Alone In The Dark

“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.

A feel of loss echoed inside him, although for the life of him he didn’t know why.

Bemused, Patience crossed to him. A smile curved her lips as she looked up into his light blue eyes and took the rose out of his hand. For some people, words worked best, for others, it was actions.

Coltrane, she already knew, definitely fell into the latter category. He was nothing if not a man of action. The phrase “strong, silent type” had been created with him in mind. For a fleeting second, she forgot all about her rules.

“I’m touched.”

“Then you know who left this?” he asked.

Something cold and clammy began to rear its head within her when he asked the simple question. She struggled to hold back her fear. To blot out the grim photograph she’d glimpsed in the file her father had brought home with him. A photograph of a girl, about her own age now, who’d been stabbed by her stalker.

Damn it, Walter knew better this time. She took a deep breath, running her tongue along her dried lips. “You mean, it’s not from you?”

For a second he found himself engaged by the flicker of her tongue moving along the outline of her mouth. It took him a moment to respond to her question. Brady shook his head. “No, I found it on your doorstep.”

Patience’s fingers loosened their grasp, and the rose fell to the floor.

Brady bent to pick it up. When he straightened again and looked at her face, he saw that all the color had drained out of it. Her complexion had turned a shade lighter.

Was she going to do that female thing and faint on him? “You all right?”

No, she thought, doing her best to rally behind anger rather than fear. She wasn’t all right. Damn it, this was supposed to have all been behind her by now. Walter’s eyes had all but bugged out when she’d told him that the nine police officers in dress blue were all related to her. She’d thought that was the end of it. And it had been.

Until now.

Patience had to remoisten her desert-dry lips. “You found this?” She nodded at the flower that was once more in his hand. This time she made no move to take it from him.

“Yes. On your doorstep.” He’d already told her that. Brady watched her closely.

“Just like the last time,” she murmured the words to herself. Why couldn’t she stop the chill that slid up and down her spine.

“What last time?” The question came at her sharply, like fighter pilots on the attack.

She stared at him. For a second she hadn’t realized that she’d said anything out loud. And then she shook her head, dismissing her words. Not wanting to open the door any further into the past than she’d already opened it. “Nothing.”

Brady scowled. The hell it was nothing. People didn’t turn white over nothing.

“What last time?” he repeated. The question bordered on a demand.

She tried to smile and only partially succeeded. The knots in her stomach were stealing all her available air. “Is that your interrogation voice?” she asked him, trying to divert his attention. “Because if it is, it’s pretty scary.”

“Damn it, Doc, what last time?” And then he drew his own conclusion. “Someone been harassing you?”

Bingo. From her reaction, he’d say he’d hit the nail right on the head. It was there, in her eyes.

He could see it happening. Patience Cavanaugh was more than passingly pretty. She was vibrant and outgoing on top of that. But in this upside-down world, someone could mistake her friendly manner for something else, feel perhaps that she was being friendly beyond the call and go on to misinterpret her behavior as a sign of interest.

She blew out a breath and looked away. “Not lately,” she told him evasively.

Get a grip, Patience. It’s just a flower, not a scorpion. She laughed to herself. Right now, she would have preferred the scorpion. She knew how to deal with that.

Obsession—if that’s what this was boiling down to—was something beyond her range. No, no, it wasn’t obsession, it was just a man who was too obtuse to understand that she just wasn’t interested. There was no reason to believe she’d wind up like Katie. Katie Alder, that had been her name. The dead girl. This would go away just like the last time, she promised herself.

Brady had no intention of letting this slide. “But previously?”

Best defense was a strong offense, wasn’t that what Uncle Andrew always told them? With a toss of her head, she fixed her best, most confident smile to her lips.

“Really, Coltrane, there’s no reason to get all official on me.” She thought of their interaction over these past twenty-five months. “Although, I guess when you get down to it, that’s all you ever are, isn’t it? Official.”

“This isn’t about me, Doc, it’s about you.”

She squared her shoulders, deliberately avoiding looking at the flower he still held. “Right. And since it’s about me, I’ll handle it.”

He raised a brow, pinning her with a look. “You weren’t handling it a minute ago.”

No, that had been an aberration. One she wasn’t about to allow to happen again. She was stronger than that. “I’m better now.”

He made a leap, bridging the gap from here to there and filling in the missing pieces. It wasn’t hard. He’d handled more than one stalker case before he’d found a place for himself in narcotics. “You ever report it?”

She looked at Brady warily. She’d always sensed he was sharp, maybe even intuitive, but she didn’t want to learn she was right at her own expense. “Report what?” she asked vaguely.

“The stalker.”

Patience raised her chin defiantly. “What stalker?”

“The one who was after you,” he snapped tersely. Nothing irked him more than people who wouldn’t take help that was offered. Like his mother who had refused to walk away from his father. “Look,” Brady began more evenly this time, “nobody turns that shade of white when they see a stupid rose left on their doorstep unless there’s something else going on. Now if you don’t want to talk to me, fine, but you’ve got a boatload of police personnel in your life. Talk to one of them.”

Because she was a Cavanaugh, even though she considered herself the mildest one of the group, she inherently resented being dictated to. “How do you know I haven’t?”

He looked at her knowingly. “Just because I don’t get along with people doesn’t mean I can’t read them.” Brady gave her a look just before he turned to leave. “Have it your way. Looks like I’m not the only one who isn’t communicative.”

It was as if he’d read her mind.

Patience blew out another breath, irritated. Relenting. The man was right, she supposed. And it was better to say something to him than to Patrick or the others. Especially Patrick. She knew without asking that the law took on a whole different hue when someone her older brother cared about was being threatened.

“His name’s Walter,” she finally said, addressing her words to the back of Brady’s head.

Stopping just short of the door, Brady turned around. He stood waiting, not saying a word.

Okay, Patience thought, she might as well tell him a little more. “Walter Payne,” she elaborated. “I saved his cockatiel and he was grateful. Very grateful. He was also kind of lonely,” she added after a moment. “I tried to encourage him to go out, to get out of his shell.” She’d even gone so far as to suggest arranging a blind date for him. But although eager to please her, Walter hadn’t followed up on her suggestion. “Maybe I was too successful.”

“So he started harassing you?” He had his answer as soon as he saw the woman pale.

Harassment and stalking were such ugly words. She told herself that it was more like enduring a schoolboy crush from a forty-five-year-old man. She couldn’t handle it any other way. “He brought me flowers, said it was from Mitzi.”

“Mitzi?”

“His cockatiel. At first it was just one, like that.” She nodded at the rose. “And then it was a bouquet. There was candy and a few poems, as well.” Those had followed in quick succession. Crowding her. “I just thought he was being overly grateful. The cockatiel meant a great deal to him.”

Brady tried to read between the lines to pick up on what the veterinarian wasn’t saying. “You told him to stop?”

“In a way,” she allowed. “I said that it wasn’t really proper, that I couldn’t accept gifts for doing my job.”

Why did he have to drag the words out of her? he wondered impatiently. “And?”

Patience shrugged, blocking the edgy frustration that pushed its way forward. “He kept leaving them anyway.”

He knew that these things almost always escalated unless there was forceful police intervention. “What made him finally stop?”

“I put out a formal photograph of my family in dress blues. Made sure he saw it.” Patience nodded at the far wall.

There, hung in prominent display was a group photograph he’d seen more than once on his visits to her office. He looked at it with fresh eyes. The last time he’d seen that much blue was at a patrolman’s funeral. He had to say it was impressive.

Patience allowed a small smile to surface. “I guess that put the fear of God into him. Or at least the fear of the Cavanaughs.” Her smile widened a little. “Walter hasn’t sent a poem or a single flower in the last six months. And he hasn’t been by.”

Brady looked down at the rose. King eyed it, as well. “Until now.”

She nodded, suppressing a sigh. “Until now,” she echoed.

If this was the resurgence of the stalker, she was being entirely too blasé about it. “You should report this, you know.”

Calmer now, she thought of the mousy little man, of the stunned expression on his face when she’d made reference to her family and had shown him the photograph. She’d overreacted, she told herself, because of Katie. But this was different and she didn’t want to stir things up. “He’s harmless.”

In Brady’s book, no one was harmless in the absolute sense. Everyone had a button that could be pressed, setting them off. “Every killer was once thought of as harmless.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Damn straight I am. I’ve seen enough things in my life to know when a woman should be scared, Doc.”

She’d been around members of the police department all of her life. Beyond her father, she couldn’t recall any of them being as world-weary as Coltrane appeared to be. Not even Patrick. “God, you sound as if you’re a hundred years old.”

“Some nights, I am,” he told her matter-of-factly. “So, you want me to take a statement?”

“No, that’s all right. If I get really worried about Walter, like you said, I’ve got my own boatload of police personnel to turn to.”

It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines. “But you won’t.”

Patience didn’t feel comfortable, being read so effortlessly by a man she couldn’t begin to read herself. Rather than get into it, she gave him her reasons—or, at least, the primary one. “I don’t want to upset them unnecessarily.”

“How about necessarily?”

“Walter’s harmless,” she insisted. It felt odd, championing a man she wished, deep down, had never crossed her path. “He thinks he’s just pursuing me, like in the old-fashioned sense. Courting,” she added, fishing for the right word. Walter Payne always made her think of someone straight out of the fifties, when things had been simpler and persistence paid off. “He stopped once. If I ignore him, he’ll stop again.”

“And if he won’t?” Brady challenged. King barked, as if to back him up.

Tacoma moved closer to her mistress, offering her protection. She absently ran her hand over the dog’s head, scratching Tacoma behind the ears as she spoke, trying to keep the mental image of Katie’s photograph at bay. “Then I’ll deal with it. I have a number of people to turn to.”

Damn but she was one stubborn woman. One could see it in the set of her mouth, in her eyes.

But before he could say anything further to her, the bell above the door jangled and a woman came in, struggling with a battered cat carrier. The occupant of the carrier paced within the small space.

“I know I don’t have an appointment, Dr. Cavanaugh, but Gracie’s been hacking all night and I’m worried sick.” The statement came out like an extraordinarily long single word, each letter breathlessly woven to the one before and the one after.

Feeling the dog stiffen beside him, Brady looked down at his companion. The fur on King’s back was standing up as he stared intently at the carrier. Had he not been as well trained as he was, Brady was sure the animal would have gone after the cat, carrier or no carrier. The cat obviously sensed it, too. Hissing noises began to emerge from the carrier.

In contrast to King, Patience’s dog seemed bored and trotted over to the far corner to catch a nap beneath the rays of the early morning sun.

Taking a firm hold of King’s leash, Brady spared Patience one last look.

“Report it,” he told her much in the same voice that he used on King when he verbalized his commands.

“I’ll handle it,” Patience repeated firmly. She turned her attention to the frantic older woman. Work was the best thing for her right now. “Right this way, Mrs. Mahoney. As it happens, my first patient of the day isn’t here yet.”

And neither was her receptionist, she added silently. But then, Shirley had a very loose concept of time. Too bad. The young woman had a crush on Brady that was evident to everyone but the man himself. Shirley was going to regret not being here a tad early this morning.

Patience turned to look back at Brady and mouthed, “Thank you” before she disappeared.

She could thank him all she wanted, Brady thought as he exited the clinic. In reality, he hadn’t done anything. Doing something was up to her. He unlocked his car. The hell with it, this was her business, not his.

Holding the door open, he gave King a nod. The dog jumped into the back seat.

“Not our concern, boy,” Brady said as he got behind the steering wheel.

He placed his key in the ignition. Glancing up into the rearview mirror, he could see King staring at him. Brady tried not to read anything into the intent brown eyes, but the dog seemed to be saying that he was wrong, that she was their concern. Because they knew her.

Brady sighed. King always had a way of setting him straight. But this time, the dog was wrong. Couldn’t help someone who wouldn’t help themselves. He’d learned that a long time ago.

It had been one hell of a long day from start to finish. A bad night’s sleep didn’t help matters. Not that he ever really got a good night’s sleep. His sleep pattern would have sent any self-respecting hospital-affiliated sleep clinic into a tailspin. He amassed his sleep in snatches, never getting more than a couple hours at a clip, usually less. Each night turned into a patchwork quilt of sleep and wakefulness.

The trouble was that he couldn’t shut off his mind, couldn’t find peace even in repose. Half the time he dreamed of what he had experienced during the course of the day or, more than likely, during his earlier years.

He supposed, in comparison to that time period, anything he experienced now was a cakewalk, even if he did deal with the scum of the earth at times. At least he had the consolation of knowing that he was ridding the world of vermin, making it safer for people in Aurora, people like Patience Cavanaugh, to sleep at night.

Contributing to the restlessness he now felt was the fact that Dr. Patience Cavanaugh hadn’t been off his mind for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Usually less. He just wasn’t comfortable about her lack of action with this stalker thing.

The first free minute he’d had, he’d deliberately investigated if any new stalker complaints had been filed today. They hadn’t. Big surprise. Maybe she’d turned to someone in her family with the problem. No, he had a bead on her. For all her friendliness, all her vibrancy, Patience Cavanaugh was stubborn and independent like the rest of the Cavanaughs. That meant that she didn’t relish appearing as if she were vulnerable, as if she couldn’t take care of whatever was going on in her life all by herself.

“Still not our problem,” he told the dog that went home with him every night.

King gave him the same penetrating look he’d given him that morning.

Brady sighed. Who the hell did he think he was fooling? “Yeah, right, we’re police officers. That makes everything our problem.”

Muttering something ripe and piercing under his breath, he started up the lovingly restored Mustang that served as his single private mode of transportation from the time he had left Georgia behind in his rearview mirror. The only original thing left of the cherry-red car was its outer shell. Everything beneath the hood was new, or at least had been replaced once if not twice. The vehicle was in prime running condition. He made sure to keep it that way. Working on cars helped soothe him whenever he felt particularly agitated.

Brady paused before pulling out of the lot. He knew he should go home, maybe tune up his engine to work the frustration out of his system.

Instead he turned his car in the opposite direction and headed back to the animal clinic.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re not going home. At least not yet.” He glanced at the dog in the mirror. “Don’t give me that look. She’s a tax-paying citizen. Those are the ones we’re supposed to protect, remember?” King’s face remained impassive. “I just want to check up on her, make sure everything’s all right. Something happens to her, the department’s gotta find a new vet. Which means that you’ve got to get used to someone else poking at you. You want that?”

King continued to stare at him.

“I didn’t think so.” Brady took a sharp right. The open stretch of road in front of him invited him to go faster. He did.

Fifteen minutes later he eased his car to a stop, parking across the street from the animal clinic, which was attached to Patience’s home. After tossing the dog a large treat, Brady looked out at the two-story building. Except for the one just above the front entrance, the lights within the clinic had long since been extinguished.

The lights inside her home, however, had not. She was home. Most likely alone.

Brady settled in.

Chapter 3

Patience pushed back the curtain.

There it was again.

The car parked directly across the street from her home had been sitting there for a while now. Ordinarily she might not have even noticed it, except that for once, there were no other cars parked along the street. The neighbor who had a hundred and one excuses to throw a party was off traveling in Europe somewhere. According to the neighborhood gossip, he wasn’t due back for another three weeks.

Everyone else around her parked their cars either in the garage or in their driveway. Which made this particular vehicle stick out. Even if it hadn’t been red, which it was.

Walter owned a beige sedan. Beige, like his personality. Had the man bought a new car?

Her palms felt damp. Why did anxiety always crowd in the moment sunlight left?

Her mind was working overtime. She had to stop doing this to herself. So there was a strange car parked across the street from her house, so what? There were a hundred reasons for it being there.

She could think of only one.

She’d noticed the parked vehicle as she’d walked by her family room window. Ten minutes later, she was drawn back to the window. And again. Each time she looked, she could feel something in her chest tighten just a little more.

Get a grip.

She worked the curtain fabric through her fingers, staring at the vehicle. Telling herself that memories of her father’s case were making her overreact. Walter hadn’t hurt her last time. Why would he this time? Patience didn’t know for sure that the flower had come from Walter. But it had begun the last time with a single rose. Just because Walter had sent it, didn’t mean that someone else couldn’t send her a flower for a completely innocent reason.

There could be all sorts of explanations for that flower. It could have even come from a new real estate agent trying to make an impression. Realtors were always doing strange things like that, giving you pads, newsletters, flags. Why not roses?

Okay, so where was his flyer? Flying off somewhere? She watched a bunch of leaves chase each other at the curb where she’d swept them. Gusts of wind had been blowing all afternoon. Fall was settling in.

Stop it, Patience, you’re making yourself crazy. Just wait and see what happens next.

That was what she’d told herself earlier this evening—just before she’d spotted the car. Patience chewed on her bottom lip. Did the car belong to Walter? She didn’t know. No, she wasn’t going to break down, wasn’t going to be the spooked female, was not going to let her imagination run away with her. She could handle this. At the very least, she had to be sure if it was Walter or just a car someone had innocently parked near her house.

Summoning her courage, Patience looked out a third time. And saw the vague outline of a dog in the back seat. The relief she felt was massive. It wasn’t Walter’s car. Walter was terrified of dogs. Each time he had come into the clinic, he made sure to steer clear of any canine patients in the waiting area. He’d told her that he’d had a bad experience as a young boy that had scarred him for life.

Okay, not Walter. But, if not Walter, then who? A patient with an “emergency”? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d seen a patient after her doors were closed.

She’d even gotten a couple of calls from frantic pet owners in the middle of the night. The last one had been less than a month ago, involving an encounter between a Great Dane and a pit bull that had accidentally gotten loose in the residential area. Jogging with her master, the Great Dane had been no match for the smaller, more powerful animal. If it hadn’t been for a cruising patrol car, Patience had no doubt that the Great Dane would have been killed. As it was, she’d spent the better part of three hours stitching up the poor victim.

Determined to get to the bottom of this, Patience slipped on a sweater and went downstairs to the front entrance of her house. The wind was picking up again. Two weeks into fall and the weather had decided to surrender to the season. Patience wrapped her arms around herself as she crossed the street. She missed summer already.

As she approached the vehicle, she saw the man in the driver’s seat look her way. Because of the location of the streetlamp, his face was bathed in shadow. She recognized the dog first. King. Which meant that the man in the car had to be Coltrane.