The Dream Jumper's Pursuit Read online

  THE DREAM JUMPER’S Pursuit

  By

  Kim Hornsby

  Dedication

  To my Big Sis, Susan Hornsby, who has all the dancing talent in the family as well as the ‘intuition’.

  The Dream Jumper’s Pursuit, Copyright 2015, Top Ten Press

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9962973-1-8

  Cover design by Jeannine Henning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Seattle ~ Maui

  “Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

  Buddha

  Chapter 1

  Jamey pulled his truck into what used to be his wife Tina’s parking spot at her Maui dive shop. Her dive shop. He needed to talk to her about ordering a new sign for the store, one that included his name. Being petty wasn’t a quality he wanted to embrace, but still.

  Obi, Tina’s dog, jumped out of the truck and led the way through the alleyway door and into the backroom office. Tina’s former desk was hardly recognizable these days with everything in neat piles and file folders, now that it was his. He was a meticulous person. He had to be because he had so little control in other areas. Entering dreams, reading minds, had always left him with the need to keep order.

  Dropping the truck keys in a box labeled KEYS, Jamey thought about the upcoming afternoon dive with Tina. They planned to anchor between Maui and Lanai and go deep enough to see the Hawaiian Black Coral—a rare species that had only been discovered in Hawaii fifty years ago. It was only found at depths of more than a hundred feet down, and although he wasn’t scared about the depth, he was hesitant about something. Since he’d woken that morning, something hovered like one of those dark rainclouds that sometimes swept in from beyond Molokai. On days like this, he kept his guard up.

  As he walked through to the shop, his niece, Katie, was ringing up a group of customers buying snorkel gear. “I’m going for smoothies,” he whispered to her. This had become their routine when he came to work; he’d check in, then cross the street to the Sunrise Cafe. He and Tina were off coffee these days. Him, because he drank way too much, and Tina because she was breastfeeding their six-month-old son and didn’t want anything to taint the breast milk.

  “The usual,” Katie called to him.

  Jamey whistled for Obi to follow and the brindled pit-mix scooted out the door with him. Having always wanted a dog of his own, this relationship was satisfying even if Obi was firstly loyal to Tina. Lahaina’s downtown was already busy at nine a.m. and Jamey wasn’t taking any chances with the traffic. “Heel boy,” he said as they crossed the main street.

  Months ago, before Jamey had taken over running the dive shop, Obi had independently wandered the block of stores off Lahaina’s main street at whim. As a former street dog, Obi knew how to navigate the downtown of Maui’s historic whaling town better than most locals. “Wait outside,” Jamey told him at the café’s door, then slid in to the early morning lineup.

  Tina’s friend Pepper was going to babysit Kai that afternoon, to give them time away from being new parents. This was a first and something they hadn’t indulged in since Kai was born. Maybe they’d have enough time to fool around after the dive. Turn it into a real date. It’d been awhile. Then Jamey remembered that Katie was along to satisfy a new Coast Guard law about keeping a licensed captain on board during dives.

  From the line he watched Obi run around the Lahaina Library grounds sniffing and backtracking when he got a scent. West Maui’s homeless hung out on the vast lawn with their dogs and shopping carts full of belongings. The smells were probably pretty good judging from how dirty some of these guys looked.

  Living on Maui and working in Lahaina was a sweet life in so many ways. Certainly better than living on base in Afghanistan and entering the dreams of prisoners for the military. He didn’t miss life in the sandbox one bit. What he did miss, although he didn’t want to admit it to Tina, was being the Dream Jumper. His whole existence, as long as he could remember, was tied up in being able to enter people’s dreams. Now Tina had that ability, although she wasn’t pleased to have it. The only way he could jump now was if Tina took him along. A nagging feeling of being emasculated by losing the talent that defined him, coupled with the fact that he was living Tina’s life, picked at him these days. Maui was Tina’s world; he ran her dive shop, hung out with her dog, lived in her house, and jumped her dreams. And when it came to Kai, she was the main caregiver because of breastfeeding.

  Recently he’d let a nasty thought worm its way into his mind that did not sit well. A thought that needled him in his most insecure moments. He and Tina’s first husband, Hank, had something in common. Dependency on Tina. He was now in a position similar to Hank’s when Tina married him. Hank lived in Tina’s house, shared the business, the dog, the Maui life. Jamey had to remind himself that, unlike Hank, he wasn’t trying to con her out of money or the valuable paintings she kept in airtight boxes in the garage. He kept telling himself that unlike Hank, he and Tina had a child and a solid marriage based on love and respect. And, unlike Hank, he had given up a pretty good life to be with Tina. Before he’d found Tina again, over a year ago, he was perfectly happy to settle down in Carnation, Washington where his daughters lived with their mother. Now, he wanted to fit into Tina’s life, to make her happy, not to steal from her, and not because he had nowhere else to go in the world.

  He just had to figure out who he was now, without jumping. For the last few days, he’d been toying with the idea of creating some type of sideline that was all his idea, something that Tina didn’t have a hand in. Something to call his own and be proud of. But what? Damned if he knew.

  With smoothies in hand, Jamey whistled for Obi and they started back to the shop. Yup, it was a good life. He couldn’t complain. Or at least he shouldn’t. Not after living in the Sandbox. He never wanted to return to Afghanistan, even though he hadn’t been officially discharged yet. Sergeant Milton, his commander, hadn’t been in touch lately and that was good news. The man knew Jamey was now useless as the dream jumper and hopefully Milton was losing interest.

  “What’s shakin’, Blondie?” Jamey kissed Katie’s curly head, set the drinks on the counter, and approached a group of customers over by the wall of mask samples. “Hi Folks,” he said, “Are you heading out to do some snorkeling today? I recommend Airport Beach, then we can take you over to Lanai on the boat to do an introductory scuba dive.”

  “It’s easier than snorkeling,” Katie said, “and super fun!”

  “How much is diving?” the taller man asked, even though his wife looked worried.

  Jamey turned to Katie who was ready to do her sales job on them. Good girl. Now to fill some tanks, do paperwork, and then get over to the Maala Boat ramp at noon to meet Tina’s boat. They’d do a dive led by her, with dive equipment from her shop.

  He had to stop this analytical bullshit about his tailcoat-riding life before he drove himself nuts.

  ***

  Tina glanced up to the surface of the water, over a hundred feet away. Up top, it was a calm day in the channel between Maui and Lanai, but then it was mid-summer. The amount of water between her and the atmosphere was mind boggling, not to mention the weight. The anxiety that had o
nce crippled her underwater and kept her from earning a living as a diving instructor, was long gone. Instead, her thoughts were of how much air her buddy, the heavier breather, had used already from his tank. She looked to her husband, Jamey, who was leading them down to the black coral garden twenty feet below. He was an accomplished diver, but at this depth they had to keep an eye on each other in case nitrogen narcosis set in and one of them did something stupid.

  She signaled to ask if Jamey was okay. He was, and they angled down to the grouping of coral below. Jamey shone his dive light on the spindly black coral bushes bringing out the ebony hue and all other colors in the light’s beam. Most everything was blue, the last color to be lost at this depth until you used a light.

  Then, like a fire drill, the buzzer from their boat above them broke through the silence of the dive. Looking up, she saw the Maui Dream—a faint shadow that was matchbox-sized. Jamey heard the call too and they started back to the anchor. The buzz continued. This was the signal to abort the dive. They’d have to ascend slowly after being at almost one hundred and thirty feet. Or risk decompression sickness. And nobody wanted to fly to Honolulu to sit in a hyperbaric chamber for a week.

  Once back at the trident stuck in the sand, Tina noticed a shadow off to their left and glanced over. A large tiger shark swam only thirty feet from Jamey’s left side. This wasn’t an emergency even though tigers hold the record for the most bites in Hawaiian waters. Would Katie sound the alarm for a shark?

  The ascent on the slanted anchor line was slow, as needed, and Tina kept her eye on the shark circling behind them. He seemed simply curious. Tina couldn’t help but remember that her dead husband’s totem and dream form had been the tiger shark. Hank had turned into this form in her premonitory dreams. But Hank was dead and gone now. His spirit that lingered in their house was long gone since they’d found his body off Molokai a year earlier. Still, why did the shark linger?

  She looked up the anchor line to where she’d left a scuba tank tied at the decompression stop. And there it was, fifteen feet from the surface with two regulators. Because the dive’s duration had been cut short, they might not need the extra air for their breathing stop. They’d have plenty air in their own tanks.

  The alarm signal stopped and Tina felt instant relief from the incessant buzzing. She looked over to the shark and wished she hadn’t left her knife back on the boat. Why hadn’t she strapped it to her leg before she got in the water?

  Jamey pointed to the boat where Katie’s wavy form could be seen at the swim step, most likely waiting to tell them a huge shark was in the area. Tina nodded at her husband and looked around to see the shark had disappeared. Probably lost interest. Jamey’s eyes were set in that focused way and she wondered if her husband, whose intuition was exceptionally good, knew already what the emergency was.

  Then it hit her. Maybe the emergency had something to do with Kai. Maybe Pepper dropped her baby on his head, or he choked, or got his foot stuck in the crib railings. Or crib death. He’d been asleep when she’d left the house today.

  Oh God.

  Tina’s heart went to panic mode in two seconds and the adrenaline shooting through her nerve endings made her want to rush to the surface. She had to think this through before she risked paralysis and possible death.

  Katie wouldn’t have called them up for a shark, would she? Tina untied the extra tank to prepare to surface. Then, she looked at Jamey, making a gesture as though holding a baby. He grabbed her arm and shook his head. Was he saying don’t rush to the surface or no, it’s not Kai? Jamey’s intuition was better than hers. They both looked up to where Katie stood waiting on the swim step, her neon green T-shirt visible. She wasn’t sitting with her legs in the water, so maybe the shark was the emergency. After a very long two minutes at the stop with Jamey still holding her arm, they surfaced. Tina’s heart beat hard enough to feel it pounding through her wetsuit.

  Breaking through to the air, she spit out the regulator. “Is it Kai?”

  Katie looked extremely agitated. “No.”

  Tina handed her the extra tank and Kati hoisted it onto the boat.

  “There’s a shark behind you. You might want to get out of the water.” Katie grabbed their weight belts.

  A dorsal fin headed their way, sixty feet off. Not necessarily bad news but they couldn’t risk it. “Get the knife in my bag!” She hoisted her tank and jacket onto the swim step. Jamey wasn’t wearing a full wetsuit to cushion a shark bite. Not like her. “You go first, I have a suit,” she said to Jamey.

  “You first. I’ll punch it in the gills.” He turned and faced the shark.

  Tina scrambled up the ladder. “Out, Jamey!” She lay down on her belly with the knife, her head and arms submerged, ready to thrust the weapon into the shark if it tried to grab Jamey but he was out in two steps and safely standing on the swim step. Tina pulled her arms out of the water and the shark passed under the boat. “What the hell was that?” she said ripping off her mask.

  “Do you think it would’ve taken a bite?”

  “Not sure, but it got too close for comfort,” she said. Katie had a frozen look of horror on her face. “It’s okay, Katie. We’re out.”

  “I didn’t call you up because of the shark,” she said, looking over to Jamey. “I answered your phone Uncle Jamey. I saw it was Carrie.” Katie’s expression sent a shiver down Tina’s spine. “You need to call her back.”

  Carrie was Jamey’s ex-wife back in Washington State, the mother of Jamey’s twin girls.

  “Are the girls okay?” Jamey asked, reaching for the phone in Katie’s hand.

  “They are, but Wyatt isn’t.” Tears filled her eyes and her face crumpled.

  Wyatt was Jamey’s twins’ beloved half-brother. Only seven-years-old. Tina put her arm around Katie while Jamey dialed.

  “What happened, Carrie?” Jamey said.

  The silence was difficult, waiting, watching Jamey. “When?” His eyebrows were knit together, his mouth set in a grim line.

  Tina rubbed Katie’s back and looked to her for a hint that Wyatt wasn’t dead. She got nothing. Katie’s gaze was fixed on her uncle, her hand covering her mouth in horror.

  “I’ll get the first flight out.”

  Tina’s heart jumped. It must be serious if Jamey was headed to Seattle. “Is Wyatt okay?” she whispered to Katie, who shook her head.

  Jamey looked at his wife and niece. “I need to get to Carnation immediately. Pull anchor, Katie.” He looked directly at Tina who was thinking the worst, whatever that was.

  “Wyatt’s been abducted.”

  Chapter 2

  They rushed back to the house from the boat launch. Katie drove the truck and boat back to the dive shop in Lahaina while Tina drove her truck the opposite way to the house. Jamey booked a ticket for the next flight to Seattle, estimating that they had just enough time to go home, grab a few things, including the baby and take off for the other side of Maui to get to the airport in time.

  On that forty-minute drive to the Kahului airport Jamey sat in the back seat with Kai, who was strapped in to his rear-facing baby seat. Passing the Pali Cliffs and heading inland to the airport, Jamey phoned Carrie one last time to get more details on the situation. From her end, behind the wheel, Tina heard a lot of Carrie talking but not discernable words and waited until Jamey hung up to find out the details. The boy’s birth father, Kevin, a dad when it suited him, had his son for the weekend. But he didn’t return him as planned. When Carrie finally got in touch with Kevin, he’d told her that he wanted the week with his son to go on a road trip. It was Kevin’s birthday and he thought he deserved this.

  “Long story short,” Jamey said, “Carrie and Kevin fought, words were exchanged, and Carrie was furious. Kevin finally hung up on her, but not before threatening that she’d never see her son again.”

  “He shouldn’t have said that.” Tina said. “Any mother would freak out. He’s only seven.” Tina couldn’t imagine how panicked those words would make her feel
if it was Kai who’d been taken. “Did she drive over to Kevin’s house to get Wyatt?”

  “Yup. But there was no one home. Today too. The house is shut up tight, like no one’s been there for days. So she wants me there to try to get a feeling from the house, or outside. Chris is on a business trip trying to get home.”

  Carrie’s husband Chris was probably in Japan, a business trip he did twice a year. He’s be frantic too. Tina sped along the coastal road to Kahului, the traffic heavy, as usual. “How long since that phone conversation between Carrie and Kevin?” Tina asked.

  “Twenty-five hours by now.” Jamey rattled a lion toy in the backseat for Kai. “Carrie’s biggest fear is that Kevin’s gone somewhere with Wyatt to wait this out, make her miserable. And he’s with Looney Tunes, Rose.”

  “I thought Kevin and Rose broke up after her last miscarriage.” Tina didn’t like Kevin all that much, but she really didn’t like the girlfriend who was manipulative and bitchy in a quiet, dangerous way.

  “Guess they are back together. I told Carrie to call the police even though there’s no formal custody agreement that she can refer to, but she wanted to give them another day or two. Then she got the text from Rose saying that Wyatt was hers now.”

  “That’s horrible of Rose to send Carrie a text like that. She’s got something wrong with her.” Tina couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have another woman gloating over abducting your child. It would be horrific to lose Kai. “Wyatt is such a Mama’s boy, always hanging off Carrie. Hopefully he has no idea what’s going on and thinks he’s just on a long weekend.” They pulled up to the airport drop-off; Jamey kissed her goodbye, and was gone.

  The next morning, Tina woke and immediately tried to recall dreams. She grabbed her notebook on the bedside table, something she and Jamey decided had to become a part of their strange life now. Seeing they both dreamed vividly, and she was prone to traveling into other people’s dreams while sleeping, sometimes taking him with her, keeping account of her dreams had become something more than interesting data. She might have dreamed something revealing about Wyatt’s situation.