— Genesis 41:8 (NIV)

A scream.

A screech.

A crash.

Silence.

Caisee Pells broke that calm with a long scream as she awoke from a nightmare. While she sat up in bed, the dream’s images faded into the dark room, replaced by a blurry eyed Tate rushing to her side.

“Caisee, Caisee, it’s OK, you were just having a bad dream,” Tate said, glancing at the alarm clock, which read 4:37 a.m. in bright red numerals. “You’re awake now. I’m here.”

Tate was kneeling at Caisee’s side. They were staying at a cheap roadside motel just outside of Mackinac City in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

When they began their quest to find Wakeman a day earlier, it didn’t take them long to realize that they had absolutely no idea where to start — or where to drive. Tate voted for heading south toward Chicago, but Caisee argued for driving north and the U.P. A coin flip decided it. Caisee called heads, and Tate’s worn-out 1965 quarter landed on heads.

Caisee hoped for a fun drive to distract them from the sober task of finding her brother, but they argued more than caught up. Oddly enough, the biggest argument started when Caisee said that “God will show us the way.”

Apparently Tate wasn’t buying it.

“We started this trip with a coin flip — hard to see God’s leading in that.”

“I’m just saying that if we ask Him to show us the way and have faith in that, He will provide clues or signs to help us find Wakeman. That’s why I insisted we pray before we started the trip.”

“Then we flipped a coin … or are you saying God made sure it was heads.”

“Possibly. All I’m saying is that I believe God will help us.”

“With what? Pillar of cloud? Pillar of fire? A loud audible voice from Heaven? C’mon, Caisee. I know that God has the power to do that stuff, but we’re not living in the Old Testament times here,” Tate sneered.

“Tate Saunders, for someone who’s been raised in the church, you sure do have a lack of faith.”

That raised the argument to another level, and soon neither Caisee nor Tate was speaking.

So, after more than three hours in the car — save for a quick lunch, fuel and bathroom break — it didn’t take a coin flip for them to decide to call it a day once they drove over the Mackinac Bridge and into the U.P. They stopped at the first cheap motel out of Mackinac City and settled in for the night.

Even though Tate was always a gentleman toward her and never made romantic or sexual overtures like all the other men in her life, Caisee announced a simple, but strict set of rules before bedtime: “Stay on your side the room, no sleepwalking between the beds and no snoring.”

Well, he had obeyed two of the three commands anyway. But she was glad Tate breached her protocol by checking to see if she was all right. He even put a hand on her shoulder, which for some reason put her to tears. And she couldn’t stop shaking.

“Oh, Tate, it was awful … that dream.”

“What was it about?” Tate was now sitting on the bed and facing her.

“That is, if you want to talk about it.”

She did, but at the moment she couldn’t put it to words.

* * *

3:37 a.m.

A few hundred miles and a time zone away, Wakeman Pells cursed the sight of his alarm clock. He hated the night terrors that plagued his sleep, but when they stalked him in the middle of the night he rarely regained enough peace to sink back into his mattress and pillow and sleep until sunrise.

This black morning was no

different, except that his

subconscious had introduced a new character to his inescapable nightmare — his sister, Caisee.

Normally Wakeman tried to erase the

fleeting memories of his bad dreams as best he could by focusing on some mundane task at work or the lyrics to a favorite song. But the sight of his sister in the passenger seat of that ill-fated car kept drawing him back into the nightmare, even as he stumbled into the bathroom for a drink of water.

What was she doing there? She was dozens of miles away when it actually happened — is this my mind’s way of telling me something?

Wakeman finished his glass of water and shuffled back to bed. The dream was quickly evaporating from his memory, but could he ever totally forget the image of his sister riding shotgun and yelling at him while he sped through the parking lot.

What was she yelling to him? Didn’t she see that he — they — had

no more control over the car than they did of a runaway rollercoaster? What was she trying to tell him over the roar of the engine?

* * *

“Stop the car, Wakeman! Stop the car now! Stop the ca—”

Doyle Logan shot up so fast from his nightmare that he hit his head on the steering wheel of the old Ford pickup he was sleeping in.

Where was he? Oh, he was just outside of Mackinac City, in a Wal- Mart parking lot, which was across the street from a fleabag motel where Wakeman Pells’ buddy and sister were staying. A few fast-food bags crinkled noisily as he sat up and rubbed his forehead. Four of those bags had served as a makeshift pillow. He checked his wristwatch: 4:37 a.m.

Doyle couldn’t bear the sight of his wife being hit by the car, so he practically willed himself awake before impact. Even though he was at home when the Pells kid killed his wife in that hit-and-run accident (That is, if it was an accident), he kept dreaming about it. One night, he was working at the store and collecting grocery carts in the parking lot when Pells’

car appeared out of nowhere and slammed into his wife as she walked out of the store. In another dream, he was a customer, walking a few steps behind Martha. Once, he was another driver, pulling into a parking spot as Pells was drag racing through the lot.

But no matter what character Doyle played in the dream, he could never reach Martha in time to pull her away from the danger. And that gnawed at him nearly every hour of every day. Even his dreams had deserted him during his mourning. Peace could not be found … but when Wakeman Pells was dead he finally would be able to sleep at night and focus during the day. He could then move on with his life — riding a sweet wave of revenge.

But trailing Tate’s Honda was trickier than he thought it would be.

The movies always made it look easy, but it wasn’t. Doyle repeatedly fell too far behind or made a wrong turn or would speed up too fast and drive past them.

Still, he always found them sooner or later. The whispers cooing softly inside his head made sure of that. They always told him where he needed to go.