“Let’s try this,” she said. “Tell me what you know about The Dream, and I’ll be on my way.”
“If I knew something, I’d tell you. Why is this Dream person dangerous? What did he do?”
She leaned closer. “He murdered two men in cold blood.”
“I never have gotten that saying. In cold blood. What does that even mean?”
Agent Uribe gritted her teeth. “It means he showed no remorse. He feels no empathy.”
The waitress walked back over. “Do you want to ordah somethin’ to eat?”
“No, tha—”
“Absolutely. I’m famished.” Samuel smiled and picked up the menu. “Hmm . . . are the jalapeño poppers good?”
“If you like hot.”
Samuel pursed his lips. “Maybe the burger, beer, and fries. What’s a Narragansett? Wait, isn’t that the name of a town?”
Uribe was glaring at him.
“They make lagahs,” the waitress said.
“Eh, maybe I shouldn’t have a beer. What about . . . kabobs? You serve kabobs? That’s interesting.”
“Is that what you’d like?” The waitress sounded slightly annoyed.
“No, I don’t think so. Just give me a cheeseburger and fries.” He folded the menu.
The waitress wrote down the order and went back into the kitchen.
Samuel turned back to Uribe and probably enjoyed the frustration on her face a little too much. “So,” he said, “who was it that this Dream person killed, anyway?”
“Does that matter? Killing is killing.”
“I think it matters quite a lot. Killing isn’t necessarily the same thing as murder.”
“How could they possibly be different?”
“Well, if some madman with a gun walked into this diner right now and you had to shoot him with your side arm in order to defend innocent civilians, that wouldn’t be murder.”
“That would be in the line of duty. The Dream is not law enforcement.”
“What if that waitress had a gun behind the counter and did the same exact thing? That wouldn’t be murder.”
“Do you have a point with all this?”
“Just wondering about this Dream person you’re so interested in.”
“He killed two people. He was found with a bloody knife in his hand. He had no defensive injuries. He’s a murderer.”
“What’s his side of the story?”
“He says he doesn’t remember. Conveniently.”
“Witnessing something like that could be awfully traumatic. I’ve seen memory loss from something like that.”
“Are we going to get back to the point anytime soon?”
He grinned. “What was the point of your visit again? Oh, right, you think I know where this Dream person is. Sorry, Agent Uribe. I’m just a tourist here in Boston. If you asked me about something that went down in Atlanta, or perhaps some other key locations in certain countries, I could help you, but
all I know about Boston is what I learned on my tour down the Freedom Trail. Man, that was some good stuff. You ever been on that tour? Boston Common is beautiful, though I’m sure it’s even lovelier during spring. And seeing the Old North Church, where Robert Newman and Captain John Pulling climbed the steeple to signal to Paul Revere and William Dawes that the British were coming, was amazing.”
“Okay,” she said. “Obviously, you’re not going to tell me where he is.”
“Would if I could.”
She smirked, then opened her mouth but stopped when the waitress came over with Samuel’s burger.
“This looks delicious,” Samuel said. “Thank you.”
The waitress walked away to help an elderly woman and a little girl who’d come in and sat at a booth in the other end of the diner.
Samuel took a big bite of the burger and chewed slowly, partially because he was hungry and partially just to annoy Uribe. In his experience, people got messy when impatient and frustrated, and if he was good at one thing, it was frustrating people.
He squeezed some ketchup onto his plate and dipped a few fries in it. The food tasted better than it should have. He’d barely been eating.
“All right,” Uribe said. “You’re not going to tell me where The Dream is. Just tell me what you’ve found out so far, and I’ll leave.”
Samuel finished chewing and swallowed. “Found out about what? You mean the Freedom Trail?”
“Don’t play with me, Samuel.”
He popped a fry into his mouth and chewed while looking at her.
“The Gardner Museum heist,” she said.
“You think this Dream person knows something about that?”
“He was an art forger.”
“You’re saying he forged some of the missing artwork?”
“So exquisitely that he had to have had access to the originals.”
He smiled. “Now it makes sense. You’re from the art crimes team, right?”
“Exactly.”
“I read something about that heist once. Those guys were pretty brazen. They were never caught, right? Does the bureau have any theories about where they disappeared to? I mean, the guards saw their faces. That should’ve helped, right?”
“I need to find that missing artwork, Samuel.”
And there it was. He knew what was going on with Uribe, why something about her hadn’t sat right from the very beginning.
(C) Mike Nappe and Melissa Kosci, Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020, used with permission from the publisher.
***
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM by Mike Nappa, Melissa Kosci
Trudi Coffey only realizes that she hasn’t seen Samuel Hill in weeks when the FBI shows up asking questions about him. After a strange encounter with an armed man demanding her help and an attack by a member of the Boston mob looking for someone named Dream, Trudi manages to find Samuel–or rather, he finds her. He’s made some pretty powerful enemies, but right now his full attention is on protecting Dream from the mob. Because Dream has something they want–the map to the location of artwork stolen from the Gardener Museum during the infamous 1990 heist.
With danger closing in from all sides, Trudi and Samuel will have to call on all of their allies to keep Dream safe and discover the identity of the people who have been hunting down Samuel. The real questions are whom can they trust? And who will make it out of this thing alive?
Thriller Crime | Inspirational Mystery [Revell, On Sale: June 2, 2020, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780800726461 / eISBN: 9781493423057]
Buy A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM: Amazon.com | Kindle
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About Mike Nappa
Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist, as well as a bestselling and award-winning author with more than one million books sold worldwide. When he was a kid, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe scared him silly. Today he owns everything Poe ever wrote. A former fiction acquisitions editor, Mike earned his MA in English literature and now writes full time.
Coffey & Hill
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***
About Melissa Kosci
Melissa Kosci is a fourth-degree black belt in and certified instructor of Songahm Taekwondo. In her day job as a commercial property manager, she secretly notes personal quirks and funny situations, ready to tweak them into colorful additions for her books. She and Corey, her husband of twenty years, live in Florida, where they do their best not to melt in the sun.
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