Read Online Outsider by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page B

even to the security guards.
    The suggestion made Eugene grin. He agreed at once, and Colby felt better about his earlier faux pas.
    Â 
    B UT HE WENT BACK to his office feeling vaguely uncomfortable, still, about the way he’d upset Bernadette.
    He’d taken out his .40 caliber automatic Glock, checked the clip, and was cocking it when Sarina walked in without knocking. She stopped dead in the doorway as he put on the safety and stuck the pistol back into its holster on the opposite side of his belt.
    Sarina stared at the gun. She hadn’t realized that Colby would carry one on the job, but it was stupid not to have anticipated it. The Glock was the preferred weapon of many law enforcement agencies. You could drop one in a mud puddle and it would still fire.
    But she wasn’t supposed to know that, so she kept her mouth shut and folded her arms over her chest.
    â€œI know why you’re here,” Colby said without preamble. “Your friend Ramirez and Mr. Ritter have both had a bite of me. So go ahead.”
    He’d taken the wind out of her sails. He didn’t even look hostile.
    â€œWhy did you upset her this time?” she asked instead.
    He pulled the drawing out of his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to her.
    She blinked. She didn’t understand it. She frowned up at him. “It’s a jungle,” she began.
    He shucked his jacket, unbuttoned his sleeve and shot it up.
    She actually gasped when she saw where the prosthesis met the remaining portion of his left arm, just below his elbow, and all the blood ran out of her face.
    Her reaction made him uncomfortable. Maureen had found the prosthesis repulsive, too, not that it had mattered. He’d lost his arm after they’d separated. He’d given in to her decision to maintain a separate residence with bad grace and stayed drunk for a long time afterward. She’d lived with the man she later married, and became pregnant in defiance. Colby had given in to the divorce at once when he knew that, but she’d been oddly careless about it, and she’d never shared the final papers with him. She’d acted as if her marriage to Colby didn’t even exist.
    It was during that separation that he’d lost his arm. He hadn’t touched a woman intimately since the shooting. Obviously Sarina found him distasteful as well. It shouldn’t have bothered him, they were worlds apart now; but it did.
    He dragged the sleeve down savagely and refastened it. “I was on assignment in Africa a few years ago, one of several assignments I took there. That—” he gestured toward the drawing “—is where it happened. It was just after Maureen moved out. I developed a serious drinking problem. Our unit ran into an ambush that all our intelligence hadn’t prepared us for. I wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. My arm was shot to pieces, although one of our team walked right into the machine gun nest and took it out. If he hadn’t, I’d be dead. We had a doctor in our group who did the amputation. We were miles from a hospital and blood poisoning set in. If there hadn’t been a small clinic nearby where our doctor had access to surgical instruments and antibiotics, I’d be dead. It isn’t a memory I particularly enjoy.”
    She stared again at the drawing. “Nobody told Bernadette about any of that,” she said.
    â€œI’m not totally stupid,” he shot back. “I do realize that.”
    She bit her lower lip, hard. “I’m sorry. I’m certain that she didn’t mean it to be upsetting.”
    â€œAre you?” He laughed curtly. “She doesn’t like me. I’ve already made an enemy of her. She gave me a look that could have fried bread, and then she drew this.”
    She frowned worriedly. “She isn’t vindictive,” she said, but without real conviction. Her daughter had a regrettable temper.
    â€œMaybe she isn’t,