He was sure they could work through Clare’s concerns and eliminate her peculiar visions with biweekly sessions. Biweekly as in twice a week as opposed to once every two weeks. It had been a good thing Clare had been sitting down because she would have fallen off her chair at the thought of paying so much to the psychologist. But if the sessions rid her of seeing ghosts it was worth every penny. Probably.

She’d asked about the treatment schedule and he’d mentioned meds and an inpatient center as options if the visions continued and she kept losing weight and having problems sleeping. Those two options had tweaked her whole nervous system and she had to repress a shudder.

“Have a good day!” the receptionist chirped after Clare had made an appointment for Monday.

Clare forced a smile, stuck warmth in her voice. “You, too.”

“Thank you.”

Nodding, Clare crossed the elegant lobby to the outer door. She’d worked with a couple of happy, optimistic people and just didn’t get them.

To Clare’s surprise, Dr. Barclay came to stand at the threshold of his office door, scrutinizing her. Checking to see if she’d made another appointment or examining her physical condition, which had not improved after a restless night? She nodded to him and left.

Enzo reappeared to whine at her. He didn’t like the smell of the place and didn’t even go into the reception room, let alone the inner sanctum that was costing Clare big bucks.

Walking down the gray and deeply carpeted corridor, she let her body sag. Dr. Barclay wasn’t helping as quickly as she’d hoped. She’d be a thin and frozen skeleton before this thing was resolved, and from the looks he gave her, he was going to prescribe heavy-duty meds soon.

She didn’t want drugs.

She did want this over.

She had some thinking to do.

Clare hit the library next for more information on Jack Slade and the headquarters he’d built at Virginia Dale. Though the Internet had good data on the current condition of the building that Slade had erected, and even mentioned the ear . . . most sites on the web reiterated what Clare considered a mass of legends and falsehoods about Joseph Albert Slade himself. She already had the books she considered definitive on the man.

After a couple of hours at the library, she nerved herself to once again leave the place and head for the restaurant she’d used yesterday. Walking in the sun didn’t warm her as much as other people, nor did the sweaty folks in the under-air-conditioned mall bus Clare took to reach the restaurant.

She arranged the materials she’d copied from the library—noncirculating maps and reference items—and the books she’d checked out on the restaurant table. This time she sat outside in the warm sun.

It didn’t take the brain of a private investigator or cop to follow the logic that if Zach had a new job with a security firm, the business was no doubt located in a downtown high-rise near the restaurant, since he’d come in the day before.

She wanted to see him again.

I do, too, said Enzo. I like him a lot. He smells, really, really, REALLY good. He sniffed lustily in demonstration.

She and her imaginary companion were rubbing along fairly well today, probably since she’d tossed an occasional murmur to the dog.

So she’d ended up here in the sun at the restaurant to reward herself and hope for a much nicer session with a much more attractive man than Dr. Barclay, though that individual was sure of his sex appeal. Not that he’d done anything unacceptable. Not while she was giving him a steady income. Still, she got a sense that if—when—she beat these annoying illusions, the doctor might be interested in her. Nothing she could pinpoint, just a sense. And nothing that irritated or harassed.

She just preferred the rougher and more conflicted and incredibly more sexy Zach Slade.

“Hi, Clare.”

THIRTEEN

SHE JUMPED AT the voice, the wrong voice, of the wrong man just outside the iron rail delineating the restaurant’s space from the mall sidewalk. Frowning, she tried to recall his name. She’d seen him in the Western History room of the Denver Public Library more than once. He was the research assistant for a professor at a local college. Scrounging through her mind, she at least came up with his first name. “Hello, Ted.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your surname.”

“Mather.” He gave her a wide grin before he wiped a blue bandana across his brow. “Whew, it’s hot today. How can you possibly stand it out here? Must be air-conditioned inside. You should go in there.”

“I’m fine.”

Enzo barked. You should put on your hat.

“I suppose I have a hat somewhere,” Clare grumped. She leaned down toward her briefcase; dizziness had her stilling until she blinked and blinked again.

“Anything wrong?” Ted asked.

“No. Just looking for something,” she said. Her mind cleared and she took out a visor. “There, that should be good enough.” It would cut the glare of the light gray flagstones but still leave her head open to the sun.

You have not been eating well, Enzo scolded. You are fighting me. Us. Your gift. Not eating well. Your health is deteriorating.

“I’m still used to Aunt Sandra’s place in Chicago near the lake. I haven’t been home a full week yet.” And it had been a cloudy summer in Chicago.

“I understand,” Ted Mather said with a commiserating smile.

She’d actually forgotten he was there, a figure nearly too bright in a white polo shirt and beige pants. His hair was thinning and sandy and he had dark brown eyes. He was real, human, and alive, and he had color.

And her sanity was slipping. Her greatest fear.

She shoved that aside, forcing herself to deal with the man. “Can I help you?”

He chuckled. “No, I think I can help you. Can I join you?”

Help her? How?

Right now she began to think she should take any help she could get. From under her lashes, she glanced around the street. Her table was on the corner. No Zach Slade.

“Sure,” she said.

He nodded and moved into the restaurant.

You need food! Enzo said. Order some!

“I’ll be having tea later,” she said.

Hours from now. You didn’t eat dinner last night. You didn’t eat breakfast this morning.

“I rarely eat breakfast.”

“This is a good place for lunch,” Ted Mather said.

“Yes,” Clare agreed, though she hadn’t had anything but coffee here the day before. She looked at the menu. A sandwich might be good. Soup might be better, though, warm her up, and she wouldn’t worry about getting lettuce caught in her teeth if Zach showed up.

The waitress came and Clare ordered tomato soup. The woman gave her an odd glance but nodded and waited for Ted.

He smiled genially up at her. “Just decaf coffee, please.”

“Sure,” the server said, and left.

Ted scraped an iron chair against the flagstones. Clare gritted her teeth at the screech, bit her lip. She was obviously becoming too sensitized to . . . everything. Just when would the rest of those wretched physical tests come in?

“Clare?” Ted asked, now sitting across from her.

She forced a smile for him. “Yes, Ted?”

He beamed at her, reached down into his canvas messenger bag, and pulled out a fifteen-inch cardboard tube. “I got permission to copy this complete map for you. I saw you studying it this morning.”

“Oh, thanks!” She’d used her tablet to take pics of several maps, in sections. Most of them had been the Pony Express trail with the stations marked. The map she liked most didn’t have anything to do with Jack Slade, but it had excellent drawings and the dates that the route of the Mormon pioneers would have hit each stop. Pioneers often stayed at stations of the Overland Stage, including Virginia Dale, Slade’s headquarters and where the other ear had been lost. She shivered.