Animal Attraction Read Free

gone and I was left wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. Just in case I hadn’t and there were more people waiting to spring out at me, I climbed back into the driver’s seat and headed for my nice, safe, sane apartment where I hoped there wouldn’t be any surprises waiting.
     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

 

     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
     
     
    HOME FELT MARGINALLY SAFER, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO BE MUCH COMfort. I stopped inside the entry hall for my mail, inserting my key into the box for my unit. Habit made me scan the envelopes while I stood there. Sure enough, one was for 2C, not 2B. I set it on top of the boxes, the common tenant exchange for misdelivered mail.
    I went upstairs to my second-floor door with an uneasy tension between my shoulder blades. Having my own door closed and locked behind me made me feel a little better. Almost getting jumped in a parking lot could really put a girl on edge.
    I dropped the mail on my kitchen counter and after scarfing down a quick dinner to satisfy my increasingly demanding metabolism, I went to feed my goldfish, Ernie and Bert. I’d bought the pair and the glass bowl they lived in the week before I found my current job.
    According to a book I’d read on feng shui, goldfish in the wealth corner of your home could ease financial troubles. I wondered if there was a feng shui remedy for finding out your job was in gang territory.
    Ernie and Bert came to the surface, mouths open, ready for dinner. I sprinkled a pinch of fish food over the water and watched them nibble.
    “I made some new friends today,” I told them, thinking of Rhonda, Miguel, and Wilson. And Zach. I wasn’t forgetting Zach. Zach who flirted with me while he made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, who fought off three opponents, at least one of them armed, and told me I should’ve been expecting him.
    I was expecting him now. He said he’d been watching me and if I didn’t come to him in three days, he’d come for me. He’d hinted that he knew things about me and my birth family. He was the first lead I’d found in a string of dead ends, and I was curious enough about what he might know to stick around.
    “I think one of them wanted to date me,” I added, even though Bert hadn’t asked. “In a stalkerish sort of way.” What kind of guy tells you he’s been watching you and kisses the back of your hand?
    I looked around the apartment. It was decorated in modern bland. Light gray carpet, beige walls, white blinds over the windows. Matching vertical blinds covered a sliding glass door to a postage-stamp-sized balcony. I kept a stick in the door so it couldn’t be opened from the outside if somebody managed to climb to the second floor. Which was unlikely. But meeting my new friends made me nervous enough to go check to make sure the door was still secure.
    With the exception of the goldfish, I hadn’t done much to personalize the neutral décor. I had a futon in the living room that did double duty as sofa and bed, a bookcase that housed my DVD collection, and a small TV set.
    For some reason, the look of the apartment bothered me today. I frowned and looked closer, wondering if something was out of place. If something was, I couldn’t tell.
    Maybe I was just seeing it the way a stranger would and I didn’t like what it said about me. Bland and utilitarian, not much in the way of personality, more of a waiting station than a home.
    Of course, it pretty much  was   a waiting station. I’d graduated college a year early, and now I was circulating my résumé in search of a real job. So far I’d had two offers, both of which would have meant relocating to the West Coast. Nice, but I didn’t want to leave Virginia.
    Fairfax County not only offered easy access to mountains and beaches; it also was home to six Fortune 500 companies. The combination of career and recreation opportunities was hard to beat. Most of all, I hoped that if I stayed where I’d been