Read In Like a Lion for Free Online Page B

brothers?”
    “Cousins are close in India.” Eyes almost dry, she lifted her chin and found his dark shape with her gaze. There you go, Anjali. Suck it up.
    “Sounds pretty nice.” He turned his head and she could almost see his magnetic eyes.
    “They died, all right?” Anjali stared down at her unpolished fingernails and bit the words out like if she said them fast enough they couldn’t linger long enough to hurt.
    “What? All of them?” Those golden eyes were dead on her now, pinning her in place, refusing to let her stop, to retreat into her sorrow, forcing her to repeat words that she didn’t want to believe even now that so many years had passed.
    “They were at a wedding in the city in Gujarat my grandparents come from. There was an earthquake.” She folded her hands in her lap, and her bangles jingled beneath her lab coat. She slipped a hand under her sleeve to finger the row of bracelets warmed by her body heat. “They were crushed.” Why had she said that? Wasn’t it enough to say there’d been an earthquake? After two years she supposed a stranger might find her grief surprising in its ferocity. But it was what it was. She couldn’t defend it to herself, let alone him.
    She should have moved on. Her friends back home had, why hadn’t she? There’d been enough funerals, enough tributes, enough lawyers.
    She inhaled, fighting for composure. “So like I said, there’s nothing to tell.”
    “Hmm.” He made a noncommittal sound as if he were the psychiatrist. “Where were you?”
    “Boston. I had exams. Thankfully, my mother hadn’t wanted to leave me. She said she was afraid I’d starve if she left. Too busy studying to eat properly. But in the end I lost her, too.” That summation was totally inadequate to describe how her mother had been ripped from her, but it would have to do. A shaft of pain coursed through her in the wake of the memory. “Look, I did my part. Was I ‘entertaining’ enough?”
    She forced down the lump in her throat, hoping he wouldn’t probe more, and cast a glance at Jake. He’d turned. All she could see was the side of his face again. He shrugged once more.
    She took that as a ‘yes.’ In any case, she couldn’t talk about her family anymore, not without breaking down.
    A scroll through her records gave her a moment to collect her thoughts. “I saw a video today. Your interview after Guy Thomas’ death.”
    He turned back to her and wrapped his strong hands around the bars, but rested his forehead on his fingers, his hair obscuring his expression. Part of her wanted him to look up, to let her examine again the color of his irises, yet it was almost a relief not to have to face those strange and wonderful eyes.
    Unsure if he would reply at all, she waited, her heart tripping at a breakneck pace, as if the answer were more personal than just a clue in a clinical study. What was going on with that? Finally, she couldn’t help prodding. “The interview?”
    “What about it?”
    Relieved to get a response, she leaned toward him, resting her elbows on her knees. “You accused the police officer of lying, and when he asked why you thought that, you said he smelled funny. What did you mean?”
    He hesitated, stalked over to the bed and back, gripped the bars again, clearly torn. She could see the conflict in his rigid posture. “Just what it sounds like.”
    Her braid slid heavily against her back as she shook her head, struggling to decipher his meaning. “You thought he was lying because of the way he smelled? How does lying smell?” Again, that surge in her heart rate. She resisted the urge to take her own pulse.
    “A little sour, somewhat bitter. Exactly how you’d think it would smell.”
    She let that go. “And when they asked you what you’d hit your foster father with, you said your claws.”
    He stiffened for a moment. “That’s right.” His head came up. He held her with his leonine gaze, as if daring her to look away. As if she could. “He