of the bed. He got to his feet to greet her. She crossed the room to rub his head.
Judson closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“What was going on down there?” he asked.
“Don’t look now, but we may have some competition in the psychic detective business.” Gwen sank down onto the side of the bed. “Wesley wants to fire up a new TV series focused on solving real cold case crimes using a team of genuine psychics as investigators. But you know how hard it is to find real talent.”
Comprehension heated Judson’s eyes. “He wants Evelyn’s records of the Ballinger Study so that he can use them to find genuine psychics. He was the one who searched her study before we got there.”
“Yes.” Gwen planted her hands behind her on the quilt and braced herself. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was planning to go into the psychic investigation business myself.”
“The field is getting crowded,” Judson said. He glanced at his watch and went to stand at the window, looking out into the woods. “We have some time. How long would it take?”
“How long would what take?” she asked.
He turned his head to look at her. “You said you could help me find what I’m looking for in my recurring dream. How long would it take?”
She stilled. “Not long.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Are you sure?”
His eyes burned. “Dad said that a man would really have to trust a woman before he let her put him into a trance. I told you earlier that I trust you.”
“But you still don’t like the idea of needing dream therapy.”
His smile was rueful. “You know me well, don’t you, Dream Eyes?”
“Think of me as a repair person. Some people fix plumbing. I fix dreams.”
“You have a gift, an incredible talent,” he said. “What you do is amazing.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Walk through my dreams, partner. Help me find what I need to find.”
“All right, but I have to warn you, I need context first,” she said.
“I knew you were going to say that. Am I good or what?”
“You’re good. Talk to me, Judson.”
Thirty-seven
He needed answers, and it wasn’t like he was having any luck getting them on his own, Judson thought. Time to call in the services of an expert. Gwen was one hell of a talent. And he trusted her.
He turned back to the window.
“What, exactly, do you mean by context?” he asked.
“I know that your dream is connected to whatever happened on that last job with your no-name-agency client, but that’s all I’ve got. I need more if you want me to guide you through a trance.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what happened. But I don’t see how it will help you interpret my dream.”
“Take your time.”
He fell silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts and memories. After a while, he started talking. He knew that he would not stop until he had told her everything.
“You know that Sam and I do—did—some investigative work for an off-the-books government agency,” he said. “What you don’t know is how we got the client.”
“I assume you don’t advertise Coppersmith Consulting services online.”
“No. The director of the agency, Joe Spalding, recruited me and two other guys, Burns and Elland, in our senior year in college. Spalding was a quietly powerful figure in the intelligence community. He had been green- lighted to set up an experimental covert ops department staffed with agents he believed had some paranormal talent. It was supposed to be an updated version of the old CIA remote viewing project.”
“How in the world did he identify potential agents like you?” Gwen asked.
“Spalding’s real secret asset was that he was a talent himself,” Judson said. “A strong one. He could recognize other people with similar psychic profiles if he got close enough to pick up the energy of their auras. He set up shop on a handful of college campuses, offering to pay students to take what he called an experimental psychology test that was designed to determine if a person had any psychic talent. I signed up out of curiosity to see if his test really worked.”
“You knew you had some talent, so you were testing his test,” Gwen said.
“Yes. The test, as it turned out, was a fraud. It was the old tell-me-what-card-I’m-holding-up-now experiment.”
“Useless, according to Evelyn.”
“Right. But Spalding wasn’t depending on the results of his test. He was trying to find other people with what he called hot auras. A lot of nontalents showed up to take the test, of course, but he also got a few people who, like me, were drawn to the experiment because we wanted to know more about the psychic side of our natures.”
“Spalding recognized you when he saw you,” Gwen said.
“Yes. He found Burns and Elland at another campus. He offered all three of us a thrilling career filled with action and adventure as well as the opportunity to use our psychic talents in the service of our country.”
“I gather you couldn’t resist the offer,” Gwen said.
“Hell, no.” He turned around to face her. “I was twenty-one and looking for all the things Spalding promised. Mom tried to talk me out of joining the agency. But Dad was all for it. He said it would be good experience since I seemed fated for a career in the security field. And it was good experience. For a while.”
Gwen smiled. “You were living every young man’s dream. You were a real psychic secret agent. Very cool.”
“Good times, yeah. Spalding understood that I preferred to work alone, and he let me run with my assignments. He didn’t ask questions. All he cared about was results. I always got results. But after a couple of years, I realized that I wasn’t cut out to work for someone else. I liked the investigation process, though.”
“Because it suited your talents,” Gwen said. “It was satisfying work.”
“Yes. But I knew that I didn’t want to work for Spalding or anyone else forever. I wanted to be my own boss. In the meantime, Sam had finished getting his fancy degrees in geology and engineering. We all knew that he was destined to head up the Coppersmith R-and-D lab, but like Emma and me, he didn’t—couldn’t—work directly for Dad.”
“You Coppersmiths care a lot about each other, but you’re all too strong willed to take orders from each other,” Gwen said.
“Like Mom says, we’re all chips off the old rock and Dad is a very hard chunk of stone. As it happened, Sam was thinking about setting up his own consulting firm, but there’s not a lot of demand for paranormal crystal consultants outside the Coppersmith R-and-D lab. Spalding, however, saw a use for Sam’s talents in the field. It was Spalding who suggested that Sam and I set up a private investigation business and work for him on a contract basis.”
“Coppersmith Consulting.”
“Trust me, the word
“What happened?” Gwen asked.
“The changes were subtle at first. As contract consultants, we realized we were out of the need-to-know loop on a lot of stuff. But we had our intuition. We started to get uneasy about some of the jobs. Started turning down work from Spalding unless we could get enough background out of him.”
