"Just because she was here wouldn't prove you were. And the fact that you got a new key from the manager supports the idea that your key was taken."

"I agree, but I can see how the sheriff might be able to build a circumstantial case against me. Everything that happened last night was plotted out beforehand. Someone took a lot of time and forethought to set me up."

"Maybe we should wipe down the tables and the doorknobs and other surfaces," Catherine said, striding into the bathroom. She grabbed two towels off the rack and tossed one to him as she reentered the room. "At least we can make sure they don't find her prints here."

Dylan nodded. "Good thinking. Have you done this sort of thing before?"

"Maybe," she said, giving him a cryptic smile. "But that's not important now, is it?"

"You're a very interesting woman. I like a good mystery, you know."

"Then you must be loving your life right now."

"I like a good mystery when it doesn't involve me," he amended. "I'd rather be the detective than the victim or the villain."

They worked quickly, wiping off all the furniture and doorknobs; then Dylan tossed the towels in the tub and doused them with water-for what reason he didn't know, except that it seemed like a good finishing touch. When he returned to the room he picked up the phone by the bed and punched the number for the front desk. "I'm checking out of room three oh four," he said when the clerk answered. "I'll leave the key in the room." He gave one last look around as he hung up the phone, remembering the one item he had not located. "Erica must have taken my car keys, unless I lost them in the woods. But I did see my car in the lot when we pulled in, so she didn't take it."

"How will you get home?"

"I'll figure that out later. I guess I'm good to go."

"My room is just down the hall," Catherine said as she opened the door.

Catherine's room was set up the same as his, but her bed was made and everything was in order. Obviously the maid had been in. As Dylan set his bags down on the bed, his gaze caught on the painting displayed on the easel. It was an abstract slash of dark colors that collided with one another in an angry, sinister manner. He'd seen other such paintings at Catherine's beach house and had been struck before by their intensity and passion.

Catherine immediately moved in front of the picture. "Don't look," she said, holding up a hand. "I meant to put it away, but it was still wet when I went downstairs."

"You know that makes it impossible for me not to look," he told her. "Besides, I saw the gruesome pictures at your house. I know you have a dark side."

He walked around her to stare at the painting. "When did you do this?"

"Last night. When I wake up from a nightmare I have to paint," she said with a sigh. "It's ugly, isn't it?"

"Definitely not my taste. What did you dream about?"

She shook her head. "I don't remember. I never remember. Sometimes just for a second I hear screams in my head, and then that's it. I wake up feeling a terrifying panic."

"Are the screams female?"

A flicker of doubt sparked in her eyes. "I think so. I never thought about it. But, yes, I believe they're female screams."

"Are you sure last night's screams weren't real? If something happened to Erica you might have heard her cry out. Her cabin isn't that far away."

"I'm certain it wasn't Erica I heard. The screams were in my head, along with . . ." She stopped talking. "Along with a lot of other crap, nothing that concerns you."

"I'm not so sure about that." He looked back at the picture. Tilting his head, he considered the lines that seemed to stand out, depending on the angle and the light. "It's a face, isn't it?"

"I don't want to talk about it or analyze it," she said quickly.

"Tough, I do. Answer the question."

Catherine frowned, obviously annoyed by the order, but after a moment she said, "I think it's a face, but I'm surprised you can see it."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do." He gave the portrait several more minutes of consideration, feeling something tickling the back of his brain, some tiny detail that he recognized but couldn't quite figure out. And then it hit him- what appeared to be a tiny gold cross in the center of the chaos of colors. "Erica wore a cross on a necklace," he said, pointing to the tiny gold lines. "I remember thinking that it was an odd choice for a woman who didn't seem to be the religious type." He gazed at Catherine and saw the answer in her eyes. "This is Erica, isn't it?"

"It could be, I guess."

His pulse began to race. "You're not guessing at all. You know it's her."

"I think it is," she admitted. "But usually I don't recognize the faces that I paint. They're strangers. They're not people I think I've ever seen, or if I saw them I didn't notice them. But they all feel like they're calling out to me. As if they're afraid and I'm the only one who can save them. But how can I save them when I don't know who they are?"

He heard the despair in her voice, and even though he didn't completely understand what she was saying, he could see that she was very disturbed by the fact that she couldn't seem to make her visions or her dreams work to help anyone. "This might be your breakthrough. If it's Erica, then you can help her."

"I don't know."

"Don't doubt yourself."

"I can't help it. I've been living with these nightmares for a long time. I don't want to be this way, you know. All my life I just wanted to be normal. But that's not going to happen. So most of the time I try not to look too closely at anything."

"And does that work for you?"

She made a face at him. "Obviously not. Well, let me rephrase that. It works in the daylight, but at night, when my subconscious takes over, I have no control. I'm just along for the ride."

"That must make for some exciting nights."

"That I don't remember in the morning. All I'm left with is another gruesome picture."

"No one is completely normal, Catherine. Everyone is a little crazy. Trust me; I know. I've covered a lot of crazies in my life. On the scale of nutty, you're not so bad."

"You're just trying to make me feel better."

"I'm trying to make you see that just because you paint your nightmares doesn't mean that you're out of your mind."

"The only difference is that I think my nightmares might be real . . . actually happening in the world. It's difficult to explain, but sometimes I feel like I'm inside the head of someone who is really . . . evil. It scares the hell out of me. For a long time I was afraid that I was sleepwalking, that I was leaving the house and killing people in my dreams. When I was younger I even set up barricades so I could make sure in the morning that I hadn't left."

"And you hadn't," he said, sure that she didn't have a mean bone in her body.

"No, but I still felt like a witness to something I couldn't remember. I used to read the newspapers in the morning after my dreams, wondering if I'd see news of some murder that would trigger a memory in my mind, but there was never anything that seemed familiar."

He wanted to tell her that that was because her dreams weren't real. But she'd probably just interpret that as another slam, and he sensed it wouldn't take much to drive her away. Right now she was the only ally he had. "Why do you think you drew Erica's face, especially the cross? Did you notice it last night when you saw her at the bar?"

"Not consciously." She pressed a hand to her temple, as if he were giving her a headache. "Can we stop talking about this?"

"How often do the nightmares come?"

She sighed. "You're very stubborn."

"So I've been told."

"It depends. Usually when I get them they go on for a couple of days or sometimes weeks. Then they just stop. It seems that the more in touch I am with the people around me, the more likely I am to have the nightmares. It's as if I open up some emotional transmitter and I can't filter out the bad from the good."

"When did they start this last time?"

She bit down on her bottom lip. "The night after I had the vision about you. The nightmares have been getting worse the last two months, intensifying every night. And this is the first picture where I've ever recognized the face. It must mean something."

He ran a hand through his hair, feeling as if he were getting off track. He wasn't going to find the answers to Erica's disappearance in a painting or in Catherine's dreams. He had to get real. "I'm going to call my lawyer." He needed to bring an objective party into the mix, and his longtime friend Mark Singer was a damn good criminal attorney. He would know the best course of action to take.

"That's a good idea," Catherine said with relief, lifting the painting off the easel.

"What are you doing with that?"

"Putting it away. I don't like looking at it." She slipped the painting into a large portfolio and blew out a breath of relief.

Dylan wished he could set aside his problems as easily. "Mark," he said as his attorney picked up the phone, "I'm in a hell of a lot of trouble."

Chapter 5.

While Dylan spoke to his attorney, Catherine tidied up her paints. She felt restless and a little short of breath. Dylan took up a lot of emotional and physical space, and she was so attuned to him that she sensed the tension in his body as if it were her own.

A part of her really wanted to walk away from him, but the fact that she'd drawn Erica's face and that maybe, just maybe, this time she had a chance to actually help someone in her vision made it impossible for her to consider leaving.

Although she had to wonder why she was supposed to help the woman who had drugged Dylan and left him out in the woods all night. Was Erica the victim or the villain? Was she good or was she evil?

As Catherine remembered the fear that had gripped her when she'd looked into Erica's cabin, she suspected that Erica had gotten herself caught in the very trap she was supposed to be setting for Dylan. Catherine felt fairly certain that someone had been watching Erica last night. But who and why? And was Erica really in trouble? Or was her disappearance just part of the plan to set Dylan up?

Catherine glanced over at Dylan as he ended his call. "What did your attorney say?"

"Mark will call the sheriff's office and see what he can find out," Dylan said. "Hopefully they'll give him more information than they gave me. In the meantime I'd like to take a shower. Do you mind? I've been in these clothes way too long."

"Help yourself."

"Would you answer my phone if it rings? I think it will take Mark a while to call back, but I don't want to miss him. His name is Mark Singer."

"Sure," she said, relieved when Dylan grabbed his clothes and entered the bathroom. She needed to catch her breath, figure out what she could do to help, and she could think more clearly with Dylan out of the room.

Returning to the window, she took a moment to absorb the gorgeous view of the mountains and lake. She'd planned to stay in the area and paint for a few days. At least, that was what she'd told herself. Perhaps deep down she'd known all along that she would stay in Tahoe because of Dylan. She'd never admit it aloud, but she hadn't been able to get him out of her head since she'd met him two months earlier. He'd been a prominent star in her daydreams, and painting his portrait had done little to banish him from her mind. She'd told herself it was just a foolish crush or infatuation or an inconvenient attraction, and that it would go away with time, but so far that hadn't happened. When she'd seen him at the wedding, standing next to his brother, looking so ruggedly appealing, her heart had skipped a beat. And it had shocked her to feel that gut-clenching desire. It had also scared her a little.

That was the real reason she'd left Dylan alone with Erica. She'd welcomed the other woman's presence as a good interruption, an opportunity to excuse herself and put some distance between herself and the man she couldn't forget. She knew Dylan wasn't right for her in so many ways.

But perhaps if she hadn't let fear run her off, Dylan wouldn't be in the mess he was in now. Not that she could have possibly anticipated the current turn of events.

As she gazed down at the entrance to the lodge, she saw several men gathering there. They looked like some sort of search-and-rescue team that had come from the woods. They conversed for a few minutes and then got into two separate vehicles and drove away. Obviously they hadn't found Erica, but had they found anything else?

More worry settled in the pit of Catherine's stomach as she let her gaze drift out over the lake, wondering what secrets were hidden in its depths.

As she watched the shimmering blue water it seemed to grow more turbulent, whitecaps and waves developing, shattering its peaceful beauty. The sun disappeared. Dark clouds covered the horizon. Shadows turned the tall trees into terrifying shapes. Shaken, she turned away.

She'd never had nightmares in the daytime before. Was the monster getting closer?

A man parked his car in front of a convenience store just outside Tahoe City and pulled out his cell phone. He was supposed to have reported in several hours ago, but he'd spent half the night searching the woods for that damn woman. He didn't know how she'd gotten away from him, but he would find her, and he would finish the job.

His call was answered on the third ring.

"She got away," he said shortly, hating to admit it, but there was no escaping the facts.

"How did that happen?"

The stone-cold voice reminded him that there was no excuse for failure. "You said she wouldn't be expecting me, that she would be taken by surprise, but she was ready," he complained. "She jumped me before I was halfway through the door."

"You were sloppy to let her hear you coming. I thought you were supposed to be the best."

"I am the best, and next time I'll plan the hit my way." He enjoyed turning the blame around; it took the bad taste of failure out of his mouth and softened the pain in the back of his head where the woman had nailed him with the iron poker from the fireplace. He intended to pay her back for that. Now that he knew what a wildcat she was, it would make the eventual taking that much sweeter. There was nothing like killing a woman. Every time he did it he felt an intense rush of satisfaction, better than sex, better than any thing.

"Does anyone know you were there?"

The question drew him back to the present.

"Of course not. I never leave anything behind." Once he'd come to terms with the fact that the woman had escaped, he'd gone back to the cabin and cleaned up his own blood so as not to mix it with the evidence planted in the cabin. Then he'd wiped off the poker and, to be extra careful, had tossed it into the lake. No one could trace it back to him. And no one would ever know he'd been anywhere near the lodge.

"Where is she now?"

"I have a good idea," he said. "Don't worry; I'll find her."

"And you'll kill her as planned. She can't live past tomorrow. You understand that, don't you?"

He understood, all right. If he didn't succeed, not only would he not get his money, he would probably end up dead himself. Kill or be killed. It was the way he'd lived his entire life. And murder . . . well, it was the one thing he was really good at.

Erica Layton would die, but he wouldn't be the one to pay for it. Sometimes life was sweet.

Dylan was tempted to linger in the shower. The hot spray eased the tension in his neck and shoulders, but he forced himself to turn off the water. He didn't have time to waste. The trap was tightening around him, and he needed to find a way out fast. He wondered if this was how Joseph Ravino had felt when he'd realized Dylan was onto him, when he'd seen the house of lies he'd built begin to crumble. Which also begged the question, was that the purpose for this game-payback?

It would be Ravino's style to use Erica, the very woman who'd betrayed him, to set up someone else. It would be poetic justice. And Erica could be bought- there was no doubt about that. Or she could have been threatened or blackmailed. Erica certainly wouldn't want to end up dead, the way Ravino's wife had. With the senator's connections, even from prison he could be calling the shots. Dylan just needed to figure out the next move before Ravino or Erica made it.