Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Who are they? Matt asked.
“I don’t know,” she almost shouted in her frustration as the mental image faded. “But they’re depending on me, and I have to help them.”
“Okay,” he answered, giving her his full support. “But how do we do it?”
“First, I have to figure out who they are—and where they are.” She swallowed hard. “And I think there might be something at my house that tells me.”
He gave her a long look. “You think it’s safe to go to your house? You might not know why those men were chasing you, but it’s a given that they know your name. Now that you’ve escaped from them twice, they probably have your house staked out—hoping you’ll come back.”
“I know that.” She dragged in a frustrated breath and let it out. “But I think I have to. I mean, I can’t just keep running away. I have to figure out what’s going on.”
“Inconvenient,” he answered in a dry voice that might have fooled her if she hadn’t already learned a lot about him.
“I probably have records on my computer.”
“And somebody probably already got to them—after the car accident when you were out of commission.”
She nodded, hating that they were in this bind. She needed to know more about herself, and she knew she couldn’t do it alone. She also knew that Matt was following her thought processes.
“We have your address, and we can get there, but we have to be very cautious.”
It was instructive to see how he thought as they drove toward Arbutus, a middle-class community where her house was located. He stopped at a drugstore and bought them both Orioles baseball caps, which they pulled down low to hide their faces. He also bought two Orioles tee shirts. Hers was oversized and hung far down her arms and body, but it created a different look for her. A roll of duct tape completed his purchases.
When they’d returned to his car and she’d put the shirt over her clothing, he said, “Lie down in the back.”
She didn’t have to ask why. She knew he wanted anyone watching to think that a lone man was driving through the neighborhood.
Prone on the backseat, she couldn’t see any details of the passing scenery, but that didn’t matter because she didn’t remember the details, anyway.
“I just drove past your house,” he informed her.
“What’s it look like?”
“It’s two stories. An older home with a front porch and new vinyl siding. The front yard is nicely planted, and a man is sitting in a car across the street, keeping an eye on the place.”
“Great.”
“It’s the thug who killed Polly.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, Lord.”
“We expected him or someone like him.”
“Too bad we can’t tell the cops Nurse Kramer’s killer is here.”
“Yeah. But it would just be his word against ours. And I feel he’d lawyer up and get out before we could blink.”
She nodded, then said, “He was alone when he came to Polly’s, but he won’t make that mistake again. I’m sure there’s another guy out back.”
“And we can’t drive up the alley because we could get trapped.”
“Right.”
He turned the corner and parked near the end of the alley. They both got outand walked back. She didn’t even know which house she lived in, and it was strange to have Matt be the one to direct her.
He pointed. “Your place is about halfway down.”
The yards were about thirty feet deep, all with three-foot-high chain-link fences.
She spotted the other man when they were about twenty yards away. He was sitting on her backsteps, partly screened by low bushes.
We have to get close enough and disable him before he can alert his friend out front.
I don’t suppose you remember who lives in the house next door.
Sorry. But in this neighborhood, they’re probably at work.
Let’s hope.
Before they turned in at the house to the right of hers, they planned their attack. As they walked toward the back door, Elizabeth could see the guy on her backsteps flicking them a look, but apparently, he didn’t recognize either one of them.
When they reached the door, Matt pretended to get out his keys. She pressed close to him, giving him energy as he raised his arm toward the intruder on her backsteps.
Is this going to work? I mean, he’s not a rock in a stream.
We’ll find out.
She felt Matt gathering power, then sending a bolt of energy toward the man staking out her backsteps. It made the guy go rigidandthen slump to the side. Matt was already charging down the steps and vaulting the fence into her yard.
Instead of continuing with the superhero route, he socked the guy in the jaw, then took the gun from his shoulder holster, checked that the safety was on, and stuffed the weapon into the waistband of his jeans, under his Orioles tee shirt.
She helped pull the thug into the bushes, where they taped his hands and feet together and slapped a piece of tape over his mouth. They also removed his cell phone and wallet.
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 guys have 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 the main 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.”
“Yeah.”
She picked up a framed diploma from the floor. And I have a Master’s degree from the University of Maryland.”
“Which might mean you grew up in the area—or not. It could be that they had the kind of program you were looking for.”
Matt walked into the closet area. When she heard him open the window, she poked her head around the filing cabinets.
“What are you doing?”
“What I learned to do in Africa. Making sure there’s an alternate exit if we need it.”
Gary Southwell looked at his watch. He and Hank Patterson had been staking out Elizabeth Forester’s house since he’d gotten his new orders from Mr. Lang. They were supposed to check in with each other every half hour, and Patterson hadn’t phoned. Which was unsettling because the man had been punctual as clockwork until now.
He clicked the phone one more time, trying to get his partner. Finally, he gave up and wondered what he should do. Not call Lang. His boss was already annoyed by their lack of progress in apprehending Elizabeth Forester. The woman had determination—and grit. He’d give her that. And apparently, she’d found a guy who wouldn’t leave her in the lurch.
Had they known each other before she’d landed in the hospital, or what? If not, it was shocking that the doctor was laying his life on the line for a woman he’d met only a few days ago. Gary sure wouldn’t do it. He laughed. Or for any other broad. They simply weren’t worth it.
He slipped out of the car where he’d been sitting for hours and looked around as he stretched, then started down the block, glancing back at the house before turning the corner. If Forester and the doctor were in there, he would give them a chance to get out the front, but on balance, he had to risk it.
In the alley, he hurried to the back door, where Patterson was supposed to be stationed. He wasn’t there, but as Gary approached the house, he heard a muffled sound of distress in the bushes. When he cautiously approached, he found his partner lying on the ground, taped hand and foot.
Gary pulled the tape off his mouth. “What the hell happened to you?”
“They got the drop on me.”
“You mean Elizabeth and that doctor?”
“Yeah,” Patterson said as Gary freed his partner’s wrists and started working on his legs.
Patterson shook his hands and kicked his feet to get the circulation going.
“What happened, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. It was like …” he stopped and glanced at Gary. “Like they hurled a thunderbolt or something at me.”
“That’s impossible. Maybe they had a Taser.”
Patterson considered the idea. “I don’t know what it was. I’m just sayin,’ be damned careful if you get near them.”
“Were you unconscious?”
“Maybe for a little while.”
“Okay,” Gary muttered, wondering what they would do now and thinking about that five-minute window when he’d left his post and headed back here—to find Patterson.
Could they have gotten away while his partner was out?
“Did you see them leave?” Gary asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Then we’d better assume they saw me out front, which means they wouldn’t go out that way.” Gary glanced at Patterson. “You steady on your feet?”
“Steady enough to kill those bastards.”
“Waste the guy. The boss wants to do the woman himself.”
“You mean do her—then kill her?”
“Yeah.”
In the office, Elizabeth picked up some of the papers scattered on the floor and thumbed through them. “These are records of some of my clients.”
After righting the desk chair, she sat down and started to read one of the cases. “This woman was living in a flophouse in Baltimore. It looks like she came into the country illegally.”
“I know you want to understand what you were doing, but I think you don’t have time to read cases now.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “They could be clues to what was going on—when those thugs tried to grab me after the accident.”
“Maybe you can take some with you. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”
She nodded but didn’t move.
“There’s got to be something here,” she murmured as she looked around the shambles that had been her office. “Something they missed.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugged. “I just do. And maybe you can help me figure it out.”
Standing, she reached for Matt. Pulling him close, she molded her body against his as they stood in the middle of the mess. His arms stroked up and down her back, and while she held onto him, she felt the familiar merging of their minds that had so quickly become necessary to her existence.
Yes, he silently agreed.
She wanted to revel in the closeness she’d never experienced before meeting him, but she knew there wasn’t time for that now. What she had to do was search for the memories he’d brought back to her. Not something long ago. Something recent.
Eyes closed, she mentally looked around the room, trying to figure out what she couldn’t remember alone.
Her mental gaze shifted to the bulletin board. There were several whimsical things stuck to it, including a couple of greeting cards, a Mardi Gras mask, two cocktail swizzle sticks, and a key ring with a small flashlight attached.
Matt followed her thoughts as she stepped away from him and reached for the key ring. She had just taken it off the board when an unwelcome noise made them both go still.
In the quiet of the house, they heard a door open.