Free Fury by Steven James Page A

know.”
    He still wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up that knife.
    Move into the topic slowl y.
    “This morning I was doing research on homicidal sleepwalking—it’s when someone who’s sleepwalking kills another person.”
    “Why?”
    “Why would they kill someone?”
    “No, why were you researching it?”
    “Because of . . . Well, because I wanted to find out if I might hurt someone while I was sleeping.”
    “But homicidal sleepwalking? That’s crazy.”
    “I know, but it actually does happen, usually between family members. One time in England this guy strangled his wife in his sleep and when he woke up he had no memory of it. He was found not guilty of murder. Another guy threw his daughter out a window. Then this one woman—”
    “Okay, I get it. I don’t want to hear any more. It’s kind of disturbing.”
    “Right.”
    “And so all this scares you? Is that it? I mean, considering that you’ve started sleepwalking again?”
    “Yes. It does.”
    They both walked in silence for a little while, then Daniel finally said, “So the scariest thing is: How can you stop yourself from doing something terrible while you’re sleeping? I mean, if you’re not even conscious of it happening, you could climb out of bed, murder someone, crawl back into bed and wake up and not remember any of it.”
    “I don’t think you need to worry about any of that happening.”
    Tell her about the knife.
    No.
    Yes. You can trust her.
    No, she’ll be afraid of yo u. You’ll scare her.
    When he didn’t reply she reiterated. “Really, Daniel. You would never do anything terrible in your sleep.”
    You need to tell her. Go ahead.
    “Nicole, last night when I woke up in my dad’s bedroom I was holding a knife.”
    “What?”
    “I was holding a knife. A hunting knife.”
    “So that’s why you were looking up the stuff on homicidal sleepwalking.”
    “Yes.”
    “You would never hurt him, Daniel. You wouldn’t hurt anyone. I just don’t believe a person could do that, harm someone—or especially not kill ’em—unless that’s part of you, unless there’s something inside of you—I don’t know, I mean without some hatred or anger or something like that motivating you to do it. And that’s not you. Not you at all.”
    Two wolves inside.
    Fighting.
    Alwa ys fighting.
    “I’m not so sure,” he said. “But I know one thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    “We need to figure out why the blurs have started again. And we need to do it before tonight.”
    “When you go to bed again.”
    “Yes.”
    They had to leave the trail to get to where Daniel was planning to take her. After they did, he led her through the woods to the south, toward the Traybor Institute.
    There were a few ponds nearby. The lakes and waterways in this part of the state would freeze, not always this early in winter, but it all depended on the weather. Right now, the ice was at that stage where you could probably walk across it safely, but taking a snowmobile or a car out there to go ice fishing would definitely not be a good idea.
    “It’s not too far,” he told her as they bypassed the nearest pond.
    The y crossed a snowmobile trail that ended at an isolated road that led to a series of cabins encircling Waunakee Lake.
    “So, are you going to tell me where we’re going or is it still a surprise?” she asked.
    At this point he couldn’t think of any good reason to keep it from her. “It’s that place they built last fall over on the edge of the forest, you know, that research station.”
    “Why are we going there?”
    “I was looking through some maps last night and it got me thinking.”
    “Go on.”
    He still hadn’t told her about the mysterious texts he’d been receiving. Everything else so far involved what he had been doing or thinking, but the messages involved someone else, because obviously someone was sending them to him.
    The text last night led him to the basement.
    It’ll hurt her feelings if she finds out about the