Cavanaugh Justice: Alone In The Dark Part 14

She ran her hand along the dog's well-brushed coat. "He does when I give it to him."

Josh laughed shortly, as if what she'd just said was self-evident. "Gonzo would probably stand still for an enema if you were the one giving it to him."

Patience c.o.c.ked her head as she looked at Gonzo's partner. A bemused smile curved her lips. "That has got to be the strangest compliment I ever got, but thank you-I think."

The reason for the unexpected visit concluded, Josh appeared reluctant to leave. He nodded toward the back office. "What was going on here when I came in? You seemed ... threatened."

So much for keeping a poker face, she thought. "Did I?"

Patience blew out a breath, debating. She'd thought that Brady had told Josh earlier about Walter. But maybe he hadn't. It seemed that her ability to read Brady came up short. In a lot of ways.

Since he'd pushed, she gave Josh a quick summary, without the highlights. The less she said about the situation, the faster she could put it behind her. "For some reason, Walter Payne got it into his head that there might be something between us if he just pressed hard enough."

By his expression, this was obviously news to Josh. She saw anger crease his forehead just before he nodded toward the outer door. "That little weasel?"

"He's not a weasel, he's just-" She shrugged, searching for the right word, and then settled on "-misguided. And lonely."

Josh's eyes grew dark. "Did he try anything?"

A vein popped up on Josh's brow. Signs of a temper she'd never been aware of became evident. Patience placed her hands on his chest, as if that could hold him down. "Whoa, Captain America, hold it, it's okay," she teased. "Walter just came by to tell me goodbye. He's moving."

Josh appeared unconvinced. "I can keep an eye on him for you."

She shook her head. "Not necessary."

But Josh didn't seem to think she was right. "Maybe a woman like you doesn't realize what kind of fatal attraction she represents."

She knew that she didn't stop clocks when, she pa.s.sed, but she'd never thought of herself as particularly beautiful, either. "I'd hardly call it fatal."

"That's because you're oblivious to it. But other people aren't." There was a glimmer of annoyance in his voice. "Like Coltrane."

The mention of the man who had disappeared from her life brought with it a strange feeling that rippled through her. She felt oddly abandoned, even though she'd tried, over and over, to talk herself out of it. Coming from the family that she did, she knew all the reasons that could have kept Brady from coming to see her. Policemen didn't exactly keep regular hours. But that shouldn't have stopped Brady from at least giving her a two-second phone call just to touch base. To...

What was she doing? She didn't want this relations.h.i.+p, so why was she pining?

Because she was going crazy, that's why.

Patience brushed back a strand of hair that had come undone from the clip at the back of her neck. "Could we change the subject?"

"Fine with me." The smile on Josh's lips was warm and sensuously teasing. "Let's talk about something closer to home."

"Like Gonzo."

His eyes held hers. "I was thinking of something a little more human."

"You're insulting him." She grinned, petting the dog again. Gonzo seemed to curl into her touch. She gave him one final pat and picked up his chart again, heading for the door. "And now that you have his pills, I'd better get back to my other patients or I'm liable to be here all night."

Josh walked out the door with her. "Call me the next time you need rescuing."

She laughed. "I will."

He paused before going into the reception area. "I mean it."

He sounded so serious. Had he seen something in Walter Payne's eyes that she'd missed? No, she couldn't let herself think that way. She wasn't going to live her life glancing over her shoulder all the time. It was time to end this conversation.

Patience looked down at the German shepherd. "Gonzo, be a good dog and take your master back to work."

Gonzo barked once, as if in agreement, and then led Josh out. The latter gave her a quick wink before he allowed himself to be dragged off.

She shook her head and laughed as she entered the next exam room.

It had been a very long day, with two emergencies that had to be wedged into her appointments. An undersize c.o.c.ker spaniel had had an altercation with a rosebush and lost; and a Great Dane had decided to help herself to some chocolate cake that had been left out on the dining room table. Luckily the dog's owner had stopped her before she'd consumed die whole thing. Chocolate could often be deadly for a dog.

Lucky the same wasn't true for humans, Patience thought, locking the door. Tonight's main course was going to be a pint of chocolate ice cream. She had no desire to make anything edible on her own and didn't even feel like putting out the energy to dial a number for take-out.

Claiming to be coming down with a cold, s.h.i.+rley had long since gone home, leaving her to juggle patients, charts and payment statements on her own. Exhausted, Patience was about to shut off the lights when she heard pounding on the door.

Everything inside her froze.

Was that Walter?

Lulling her into thinking he was moving away, had he decided to sneak back to see her?

She tried to calm herself down. Walter wouldn't be pounding on the door like that. That was drawing attention, not sneaking.

"Patience? Patience, are you still in there? Open the d.a.m.n door!"

Brady.

Her heart resumed beating. Pounding in time to the fist that was meeting the door. Why was he yelling like that?

Patience ran to the door before the rest of her questions could even form.

The second she unlocked the door, it flew open, banging on the opposite wall. Brady staggered in, struggling with the weight in his arms. He was carrying King. The dog was covered with blood.

Patience stifled the gasp that rose in her throat. There was no time to react as a person, only as a veterinarian. Her feelings needed to be put on hold.

"Oh my G.o.d, what happened?" Even as she asked, she was leading Brady and King back to the operating room.

In an effort to remain calm, Brady recited the events in a clipped manner. "We found a cache of drugs in a toy warehouse earlier this evening. The drugs were packed inside the dolls. They were using heroin instead of stuffing. Drug dealer had a pit bull on the premises. It went for me and King tried to save me." And then the cold act folded as his voice throbbed with emotion. "You've got to save him."

She blinked away the tears that filled her eyes. The kind of pit bull a drug dealer would have was bred to kill, and there was no more effective killing machine on the face of the planet. By scientific calculations, the jaws of a pit bull could exude over two thousand pounds of pressure when clamped.

"You could have been killed. You both could have." She pulled down a fresh sheet of exam paper to cover the table for King. "Put him on the table. How did you-"

"Get away?" he guessed. "Easy." His expression was grim. "Gillespie shot him," he told her, mentioning another patrolman a.s.signed to the detail. He swallowed, battling fears as he looked at his long-time friend and companion. "Is he going to be all right?"

"Yes."

Her response was automatic. It was what they both needed to hear, whether or not it was logically true. She didn't want to think about odds, or possibilities, or what could go wrong. Nothing was going to go wrong. She was going to make the dog be all right.

"Hold him down for a second," she instructed. Then, while Brady did so, she prepared a syringe, tapping the side to make sure there was no air bubble trapped inside "What's that?" Brady immediately demanded.

"Just a sedative to make him relax." She nodded toward the reception area. "Why don't you wait for me outside?"

His feet firmly planted on the ground, Brady made no move to go. "No."

She slipped on the blue operating gown and prepared a tray. "It's going to get messy."

She could argue until she was blue in the face, nothing short of an order from G.o.d was going to get him to leave. And maybe not even then. "He's my dog. I'm staying."

She didn't have the time to waste arguing. The dog needed her now and needed her focused. "Okay, then stay out of my way."

Patience washed her hands, then quickly pulled on a pair of rubber gloves before beginning her examination. The dog, mercifully, was already asleep.

Both of King's ears had been bitten, and a piece was missing from the tip of one. But the wounds she was more concerned about were the ones along the canine's throat. There were a total of three separate tears. It was obvious that the pit bull had intended to rip out King's throat.

But when she examined them, she saw that the tears were superficial. She looked up at Brady. He was like a stone statue, standing guard. It reminded her of an old fairy tale Patrick had read to her. The Steadfast Tin Soldier. "How did you manage to keep the dog from ripping King's throat apart?"

"I pushed them together." His arms ached just to think about the ordeal. He'd used every last bit of strength he had and then some to hold the pit bull against King. Otherwise, the dog would have bitten through chunks of King's throat.

"Quick thinking." If Brady hadn't been quick, there was no question in her mind that King would have been dead in moments.

"If I'd been quick, I would have shot him myself before he got to King."

Though sedated, the dog twitched slightly as she cleaned off his wounds. She started to repair the damage. "But the pit bull got to you first, right?"

"Yeah."

Patience glanced up at him from her suturing. Brady's s.h.i.+rt was covered with blood. She nodded at it. "How much of that is yours?"

He looked down to see what she was talking about. He'd been running on empty ever since he'd seen the untethered dog come at them. After the attacking dog had been taken down, Gillespie had offered to drive him to an all night vet's, but he'd refused. Refused to allow anyone to touch him or his dog. He'd wanted to come to her. Because he was afraid that if he didn't, no one else could save King.

He was still afraid.

"I don't know."

"Why don't you let me help-"

He didn't even let her finish. "After you sew up King," he ordered.

Patience knew without being told that there was no reasoning with him. In a way, she supposed she understood. She would have placed Tacoma's well-being before her own.

"Okay," she agreed.

It was more than an hour before Patience finally stripped off her gloves and operating gown. She'd done all she could for the dog, the rest was out of her hands, but she felt pretty confident that all had gone well.

They moved King onto a pallet in the corner of the room. The dog was still sedated, but beginning to come around. "He needs to rest now," she told Brady.

He nodded. "I'm going to stay here." He began to pull up a chair.

"First we're going to see just how much of that blood was yours, remember? Take your s.h.i.+rt off."

He waved her away. He'd sustained worse at his father's hands when he was a kid. "I'm okay."

Her eyes narrowed. "The h.e.l.l you are." Not waiting for him to comply, Patience picked up a pair of surgical scissors and began to cut his b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt away from his body.

He knew better than to jerk away. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Taking matters into my own hands." Brady started to stop her, only to have his hand pushed away. "Sit down," she ordered. When he didn't, she warned, "Don't mess with me, Coltrane." Her eyes blazed. All the feelings surrounding this man suddenly came rus.h.i.+ng up from inside her. It was almost too much for her to deal with at one time. "You don't want to see me when I'm angry."

Brady did as he was ordered and sat on the examination table. Despite himself, he was amused. "Didn't the Hulk say something like that?"

She spared him a look that told him he'd better not be laughing at her. "The Hulk didn't talk. That was his alter ego and right now, I'd say it was pretty good advice."

His stomach tightened reflexively as she dabbed peroxide on the first of his wounds. It took him a second to find his breath. "Why are you angry?"

Ordinarily she would have shrugged away his question and kept everything inside. But he was hurt and bleeding and he might have been killed today, leaving her with all these unresolved feelings that had nowhere to go. d.a.m.n it, she wasn't supposed to care like this. "Because it takes King and you almost bleeding to death to get you to show up," she said, her voice vibrating with anger.

"I'm not bleeding to death-"

She shot him a dark look. "Don't twist my words around, Coltrane. You're in a very dangerous spot right now."

He looked at the scissors on the examination table beside him. "Yeah, I know." And then, because the look in her eyes had gotten to him, he decided that, for once in his life, he was going to tackle something other than stone-cold facts. "Look, I thought it was for the best if I left you alone."

Patience finished cleaning another wound. Tossing away the swab, she turned her attention to the third. "Whose best?"

"Yours." The answer was automatic, without thought. And then he added, "Maybe mine."

"Why?" Very delicately, she applied a salve to the wound. She could see his skin tighten.

"Because you said you didn't want to get involved with a cop."

She raised her eyes to his. "I think we've pa.s.sed the 'get' part and are well into 'involved,' wouldn't you say?"

Brady swallowed a curse born more of frustration than of the physical pain he was experiencing. "Patience, I don't know the first thing about being in a relations.h.i.+p."

She examined her work before continuing on to the next wound. He was lucky the pit bull hadn't turned him into a human chew toy.

"They're a little like snowflakes, every one is just a little bit different from the rest." She looked at him again. "You go from there."

She didn't get it yet, did she? He had no frame of reference to fall back on, nothing to guide him as to what he should do, what he should feel. "I grew up in a house full of anger and hate."

"The man who put himself between his dog and a pit bull knows more than just anger and hate. He knows about love and sacrifice." There were three more wounds, all in a row along his rib cage. She liberally applied peroxide to all three and winced along with him. "Look, I'm scared, too. Maybe we can be scared together."

She felt him backing away from her. "I didn't say I was scared."

The right corner of her mouth rose slightly. "You didn't have to." Taking a fresh swab, she wiped away the blood from his forehead. Studying it, she frowned. Brady had a gash there that was going to form a nasty scar if it wasn't sutured.