Alone in the Dark

Brady said nothing more. She tried to coax more out. “What makes you say that?”

“Nothing.”

The curtain had gone down again. No encores followed. Patience let a small sigh escape as she continued to examine King.

Stupid of him, letting that out, Brady thought. His mistake. But not one he was about to follow up on. He wasn’t about to tell this petite, pretty woman that for one unguarded moment he was thinking of his own past. Of his own father.

The man he’d shot.

The event haunted him to this very day. Any way you looked at it, Brady thought, he was truly an unlikely candidate for the position he now held. On the right side of the law.

Originally from a town so small in the south of Georgia that it didn’t exist on some of the less detailed maps, Braden Coltrane had been just barely seventeen years old when he’d shot and killed his abusive father. When he’d been forced to kill him to save his mother and sister.

As was his habit, Owen Coltrane had come home roaring drunk. And as was his habit, Owen had begun to take his mood out on his wife and daughter. Unable to stand the tension he was forced to endure day in, day out, Brady had been in his closet-size bedroom, which had once served as the walk-in pantry, packing. Preparing to leave home for good that very night. He’d stopped packing when he’d heard his sister’s frantic screams.

Rushing out into the living area of their run-down house, he’d seen his father threaten his mother with the gun that he’d prized more than his family. Not thinking of anything but saving his mother, Brady had gotten in between his parents.

His mother had stepped back, screaming as he’d wrestled his father for control of the firearm. In the struggle, it discharged, mortally wounding his father in the chest.

He remembered feeling numbed then shaken as he’d watched the blood pool beneath his father’s body. His father had already been dead when he hit the wooden floor, a startled, angry expression forever frozen on his face.

A trial followed and he’d been found not guilty due to extenuating circumstances. Everyone knew the kind of man Owen Coltrane had been: mean sober and meaner drunk. But despite the stares and whispers that never stopped—they’d followed him wherever he went—Brady had remained in town, working at whatever jobs he could find to try to earn a living. He’d had to provide for his sister and bereaved mother.

His mother, who had never stopped blaming him for what had happened, died less than two years after his father of what the local doctor had unscientifically called “a broken heart.” To Brady’s everlasting bewilderment and anger, his mother had pined away after his father and although Owen had abused her throughout their entire marriage, she’d been unable to find a way to live without him.

Which led Brady to the final conclusion that he just couldn’t begin to understand relationships at all. He certainly had no role models to fall back on. His father had been a cruel, vindictive man, devoid of love. His mother had been a weak puppet who hadn’t loved her children enough to protect them from her husband’s wrath. Though he had begged his mother to leave his father and start a new life for herself and for them, she’d always turned a deaf ear on his pleas.

Less than a month after their mother’s funeral, Brady’s sister Laura married a marine and left town. At nineteen, with no responsibility left, he’d been free to do whatever he wanted.

And what he’d wanted was to get as far the hell away from memories of his childhood as he could.

He’d packed up and left Georgia right after Laura’s wedding, taking only a few possessions and the burden of his past with him.

He’d knocked around a bit, moving clear across the country. Settling down, he’d decided to go to college at night to earn a degree in criminology, a subject that had always interested him. It took him less than three and a half years. When he put his mind to something, he didn’t let anything get in his way.

Eventually he came to Aurora and joined the local police force. He did well with the work, but not with his partners. An affinity for animals had led him to apply for the K-9 squad when an opening became available. He’d always felt that animals were truer than people, being unable to engage in deceptions.

And now he and King had a bond he had never felt with another living creature. He’d lay down his life for the dog without a second thought.

Patience looked at Brady for a moment, wondering what was going on inside his head.

In a way, the patrolman reminded her a great deal of Patrick before his wife, Maggi, had come into his life. When they were growing up, Patrick had always borne the brunt of their father’s displeasure, partially, Patience thought, because Patrick looked a great deal like their uncle Andrew, whose career had been so much more dynamic than their father’s. Before he’d retired, Andrew Cavanaugh, the son of a beat cop, had advanced his way up to police chief of Aurora. And Uncle Brian, her father’s younger brother, was the current chief of detectives.

Her father had always felt as if he were struggling beneath the shadows of both of his brothers. He’d never come into his own and had harbored a great deal of resentment toward both of them. The only place he could freely take out his anger was at home, on his family.

Had Brady gone through something like that?

For a fleeting moment, without knowing any of the circumstances, or even if she was right, Patience felt a kinship with him.

Maybe it was something in his eyes. A startling shade of blue, in unguarded moments they seemed incredibly sad to her.

“You know,” she began, putting down her stethoscope, “in addition to being an incredible talker, I am also an incredible listener.”

He knew where she was going with this. Once or twice before she’d tried to nudge him toward a conversation that involved something more private than how King was doing. He’d steered clear of it then, as well. He had no desire to share any of himself. He was what he was and had no need for human contact of any kind.

Inclining his head, he slipped King’s leash around his neck. Brady had witnessed enough routine exams to know that this one was over. “Too bad you don’t have anything to listen to.”

Couldn’t say she didn’t try, Patience thought. But then, Coltrane was a hard nut to crack. And she knew when to back off. Picking up the dog’s chart, she began making the necessary notations.

“Well, I’m available if you ever feel you have something to say.”

“I won’t,” he assured her. Everything he felt remained inside. It was best that way. There had been a period when he’d thought of himself as a walking time bomb, but he had gotten that under control. His father’s demise had done that.

King responded to the hand signal he gave the dog, leaping off the table and then standing almost at attention at his heel. “So, how’s King?”

“Fitter than most people I know.” Retiring her pen, she slipped it back into her pocket and flipped the chart closed. Patience paused to pet the dog. “Okay, boy, you’re free to go.” King looked to Brady for a command. Patience raised her eyes to the patrolman, as well. “I’ll see you next month.”

Brady made no reply, merely nodded. In another moment man and dog were out the door.

It was almost time to open her doors. She glanced at her calendar to see when her first appointment was due in. Not until nine. That meant she could allow herself a decent cup of coffee.

“That is one quiet man,” she murmured to the dog who followed her around like a faithful, furry shadow. She’d rescued Tacoma, a mix of husky and God only knew what else, when she’d come across the stray, dirty, starving and bleeding on the side of the road one night. She’d taken her to the clinic and ministered to the dog, keeping vigil until she finally pulled through. Tacoma had rewarded her the only way she knew how, by permanently giving Patience her heart.

She heard the bell over the door ring. That wasn’t her nine o’clock appointment and, most likely, it wasn’t her receptionist yet. Shirley never came in early. Maybe Coltrane finally wanted to say something.

“Forget something?”

She turned around to see Brady in the doorway. He was holding a single perfect pink rose in his hand.

Chapter 2

“Brady?”

Patience cocked her head, as if that would somehow help her take in the image of Brady holding on to a large German shepherd with one hand and a delicate rose in the other. She’d never seen anything quite so incongruous in her life. He’d be the last man in the world she’d think would offer flowers of any kind, much less a single rose.

Just goes to show that one never really knows a person.

Her smile widened as she held out her hand.

Brady realized by the look on her face what she had to be thinking. That the flower was from him. But why would that even cross her mind? There was nothing between them other than a loose, nodding acquaintance that spanned the last two years. Maybe something could have happened between them were he someone else, were he not hollow inside with no hope of ever changing that condition.

But he wasn’t someone else and he’d never given the gregarious veterinarian any reason to think that he was. Or that he thought of her as anything other than the police vet.

Even if, once in a while, he did.

There was no way for her to know that. No reason for her to entertain the thought that he would be the one to give her a flower.

But someone had given her this gift.