Page 39 of Diagnosis Attraction

Matt smashed the phone with a rockandthen pawed through the wallet. The guy had a wad of cash but no identification.

“The money will come in handy,” Matt said as he stuffed the bills into his pocket. “Do you keep a key to the back door somewhere?” he asked.

“I wish I knew. Maybe a neighbor has a key, but I don’t recall.”

She pushed aside a flowerpot and moved a couple of large rocks but saw nothing.

“We may have to break in.” Matt climbed the steps and tried her door. When it turned out to be unlocked, she drew in a sharp breath.

“Looks like the bad guys were inside and didn’t bother to lock up. Stay here until I make sure nobody’s in there.”

He drew the gun and held it in both hands. Before stepping inside, he studied the threshold, looking for trip wires, then cautiously entered.

Matt had asked her to wait for his all clear, but as she stood with her heart pounding in her chest, she knew she couldn’t make herself stay outside. This was her house—an important key to her understanding herself. And really, would the bad guyshave someone in here when they already had men at the front and back?

When Matt saw she was following him, he made a rough sound, but he didn’t order her out.

“Wait downstairs while I go up.”

“Okay.”

Again, waiting was hard.

All clear,he told her as he came down the stairs.

But I see from your thoughts that it’s a mess up there.

Sorry.

She had expected it from what she saw on the first floor. As she looked around, she grappled with mixed reactions. She was anxious to see the place where she lived. Apparently, her taste ran to the whimsical, with touches like bright cloths on horizontal surfaces and ethnic pottery—not much like that sober black jacket and slacks she’d been wearing when she had the accident. She seemed to kick back when she got into her own environment.

But at the same time she was thinking about her taste, she was taking in the destruction. Someone had been searching the house and not caring what kind of mess they hadleft.

She hurried to her office, which was a long, narrow room at the side of the house and gasped when she saw her computer. The screen lay smashed on the floor, and the processor had been taken apart, presumably to remove the hard drive.

The room was divided into two sections by a bank of filing cabinets. Behind them was an area she’d blocked off as a storage closet where she’d piled cardboard boxes purchased from an office supply store. From the mess on the floor, she gathered that some held old tax information and financial records while others were usedfor books and storage of out-of-season clothing. After looking at the area behind the cabinets, she walked through themain part of the office, where files and papers lay all over the floor.

As she looked toward the stairs, she could suddenly picture her cozy bedroom. She’d painted it blue and white and continued the theme with the curtains and bedspread. She knew it was better not to go up and look at the mess and not go up there and get trapped.

With a grimace, she returned to the kitchen, picked up a set of measuring spoons from the floor, and looked around. Oak cabinets. Ceramic tile on the floor and some kind of fake stone on the countertops. The room looked like it had been renovated in the past five years, but it was as wrecked as the office. Cabinet doors hung open, and food had been emptied out as though someone had thought she might hide important information in a cereal box.

Matt joined her.

“Sorry. It looks like they would have found anything of value.”

“Maybe not,” she muttered.

The searchers had taken apart all the obvious places, but was she clever enough to have thought of somewhere they wouldn’t have considered?

Like, would she have hidden something in a box of tampons? Probably not, because every spy knew that old trick.

After returning to the office, she looked around and saw a bulletin board. Excitement leaped inside her when she saw several name tags from conferences hanging on pins.

“I’m a social worker,” she breathed.

“Looks like it.”

She swallowed hard. “I guess we have that in common—taking jobs where we could help people because that was the only way we could connect.”

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