"Hey, Shakira." Otto pulled a chair over from the empty table on his right and sat across from her. "Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all." She sipped her coffee and continued typing on her laptop.

He scooted his backpack under the table with his foot and put his coffee cup down in front of him. "What's up?"

"Not much. Just writing some software for a new client and enjoying the sunrise. How 'bout you? What brought you here so early?"

"The sunrise. And knowing that you often have breakfast here gave me the extra motivation I needed to haul my ass out of bed after only a few hours of sleep." He grinned and turned to look out across the city. The little cafe he and Shakira sat in front of was on one of the upper floors of the Galleria, and it provided a spectacular view of the city. At night it looked like an endless sea of neon, but now the sun was climbing over the horizon and the clouds, glowing pink and orange, were just as beautiful.

Shakira chuckled and shook her head. "You need more sleep than that."

"Not much. For some reason, if I sleep more than four or five hours, it screws me up for the entire day. I just end up feeling groggy and sluggish all day." True, as far as it went, but he also disliked sleeping because of the increasingly unsettling dreams he'd been having.

He glanced past her, out the other side of the cafe, which opened into the interior of the mall. A few people walked around, but there would be many more later. He kept most of his attention on Shakira and hoped she wouldn't notice him staring at her. She was wearing one of her usual loose-fitting T-shirts and a pair of denim shorts that showed off the curves of her hips and thighs quite nicely, and it wasn't easy to keep his eyes from wandering back to her.

"Anything new going on with you?" Shakira said as she continued typing.

"The usual, more or less." Otto shrugged, finished his doughnut, and glanced over his shoulder at the menu board on the far wall. Coffee and a doughnut worked well enough to get him started in the morning, but he'd need something more substantial than that.

Shakira continued typing for a moment, then her expression shifted slightly. "Say, Otto, there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

"Sure, let ‘er rip." He turned to face her again.

She hesitated a moment before continuing. "It's about the conversation we had a few days ago. About those dreams you've been having."

He nodded and sipped his coffee. He'd been trying not to think about the nightmares, but maybe talking about them would help more than keeping it all bottled up.

"I wasn't sure I wanted to bring it up," she said, keeping her voice low, "but I want to be sure you're okay."

He nodded. "I'm always a little unnerved when I wake up, but I get over it quickly enough." He turned his cup slowly and added in a softer voice, "Mostly."

"Those dreams haven't stopped?"

"They're getting more frequent. And they still feel more like memories than dreams."

She nodded. After another brief hesitation, she spoke again. "Feel like talking about it?"

"I guess so." He took a deep breath and spent a moment gathering his thoughts. The bizarre dreams had started years ago, but they'd been infrequent until recently. They ranged from glimpses of surreal environments to relentless nightmares. "Well, the one I had last night is a good place to start, I guess. I only remember bits of it. I was on a mountain, I think. There was a cliff on one side, seemed to be several miles high. The sky had two suns, both of 'em blue, so the sky looked weird." He frowned as more pieces of the dream bubbled to the surface. "I was being chased by … something. Never got a clear look at it, at least not that I can remember."

"Creepy." Shakira raised an eyebrow. "And it seemed more like a memory than a dream?"

"Yeah. My dreams are usually pretty disjointed." Otto tossed her a lopsided grin. "And ninety percent of them are about sex." He drank some more coffee. "These, on the other hand, are a lot more coherent. If I could remember more pieces of them after I wake up, I think they'd make perfect sense."

"Still think they're related to … what happened to you when you were little?"

"Yeah." He hadn't remembered being shot until recently -- around the time the weird dreams had started ramping up, in fact. It had happened when he was six or maybe seven years old. He'd been walking down the street and heard screeching tires and gunshots. It had been a drive-by shooting and he'd gotten caught in the middle of it. Before he could figure out what was happening, he'd been hit in the shoulder and chest. He remembered falling, feeling cold pavement under him, everything fading away … and then his heart had stopped.

He had died.

And yet here he was, without so much as a scar where either bullet had hit him. He'd done a thorough search of the city's hospital and police records and had found nothing -- no children with wounds like his had been admitted at that time, and none had been DOA when they were brought in. Yet he'd found articles on numerous news websites showing the aftermath of the drive-by, complete with the victims' bodies sprawled on the ground -- and one spot where a small body had been, a pool of blood that couldn't have come from anywhere else, but no corpse.

He'd copied all the articles and records and given them to Shakira a few days ago. She'd looked into it herself and had come to the same conclusion -- either he really had been gunned down and somehow walked away without a scratch, or he was imagining the whole thing.

He shrugged again and released a long sigh. "I don't know how they're connected, but I'm sure they are."

Shakira nodded and patted his hand. "Try not to let it get to you. I'm sure we'll find a reasonable explanation for it all."

"I hope so. If we don't, it'll mean I really am going nuts."

"Hey, don't talk like that. I've seen enough in the files you showed me to convince me that there's something to this. Whatever it might be, you're not crazy." She patted his hand again nodded at the menu board above the counter. "Maybe some food will help you feel better. Breakfast is on me today if you're still hungry."

"I was just thinking about ordering something, but I can pay for it myself."

"Don't worry about it. If you insist on making us even later, you can always buy me a cup of coffee or something, sometime." She chuckled and winked at him. "And just because I'm buying you breakfast, it doesn't mean I expect you to put out, so don't get your hopes up."

Otto laughed, then he sighed and shook his head. "Damn, for a second I thought I actually had a shot."

Shakira laughed and shook her head. She turned back to the menu board. "Okay, what're you hungry for?"

He let his gaze caress her body for a moment and suppressed a sigh. If only she could understand how I feel about her, instead of thinking it's a joke or a teenage crush.

He kept it to himself and focused his attention on the menu.