Page 2 of Silent Threat
Her transaction was approved. She signed the receipt. “Could I have the key to the bathroom, please?”
She didn’t look at Joey again as she walked out into the gray-skied September morning. He managed to bump into her nearly every day, always with those lost-puppy-dog eyes and that hurt expression.Look what you’ve done to me.And, of course, Annie specialized in lost puppies.
“Could we talk?” The question hooked into the back of her shirt as she was about to turn the corner.
She stopped at the mouth of the narrow alley. The ten-foot strip of concrete between the gas station and a windowless warehouse on the other side was a desiccated wasteland.They should clean up this place and put a couple of potted plants back here,she thought. And then:Shouldn’t have had that second cup of tea with breakfast.If she didn’t have to use the bathroom, she’d be out of there by now.
Sheneededto be out of there. She had a new patient today, a former Navy SEAL.
Behind her, Joey stepped closer, his boots scuffing on the concrete.
“Please stop following me,” Annie said. “It’s making me uncomfortable.”
He had not been violent with her, but hehadbeen violent with others—drunken brawls, mostly. Mostly started by his cousin, Big Jim, who could talk Joey into anything, but chose to talk him into only the immoral and illegal. Big guy, big talker, the oldest of the cousins, Big Jim always had the best stories and the worst ideas.
Actually, the whole family was pretty messy.
“I need to tell you something.” Joey kept coming. “I’m your man. You know I am. Meant to be.”
He was about five feet eleven inches, the beginnings of a beer belly giving him some girth, a country boy who wore Timberlands and Levi’s with a plaid shirt and a red Phillies baseball hat. He was like a puppy who hadn’t taken to training, then grown big and just wanted to do what he wanted.
“I can’t be late for work,” she said.
“You care more about your patients than you care about me.”
She had no intention of justifying herself. Again.
“Listen, when I came back to Broslin last year, I was in love with the idea of coming home. A return to childhood and innocence and a safe place, you know? You were my best friend back in elementary school. So you kind of represented all that for me. But that’s not enough for a romantic relationship.”
Misery drew grooves around Joey’s eyes, a whole set all at once, like drawing in sand with a garden rake. “Can I come over tonight?” He moved forward again, caught himself, stopped. “Just to talk.”
“No. I’m sorry. Goodbye, Joey.” Bathroom key in hand, Annie hurried into the alleyway.
When she finished in the bathroom and turned on the tap, she looked into the cracked mirror over the sink. “Joey is moving on. The new patient will commit to therapy and make amazing progress. I’m going to have a great day today.”
She’d already said her affirmations while combing her hair this morning, but repetition wouldn’t hurt.
She washed her hands, grabbed a paper towel, and kept it in hand as she reached for the doorknob.
OK, Joey, please don’t be waiting.
He wasn’t. But the man not two feet from the door, whirling around with a feral growl, was infinitely worse. Insanely huge. Wide shoulders. Corded muscles. Shaved head. Barbed-wire tattoos above his ears.
The man’s skin was a shade or two darker than Annie’s, his nearly black gaze hard and merciless. He wore army boots and fatigues with an olive T-shirt that covered neither the scars nor the ink on his massive arms and neck.
His half-raised hand promised death.
All that took Annie a split second to register as her heart broke into a panicked rush to punch its way out of her chest.
“Don’t.” She braced for impact, the paper towel dropping from her fingers.
She was stuck in the narrow doorway, the door half-closed behind her. She couldn’t make any moves, her self-defense training useless. She had no room to maneuver.
But instead of letting the punch fly, the man stepped back, dropping his frying-pan-size hand. “You startled me.”
His rusty voice gave the impression of a hermit who rarely left his mountain hideaway. The look he gave her was in that vein too—a hard look from a hard man unused to human interaction. Maybe not a hermit, no, nothing that harmless.A bear.A grizzly coming out of hibernation: slow for now, considering, a lethal predator awakening.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Get a grip.
