Dream Walker Read Online Free PDF Page A

sudden shift in conscience or was he devastated that his resolve failed and he couldn’t kill her?
    Then there was the lead soldier, merciless as he stepped in to kill Aislen without any hesitation. Aislen’s heart hammered in her chest now as she remembered him. He was a chiseled masterpiece, defined muscles taut and flexed, barely containing themselves within the confines of his uniform. His eyes were the glacier blue of ice, and the steely determination that radiated from them pierced straight through her core. He was so exquisite it was frightening. She had felt powerless before him, helpless and frozen. She felt ashamed of herself now for feeling so weak. He had only looked at her for a moment, yet it felt like an eternity passed between them.
    Then he shot her, plain and simple.
    Aislen shuddered. A chill scampered across her arms and wiggled up the nape of her neck. Heaviness lingered in the air around her. The dream still felt present in her mind and palpable on her flesh.
    She’d heard somewhere that if you died in a dream, you died in your real life. Well, obviously, that wasn’t true. Thankfully, she was alive and breathing, but even when she woke up it took her several minutes to figure out where she was, to put the puzzle pieces together, to form her bedroom, to weave the story together of who she was. It was like being newly born and placed back into her life.
    Disturbing. Discombobulating.
    To have a dream as vivid as this was unusual for Aislen and it scared the crap out of her. Aislen was not much of a dreamer, asleep or awake. She rarely remembered any of them. Most of the time she went to sleep, then woke up out of blackness only knowing that time had passed because the numbers on her clock had changed. When she did remember a dream, it was in vague fragments, a mash-up of the previous day’s conflicts mixed with whatever she happened to catch on television before she’d gone to bed. One could wrap a rationale around that.
    Aislen wasn’t prone to daydreaming, either; silly flights of fancy were a waste of valuable time. She had school and work and goals to achieve. Girls satisfied with whatever life brought to them on a platter could afford to wile away the hours wandering in la-la land. One day, they would wake up and realize life only brought you Mac and Cheese and powdered milk if you let it—the stuff of food stamps.
    No, Aislen was as realistic and practical as they came. She had partaken enough from that menu and was determined to create a future in which she could choose what was going on her platter. Her preference was having her cake and eating it too, thank you very much.
    Aislen heard rustling in the kitchen downstairs, and the aromas of coffee and bacon began drifting through the cracks of the old ranch house. This was the beginning of the daily grind: Mom making some breakfast, packing Aislen a lunch, and brewing a strong pot of java to get their blood pumping.
    At 24, Aislen felt too old to still be living at home, but her mom wasn’t exactly pushing her out the door. Quite the contrary, Sabine was insistent that Aislen finish her nursing degree before she had to start worrying about paying rent and feeding herself. She refused to allow Aislen to contribute anything to the household, wanting her to pay for school and save money instead. Aislen’s guilt over her mother’s generosity mounted daily.
    Her mother had worked long, hard hours for years, waitressing at a breakfast joint in town to support the two of them. One wouldn’t expect that it would provide them with much, but her mom had managed to buy a house and a couple of decent, although very used, cars, all on her meager waitress salary and the generous tips of her patrons.
    Their house wasn’t a showplace by any stretch of the imagination. Squatting just outside the city limits of Modesto, in the little town of Empire, the two-bedroom ranchette literally sat right next to the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad. The constant