He blinked. She took a cautious inhale of relief when she saw the tension leave his coiled muscles and he took a step back.
“This is Thomas Nicasio, Sherman. He’s my guest. I’m sorry about—”
“You should be careful about sneaking around a person’s property like that,” Thomas told Sherman bluntly.
“Thomas, he’s my neighbor. He comes over here all the time,” Sophie snapped. She was worried about his overreaction, his hypervigilance toward what he considered to be a threat, but that didn’t give him an excuse to be rude.
When he glanced at her slantwise, she saw the wildness in his eyes, the look of a creature cornered. His pupils were constricted into pinpoints. He was panting again, shallow and fast, like he had been the evening she saw him on her dock. Her breath froze in her lungs as she recognized the acuteness of his anxiety, the evidence of a fight or flight response storming through his blood.
“Thomas—” she began, but he cut her off.
“Excuse me,” he muttered thickly before he stalked off toward the house, his posture stiff.
Sophie found herself staring at a pale Sherman Dolan. His mouth gaped open in amazement at Thomas’s bizarre behavior.
“Sophie? Should I call the police? Who is that man?” Sherman demanded.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sophie shook her head, feeling guilty upon hearing the tremor in Sherman’s voice. It was strange, to see someone she knew so well suddenly seem so vulnerable. Sherman was a fit man in his early sixties, but he looked somehow shrunken at that moment, shaken. There was little doubt that coming into abrupt contact with the cyclone of emotion that spun at Thomas’s core could subtract a few years from one’s life. It had obviously frightened Sherman as much as it had her. Her eyes burned and she realized they were filled with tears. It had pained her to see that trapped look on Thomas’s face.
“I’m so sorry, Sherm. I appreciate you coming to check on me. I’m perfectly safe. Thomas is a friend.”
She understood Sherm’s incredulous look.
“He’s just experienced a terrible loss,” Sophie explained rapidly. “You’ve heard of posttraumatic stress syndrome? That’s . . . that’s kind of what he’s experiencing.”
Even though her explanation sounded lame to her stunned ears, she realized what she said was true. Thomas was indeed behaving like someone with posttraumatic stress syndrome. She’d suspected it before, after talking to Andy—and even after her brief conversation with Agent Fisk last night—but the more obvious symptom of amnesia had thrown her off course.
Sherman pointed up toward the house. “That man nearly attacked me.”
“I know . . . I’m so sorry. Please try to understand. He’s not himself. People with his condition can suddenly become hyper-vigilant about threat; they’re always waiting for something dangerous to happen. Their body and mind are sort of in a constant overdrive.” She glanced anxiously at the house. What was Thomas doing in there?
God, what had happened to Thomas that had made him into this coil of twisted, stretched nerves? Was it just Rick’s and Abel’s unexpected deaths plaguing Thomas’s soul?
It had to be something more . . .
She thought of the way he’d so carefully locked the doors when they’d arrived last night, the bruise on his head and his abraded knuckles. A nameless, uneasy fear buzzed in her gut.
“I hope you can understand, Sherm. I should go check on him. I’m so sorry about this.”
She left her neighbor standing in the yard. She’d go over to the Dolans’ house and try to smooth things over later. Right now, Thomas was her primary concern.
She hurried into the side entrance of the house and rushed past her untouched painting on an easel into the hallway. The living room was dim, cool, and empty. She heard a noise behind her and spun around.
“Thomas. What . . . what are you doing?”
He never stopped walking as he exited the hallway wearing the trousers from his suit. He pulled the rumpled white dress shirt he’d worn last night across his tanned torso and began to button it briskly. Sophie flinched when she saw the blood at his collar.
“Thomas?” she queried again shrilly when he walked into the kitchen, still not meeting her gaze. His expression looked rigid, like it’d been carved from stone.
“I’m going.”
Sophie’s eyes widened in disbelief when, without another word, he began to walk toward the back door. She ran. She barely had time to pass him and block the screen door.
“No,” she countered bluntly.
Irritation flickered across his rocklike countenance.