Page 86 of The Bride Wore White

She was right. There might not be any answers in the mirror dream, but he had to know that for certain.

He reached for her hand. She threaded her fingers through his.

“Tell me your dream, Jack,” she said.

Chapter 40

He tightened his grip on her fingers and started talking before he could change his mind.

“The dream always starts the same way,” he said. “I’m in Cordell Bonner’s lab. It’s the moment after the explosion. There is a fire. It is spreading rapidly. I have just freed the two homeless men Bonner was using as subjects for his experiments. They run from the building. There’s another explosion. Chemicals. Glass.” He reached up with his fingertips to touch the side of his face and then lowered his hand.

“Is that how you got the scars?” Prudence asked. “An explosion of chemicals and glass?”

“Yes. I know I should run. Follow the two men I just set free. But I can’t.”

He paused because a shiver of intense awareness arced through his senses. He saw that Prudence was touching her pendant. He could have sworn the crystal was starting to glow.A trick of the light.

“Why can’t you follow those two men out of the burning lab?” Prudence asked.

“The notebooks. I turn and go back for Bonner’s notebooks. But it’s too late. The fire is too intense now. In the end I give up and try to escape. In reality that is what I did. But in my dream there is always a mirror blocking my path.”

“Was there a mirror in Cordell Bonner’s lab?”

“No. Only in my dream. I know it’s the only way out for me, but there are flames in the mirror, too. I can see a figure concealed in the fire on the other side of the glass. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a monster, but I know I have to identify him before I can escape. I can’t make him out, though, so I’m trapped. That’s the point at which I wake up.”

He stopped talking. Prudence sat silently for a time, and then she released his hand.

“Well?” he said. He tried to sound casual, merely curious. He was pretty sure he failed.

“You go back for the notebooks,” she said, “but it’s too late. You can’t get to them because of the fire. Then, when you give up and try to escape, the mirror blocks your path. You are trapped unless you identify the figure in the mirror.”

“Yes. Well?”

“What do you normally see when you look directly into a mirror?”

“My reflection.”

“Exactly,” Prudence said.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a mirror, Jack. That means you are seeing yourself, but you aren’t sure it’s a version of you that you want to see. Maybe it’s a version that will scare you.”

“Because I don’t want to look at my scars?”

“No, because you don’t want to acknowledge that something might have happened to you that day in Cordell Bonner’s lab because of the explosion of those chemicals. You knew you had been exposed to whatever he was concocting in his lab. That’s why you went back for the notebooks. You wanted to know what you had been hit with, but it was too late. You had no choice but to leave without the answers. You escaped. But one morning you woke up knowing something had changed.”

He groaned. “You really are good at this dream reading business.”

“What did change?”

“I see things differently now when I look at a crime scene. Details I would not have noticed before. And it’s not just crime scenes. I find myself jumping ahead to conclusions about people and situations without making sure the facts add up.”

Prudence smiled. “Welcome to the sixth sense club. Obviously you had some talent before you went into that lab, but now your sensitivity is even more acute.”

He could not take his eyes off her now. “Maybe.”

“Deep down you’re afraid that whatever chemicals were released in the explosion and the fire in that lab might have opened a pathway to your psychic senses. And that’s why you resist trying to identify the man in the mirror. You know that man is you, and you are afraid you are not the same man you were before the Cordell Bonner case.”

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