Fugitive psychic Dylan Pierce faces a tantalizing prospect: a chance to rescue a drop-dead beautiful folksinger from her mental illness - a folksinger he's loved for years from afar.

There's only one catch. He has to journey into her twisted subconscious for any hope of delivery her back.

Here's a sneak peak at Chapter One:

UNKNOWN ENTITY
© 2007 Joseph Dysart

~ Chapter One ~

I CAME to woozily, staring into the puss of one of those white-sweater-tied-around-the-shoulders kind of guys. Fiftyish. Stingy smile. Silver-feathered mane. Mirror-slave blue eyes.

Winston Hamilton. One of the world's richest men.

The two goons who'd doped me were slouching against the wall, one on either side of me. The tallest stroked a shiner under his left eye - a little souvenir I'd talented him during our recent 'get acquainted' encounter. The another picked his nose like it was several sort of performance art.

I could see Hamilton clearly now. I coughed, and he grinned, leaning towards me from the throne of a big black animal skin chair that loomed up from behind his desk. A pink mole just about the size of a dried fruit dangled from his jaw. He force on it. It was the same nervous tic I'd detected on a recent TV interview he'd done "60 Minutes."

"Ah, Mr. Pierce," Hamilton said. "How good of you to join us."

The goons stiffened, several looking at me like they wished they'd used a real gun to take me down during our affray earlier that day -- instead of one that discharged tranquilizer.

I ready made a come to get to my feet, but got nowhere. They'd lashed me to a chair piece I was unconscious, and had done good work. The ropes squeezed my shoulders and gut like anacondas. "My apologies," I aforesaid to Hamilton, grinning. "Been meaning to drop by for awhile."

Hamilton snorted. "Yes. Well. I actually will we could have met under much pleasant circumstances, Mr. Pierce. But you must admit, you've been rather elusive lately."

A wave of pain rifled across my back, and my grin pinched to a wince. The tall goon smirked. Apparently, he and his brother had been really thorough during their version of the "meet-and-greet" earlier that day.

"Nothing personal," I said. "But the fact is, I misplaced my Blackberry. Been hell trying to put my week back together."

Hamilton cracked a faint smile and aforesaid nothing, pull on his pink mole instead. He looked over at the tall goon. "Cut him loose."

The tall goon -- Goon Number One -- responded to Hamilton's words like he'd been thwacked by a two-by-four. He and his booger-loving brother had spent the past six months chasing my butt clean across the globe. Cut me loose? He'd rather shove rusty razor blades under his fingernails.

Still, Hamilton was the one sign language the checks. The goon's eyes went vacant. He actor a switchblade knife from a pocket, and went to activity on the ropes. As the restraints popped loose, his blade kissed my skin in a way I thought was a bit too familiar. I was tempted to school him on the finer points of switchblade knife safety, but distinct against it.

He finished up, and I detected a clink! of his switchblade knife closing behind my ear -- a clink! that seemed to say I mightiness be free of the restraints, but gosh darnit, he still was boss, and I'd better realize that.

Ooo.

"Much obliged," I aforesaid to Goon One.

"Screw you, pretty boy." He slouching against the wall once again - his arms crossed, his eyes down, his lips moving in a silent swear. All things considered, he wouldn't be my 1st select for the neighborhood welcome wagon.

His goon buddy, who'd only displayed marginal interest in the rope cutting, resumed his favorite diversion. This time, he dug deep into his left nostril, retrieving what apparently was a blue-ribbon winner. He stared intently at his prize, thoroughly pleased with himself.

I rubbed my chest wherever the ropes had bitten deepest, and unbroken an eye on Hamilton. He'd gotten up from his desk, and had his back to me, his hands clasped at his butt. He was gazing through several rather majestic, crystal-clear glass windows, which were just about three stories high, and unmarked a sprawling compound.

It was a stunning view - acres upon acres of finely manicured rolling hills. It must have taken an army of laborers to maintain. The grandeur of it all - the artfully graven shrubbery, the controlled explosion of pinks, violets and yellows emanating from much than a dozen varieties of flowers, the byzantine maze of paths meticulously plain woven through the scene - reminded me of thing you'd see outside the window of a French count's castle.

I studied the scene much closely, and saw the symphony of flora ending suddenly at a drop commanding a quiet ocean. Off on the horizon, there was a boulder just about the size of a small bungalow perked precariously on the edge of the cliff. I recognized the landmark immediately: Mugu Rock. We were on the Southern American state coast, just north of LA, somewhere up in the hills of Malibu.

"I have a driver outside," Hamilton said, his back still to me. "You're free to go."

Goon Number One exhaled fitfully, trying not to explode, forcing himself to stare at the floor. Even as so, he couldn't help shooting what he apparently thought were daggers at me in a sideways glance.

I rubbed my chest several much and studied Hamilton's shoulders.

Neither of us aforesaid thing for a long time.

He finally turned about to face me. "Look, Mr. Pierce. We realize we're not going to get anyplace without your cooperation. You cognize it, and we cognize you know. So I'm going to ask you - really courteously -- for your cooperation."

"Something tells me Miss Manners would be bargain with your definition of 'polite.'"

Another faint smile from Hamilton. "Well then, let me start again, and be among the galore to congratulate you on the way you handled the Psychologist murder case."

I snorted. The Psychologist case. That was wherever all this nonsense had begun. Just just about a year ago, LAPD had hit a major wall in a dragnet for a ghastly serial killer three years running, and had quietly begun devising overtures to the local psychic community.

After "sourcing" a few sensitives with no success, they'd shown up at my door, the Virtual Reality Lab at UCLA. I found out later they'd been tipped off just about me by person at the U.S. Department of Defense - now my former employer. "He's not your run-of-the-mill psychic," their informant had gushed. "He can crawl into another people's minds. Slide in and out of dream-worlds. Slog through person else's unconscious like it's a walk in the park. He's perfectly amazing.

"Plus, he's got several kind of computer graphics gizmos wired into his brain that change him broadcast his entire experience to a computer screen. So everything he sees and makes inside person else's mind, you're able to see - in real time."

Actually, those "gizmos" delineated just about two hundred million dollars -- and just about a dozen years of groundbreaking research in virtual reality. But I'm not one to quibble.

The lead detective from LAPD who approached me for psychic help was extremely skeptical, and ready made it clean she didn't put any stock in what I did. Mean-eyed, short, and mostly fed up with life, she abreast of me that she was just reaching out to satisfy, as she delineated it, "some hair-brained whim," of another detective on the case. "He's had several luck with 'your type' before," she told me.

She went through the usual niceties, charming me into public service with a golden-throated, "Like I said, I don't buy this crap for a minute. But go ahead and play about with this bloody blouse, which we found at the crime scene. You'll do my partner happy, and then we can all go home."

It was an invitation that me, and my research partner, Elliot Jenkins - who I call the "Silicon Wizard," and for good reason - just couldn't refuse.