The Dream Runner by Kerry Schafer Page A

toward me.
    My heart thundered like surf in my ears, but I tried to hold out some hope. A vacation, a visit, an early trip to the grocery store. I managed to force a smile. "Do you know when she'll be back?"
    "Ambulance came for her last night." She stepped closer, adding in a loud whisper, "Overdose. Couldn't bear the loss of her husband, I imagine."
    My body settled down into a cold calm. Mia wasn't the first dreamer who had been driven to self-harm. I tried to chase away my guilt by telling myself that she was desperate to begin with, that it wasn't the dream that pushed her over the edge. Hell, maybe the dream had helped her hold on another day or two. At that moment this platitude looked about as fresh and bright as the room I'd stripped up at my haunted house.
    "Alive?"
    The neighbor shrugged. "Lights and sirens, so she must have been when they left here."
    "Where's Jayden?"
    "At a friend's house. His aunt will come get him if need be."
    I needed to get into that house to retrieve the dream, but the neighbor was a problem. She knew everything, and she knew I wasn't a friend of Mia's. A long lost sister or cousin story wasn't going to fly.
    I smiled, wide enough that my face felt like it was breaking. "Well, then. I'll run up to the hospital in just a few minutes. But she had something she wanted me to look at—I wonder if I should still do that, since I'm here."
    It was about the lamest thing I could have said, and I had no expectation it would work. But the woman's face twisted, and she gasped, "Surely not the Boston Fern."
    I'm not necessarily proud of it, but I seized the day and ran with what she gave me. "Why yes, that's exactly it. How did you know?"
    The old woman instantly drew herself up to full height—which was maybe five feet tall— and literally huffed. "She doesn't have a clue how to take care of that plant. Shirley should have left it to me. I can't believe she's trusted this little snippet with a plant like that. Please tell me it doesn't have mites."
    "That's what she was worried about." I smiled again, this time for real, and stalked off on my plant saving mission, leaving the old biddy standing there.
    Since the doors were going to be locked, and I didn't want anyone to see me break in, I went around the corner of the house and to the back door. It only took me a minute; I'd been a street brat for a while, and although I drew the line at stealing from people outright, I was not above sneaking into an empty house for a sandwich and a hot shower.
    As a dream runner I'd perfected the ability to pick a lock—it was necessary every now and then when a dream was ready for collecting. If I'd read the neighbor correctly, she'd be along momentarily to school me about the status of the plant, so I moved fast.
    The kid's room was easy enough to spot, and the only other bedroom had to be Mia's. A wedding picture hung on the wall—she looked young and frightened, clinging to the groom's arm with both hands. I stopped and stared. The man in the picture was not the man whose face I had seen when I'd read her for the dream. His eyes were soft and a little bit sad, and the expression on his face was pure besotted love.
    I was confused and disoriented for a minute, but I didn't have time to ponder. Maybe he'd changed a lot as he aged. Maybe the alcohol had done it. If we knew what turned men into abusers, we could fix them before they got there.
    Mia's bed was unmade, the only messy thing in that whole house, and even that was minimal, as though she had taken up as little space as possible under the covers and lay there unmoving. A packet of over-the-counter sleeping pills and a half empty glass of water sat on a spotless bedside table, next to a familiar stone bottle.
    Damn, I'd been so off-kilter  I had left home without the briefcase. I stood with the bottle in my hands, considering the possibilities. If I dropped and broke it—had an accident on the bike, or if somebody stole it—I'd