Panic Attack by Jason Starr Read Free Book Online

with Carol. When he came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, Dana was in the bedroom, fully dressed in jeans and a long- sleeved black scoop- neck top. She was looking for something in the top drawer of the dresser.
“Good morning,” he said.
    She waited a couple of beats, then said, “Good morning,” and he could tell she was still angry about the gun. He always knew when she was angry and exactly what she was angry about, though she rarely expressed her anger in an appropriate, productive way.
    But he didn’t feel like getting into a big discussion with her about her anger so he said, “Looks like they’re pretty much gone, huh?”
“I talked to a couple of reporters this morning,” Dana said. Her voice was a monotone; she was definitely repressing rage.
“Yeah?” Adam asked. “From where?”
“I don’t know.” She was still searching in the drawer. “TV, newspapers, wherever.”
Adam tossed the towel into the hamper and was naked. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and, as usual, sucked in his gut a little. He wasn’t in such bad shape for his age— only about ten, okay, fifteen pounds overweight— but he was self- conscious about the flab in his midsection. He really had to start running again, get a regular tennis game going at the country club. He played golf frequently, but riding around in a golf cart wasn’t doing much for his waistline. He had to do more crunches, get serious about it. In three years he’d turn fifty, and he wanted to be thin in his fifties.
“Well, it seems to be blowing over,” he said distractedly.
She closed the drawer, then turned toward Adam— still avoiding eye contact— and said, “It’s not here.”
Adam was no longer looking in the mirror, but he was still distracted. “What’s not?”
“The paper I wrote the code to the alarm on.”
Now she had Adam’s full attention, and he looked at her and asked, “What’re you talking about?”
“This morning when I woke up I remembered I had the number, the code, whatever, written down on a little piece of paper. Remember, I wrote it down when we first got the alarm because you had the code on that card they gave you, but I didn’t know it?”
“Okay,” Adam said. Actually, he didn’t remember any of this; he was just egging her on.
“So I thought I put it in the drawer in the bureau in the den, you know, where we keep the old bills, but I checked this morning, and it wasn’t there. And now I’ve checked all over and I can’t find it anywhere.”
“Maybe you threw it out.”
“Maybe, but I really thought it was in the drawer downstairs.”
Dana, unlike Adam, was a very or ganized person and usually didn’t misplace things.
“Did you check thoroughly?”
“Of course I checked thoroughly, but it wasn’t there.”
“Okay, calm down.”
“I am calm,” she said, but she obviously wasn’t. She was making eye contact with him for the first time this morning, glaring at him in a very cold, very distant way.
“So where else can it be?” Adam asked.
“Well, obviously, I thought it was in the drawer up here.”
“Did you check the kitchen?”
“I definitely didn’t put it in the kitchen.”
“What about under the drawer in the bureau? Sometimes things spill out over the top and fall through the—”
“I already checked and it wasn’t there. Should I call Detective Clements and tell him?”
“I think that’s a little ridiculous.”
“Why is it ridiculous? He thinks somebody had the code to the alarm and a piece of paper with the code’s missing.”
“Okay, fine,” Adam conceded. “If you want to call him, call him. It doesn’t really matter one way or another, but I’d just look around once more before you waste his time, that’s all.”
Adam was pulling on his jeans; his damn back was bothering him again. He wasn’t facing Dana, but he could tell she was still in the room. She was probably looking at him angrily with her hands crossed in front of her chest. He turned around for a moment just to see if he was right. Yep, he was.
“So have you talked to Marissa yet