Touched by Lightning [Dreams of You] (Romantic Suspense) Read online

  Stella was the only person in whom he had confided his strange experience. Those images haunted him afterwards, and the nightmares about drowning had gripped him in fear and panic every night for months.

  His mother scoffed at her sister’s physic abilities, calling Stella a phony every time her name came up. Adrian wasn’t inclined to believe in things paranormal, but he knew he’d go crazy if he didn’t talk to someone. Stella, at least, wouldn’t think he’d lost it.

  Nor did she laugh when he relayed the lightning strike and visions.

  “Something strange happened while you were dead.”

  He felt a tightness in his chest. “Yes,” he whispered.

  Stella’s eyes closed, and her hand tightened on his. “This is very strange. I’ve never felt anything like this before. Your soul left your body…and connected with another soul. A woman.”

  Adrian hadn’t realized his eyes had drifted shut until they snapped open. “Yes. Can you see her? Who is she?”

  Stella raised her other hand, issuing a command of silence. Her eyes remained closed, but a muscle above her lip twitched. “She has golden blond hair and is quite lovely. But there is so much pain.”

  “From what?”

  Her brow furrowed, and lines gathered around her eyes as she concentrated. “Heat. Fire. Some kind of explosion.”

  He couldn’t believe it. Stella could not know about BlueFire unless she was the real deal. “Where is she now?”

  “I can still feel pain, but it’s emotional.” Her eyes opened, and she blinked. “That’s all I get.”

  “You said our souls connected. What did you mean?”

  “When we die, our souls leave our bodies and start down that final pathway to heaven. Sometimes they return to our bodies before reaching our destination. What’s known as the near-death experience. Something else happened to you. Your soul went to hers. At the moment you were hit by lightning, she was experiencing something just as traumatic. Perhaps it was that connection that united your souls.” Stella’s eyes closed, and her fingers slid over his palm again. “Your destiny is entwined with this woman of the golden tresses and eyes the color of a stormy sky. Her life is in danger.”

  He had to keep himself from launching out of the chair. “How can I find her?”

  Stella frowned, shaking her head. “If you seek her out, you may be able to save her. But I see danger in that. For her. And you.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  Stella shook her head, coming out of her trance again. “I don’t know. All I see is water.”

  He sat up straighter. “Water? Maybe that has something to do with a nightmare I keep having. I’m inside her soul, and suddenly I plunge into water. I fight to stay afloat but eventually I tire out. When I can’t hold my breath any longer, I feel the cold water rush into my lungs.” Even now, he could feel the panic constricting his chest. “Then I wake up.”

  Stella looked haunted. “The water I see…that’s her death.”

  Adrian snapped out of the memory, taking in a deep breath of air. He looked at the photograph again. Would she drown because of him, or could he save her? If BlueFire existed, then he would find her.

  The roar of flames engulfed Nikki Madsen, making her gasp as oxygen burned away. It’s only a nightmare, her conscious intoned through the horror. Wake up, Nikki. Control the dream.

  She jerked awake, inhaling the clean air around her. Despite three years’ distance, she still kept reliving the horror over and over again. Now the images came roughly once a month, the ripping heat of the orange fireball as it ravaged her, the feel of the dirt as she dropped into a bed of petunias and rolled out the flames. The sound of her cries filled her ears as she screamed for her mother, saw her engulfed in flames. The worst part was not being able to breathe; even in her dream the choking sensation panicked her.

  Nikki snapped on a switch and grabbed her teddy bear to cuddle in the pool of light that encompassed her bed. Trying to push away the memories, she pulled out the leather-bound journal that had indirectly saved her life that day. If she hadn’t forgotten it, hadn’t stepped out of the car before it exploded, she, too, would have been killed.

  The webbed scar tissue on the back of her hand looked faint now, but the memories would never fade. Her fingers caressed the blue leather of her journal, covered with tiny cracks. Scarred, too, but from age.

  Nikki had always been a vivid dreamer. At thirteen, she’d decided to learn more about the dream world and what it meant. That’s when her dream journal came into existence, where she recorded the strangest of her dreams in order to decipher them. A few years ago she had mastered lucid dreaming, the ability to control her dreams.

  The journal had been the subject of one of her last conversations with her mother, Blossom. More like an argument, really. Now it seemed silly to have argued over the journal and what it represented, but neither of them could have known how their lives would be ripped apart only days later.

  Blossom had been sitting on the edge of Nikki’s bed when she returned from one of her photography forays. Her mother hardly ever came in her room, but there she sat, holding Nikki’s journal. Nikki felt violated and defensive as she set her camera on the dresser.

  Blossom stood, set the journal on the bed and took Nikki’s hands in her smooth ones. “You are a beautiful young lady—”

  “I’m not beautiful. I’m okay.”

  Blossom’s eyebrow, arched dramatically with a brown pencil, quivered. “Nikki, hear me out. I have been patiently waiting for my daughter to bloom. You’re twenty-three and look at you. You’re dressed like a homeless person. What would my friends say if they saw you like this? ‘Doesn’t Blossom buy her daughter clothes? Hasn’t Blossom given her an education and the opportunity to meet wealthy, ambitious young men?’ Have I failed you in some way?”

  Nikki picked up the journal and shook it. “What were you doing with this?”

  For a moment Blossom had the dignity to look embarrassed. “I was straightening up in here. I happened to see that and was curious.”

  “Why don’t you just admit you were snooping?”

  Her mother looked away for a moment. “If I was, it was for your own good. I worry about you, darling.”

  Nikki glanced down at her drab clothes. “Because I don’t dress as nice as you do? I can’t walk around taking photographs dressed in silk and linen. I have to blend in. Besides, it’s impractical.” She could never tell her mother where she’d been taking photographs and why she had to blend in.

  “But, honey, you shouldn’t have to be practical. You’re a Madsen, poised to inherit millions in a few years. You should be dating, finding a nice man to marry. Then you can photograph your vacations and babies.”

  Nikki rolled her eyes. “I want a career in photography. I don’t want to marry any one of those snobs from the country club. I want to be respected for my mind, for who I am, not for how pretty I can look at social functions.” That was her mother’s expertise. “Or for my bank account.”

  Blossom walked to the window with a long-suffering sigh, watching the waves wash in from the Atlantic Ocean. “Your father would be so disappointed.”

  Nikki whirled around. “Dad would be proud of me. He encouraged me to pursue my photography.” Even ten years after his death, she could still feel his encouragement from above.

  Blossom turned at the fiery tone in Nikki’s voice. “He was humoring you. He wanted for you what I want.”

  “And exactly what is that, Mother?”

  Blossom cocked her head and smiled. “You spend so much time alone; you don’t date, you’re consumed with this photography thing. We want you to fit in, darling.”

  Nikki laughed, though the words hurt her. “You send me away for my high school years, then off to college, and you expect me to come back and fit right in?”

  Her mother did her best at a laugh. “Darling, you’ve never fit in. Even when you were young, you never wore all those ruffly dresses I bought you, never had a lot of fri
ends or went to school dances. I just wanted the best for you. I still do. Your brother may be an idiot, but at least he’s trying to fit into the Madsen mold. You should do the same.”

  Nikki saw how the pressure to fit that mold had made Devlin reckless and insecure. He wanted to prove himself, but he didn’t have their father’s business sense. She returned the journal to the place her mother ‘happened’ to see it: tucked beneath her mattress.

  “I don’t want to fit the Madsen mold. I’ve got to live my life my way. I’m sorry I let you down.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she cleared it. “But I can’t be the person you want me to be.”

  Maybe there was no place for her to fit in. She changed from her silk nightgown into baggy denim pants and the faded lumberjack’s shirt she’d bought at the Goodwill. Peering out the tiny side widow, she could see the first hint of the rising sun. Time to go before she was caught.

  Nikki grabbed the glass cleaner and climbed out the back door of the plain, brown van parked at the rear of a used car lot in West Palm Beach. With three quick strokes, she wiped off the price she’d written in shoe polish the night before. Back inside, she pinned her long curls back, tying a scarf over her head. She poured bottled water into a basin and brushed her teeth, tossed the foamy water out the back, then made her miniscule bed. After climbing into the driver’s seat, she pulled out of the lot a full hour before it opened. Some of the used lots erected barbed-wire fences around their perimeter, limiting where she could park at night without being detected or towed away. She rotated between seven different spots, including alleys and hotel parking lots, so she didn’t arouse attention.

  Seamus, a skinny old man who was a regular in her photographs, was already out from wherever he slept in at night. His white whiskers stood out against his dark skin. Beside him sat the baby stroller in which he toted all his worldly possessions. She parked around the back of the half vacant shopping center and walked to where Seamus stood. His foot was propped on a bench, and he gestured during an animated conversation he had with no one. Sometimes he was lucid, and then there were days like this. She snapped a couple shots, showing that there was no one listening to his serious talk about the irony of war. She would call it: Just because no one will listen does not make me silent.

  CHAPTER 2

  Adrian drove along Oceanview Drive with the top down on his rented Mustang, even though a cold front had blown in the night before. To a New Yorker, driving a convertible in November was like cheating Mother Nature. The sun-washed sky melded into the teal ocean, itself covered in white caps. On the left, Palm Beach’s mansions of glory rose tall and proud to take in the view.

  Palm fronds whipped in the stiff breeze, reminding him of a little girl making a sandcastle. He pulled into the driveway of the house he’d rented for his assignment last week. Everything was just as he’d left it a few days ago; even the shell necklace the Spanish girl had sold him still hung from the key hook. He wondered if he would have ended up like that, selling trinkets for money. His mother believed marrying Elio had saved them from that fate. Which fate was worse? Being homeless or getting beaten up?

  Adrian sectioned off the map of the area, then pulled the four sheets of yellowed paper from his briefcase. He’d done the drawings a year ago when he worried that he might forget what BlueFire looked like. They were all he had of her, them and the gallery he’d seen her go into. That’s where he would start.

  It took only a few questions of the locals to pinpoint where the gallery was. The Wharf was what he would call an artsy tourist stop with quaint souvenir shops, galleries and cafes. It was in West Palm Beach and, despite the name and dockside appearance, sat across the street from the Intracoastal. Weathered gray planking and railings were accented by groups of pilings roped together and occasionally topped with a pelican.

  He had never seen the name of the gallery, but there were only five of them in the plaza. He spotted the fishing nets, the green Chinese float, and the basket of painted sand dollars out front: the Garcia Gallery.

  This was the place. His chest tightened. He’d been here before, through BlueFire’s eyes. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and walked inside. A string of silver bells on the door announced his entrance. The disappointment he felt as he looked around made him realize he’d been expecting to see BlueFire behind the white counter. The Hispanic man in his forties, straightening a painting in the far corner, was a poor substitute, but maybe he could help.

  The man turned at the sound of the bells and walked over. “Welcome to my gallery. I am Ulyssis Garcia. Everything here is made by local artists. A lot of talent, eh?”

  Adrian nodded, pulling out the sketches.

  “Ah, you are an artist?” Ulyssis asked.

  Adrian couldn’t help but smile. “These aren’t nearly good enough to sell. I met a young woman when I was here about four years ago.” He touched his hand to his heart. “I haven’t forgotten her, and now that I’m back in the area, I wanted to look her up. Unfortunately, I’ve lost her name and address. All I know is that she brought me here once. I thought perhaps you could help.”

  “Anything to help lovers,” Ulyssis said, leaning over to look at the drawings.

  Adrian pulled the sketch of BlueFire’s face from the bottom. He hadn’t brought the photograph because it was so obscured. “Have you seen her lately?”

  Ulyssis seemed to put on a polite mask, but his posture remained rigid. “I have never seen anyone like that.”

  Adrian folded the sketches again, forcing a smile. “Thanks, anyway.” The man knew her, all right, but he wasn’t about to give Adrian any information. Why was he protecting her? Damn, if only he could shoot straight with the guy. Yeah, that would go over well. He casually perused the artwork in the gallery.

  A collection of black-and-white photographs caught his eye. An eerie feeling of familiarity washed over him. The prints themselves were poignant—the human side of the homeless. A peach card identified the photographer as Nicolina.

  Ulyssis was furiously wiping at a spot on the counter when Adrian turned to ask, “Who is this Nicolina?”

  “I don’t remember. Those pictures have been there for five years.” The man flipped his hand as though to dismiss them.

  Adrian cocked an eyebrow. “And you’ve kept them up there all this time?”

  “I’ve sold a few. The woman never came back to pick up her money.” Ulyssis took a quick, impatient breath. “Why take them down? I might as well try to sell them.”

  “They’re good. Very good. She’s got some admirable techniques. I’d like to meet her, exchange ideas. I’m a photographer, too.”

  “I told you, I have no idea where she is.” The man bit off the words.

  All right, then. Adrian forced a causal smile. “No problem.”

  He reached up and pulled one of the dark frames off the wall. An old black man stood next to a baby stroller filled with what looked like his life possessions. He had one foot propped on a bench and was animatedly conversing with absolutely no one. The words at the bottom made Adrian’s throat go dry: Just because no one will listen does not make me silent. A shiver worked its way down his back.

  “I’ll take this one.”

  Ulyssis tensed, as though contemplating whether to sell it to him.

  “It is for sale, isn’t it?” Adrian pulled out a fifty and set it on the counter.

  “Of course. It…it happens to be my favorite. I’ve gotten so used to it being there all these years.”

  Ulyssis wrapped the picture in tissue and placed it in a silver box. He processed the sale and handed Adrian his change. Ulyssis’s smile was far from the genuine one Adrian had received when he first walked in the gallery. The man was definitely hiding something, and it had to do with BlueFire. The thought made him crazy.

  As soon as he reached his car, Adrian opened the box and looked at the picture again. Something about it reached out and took his heart in a firm hold. He stepped out of the car and walked back to t
he gallery. The bells on the door tinkled again. Ulyssis’s smile faded when he saw who his customer was.

  Adrian let the door close with a soft thud. “I want the rest of them.”

  Ulyssis smiled as Nikki stepped inside the art gallery, though she sensed something amiss. Three silver-haired ladies were admiring a flowery painting of a girl by a pond. Nikki wandered toward the back corner, aware of how out of place she looked in the gallery.

  When the ladies left, she turned to Ulyssis. “Did they even look at my pictures?” she asked, staring up at her collection—or where her collection had been. “Wait a minute. Did you move them?” Her heart felt a stabbing pain. “Or don’t you want to carry them anymore?” More than pain, she felt panic. Those pictures were her only income, sparse as it was.

  Ulyssis walked over and stood next to her, wringing his hands nervously. He was going to tell her that he didn’t have room for her shots anymore. They were too depressing, too real. She swallowed hard, gathering her courage to face his words.

  Finally he touched her arm with his incredibly smooth hand. “Of course I want to show them, Nicolina. Your pictures may not appeal to every buyer, but they catch the attention and curiosity of everyone who sees them.”

  She forced a smile, then gave a puzzling look at the blank space covered with ten hooks. “What happened to them?”

  “I sold them.”

  Her eyes widened. “All of them, to one buyer?”

  “Yes,” he said, still strangely solemn.

  She grasped his hands and jumped up and down. “That’s wonderful!”

  “It’s the man who bought them that has me a little worried. He came in asking about a woman he met four years ago. She brought him here, he said. He showed me a sketch he’d made of her. Nicolina, it looked a lot like you.”