Outsider Read Online Free Page A

when he didn’t step aside.
    â€œWho’s the guy?” he asked, nodding toward where Rodrigo had disappeared.
    â€œA friend,” Sarina said before she thought that it was none of his business. “Rodrigo Ramirez. He works here, too. Would you move, please?”
    â€œIs he the girl’s father?”
    Sarina’s eyebrows arched. “I’ve only known him three years.”
    He looked at Bernadette with a narrow stare. “I hope you don’t have any plans to try to blame her on me,” he said out of the blue, without a clue why he’d made the outrageous remark. “I’d rather be shot than lay claim to a child that rude.”
    She wasn’t a violent woman, but the sarcastic remark hit her in a raw spot. She’d had years of anguish, from her troubled pregnancy to a dangerous delivery, and all the health problems that had come afterward. The comment made her furious. Without pausing to count the cost, she drew back her foot and kicked him in the shin as hard as she could.
    He groaned and bent over to rub his leg with a muffled curse.
    â€œGood for you, Mommy,” Bernadette said gleefully. “That’s the one that got hit with the baseball bat, too!”
    Colby gaped at her. Only the month before, he’d had to apprehend a man at his former job for Pierce Hutton who was armed with a baseball bat. He’d been hit in the leg trying to subdue the perpetrator. How the hell did the kid know that?
    â€œCome on, Bernadette,” Sarina said, almost dragging the child along with her past the small café downstairs.
    Colby walked after them, hobbling a little. “That child is a witch!” he raged in Apache. Sarina didn’t respond to the insult, but the child looked back at him with cold, angry eyes as he followed them down the hall. If his leg hadn’t been hurting so badly, he might have noticed that she understood what he’d said about her.
    Inside the small café overlooking the corridor, maintained for Ritter employees, Alexander Cobb was buying a cappuccino for the young woman Colby remembered from the shoot-out. Colby grimaced as he noticed Cobb watching him with an unholy amused grin. His new job wasn’t starting off on the best of feet.

CHAPTER TWO
    I T BOTHERED S ARINA that Colby had warned her not to accuse him of being Bernadette’s father. Of course, he had no reason to think it was true. He’d said it in a sarcastic manner and was probably trying to score points. He didn’t bother to mention her frantic call, and his chilling response to it, all those years ago when she was pregnant with Bernadette. He’d told Maureen to tell Sarina that he was sterile and the child couldn’t possibly be his. What a joke.
    But not a funny one. She’d called him in her ninth month of pregnancy, desperate for help. She’d been totally alone, with no money, unable to work, and at the mercy of bill collectors and the obstetrician who was trying to save her baby. Colby had told his wife Maureen to tell her that she was lying, it couldn’t possibly be his child, that he never wanted to speak to her again. She was a filthy little liar, Maureen had quoted, and he hated her for trying to ruin his marriage to Maureen. If she accused him again of fathering her child, Maureen added, Colby would take her to court.
    After all these years, it was still painful to remember his rejection. He didn’t believe he could have a child and he’d made sure she knew it. That was something of a relief, but it was disturbing that he’d even alluded to it just now. She loved her daughter. She didn’t want to take any chance of losing her.
    But perhaps she was worrying for no good reason. Colby was surely still married to that horrible woman, Maureen. It was obvious that he didn’t like children. And if he truly believed he was sterile, perhaps his rude remark about Bernadette’s parentage was a defensive posture