Page 1 of Diagnosis Attraction

CHAPTER ONE

Panic choked off Elizabeth Forester’s breath as she turned the car onto Mulberry Street, the wheels screeching when she took the corner too fast. Sparing a quick glance in the rearview mirror, she saw her pursuer still behind her. She was pretty sure she had picked up the tail after she’d left the motel where she’d been hiding out—using a car she thought nobody would recognize. She made a snorting sound. Too bad her precautions hadn’t been enough.

For the past week, she’d acted like she was in the middle of a TV cop show. But she’d known the evasive action was necessary. Today, it looked like she’d been right to cover her tracks.

It had gradually dawned on her that a dark blue Camaro waslurking nearby on a regular basis—following her during the day—and that the mysterious car must be connected to the case she’d been working on.

She hadn’t started off understanding how big it really was. But a lot of little details had led her to conclude that she needed to protect herself by checking into a motel a few miles from her house and driving on alternate routes to work.

She spared another glance in the rearview mirror. The blue car was inching up, and she could see two tough-looking men inthe front seat. She shuddered, imagining what they were going to do if they got their hands on her.

She’d almost decided to go to the police with what she knew until she’d concluded that it was dangerous to trust the authorities. They weren’t going to do a thing for her, but she had to operate on the assumption that they were protecting the man who’d hired the thugs to intercept her.

Her work took her all over Baltimore, and she had an excellent knowledge of the city. If she could get far enough ahead of the men tailing her, she could turn into the nest of alleys up ahead and disappear. And then what? For now, the prime objective was to get away.

She made another quick turn, slowing her Honda in case a kid came darting out from one of the fenced-in backyards.

She thought she was in the clear until she saw the Camaro whip around the corner, right on her tail. Damn.

Still on the lookout for pedestrians, she sped up again, turning onto the next street. To her horror, a delivery van had just pulled to the curb. And a car coming in the other direction made it impossible to escape by crossing to the other traffic lane.

She swerved to avoid the van, thinking she could squeeze past on the sidewalk. But a woman and a little boy were coming straight toward her.

The fear on their faces as they saw the car bearing down on them made her gasp as she swerved again. If a lamppost hadn’t suddenly materialized in front of her, she could have gotten away. But she plowed into the upright post and came to a rocking stop.

Although the old Honda she was driving didn’t have an air bag, the seat belt kept her from hitting the windshield. But she was stunned as she sat behind the wheel.

Before she could get out of the car, one of the men from the Camaro appeared at her window.

“Got ya, bitch.”

Yanking open the car door, he dragged her out, hitting her head on the car frame as he hurled her to the sidewalk. The blow stunned her, and then everything went black.

Doctor Matthew Delano’s first stop on his morning rounds was the computer at the nurses’ station, where he scanned for urgent cases and noted which patients had been discharged—or passed away—since his last visit to the internal medicine floor.

No deaths. He always counted that as a good sign. This morning most of the patients on the general-medicine floor were in for routine problems—except for one woman whom the cops had named Jane Doe because she didn’t remember who she was. As he read the notes from the ER, he gathered that the whole situation with her was odd. For starters, she hadn’t been carrying any identification. And she’d been driving an old car registered to Susan Swinton. But when a patrol officer knocked on Swinton’s door late in the afternoon, nobody was home, and the neighbors said the woman was on an extended trip out of the country. Which left the authorities with no clue to the identity of the mystery woman in room 22.

Matt noted the irony of the room number. As in Catch-22, the novel by Joseph Heller. The term had come to mean a paradoxical situation in which a person is trapped by conflicting circumstances beyond his control.

He skimmed the chart. The woman, who was apparently in her late twenties, had no physical injuries, except for a bump on the head. The MRI showed she’d had a mild concussion, but that was resolving itself. The main problem was her missing memory—leading to her missing identity.

Her dilemma intrigued him. But although he was curious to see what she looked like, he made his way methodically down the hall, checking on patients on a first-come, first-served basis. A woman with COPD. A man with a leg infection he couldn’t shake. Another man with advanced kidney disease.

They were all routine cases for Dr. Delano since he’d gotten back from a dangerous African war zone a couple of months ago and taken an interim job in Baltimore, where at least he could feel useful.

He hadn’t really wanted to return to the States because he’d felt there was nothing here for him. At home you had to do normal stuff when you weren’t working, and normal stuff was never his first choice.

He liked the rough-and-tumble life of doctoring in a war zone and the chance to help people in desperate need of medical attention. But now the rebels were systematically shooting any outsiders who were dumb enough to stay in their country and try to help the people. Since Matt wasn’t suicidal, he was back in Baltimore, working at Memorial Hospital while he figured out the best way to serve humanity.

He made a soft snorting sound as he walked down the hall, thinking that was a lofty way to put it, especially for a man who felt disconnected from people. But he’d learned to be an expert at faking it. In fact, he was often praised for his excellent bedside manner.

He stopped at the door to room 22, feeling a sense of anticipation and at the same time reluctance. Shaking that off, he raised his hand and knocked.

“Come in,” a feminine voice called.

When he stepped into the room, the woman in the bed zeroed in on him, her face anxious. He stopped short, taking her in from where he stood eight feet away. Under the covers, she was dressed in one of those hospital gowns that leave your asshanging out the back when you get up. She wore no makeup. Her short dark hair was tousled, and she had a nasty bruise on her forehead, but despite her disarray, he found her very appealing, from her large blue eyes to her well-shaped lips and the small, slightly upturned nose in between.

She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. About his own age, he judged. She sat forward, fixing her gaze on him with a kind of unnerving desperation.

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