Cavanaugh Justice: Alone In The Dark Part 6

In no time at all, she'd have her own armed guard posted at her side, watching her 24/7. Patience sighed. She couldn't handle that, either.

What she needed, she decided, struggling to remain rational, was someone on the outside, someone who wasn't personally involved, who wouldn't overreact. Someone who wouldn't let her family know.

Someone who could rival a clam.

An image of Brady popped into her mind.

The man was the closest thing to a clam she knew. She was pretty confident that her problem would remain a secret if she asked him to check this out. After all, the man only talked to his dog, and probably only after long intervals of silence at that.

Turning to her old-fashioned Rolodex, she flipped through the cards until she found Brady's number. Memorizing it, she punched in the numbers on her keypad.

The sound of his voice answering after five rings had an unexpected effect on her pulse. She told herself it was only because of the situation, nothing more. Last night had rattled her, the roses had rattled her more. She couldn't very well be expected to be calm.

But she was working on it.

There were a great many ways to begin the conversation. Small talk and chitchat, however, probably went over like a lead balloon when it came to Coltrane. He preferred going to the meat of the matter.

She served him meat. "Brady, he sent more roses."

The voice on the other end of the line was instantly alert. "When?"

"Just now. My receptionist found the box on the doorstep."

She didn't have to say anything more than that. The response was immediate. "I'll be right over."

She knew she should tell him that he needn't hurry. That tonight, after hours, would be soon enough. But she felt like a scared child because his words filled her with relief. "All right."

If pressed, she wouldn't have been able to explain why, but as she hung up, she felt calmer already.

"Patient in room one," Shirley called out.

Patience glanced at her watch. Right on schedule. Her afternoon was under way.

She went out to do what she knew she was good at.

Chapter 6.

"She's in with a patient," the short, animated woman informed Brady when he entered the clinic less than fifteen minutes after the phone call. "But she's probably winding up. The Dalmatian's been in there for about fifteen minutes." The brunette leaned over the counter to look down at his dog, grinning broadly at the animal, and even more broadly at him. "Something wrong with King?"

Brady shook his head, all the while aware that there was another man in the reception area. The man's fingers were lightly wrapped around a leash tethered to a drooling bulldog who looked as if he'd consumed more than one too many snacks from his master's plate. In an effort to forestall any trouble, Brady gave King the command to heel. King dutifully ignored the bulldog. The latter seemed as if he were chomping at the bit to sniff out the compet.i.tion.

"Doc asked me to stop by," Brady told the young woman whose name escaped him.

"For King?" the bouncy brunette asked.

"No," Brady replied patiently, eyeing the one closed door in the back and willing Patience to appear.

"Then why...?" Since she didn't finish her question, Brady glanced in her direction and saw what appeared to be a trace of disappointment on the small, heart-shaped face. "Then you sent them to her?"

Brady's eyes narrowed. Was she talking about the roses? Before he could say anything in response, the receptionist had rounded the counter and was on the other side.

Cleaving to him, she lowered her voice as if she were in the middle of some TV melodrama, striving not to be overheard.

"They took her breath away when she saw them. She could hardly talk." She sighed wistfully. "They're absolutely beautiful. I wish someone would send me roses like that." She looked at him pointedly. The next second she seemed to rally and was all but vibrating in her enthusiasm. "Must have cost you a bundle."

"I didn't send them." Brady enunciated every syllable clearly. He didn't want to have to repeat himself.

"Oh." The hazel eyes widened as the fact that she'd apparently made a mistake sank in. She grinned as she began to backpedal. "Well. Okay. Um." A creak coming from the rear had her jerking her head in that direction. Her mouth quirked in a quick smile. "Here she is now." Not waiting for a comment, she hurried over to Patience. "Doctor, Officer Coltrane's here to see you about King."

Brady merely sighed and shook his head. The woman was definitely not up for employee of the year. Crossing to Patience, he lowered his head so that his mouth came close to her ear.

"Have you given any thought to getting a real receptionist instead of a Kewpie doll? Dish towels absorb more than she does."

Patience knew exactly what he meant. Shirley could be very trying. But she had a good heart and Patience felt protective of the younger woman. She felt a little bad for Shirley, seeing as how the woman had a crush on Brady. "She's good with animals."

He laughed shortly. "That's because her brain's the same size."

Though he'd kept his voice low, Patience glanced to see if Shirley had overheard. The receptionist watched them with a strange, unreadable expression on her face. Was she jealous? Did Shirley think that Brady had sent the flowers? As if something like that would have ever crossed Brady's mind.

She couldn't help wondering if the man had ever been involved, then decided in the next instant that the answer to that was probably a resounding no. To be involved you had to give of yourself, at least a little, and she couldn't see Brady doing that. He was much too self-contained, too controlled.

Still, she reminded herself, he had come when she'd called. He could have put her off, or told her to call the police in officially, but he hadn't and right now, that was all that mattered.

"Why don't you follow me to the back?" Patience prompted. Her eye caught the disgruntled expression on the other occupant's face. It had "I was here first" written all over it. "I'll be with you in a few minutes, Mr. Matthews, I promise. This won't take long."

Matthews nodded, but grumbled something under his breath that had to do with police officers and undue privileges.

Patience saw that the comment didn't go unheard. A muscle in Brady's cheek twitched, but to his credit he gave no other indication that he'd heard the other man or was about to offer a retort.

"Sorry about that," Patience murmured.

Brady shrugged the apology away. "Don't worry about it." He didn't have to look behind him to know that King was following. "Where are the flowers?"

"Back here." Bypa.s.sing the exam rooms, she took him to her small office just off the operating area. The room barely had enough s.p.a.ce for a desk and chair, much less the file cabinet and bookcase she'd managed to push in. Bringing another person in was a challenge. She glanced over her shoulder at Brady. "Tight squeeze."

That was putting it mildly, he thought. If he took a deep breath, he'd wind up brushing against her, something he really didn't want to do. "You could knock out a wall, make it bigger."

She'd thought about it, but the clinic already occupied a great deal of the first floor. "I didn't want to take s.p.a.ce away from the examination rooms or the operating salon. I didn't need much s.p.a.ce." Moving around to where the chair b.u.t.ted up against her desk to give him room, she gestured toward the long white box on her desk. "There it is."

"Was there a note?"

She nodded. A flicker of nerves washed over her. "It said 'It won't be long before you're mine.'"

He set his mouth hard. "Did you recognize it? Was it Payne's handwriting?"

She shook her head, frustration nibbling at her. "I'm not sure what his handwriting looks like. The poems and notes he'd send me always came off his printer."

That smacked of wanting everything uniform, controlled. Better to overestimate a suspect than to underestimate him. "Even with the flowers?" He found that highly unlikely, unless the man brought the cards with him when he bought the flowers.

She thought for a second. Only a few of the flowers had been accompanied by notes. "Those were printed, too. He has his own computer business so he's into all that."

He looked back at the rectangular box. "Is the card still inside?"

She nodded. Rather than open the box, she watched Brady take out a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and slip them on. "I thought only detectives carried around rubber gloves. Aren't you and King in the narcotics detail?"

That was exactly why he carried gloves. "Sometimes I have to handle bags of cocaine or heroin," he told her matter-of-factly. "You don't want that getting on your skin, especially if you've got a nick or a cut."

Patience was barely aware of nodding in response. She was holding her breath as he took the lid off the box, bracing herself again. It was as if each time she looked at the flowers, she was reminded all over again that the world was not the place she wanted it to be, the place that her brother and cousins made safe just by their very presence. There was a nasty side to life, a nasty side that found them despite the best of precautions.

"Certainly isn't cheap," Brady observed matter-of-factly. Each rose was as plump and perfect as the last. Great care had been taken selecting them. By his count, there were two dozen.

"This must have set him back about a hundred dollars." Both hands in the box, he moved the long-stemmed flowers around gingerly.

He'd already taken out the envelope with the card and set it on the table. She didn't understand. "What are you looking for?"

He glanced at her. "Making sure your 'admirer' just sent flowers."

"What else would he have sent?"

He debated telling her, then decided that he'd rather she be safe than another statistic. Forewarned was forearmed.

"There was one case where the stalker sent a poisonous snake along with the flowers. When they caught him, he said that he felt if he couldn't have her, n.o.body could, and he made d.a.m.n sure he got his way."

She'd put the lid back quickly, but was confident that she would have noticed if there had been anything alive in the box.

"No snake," she a.s.sured him. "Just flowers and a card."

But that was bad enough, she thought. Patience sincerely doubted that she was ever going to be able to look at a rose without feeling an icy shiver go up and down her spine.

Satisfied that the only things in the box besides the roses were sprigs of baby's breath and silver tissue paper, he turned his attention to the card. Still wearing the gloves, he slipped the card out of the envelope and read it. The words matched the ones she'd already told him. He slipped the card back into the envelope. Dropping it into the box, he put the lid back in place.

"I'm going to take this down to the lab, have it dusted for prints."

"There'll be several sets. The florist's, mine. And Shirley brought the box into the clinic."

Shirley. That would be the animated woman in the outer office. "Might be a lot of people's prints on the box and envelope," he agreed. "But it's a start." And who knew, sometimes they actually got lucky.

"Um, Brady." He looked up at her. His eyes were edgy, stirring. She felt something inside of her responding. Just nerves. "I don't want this to get back to Patrick or the others."

"Strictly off the record," he a.s.sured her. "I've got a friend in forensics who can handle this discreetly." He saw the skeptical look that pa.s.sed over Patience's face. "What?"

She shook her head, embarra.s.sed. But he kept looking at her, waiting. "It's nothing." And then she relented. "It's just that I can't seem to picture you with friends, that's all."

Brady eyed her for a long moment. He supposed he had that coming. It was no secret that he went out of his way to keep his distance from people in general. But sometimes, people got through anyway. Like Powell in forensics.

Like her.

He tried to tell himself there was no difference. "We're friends, aren't we?"

Brady's voice was devoid of emotion when he asked the question and she wondered for a second if he was being sarcastic or just incredibly dry, then decided that he was being neither.

"Yes," she acknowledged quietly, "we are." Friends was a nice, safe word that encompa.s.sed a wide terrain. Emotions were put into play with friends. That's all that was going on here, she insisted.

It only made her feel marginally better.

"Then you shouldn't have any trouble extending your imagination to my having more than just one friend," he concluded.

Brady started to pick up the box, then paused. Although she was trying to keep up a brave front, Patience seemed even more shaken this time around than she had when he'd inadvertently walked in with the rose he'd found on her doorstep.

Weighing his options, he made a decision. His a.s.signment had just been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. He and King had just led several of the detectives in the narcotics division to a successful bust. Heroin dealers were using a school bus, of all things, to get their "product" from one place to another. King had led the detectives right to the stash, packed away beneath the floorboards.

"I can stick around for a while if you like," he offered.

It wasn't that she didn't want him to. The thought of having him around was infinitely comforting, but she just couldn't allow herself to surrender to her fears. It wasn't who she was.

"You're on duty and I don't have any narcotics for you to unearth." She glanced toward the operating salon. "Unless you're interested in confiscating some of the painkillers I have on hand-"

He never cracked a smile. "I can take some personal time."

The offer surprised her. But then, Coltrane had already surprised her by turning up last night. The man wasn't nearly as one-dimensional and aloof as he pretended.

She squared her shoulders, digging deep for her resolve. "No, that's all right. I've got a lot of patients to see today. And, besides, I have Tacoma for protection." Right now, the dog napped in the last exam room, but she knew all she had to do was call out the dog's name and she would be by her side in a shot. "She might not be as highly trained as King is-" she glanced toward the dog in the hallway "-but she won't let anything happen to me."

The look on Brady's face told her he was dubious about her faith, but he shrugged as he picked up the box. "You've got my number if you change your mind. I'll let you know about the roses."

Patience walked out of the room first. She had no desire to accidentally brush against Brady as they negotiated the doorway. She felt vulnerable enough as it was.

"I appreciate it. Really," she emphasized, sensing that if she went any further, she'd just make him uncomfortable. Brady Coltrane was obviously a reluctant champion, but she was grateful that she could turn to him. He'd find things out for her with a minimum of fuss. If she'd turned to Patrick, his first action would be to corner Walter and she still wasn't one hundred percent sure that it was Walter who was sending her the flowers.

Brady accepted her thanks with no comment. He went out into the front of the office with King close beside him. As he pa.s.sed the receptionist, he heard the woman sigh. He gave no indication that he heard her. He had a feeling if he so much as looked in her direction, he would find himself detained indefinitely.

Brady went straight out the door.

Patience took a second to pull herself together, then walked into the reception area. She smiled broadly at the man sitting on the black sofa. "I can see you now, Mr. Matthews."