Page 12 of Silent Threat
She watched him, her gaze open and curious. He didn’t know many people who could stay as unruffled as that when he was in this kind of a mood.
She said, “I think you are ... off balance.”
Off balance.
That came closer to how he felt than anything anyone else had told him so far, after a lot longer acquaintance. So, all right, maybe he’d give Miss Murray half a chance.
Half because he still wasn’t sure about any of this.
And also because he figured half a chance was all she needed. Given half a chance, Annie Murray would run with it like a rabbit with her tail on fire.
Chapter Four
ANNIE LOOKED UPinto Cole’s dark, assessing gaze and tried to decide what to do with him. She couldn’t complain that he’d brought her down. She’d started the fight. She’d put him on his ass first. She hadn’t worried about the fall hurting him, not on the spongy groundcover of old leaves and mulch spread on the path.
She couldn’t believe she’d been able to knock him down. OK, she hadn’t knocked him off his feet—she’d knocked him off center, and then his own weight pulled him to the ground. He hadn’t resisted for fear of damaging her. Even when he’d had her fully restrained, he’d been careful not to put his full weight on her.
Hewasa gentleman, despite his protests. But he was rough and gruff too. A wounded warrior.
Her patient.
She sat up and pushed against his shoulder.
He held her for another second, because thiswasa power play, and the whole point had been to show her that he was the top predator in these woods.
His point made, he rolled smoothly to his feet and extended a large Band-Aid–decorated hand to help her up.
She ignored the hand and came to her feet on her own power. “If you hate being here this much, why did you enter the program?”
He began walking again, and she figured he wouldn’t answer, but he said, “I promised my mother.” He glanced back at her.
When she said nothing, he asked, “What? I don’t look like I have a mother?”
“Now that you mention it”—she dragged her gaze across the span of his shoulders—“you definitely look like you could be the love child of a grizzly bear and a navy destroyer.”
The joke was for herself, to regain her equilibrium, but for the first time, his face lightened an infinitesimal measure. Not anything as drastic as a smile, but as if he’d passed a billboard with a smiling person this morning and he was remembering that. The lighter look didn’t make him handsome, but a maybe a little less mountain-of-doomy.
Since he looked almost approachable for once, she asked, “Where do your parents live?”
The light look disappeared. He stilled, as if having a silent debate with himself. Then he answered, his tone reluctant, as if every word cost him, as if he had to put a dollar into an imaginary jar for every syllable. “My mother lives in Illinois. My father is gone.”
Father—suicide. How could she forget, even for a second? He’d thrown her off-kilter when he’d rolled her under him. He’d thrown her off-kilter by being the guy from the gas station. He’d taken her by surprise.
She needed to get her act together. “Would you like to talk about your father?”
A couple of seconds ticked by as Cole looked up the path. “He got sick from the chemicals in the First Gulf War. Became too much for him in the end.”
She touched his hand so he would turn to her. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Makes my mother worry.”
Annie could see why it would. According to the notes in his file, he’d spent a month refusing to leave his apartment—holed up with a cache of loaded weapons.
Chances of suicide for a person who had a close family member who’d committed suicide were two to three times that of the general population—a risk factor therapists took seriously.
“Are you now considering, or have you ever considered, suicide?”
“No.” His tone was sure, his gaze straight.
