After a few restless hours of sleep, they both got up. In the living room, Paul Hayes stood by a large window, watching the dawn slowly creep over the horizon and share her light.Tracy sat on the edge of a pure white sofa, also looking out at the spectacular display. Between the two of them, there was a nervous silence that weighed them both down. Tracy hunched forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands dangling listlessly in front of her. Mr. Hayes, was hunched as if the shoulders of his jacket had been lined with concrete.Neither wanted to discuss the true potential of his upcoming meeting with John Tice. The fact that Tice had insisted on meeting in a warehouse on the edge of town certainly didn’t help matters. The whole thing gave Tracy a bad feeling. The pit of her stomach rolled and shouted warning.Tracy opened her mouth to speak, but she closed it when no words came to her.What have I done to this man? What have I started? She looked him over from head to toe an
BANG!The gun went off. Tracy saw the brief flash at the end of the muzzle, and the bullet rocketed through the edge of her upper arm. She immediately cried out and fell to the ground, her blood spattering onto the gravel below. Red pain flowed down her arm.Mr. Hayes, whether through his prowess or pure luck, wrestled the man to the ground and climbed on top of him. By the time Tracy was able to clamp a hand onto her wound and stand up onto her shaking legs, Mr. Hayes had beaten the assassin into unconsciousness and was still going."Mr. Hayes," she screamed. He kept hitting the man, pummeling him into a red pulp. He was going to kill him if he didn't stop.He didn’t answer, but she still wasn’t close enough to reach him."Paul!" she cried out, desperate to keep him from making a mistake he would never forgive himself for.Hearing her call him that name made him snap out of his blood-hungry trance. He grabbed the gun from where it had fallen and climbed off of the man, never once tak
The whirling, twisting colors of blue and red over white surrounded Tracy. She knew she wasn't dreaming, that both of them were still awake, but the connection was so strong she was able to transcend and enter his thoughts without being asleep.John's mind howled with the invasion. It beat at her with icy winds and blistering heat, but she didn't relent. There was no retreat from this.The form of Jenna filled her mind.Only it wasn't the Jenna Tracy knew.A scared little girl, no more than six years old, peered up at her. She wore a simple white dress with a dark blue bow in brown hair. Freckles dotted her cheeks and innocent eyes stared out at her.“Why did you let her do that to me, Daddy?” the little girl asked. “Why would you let this happen?”“I'm so sorry, baby,” John's voice whispered. “I promised to protect you.”“She is going to take him away from me. You promised me that Paul and I would live happily ever after. You promised,” the little girl pouted.Tracy knew that it wasn
Tracy Collins sighed to herself. Another month had passed, another month she was stuck here, doing this crummy job. She looked at her surroundings. In a fancy restaurant like this, a waitress should be making at least minimum wage. If not for the tips, she’d probably have to declare bankruptcy.What did I do to deserve this life? The thought haunted her, especially because she knew the exact reason she was stuck here. She had become too comfortable at medical school, maybe going to one too many late night trivia contests instead of slicing open cadavers. School and partying on top of working at this restaurant had caught up to her. Whatever the reason that she failed that last exam, she knew that she had nobody to blame but herself.Now she was stuck with a gigantic student loan bill. Six figures wasn't even the start of it, and due to the insane laws regarding student loans in these United States, she'd never get rid of them. Just the thought of how long it would be before she could
Tracy woke up a few hours later, feeling as if she couldn’t move. She might as well have been immobile, with all the wires on her and the IV in her. A nurse was in the room with her, and soon a doctor came to visit her."Do you know how lucky you are, Tracy?" His tone was familiar, and she recognized him as one of her professors from medical school. Just one more reminder of my fuck ups, she thought."Please, tell me how lucky I am," she said sarcastically, tenderly poking at the bandage on her head with a finger.He sighed. He clearly thought that this was all her fault. "You're bruised up pretty badly, but there's nothing broken. We were concerned about the head injury, but I think that even the scarring should go away pretty soon."She groaned a curse. A nice, scarred up face was a great way to ensure that she'd get less tips. She poked at the bandage again, this time wincing at the sting from the pressure."Hey, don't do that," he snapped at her. Then he shook his head. "You've se
Her dreams started fitfully, making no real sense. She remembered flying through space, a bunch of plus signs coming out of nowhere, some swirls of light, and then:All of a sudden her dream became crystal clear. She was in a room, and the lights were dim. She looked down but only saw the floor where her feet should have been. I guess I’m just a disembodied set of eyes, she thought to herself. She looked around and saw a king-sized bed. She saw Mr. Hayes on it, naked. His details were fuzzier than the rest of the dream world, but she could still see his six-pack abs and huge pectorals.A woman sauntered out of the bathroom, dressed in black lingerie. Tracy looked closer and saw that the woman was her. Well, maybe not quite, but at least a close representation of her. Her hair was much darker, and her stare was much more intense than anything she could pull off. Other than that, it was her face and body. She came out and walked right to the foot of the bed. His eyes were fixated on her
Tracy spent the weekend trying to decide what to do with this new information. She felt in her heart that the dream was a thought she had shared with Mr. Hayes, a real thing that he wished for. She now knew exactly what he wanted, what no woman had been able to deliver, but she was torn on what to do next. Should she compromise her ideals and sleep with Mr. Hayes in order to get ahead in life?Technically, she served people what they wanted all the time in a restaurant. What was the difference between that and serving a man what he wanted sexually? Her pride was in the way, she knew.Even more than that, she had doubts. What if her head injury caused her to have this vivid dream, and the feeling she got was just a hallucination? What if this was a real psychic link, but the real Mr. Hayes wouldn't give up control? Plenty of people had fantasies that they had no intention of ever carrying out, and this might be one of them.No, she decided. He came in with a different girl every week b
When she first saw his mansion, she almost whistled. It was at least twice as big as she would have guessed, and was located right on the beach. It had to be a ten million dollar house. He parked the car in the garage, and they went inside.The butler was waiting for him. So, I guess he does have some people that do things for him, she thought. He didn't seem too surprised to see Mr. Hayes with a different woman than the one he left with, but he probably saw a lot of that while working here. He said a quick greeting and then disappeared.Paul and Tracy went upstairs. The bedroom was at the end of a long hallway, and Tracy made sure to remember how to get back out the main door.When he opened the door to the bedroom, she had her confirmation that their connection was no hallucination. It was, more or less, the same bedroom as the one in the dream. The big bed was definitely the same, and the giant brass headboard. Every detail looked like she remembered.Once inside the bedroom, Mr. H