latter never turned up. Word was he preferred his own company to that of others.
She glanced at Brady before she turned her attention to the dog’s examination. Josh and Brady were as different as night and day, beginning with their coloring. Brady had black hair to Josh’s blond. The only thing the two men had in common beyond their uniforms was that they were both good-looking. While Josh was outgoing, Officer Braden Coltrane was quiet. If she wanted more than a single-syllable conversation with King’s two-legged partner, she had to go in search of it herself, often dragging words up Brady’s throat and out of his mouth.
Silence obviously didn’t bother him. He seemed to enjoy it. Even his commands to his dog were usually silent, as opposed to Josh’s verbal ones. Each man, she thought, gave the kind of commands he was most comfortable with.
Because cultivating a conversation with him required so much effort, Patience found she had to live up to her name whenever she dealt with Brady.
She began working the animal’s thick coat, going slowly. “But there’s no point in speculating about whether or not I’d go out with Josh because I do have my rules,” she said over her shoulder at Brady. She kept her explanation simple. “There’s no way I’m going to go through what my mother did, waiting for my husband to come home every night.”
Brady laughed dryly. “There are worse things than that.”
Patience was quick to jump on the offering, looking to expand it. “Such as?”
He shrugged carelessly, looking away. “Having him come home.”
Patience looked up sharply.
The sentence hung in the air between them. Had he known her father? she wondered. Because of his family name more than anything else, there were rumors that Mike Cavanaugh had been a disgruntled, dissatisfied man. The Cavanaugh brother who couldn’t measure up. Was Brady referring to that, to the hearsay?
Or was he talking about something more close to home? She, along with most of the force, she surmised, knew next to nothing about the man.
Brady said nothing more. She tried to coax more out. “What makes you say that?”
“Nothing.”
The curtain had gone down again. No encores followed. Patience let a small sigh escape as she continued to examine King.
Stupid of him, letting that out, Brady thought. His mistake. But not one he was about to follow up on. He wasn’t about to tell this petite, pretty woman that for one unguarded moment he was thinking of his own past. Of his own father.
The man he’d shot.
The event haunted him to this very day. Any way you looked at it, Brady thought, he was truly an unlikely candidate for the position he now held. On the right side of the law.
Originally from a town so small in the south of Georgia that it didn’t exist on some of the less detailed maps, Braden Coltrane had been just barely seventeen years old when he’d shot and killed his abusive father. When he’d been forced to kill him to save his mother and sister.
As was his habit, Owen Coltrane had come home roaring drunk. And as was his habit, Owen had begun to take his mood out on his wife and daughter. Unable to stand the tension he was forced to endure day in, day out, Brady had been in his closet-size bedroom, which had once served as the walk-in pantry, packing. Preparing to leave home for good that very night. He’d stopped packing when he’d heard his sister’s frantic screams.
Rushing out into the living area of their run-down house, he’d seen his father threaten his mother with the gun that he’d prized more than his family. Not thinking of anything but saving his mother, Brady had gotten in between his parents.
His mother had stepped back, screaming as he’d wrestled his father for control of the firearm. In the struggle, it discharged, mortally wounding his father in the chest.
He remembered feeling numbed then shaken as he’d watched the blood pool beneath his father’s body. His father had already been dead when he hit the wooden floor, a startled, angry expression forever frozen on his face.
A trial followed and he’d been found not guilty due to extenuating circumstances. Everyone knew the kind of man Owen Coltrane had been: mean sober and meaner drunk. But despite the stares and whispers that never stopped—they’d followed him wherever he went—Brady had remained in town, working at whatever jobs he could find to try to earn a living. He’d had to provide for his sister and bereaved mother.
His mother, who had never stopped blaming him for what had happened, died less than two years after his father of what the local doctor had unscientifically called “a broken heart.” To Brady’s everlasting bewilderment and anger, his mother had pined away after his father and although Owen had abused her throughout their entire marriage, she’d been unable to find a way to live without him.
Which led Brady to the final conclusion that he just couldn’t begin to understand relationships at all. He certainly had no role models to fall back on. His father had been a cruel, vindictive man, devoid of love. His mother had been a weak puppet who hadn’t loved her children enough to protect them from her husband’s wrath. Though he had begged his mother to leave his father and start a new life for herself and for them, she’d always turned a deaf ear on his pleas.
Less than a month after their mother’s funeral, Brady’s sister Laura married a marine and left town. At nineteen, with no responsibility left, he’d been free to do whatever he wanted.
And what he’d wanted was to get as far the hell away from memories of his childhood as he could.
He’d packed up and left Georgia right after Laura’s wedding, taking only a few possessions and the burden of his past with him.
He’d knocked around a bit, moving clear across the country. Settling down, he’d decided to go to college at night to earn a degree in criminology, a subject that had always interested him. It took him less than three and a half years. When he put his mind to something, he didn’t let anything get in his way.
Eventually he came to Aurora and joined the local police force. He did well with the work, but not with his partners. An affinity for animals had led him to apply for the K-9 squad when an opening became available. He’d always felt that animals were truer than people, being unable to engage in deceptions.
And now he and King had a bond he had never felt with another living creature. He’d lay down his life for the dog without a second thought.
Patience looked at Brady for a moment, wondering what was going on inside his head.
In a way, the patrolman reminded her a great deal of Patrick before his wife, Maggi, had come into his life. When they were growing up, Patrick had always borne the brunt of their father’s displeasure, partially, Patience thought, because Patrick looked a great deal like their uncle Andrew, whose career had been so much more dynamic than their father’s. Before he’d retired, Andrew Cavanaugh, the son of a beat cop, had advanced his way up to police chief of Aurora. And Uncle Brian, her father’s younger brother, was the current chief of detectives.
Her father had always felt as if he were struggling beneath the shadows of both of his brothers. He’d never come into his own and had harbored a great deal of resentment toward both of them. The only place he could freely take out his anger was at home, on his family.
Had
