Back in the main room, she found Daniel propped against the headboard, a slice of pizza in one hand, a beer in the other, watching CNN. She crossed the room and opened the white box with red lettering.

“Ham and pineapple on one side, anchovies on the other,” he said.

The sauce was a reddish orange, more orange than red when she really looked close, especially where it pooled thinly around the chunks of pineapple. “They both look so good I can’t decide,” she said with a sarcasm she figured would be lost on him.

She settled for the pineapple, grabbed a beer, and sat down on what she already considered her bed.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked a minute later when her slice was finally ready to be eaten. He stared at the neat pile of ham she’d placed on a napkin near the alarm clock radio.

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“You’re full of shit.”

She took a sip of beer. Surprisingly, it didn’t make her gag. “Why is it so hard to believe I’m a vegetarian?”

“Because you abandoned your dog, for chrissake. How can you be an animal lover if you abandon your dog? And you ate steak at my place.”

“Fed it to Premonition.” She examined her pizza slice with a critical eye. The sauce was definitely orange, the same rusty orange as the shag rug at The Palms.

She stared harder at the pizza. Was that a hair? She pulled. Cheese. Hardened cheese. But maybe it was hardened cheese wrapped around a hair. Without looking at the pizza, she forced herself to take a bite. She chewed, feeling the hair adhere to her throat. She swallowed, grabbed the beer, and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. Then she tried a test swallow. She couldn’t feel anything weird, but there was no way she could continue eating. The meal had been ruined. And next time she ate pizza she would remember the hair.

“Aren’t you going to have any more?” Daniel asked, seeing that she’d put the piece aside.

She shook her head.

“If you don’t like it, order something else.”

“No.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. And then she found herself lying to him the way she lied to everybody. It was easier than trying to explain to someone that something as harmless as a slice of pizza or a piece of pumpkin pie could taste and look like a hairball or a musty rug. “I ate earlier today. I’m not hungry.”

In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth for a full two minutes. Then she removed the towel from her head and shook out what was left of her hair. Wet, it didn’t look as bad. Uneven, but not freakish.

When she returned to the main room, Daniel announced that he was going to take a shower.

She’d thought to leave when he was sleeping, but this could be almost as good.

“And just in case you have any bright ideas, I’m taking the car keys with me.”

“Did I ever tell you my brother taught me how to hot-wire a car?” She smiled. At the moment he would be wondering if she was lying.

“Did you come from a bloody band of thieves?”

“We were always in trouble.” Truth was, they were the best kids in the world, always trying to please. But whenever anybody asked about her family, Cleo always came up with an evasive answer. It was less painful.

“Gimme your robe,” he said.

“What?”

“Your robe. Give it to me. I want to make sure you don’t leave.”

“I could wrap myself in a sheet.”

“That might be a little conspicuous.”

She thought about how far it was from the room to his car, about how many people they had passed on their way there.

“Don’t tell me you’re too modest to drop the robe.”

She took that as a direct challenge. Slowly she undid the belt and let the robe fall open. Then, with her eyes never leaving his, she slipped the fabric from her shoulders until she held the robe in one hand.

He stared.

“Don’t you want it?” She lifted the robe higher, her arm outstretched. “Here.”

He took three long steps toward her, snatched the robe from her fingers, and disappeared into the bathroom.

“Have a nice shower,” she said, smiling.

Inside the bathroom, Daniel leaned against the door, eyes closed, his heart beating in his ears. Damn. Why the hell had he done that? Why hadn’t he just used a set of handcuffs? He had a pair in the car. But he hated to handcuff a woman. He hated to handcuff anybody, truth be told. And son of a bitch, he hadn’t known she was naked under there. He’d figured she was wearing underwear.

Oh, God, he thought, unable to stop seeing those full, rounded breasts, those sweetly curving hips, that narrow strip of red-gold hair. The boldness in her eyes. The dare. The challenge.

What was she after? A trade? Sex for her freedom?

This whole thing was a bad idea.

He pushed away from the door and turned on the shower, not even bothering with the hot control. Ten minutes later, when he’d gotten all the blood and cola out of his hair and off his skin, he quit the shower, grabbed a towel and dried off. Normally he would have slept in the nude, but there was no telling what Cleo Tyler would do next. A man had to be prepared. He slipped back into his jeans and stepped from the bathroom.

Cleo appeared to be asleep. Probably pretending, lying in bed, covers up to her chin, one bent arm against the pillow. Her hair was partially dry, falling across her face so all he could see were her full, slightly parted lips.

Relieved that there would be no round two-or would it be considered round three?-he pulled the mattress off the nearest bed, covers and all. It was against fire code, but it was the only way he was going to get any sleep.

He dropped it in front of the door so there was no way she could get out without waking him. Then he grabbed a couple of pillows and eased himself down on the mattress.

Chapter Nine

It was the dream again. This time Cleo stood alongside the road, watching as the car approached. She tried to move, tried to shout, but even though she was there, she had no control over the event. It was like watching a movie. But unlike a movie, where you could turn away or leave the room, Cleo could do neither of those things. The car floated around the corner to head directly at her, headlights blinding. She lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Suddenly, somehow, she was inside the car, but she could see herself outside, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt.

She heard Jordan ’s cry of alarm, felt the weight of the car shift, saw a cement wall hurtling toward them.

This part of dream was always the same. The slow motion. The crunch of metal. The shattering of glass. Then her screams.

Don’t look. Don’t get out of the car.

But she did. She always did.

Nobody knew how she got out of the real accident. Speculation was that she’d crawled through the broken front window, because glass shards were found embedded in her knees. But in the dream, she was always just out. Just standing beside the car looking in. But the car was empty.

She turned around, the way she always turned around.

And bumped into herself, into her wild-eyed self. “You’re a bad person,” the Cleo in white said. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

“No.”

Cleo in white grabbed her arm. And Cleo was amazed, because she could feel the deathly chill of the other Cleo’s skin, the pressure of her fingers. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do it, you did it.” Cleo hung back, planting her feet on ground that kept slipping away. “You killed Jordan. You did it. I can’t look,” Cleo sobbed. “Don’t make me look.”

Suddenly she was in the middle of the road, staring at the broken, smashed pumpkin.

Why, she thought, the way she always thought with such a degree of false confidence, it’s only a broken pumpkin. But then the pumpkin moved. And the pumpkin cried for help.