The woman let out a normal chuckle that completely unnerved me, considering what she’d just witnessed. “Oh, I knew they’d get in here someday, the way Tommy likes to feed those darn strays! Thank you for chasing them off, darlin’.”
“It was no trouble,” Ryan replied, giving her a charming smile. His eyes flicked to me and he gave a slight motion of his head toward the door. I glanced over to see Zack coming back inside.
“Ryan, the boy was bitten, but he’ll be all right.” He gave Ryan the strange look again. “You’ll see to him?”
Ryan’s face could have been carved from iron. He didn’t nod, just stepped past Zack and walked outside, returning less than a minute later supporting a limping Tommy. “Ya gotta be careful of those feral dogs, kid. You never know when one might take a snap at you.” He eased the boy down to a chair. “You gonna be all right?”
The boy bit his lip, clearly doing everything he could to be manly and not cry about the wound in his leg. It wasn’t gaping or anything, but it was big, and I knew that the kid was going to need some serious stitching. How anyone could think that a stray dog with a normal-size jaw had made that injury was beyond me.
But at the moment there were many things that I felt I wasn’t quite grasping.
“Ryan—” I began.
He jerked his hand up in a keep quiet gesture, eyes unfocused. I wanted to shriek, but I forced myself to hold it in. About a dozen heartbeats later, he blinked and looked back at Zack.
“Okay, the cook is the only other one in the place, and he wears an iPod turned up loud enough to drown out a nuclear explosion.” He scrubbed at his face, hand shaking slightly, then his eyes met mine. “Some stray dogs got in the back door and caused a big mess. That’s … that’s what they remember.”
I could only stare at him for several heartbeats. “What did you just do?” It came out much more calmly than I had expected.
An expression of true pain flickered across his face, then was gone. He gave me a smile that looked terribly sad, then gripped me by the shoulders, eyes quickly scanning me up and down. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No,” I said, voice strangled. “What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” He squeezed my shoulders and then released me. “Okay, go now. Go back to work.” He turned and walked to the front door of the restaurant. I watched him through the front window as he climbed into his car and drove off, then I turned to Zack, who was carefully picking up casings.
He didn’t give me a chance to speak. “Kara, don’t. Please.” His eyes were troubled as he straightened. “There’s a lot about Ryan that’s … complicated.”
“Complicated?” The word nearly exploded from me. “Those people just forgot about everything that happened! How often does he do this? How does he do this?”
“He doesn’t do it often at all.” Zack looked miserable, but I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic at the moment. “No one else knows he can do this. Not even the FBI.” He paused. “Especially not the FBI.” He shook his head. “I know only because I’ve seen him do it before … when there was no other choice.”
I had to tighten my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “How much do you know about him?”
“Not enough. Please, Kara. If we cause a scene here, it will undo everything he did. Please. Just go back to work.”
He turned away from me and started walking toward the front door.
I did the only thing I could think to do, and let him go.
I DROVE AWAY FROM THE RESTAURANT, HANDS TIGHTENING on the steering wheel at every crackle of the radio, knowing that at any second there would be an alert tone and a dispatch reporting shots fired at the old Ice House restaurant, but the radio traffic remained stubbornly boring. A complaint about a barking dog. A report of a car break-in. Nothing about a few dozen shots fired in a public place.
A chill ran over my skin. The waitress had gone from hysterical to calm in the span of a heartbeat, seeming to forget everything that had happened. My stomach churned unpleasantly, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the poor meal or from what I’d witnessed. Was it something Ryan was conscious of or just some sort of effect that surrounded him? And has it ever been used on me?
There was no way I was going to return to the office. If anyone asked me, I’d plead some sort of work in the field. Boudreaux and Pellini get away with it all the time, right? Besides, it was Friday. Most of the rank would be gone anyway.
A shiver ran through me. Boudreaux and Pellini. Ryan had done something at the funeral to make them stop being dicks. I didn’t even have to wonder about that. There was no way that their change of heart had occurred naturally.
So had he ever done something like that to me?