I was starting to get antsy. I stepped through the terrace door into the small yard, scanning the adjacent country road for what felt like the hundredth time. I was alone in the apartment. Christina was spending the weekend with her friend Natasha again, probably because she felt like Danny and I were due some alone time.

It was almost eight thirty. I’d already finished walking the dog, and breakfast was waiting on the table. Sure, Danny had left a little later than usual, but he still ought to have been home by now. He never ran for more than an hour.

Just as I was about to grab Leika again and go walk the trail to see if we ran into him, just to ease my troubled mind, I heard the front door to the building close. I breathed a sigh of relief, annoyed with myself for freaking out so easily.

Before he could reach the apartment door, I opened it for him—and gasped.

His white shirt was spattered with blood. His nose was bleeding as well, and one of his eyes was swelling up. He walked past me, holding up a hand to stop me from saying anything. “Just don’t ask any questions.”

“What happened?” I asked anyway.

“What does it look like? I got in a little disagreement.”

“Yeah, I can see that. And it looks like you lost.” He’d come home from kickboxing with injuries now and again, but I’d never seen him like this.

He growled something I didn’t catch.

Instinctively, I reached toward the gash above his eye. “Let me see that, I think you might need stitches…”

He shrank away. “Hands off! Blood!”

I’d forgotten the obvious for a moment, the way a person sometimes forgets that the Earth has gravity.

Danny pulled off his soiled shirt and jogging pants, wadded them up into one big ball and stuffed them in the trash can. “It’s not that bad. It’ll heal on its own. I’ve had worse, and they all healed just fine without stitches.” He hastened to the bathroom.

I was too panicked to do anything but sit there in the kitchen, listening to the sound of the shower. After a while, he emerged with wet hair and fresh clothes, and joined me at the table. His eye was black now, but his nose had stopped bleeding. He’d bandaged the gash over his eye carefully, so that it would heal without leaving a scar. The bleeding lip, on the other hand, he simply ignored. I gave him a worried, expectant once-over as he bit into a piece of toast.

“What?” he asked, chewing.

“What happened?”

He sighed in resignation. “A couple of guys jumped me in the woods. I guess they weren’t fans of mine.”

“Who the hell were they?”

“Oddly enough, they didn’t introduce themselves.”

I was starting to get annoyed. “Can’t you be serious for five seconds?”

“I am.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Five, maybe six. I dunno, I forgot to count.” He smeared some butter on a second piece of toast.

“Five or six?” I made a face. “You told me once that you’d be able to take five guys. So where’d they go, the ICU or the cemetery? Or were they all heavyweight boxing champions?”

He set down his toast and gave me a penetrating stare. “You need to listen more carefully. I said that I could, not that I would.”

A sense of foreboding crept over me. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I pushed my plate away. I’d lost my appetite.

“The Bible says, ‘If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ You should eat, Ducky.”

“You’re messing with me, right?”

“A little.” He placidly reached for his toast again.

“Danny!” I snapped, snatching the toast out of his hand. “What the hell did you do?”

He reclaimed his breakfast. “I played dead. It works in the animal world. The animals lose interest and go look for a new victim.”

“You didn’t even defend yourself.” It was a statement, not a question. “Why?”

He merely shrugged, leaving the question unanswered. Suddenly, I realized why he hadn’t put up a fight, and why he probably never would.

Force of habit.

He’d learned as a child that it was better to let unpleasant things happen to him without resisting. The less he fought back, the less painful it ended up being for him. Despite all the martial arts training, self-defense still wasn’t something he was capable of.

“Why did they do it? Did they have a reason?”

That was the moment when his carefully crafted mask of nonchalance fell away. He threw his toast down onto the plate furiously, crossing his arms. “They knew, Jessica!” He chewed on his bleeding lip. “They knew. They called me a junkie faggot and told me to get the hell out before I infected their village with the gay plague.”

I sat bolt upright, horrified. “How? I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t!” I put one hand over my heart and raised the other. “I swear!”

“I know.”

“But nobody else would know…”

“Tara,” he said. “Tara Müller. The doctor’s assistant. I know her from high school. We… Um, well… She wasn’t one of the girlfriends I’ve told you about, but…um, I guess you could say I dumped her. And apparently she’s still upset about it.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Why didn’t you say anything when we were there? We could have had the tests done somewhere else!”

Danny shrugged, looking perfectly relaxed again. Sometimes he and his endless patience drove me insane. “It was too late by then anyway.”

“Fantastic,” I grumbled. “So now what? What do we do?”

“Eat breakfast?”

“About those guys!” It was all I could do not to scream at him. “We have to find out who they are. Report them to the police. Kill them. Something!”

“We don’t have to do anything. I can’t imagine it will happen again.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Danny stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and sighed. “I’m not. I just don’t know who they were, so there’s not a lot we can do.” He ran a hand through his hair, one of his trademark gestures, and I gasped in horror when I saw that his entire left arm was scraped, from his wrist to his shoulder.

“Jesus, what did they do to you? Drag you across the asphalt?”

“Something like that, yeah. Can we drop this now?”

“From now on, when you go running, you’re taking my dog with you,” I decided. “She’ll watch out for you. She doesn’t let anyone get anywhere near me.”

I smacked a hand to my forehead at the thought of a six-foot-tall world-champion kickboxer needing my medium-sized dog to protect him. Everything about this situation was so wrong. I shook my head, secretly resolving to pay sweet little Tara a visit at work sometime soon.