Free Lost & found by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

know she and I are the only ones who suffer from them."
    "Have you always had trouble with the attacks?"
    "They started when I was in college." She gripped her lapels more tightly. "But I think they stem from something that happened when I was fourteen. There was an ... accident. I nearly drowned. Later, when I started getting the panic attacks, the feeling reminded me of how I felt when it happened."
    "You use the pills often?"
    "No. Not anymore. Not for ages." She listened to her own words with mounting horror. The conversation had taken a bad turn. By now Mack had probably concluded that she was nothing but a twitchy bundle of nerves—unstable, unsteady and unreliable. Not a terrific professional image. Visions of future consulting jobs began to fade rapidly. "I haven't had a ABC Amber Text Converter Trial vers ion, http://www.processtext.com/abctxt.html
    serious problem for a long time. Years, in fact."
    "How many years?"
    If she didn't get the topic changed in a hurry, she was going to get a real panic attack tonight after all.
    "At least two," she said, trying to sound casual and unconcerned. "Three, actually." Three was pushing it a bit but in another couple of months it would be a full three years since the last severe attack. "Actually, it's been so long, I can hardly recall the last time I had a problem." Mentally, she crossed her fingers behind her back. "Regular yoga and deep breathing do the trick. I just keep the pill handy for an extreme emergency."
    "I see."
    Definitely time to redirect the focus of this conversation, she decided.
    "What you did at Ambrose's cabin tonight," she said. "That was amazing. I assume from the way you dealt with those two thugs that this is not the first time you've been in that sort of situation?"
    There was a small pause. She got the impression that Mack was considering his words carefully. Apparently the fact that they had shared a major bonding experience tonight did not mean that he suddenly wanted her to know his life history.
    "My father was career military," he said finally. "I got married in college and needed a job in a hurry so I followed in his footsteps for a few years. When I got out I went to work for a company that did security consulting for corporations. One way or another I've spent a fair amount of time around guns or people who carried them."
    "I see."
    She digested that news cautiously. It certainly cast a whole new light on Mack Easton. She came from the world of art and until tonight she had assumed that he also came from that same realm. She had understood from their first telephone conversation that he was different from the other men she had known well in her life, but she had not fully comprehended just how different.
    "How did you end up in the business of tracing lost and stolen art?" she asked.
    "After my wife died, I decided to get into a line of work that involved fewer guns."
    "I see. I'm sorry, I hadn't realized. When did you lose your wife?"
    "Six years ago."
    The quiet acceptance of loss in his voice told her everything she might have wanted to know about his marriage. He had loved his wife. He had come to terms with grief.
    "I'm sorry," she said again, very gently this time.
    Silence dripped as steadily as the rain for a time.
    "You know," Mack said after a while, "I can't even remember the last time a recovery job went south the way this one did tonight."
    He sounded thoroughly disgusted. She sighed inwardly. So much for the prospects of future work for Lost and Found. Without any real hope of altering his opinion of her performance, she sought some mitigating circumstances.
    "It was a highly unusual situation," she pointed out. "Not exactly a routine assignment."
    "You failed to follow procedure. You should have called me as soon as you traced the helmet to Vandyke."
    "Wait a minute, that's not fair. I admit things went bad, but it wasn't my fault. I just flew in to examine the helmet. Ambrose had described it to me over the phone, but with old