Alone in the Dark Read Online Free Page 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.

    Tacomamoved closer to her mistress, offering her protection. She absently ran her hand
    over the dog's head, scratchingTacomabehind the bars 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 Grade's been hacking all night
    and I'm worried sick." The statement came out like an extraordinarily long single