Cold Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

deal with things like that and not be hurt by them.”
    There was an unfamiliar edge to his voice. “And you are?”
    “You have too much heart,” she said. “Even if you don't show it.”
    He sneered.
    “I don't know if that was ever true, Micky. It isn't now.”
    “You can't do anything for people like that. You've said so yourself.”
    “I don't think I can help a man like Vegler. But if someone had seen it coming earlier, they might have controlled his episodes.”
    “Controlled? You believe that?”
    Damon shrugged. “I don't know what I believe anymore.” His eyes were distant, his face harder than she had ever seen it.
    “Some things nobody should experience.”
    Damon's face softened. “You're going to move in with Jim. Right?”
    “I guess. For a while.”
    “Good. It'll kill him if you don't.”
    She shut her eyes.
    “Sorry,” said Damon. “I shouldn't have put it like that.”
    “I just feel lost.”
    “You aren't lost. I found you.”
    Damon was there every day for the six weeks that she was hospitalized. He visited her at Jim's every day for three weeks after that. Micky still wore a bandage on her shoulder but the wound was healing. Her back was getting better too.
    But not her heart.
    She didn't cry every day. Not so anyone could see. And she didn't walk around bumping into walls anymore. She supposed that was an improvement. She was getting better at covering up her grief again.
    One day she and Damon sat on the veranda, not speaking, watching Jim tend the horses.
    “Don't you need to be back to work?” she asked. Thesun had fled and storm clouds climbed to impossible heights over flat expanse of Texas prairie.
    “One of the few benefits of being a consulting psychologist,” said Damon, studying the thunderheads. “I come and go as I choose.”
    “So you're independently wealthy now.”
    “Like the Kennedys.”
    “Seriously.”
    A frown replaced his usual smile. “I'm kind of in flux right now.”
    “In flux? What the hell does that mean?”
    “I don't want to leave you.”
    “I'm all right.”
    “Is that why you carry your gun around with you?” The Glock lay on the earthen tile, close at hand between them.
    Micky refused to follow Damon's eyes to the pistol.
    “Is that why you haven't left this house in three weeks?” he said.
    “I'll leave when I'm ready.”
    “Jim says the police department offered to put you back on limited duty.”
    “A desk job.”
    “A desk job might be what you need.”
    “Don't patronize me.”
    “I'm not patronizing. I'm trying to be a friend.”
    “If you're my friend, then tell me why you're giving up on yourself.”
    “Is this an argument?”
    “Sure,” she said, smiling. “Let's argue. Now tell me why you're not working. You used to love your work.”
    “I did,” he agreed. “I don't anymore. I need something I can
lock
onto. I just don't have any idea what it might be right now.”
    “Why do you want something else?”
    “Because a psychologist has to tell the truth. And the truth doesn't set you free. Not anymore. The truth will kill you.”
    His face had a hard edge she'd never seen before; his eyes stared out at something in the distance she couldn't see. “I used to think that people cared about one another. Now I don't. Is that explanation enough?”
    She laid her hand on his arm. “I care about you. You careabout me. Jim cares about both of us. He loves us. You know that.”
    “Yeah. There's Jim.”
    “Knock it off,” she said. “You're turning maudlin in your youth.”
    “Two cripples,” he said, turning at last to smile at her. “And we can't even heal each other.”
    “You need to get back on your horse.”
    “So do you.”
    “No,” she said. “Not yet.”
    “Well,” said Damon, rising. “We sit here talking of horses and Jim does all the work.”
    She watched him saunter out to the corral and she wondered what she had missed in the conversation. Damon's wounds seemed as deep as her own but, like her,