Page 32 of In Her Grasp

“Who’s the fourth boy?” she asked again, desperately trying to hold onto the connection.

But as their mouths moved, intending to bridge the chasm between life and death with their revelation, the roar of the spillway rose like an indomitable beast, drowning out their voices. The sound swelled, a crescendo that engulfed the dam, the water, and the night itself, severing the tenuous connection Jenna had forged with these echoes of the past.

As the clamor reached its peak, the dream’s grip on Jenna loosened, the edges of her world beginning to fray and dissolve. She fought to hold on, to stay submerged in this realm where answers lurked just beyond reach, but waking reality beckoned with relentless urgency.

Jenna’s eyes snapped open, dispelling the moonlit illusion of Sablewood Dam. Her heart raced, a remnant of the adrenaline that fueled her spectral confrontation. The darkness of her bedroom was punctuated only by the soft, green glow of the digital clock, its numbers a stark reminder that the night has passed while she traversed the strange corridors of her dreams.

Despite the abrupt departure from that other place, some details still clung to her. The faces of the boys, the expressions of the dead men, and the roar of the spillway all persisted in her waking mind. They demanded her attention, refusing to be relegated to the recesses of mere dreams, insisting on their relevance to the waking world and the mysteries that plagued it.

Jenna’s breath steadied as she reconciled the two realities. The urgency of the unanswered question propelled her forward, a driving force not to be ignored or delayed. The vision may have faded, but its implications resonated with a clarity that transcended the boundaries of sleep.

She hurriedly scribbled across the pages of her notebook, trying to capture every fragment of the dream before it could evaporate. She had trained herself to do this, to act as both the medium and the scribe for these nocturnal visitations that seemed more prophecy than fantasy. Shapes and symbolsspilled out—a dam, water defying drought, the faces of dead men, and the laughter of young boys—each image a puzzle piece in the unsolved mystery of three murders.

The pen moved as with a life of its own, transcribing the urgency that pulsed through her veins. Finally, she wrote down the echo of a question left unanswered: Who was the fourth boy?

After the last word was scribbled onto the paper, Jenna reached for her phone. She punched in Jake’s number and then pushed the blankets aside, feet finding the cold floor even as Jake’s groggy voice came through the line. There was no time for the niceties of dawn; urgency carved from the night’s visions left no room for such things.

The line crackled with Jake’s awakening alertness, a static undercurrent to his swiftly sharpening tone. His questions were immediate, indicative of his own professional instincts kicking in, but Jenna cut them off with a quiet intensity that brooked no argument. This was not a request; it was a directive. A necessity.

“Jake,” she started without preamble, her words crisp and clear despite the hour. “We need to go back to Colstock this morning.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jenna eased her car to a stop in front of Jake’s house and watched as he emerged quickly and hurried toward her, his uniform crisp, the weight of his duty belt visible under his jacket.

“Morning,” he said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Where to?”

She handed him a slip of paper where she’d scribbled Tommy Larson’s address.

“Tommy Larson’s farm,” Jenna replied, giving him the address. “We need to talk to him about those bodies.”

Jake glanced at the address, then nodded, “I’ll give you directions.”

A silence fell between them as Jenna found herself still reeling inwardly from last night’s dream revelations.

“What’s going on, Jenna?” Jake asked as they rolled through Trentville’s quiet streets. “Did you have another dream?”

“Yes,” she said, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “I think I know the first name of our third body we found in the reservoir. It’s Jimmy.”

“Jimmy,” Jake echoed softly. “It’s a pretty common name.”

“It is. But I think Tommy might be able to help us identify this one. He also should be able to confirm that the other body belongs to Clive Carroway.”

“Alright,” Jake said, after a moment, shifting in his seat to face her. “Let’s see what Tommy has to say.”

As they left the town of Trentville behind, Jenna pressed her foot against the accelerator, the car responding with a gentle purr. Ahead lay the possibilities of answers, hidden among the low rolling hills that clung to their mysteries with stubborn pride.

As the landscape blurred past her car window, a canvas of greens and browns painted with the strokes of an early morning, she recounted to Jake the fragmented images from her dream.

“There were four boys,” she said, “laughing, swimming perilously close to the dam’s spillway, which was overflowing with water. But in the group standing on top of the dam with me, there were only three men, Mike and Clive... and one they called Jimmy.”

“Who is he?” Jake inquired, his gaze never leaving her face.

“I don’t know,” Jenna replied, her voice edged with frustration. “The men told me that the boys were only memories they had of themselves, not really there at all. Now we’ve found a third victim, still unnamed—we have to consider the possibility that he’s Jimmy.”

“Could be,” Jake mused, “but where was the fourth adult then? I mean, if the boys were supposed to represent the men’s younger selves, it sounds like there ought to have been one more. Why show four boys and only three men?”

Jenna could only shrug, her mind a whirlwind of theories and tenuous links. “That’s what we need to figure out,” she admitted. “It feels like that piece is crucial—the key to understanding how all these lives connect at Sablewood Reservoir.”

---