Alone in the Dark
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Marie Ferrarella
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Chapter 1
“C’mon, say yes. You know you want to.”
Patience Cavanaugh pushed her strawberry-blond hair out of her eyes and glanced up from the four-legged patient she was examining to the man who flirted with her.
Granted, there was a great deal to recommend him. Patrolman Josh Graham looked like every woman’s dream come true. Handsome, blond, outgoing with a killer smile, Josh filled out his uniform quite well. The very sight of him by her side would undoubtedly guarantee her the envy of every woman within a five-mile radius.
If she were into that sort of thing, which she wasn’t.
Besides, the uniform was the source of the problem and the reason why she was going to turn him down. Again.
Life for Patience was filled to overflowing with police personnel. From her brother, Patrick, to her two uncles right down to eight of her nine cousins. And even the ninth one, Janelle, was associated with law enforcement. Uncle Brian’s daughter was currently an assistant district attorney with a very impressive track record.
Patience thought of her father. He’d been a policeman as well.
And he had died in the line of duty.
Unlike the rest of the family, Michael Cavanaugh’s work had turned him into a bitter man. Looking back on her childhood, she could hardly remember a day when there hadn’t been some kind of unrest and turmoil within their small household. The job made him a hard man to live with. Night after night, she’d watch her mother hold her breath, waiting for her father to come through the door. Saw the tense interaction between her parents almost from the moment he walked in. Felt, along with her older brother who tried to take the brunt of it, the fallout of her father’s mounting frustration. Frustration that encompassed what he saw on the job as well as his own performance, but that she was to learn about later. What she knew firsthand was that he didn’t leave his work at the precinct. It gave him nightmares when he was asleep.
In a way, his work had haunted all of them.
Even before her father’s sudden death fifteen years ago, she’d made a vow to herself that when she finally decided to get serious about someone, that someone would not be associated with the police department. The best way to stick to that silent promise was not to get involved with a cop in the first place. Socially.
Professionally was another matter. As a vet running her own animal clinic, she treated the whole of the Aurora Police Department’s K-9 squad, making sure the force of five German shepherds was up on their shots as well as treating them for any injuries sustained on the job or off.
Which brought her back around to Josh Graham. He had started with the K-9 squad about eighteen months ago. He’d begun his campaign to get her to go out with him around the same time. She treated his persistent pursuit with the humor that was second nature to her as well as her shield. Josh took it all in stride, but he never quite gave up, either.
She went back to examining the dog’s ears. “You know my rules about that, Josh.”
“Right.” Josh moved in a little closer to the examination table—and her. “Those would be your rules of engagement.” She had delineated them with tact and force the one time when she perceived that he was seriously asking her out instead of merely flirting with her. He grinned broadly at her. “Haven’t you heard? Rules are made to be broken.”
With swift, sure movements, she worked her fingers around the animal’s back and hind quarters, checking for any new lumps. Usually, they represented fatty deposits that eventually disappeared, but she liked staying on top of everything.
She spared Josh a look. “Funny philosophy, coming from a cop.”
The grin never dimmed. “It’s because I am a cop that I know just when they need to be adhered to and when they need to be broken.” He moved as she did, slowly shadowing her path around the examination table. “Now, your rules are fine when it comes to other cops, like say Coltrane over there.” Emphasizing his point, he nodded at the door as another patrolman, Braden Coltrane entered with his four-footed partner, King. “Word is that the reason he’s partnered with one of the dogs is because no two-footed cop could put up with him.” She was finished feeling her way around the dog’s fur and Josh made it a point to be right in front of her again. “But me, well, your rule really shouldn’t apply to me.”
Humor curved her mouth. They both knew she wasn’t going to say yes. And they both knew he was going to push, just a little. It was a game at this point, and diverting. “And why’s that?”
“Because we’re soul mates, Patience. I can feel it.” He placed his hand over his heart.
Patience turned her attention to checking Gonzo’s teeth and gums. The former were turning a bit yellow. She was going to have to step up the cleaning schedule, she thought. “Well, I can’t.”
He cocked his head appealingly. “You would if you went out with me.”
She spared him a glance, suppressing the sigh. Another woman, she knew, would probably have been worn down by now. But another woman hadn’t held her comatose father’s hand in the hospital, praying that he wouldn’t slip away; that there would still be a chance for them to find a better footing. To finally be a real father and daughter instead of what they’d been: two hollowed-out shells with appropriate labels affixed to them. She’d needed more from him, wanted more. Surly or not, he’d been her father and she hadn’t wanted to lose him to a gunman’s bullet.
But she had. And no more restitutions were ever made. It made her feel cheated and angry. And guilty because she’d been relieved that the tension her father generated in their home was finally gone. The angry man who should have never been a cop was no more. She missed the idea of him, if not the man himself.
A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “I’d just rather stick to the rules right now, Josh, if you don’t mind.”
“‘Right now,”’ he repeated. “Which means you might not later.”
She supposed this was what was meant by a never-say-die attitude. “Which means I’m being polite.” She picked up the dog’s chart and made the proper notations. She was aware that both dog and master were studying her every move.
“I’m not giving up, you know,” Josh told her the moment she laid down the chart.
Patience sighed. “Yes, I know, but you are wasting your time. Really. I’m flattered, Josh, but I’m also serious.”
“We’ll see,” was all he said, flashing her a grin that he’d used to melt kneecaps at forty paces.
She merely laughed and shook her head. “Gonzo’s ready to go,” she told him. “He’s fine and fit for duty.” Because the dog nudged her, she petted the animal and was rewarded with a big, sloppy kiss. Delighted, Patience ruffled the dog’s fur.
“Never thought I’d envy a mutt. Down, Gonzo.” The dog obediently jumped down.
She patted the animal’s head. “On behalf of Gonzo, I take offense at that.”
Josh never missed a beat. “You could plead his case over dinner.”
She shook her head, laughing. “Go.” She fairly pushed Josh out of the room and into the hall. “You have a beat to patrol.”
With that she looked out into the waiting room. It was early, before the official start of her day. Her clinic was open from eight until five, but she made exceptions for the police department, having them bring in the canines before office hours so that they didn’t have to spend any time in her waiting room.
She made exceptions for any emergency that might come up, as well. Like people, animals didn’t always come down with something during prescribed business hours. More than once she’d been on the receiving end of a frantic call that came to her in the middle of the night. Never once had she turned down a sick animal.
Which was how Walter Payne had come into her life. The meek software technician had called her, beside himself over his prized cockatiel. The bird had become ill at two in the morning. She’d never asked what he was doing, keeping company with the bird at that hour. Looking back, she thought perhaps that had been her initial mistake.
Because Walter’s effuse gratitude had turned into something more. The flower he’d claimed came from the bird swiftly became bouquets left on her doorstep. There were poems and candy, all of which she politely but firmly declined, saying that payment of his bill was all that was necessary. But it wasn’t all that was necessary from his point of view. The visits, with and without the accompanying cockatiel, increased until she’d begun to feel as if she were being stalked.
Not that Walter ever really worried her. She’d felt that the man was harmless in his adulation. But she couldn’t get a case her father had been investigation out of her mind. She’d been ten at the time and maybe that was why it had left such a chilling impression on her. There’d been a young woman who’d been repeatedly stalked by a man she’d hardly known. He’d wound up killing her.
Patience had tried to tell herself that Walter and the other woman’s stalker were nothing alike. Walter was a sad little man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she’d struggled against ghosts from the past and at times it wasn’t easy not to give in to the fear. Just to play it safe, Patience had made sure that the group photograph of her entire family, all in dress uniform—save for her and Janelle—was prominently displayed where Walter could see it.
It was a silent warning and, evidently, he got it. His attentions faded. Which was a good thing because she’d been certain that her big brother, Patrick, was just inches away from nailing the computer enthusiast’s skinny hide to the back door. She’d made the mistake of mentioning it to him in passing and he’d been ready to take her in to file a restraining order against Walter. It had taken a lot of talking on her part to make him give up the idea; she’d known Patrick had been thinking of the same case her father had had.
Shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her white lab coat, Patience stood in the waiting room doorway and looked at her only other K-9 patient for the day. The other three had come by yesterday.
“Brady, you’re up next.”
“Don’t forget to give him his distemper shot,” Josh cracked, nodding at Brady as he passed by the tall, solemn dark-haired man.
Gonzo and King remained oblivious to one another as if they were wearing blinders. Brady gave a slight nod of greeting in response. His mouth never curved in the slightest.
Brady followed Patience into the examination room. “Graham giving you a hard time?”
Not looking in her direction, Brady gave King the command to get on the examination table. The sleek three-year-old German shepherd glided on as effortlessly as if he were a mere ten-pound puppy instead of the one-hundred-and-twelve-pound dog that he actually was.
Patience raised a shoulder, letting it drop again dismissively. “He’s just being Josh. Persistent,” she added when Brady didn’t say anything. Not that he would. In all the time that she’d known him, she’d found Brady to be just a little more talkative than a sphinx. “I just think it’s hard for him to believe that any woman would turn him down.”
Brady said nothing for a couple of seconds, letting her lay out her instruments and get to work. “And did you?”
“As always.” It was no secret how she felt about dating policeman. Everyone knew. She smiled at Brady. “Like I told Josh, I have my rules.”
“Otherwise you’d go out with him,” Josh answered.
Since he’d actually volunteered a sentence, she thought for a moment. “Maybe.”
There was no question that she did find Josh almost as charming as the patrolman found himself. He had an engaging personality and she saw him frequently enough, either for the dog’s routine exams or whenever her uncle Andrew, the former police chief of Aurora, threw a party. Her uncle did that with a fair amount of regularity and he usually invited half the police force. Josh was among that half.
As was Brady, from what she’d heard, but the latter never turned up. Word was he preferred his own company to that of others.
She glanced at Brady before she turned her attention to the dog’s examination. Josh and Brady were as different as night and day, beginning with their coloring. Brady had black hair to Josh’s blond. The only thing the two men had in common beyond their uniforms was that they were both good-looking. While Josh was outgoing, Officer Braden Coltrane was quiet. If she wanted more than a single-syllable conversation with King’s two-legged partner, she had to go in search of it herself, often dragging words up Brady’s throat and out of his mouth.
Silence obviously didn’t bother him. He seemed to enjoy it. Even his commands to his dog were usually silent, as opposed to Josh’s verbal ones. Each man, she thought, gave the kind of commands he was most comfortable with.
Because cultivating a conversation with him required so much effort, Patience found she had to live up to her name whenever she dealt with Brady.
She began working the animal’s thick coat, going slowly. “But there’s no point in speculating about whether or not I’d go out with Josh because I do have my rules,” she said over her shoulder at Brady. She kept her explanation simple. “There’s no way I’m going to go through what my mother did, waiting for my husband to come home every night.”
Brady laughed dryly. “There are worse things than that.”
Patience was quick to jump on the offering, looking to expand it. “Such as?”
He shrugged carelessly, looking away. “Having him come home.”
Patience looked up sharply.
The sentence hung in the air between them. Had he known her father? she wondered. Because of his family name more than anything else, there were rumors that Mike Cavanaugh had been a disgruntled, dissatisfied man. The Cavanaugh brother who couldn’t measure up. Was Brady referring to that, to the hearsay?
Or was he talking about something more close to home? She, along with most of the force, she surmised, knew next to nothing about the man.
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.
