Page 50 of Missing Justice

Another grin, complete with smoldering eyes. “Are you talking our working arrangement or our personal one?”

How could she resist those eyes? “Either. Both.”

“I notice a definite lack of scotch since we had our chat the other night.”

“Crack investigator, you are. I heard what you said. There are other ways to deal with pain than with a bottle. I’m working on it.”

He swept her up in his arms, lifting her off the ground. “You just made my night, Agent Sinclair. My whole week, in fact.”

She let out a surprised whoop and wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her toward the bedroom. As they passed the living room, an inkling that something wasn’t right hit her. A blade of light cutting across her leather ottoman in the otherwise dark room.

“My laptop is open.”

He stopped, flipping on the hall light. “So?”

“I always shut it down and close the lid before I leave in the morning.”

“Maybe you forgot today.”

She never forgot. “Set me down.”

He did and then proceeded to follow her into the living room to her desk. The lid of her laptop was up, the screen lit with the mountain scene she used as wallpaper. “Even if I didn’t shut this down, the screen saver should have kicked in and put the computer in sleep mode.”

“Maybe it ran an update or something.”

“I have it set up to do that in the early morning hours when I sleep.”

She glanced around at the rest of the room. Nothing else seemed out of place. Plunking down in her office chair, she noticed her file on the Jarvis case was minimized but open. She clicked on the blue folder and the mountain scene morphed into a document with her notes on the case. “And I never leave a file open.”

“You’ve been stressed out and distracted, Taylor.”

But it was her routine. She checked emails while she drank her coffee, scanned the latest news, and jotted down notes on things that had popped into her mind overnight. Then she always—always—closed out all the files and shut down the computer. “They got around the password.”

Matt peered over her shoulder, arms now crossed. “You think someone was here, in your place, looking at files on your computer?”

The tone of his voice suggested she was paranoid. Spinning in the chair, she nearly knocked him over as she took off for her bedroom. First, she snagged her gun from the hall table. “Let’s check the basement.”

Matt—good man—didn’t question her further, drawing his own weapon and making the circuit with her, going from one room to the other in silence, then down to the basement level in case the unwanted visitor was still there.

No visitor, but Matt did gawk at her Isabel wall. Who wouldn’t? It contained every newspaper article, every lead the cops—and Taylor—had ever chased. Pictures of Izzy, a map of their neighborhood, Izzy’s profile, along with lists of possible suspects, none of whom had ever panned out.

Matt studied it in silence, took her hand and led her back upstairs. When he continued not to say anything about her Izzy wall, she pulled him into her bedroom and showed him the window that led to the alley. “The curtain is pushed back.”

He still wasn’t convinced. “Still doesn’t prove anyone was here. Is anything missing? Broken?”

“No, which leads me again to the fact they were searching my files.”

Her gaze caught on her chest of drawers. One corner of the top drawer stuck out a fraction, as if someone had opened it, and then when they tried to close it, it had jammed. The chest of drawers had been her grandmother’s and often stuck on one side. Being used to it, Taylor knew to give it an extra push to close it.

Her stomach dropped. She flew across the room to the drawer and jerked it open.

“What is it?” Matt asked, once again looking over her shoulder.

Her relief came out in a whooshing sigh as she picked up her badge. “I store my badge here when I’m home. I left my credentials tonight since I was pretending to be Mrs. Dillinger.”

“And they’re still here.”

“But someone was in this drawer, Matt. They were on my computer, and they went through my things.” A shiver of repulsion went through her, the old memory about Isabel andthatnight rearing its ugly head. Her chest filled with ice.