Free Alone in the Dark by Marie Ferrarella Page B

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 assured her. "I've got a friend in forensics who can handle this discreetly." He saw the skeptical look that passed over Patience's face. "What?"

    She shook her head, embarrassed. 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 encompassed 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 assignment 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 haveTacomafor 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