured around the time of the book’s arrival, she had gained a number of vital insights. And one of them was that the book itself was nothing. The only purpose the book held, the only value, was in drawing the viewer closer to God. And she did not need the book to do that. She never had.
    Elena had felt that the time for the book’s practical application had ended; that moment and that particular purpose lay in the past. Now, as Elena examined the image, she wondered if its time had come again.
    Elena opened her Bible to the book of Daniel. Her fingers found the place before she consciously knew what she sought. But there it was before her eyes, a vivid reminder of another man given the unwanted responsibility. Elena read the opening passage and felt an easing away of her stress and her worry. No matter what else, she was not alone. She never had been. Not for an instant.
    When the phone rang, she was tempted not to answer. But then she saw the readout and knew she had to take the call. She pressed the button and