The Cavanaugh Code
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Copyright

MARIE FERRARELLA has written almost two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Charlie, who I love more today than yesterday, but not half as much as tomorrow.

Chapter One

The way Detective Taylor McIntyre liked to work a homicide was to put herself in the victim’s place. Not just into his or her place, but into their actual lives.

To get a full sense of the person, she needed to walk through their homes, touch their things and imagine what it felt like to be this person who had fallen victim to a homicide.

In essence, Taylor, a third-generation law enforcement agent, wanted to walk in their shoes and examine what they normally had to deal with on a daily basis. She couldn’t accomplish that from a distance. And she had come to learn that sometimes the smallest of details was what eventually allowed her and her partner to find the killer and solve the crime.

Just because her partner, Detective Aaron Briscoe, was on a temporary leave of absence, immersing himself in the head-spinning roller-coaster ride of first-time fatherhood, and the precinct was shorthanded, didn’t mean that she had to change her approach. She just had to go through the paces alone rather than have Aaron stare at her as she wandered around, patiently waiting until she needed to use him as her sounding board.

Taylor had no doubt that her partner of almost three years considered her approach unusual, but he’d made his peace with it and generally went along with her method. That was what had made them such a good team and she missed him now, missed the sound of Aaron’s grunting as he squatted down to examine something close-up.

She even missed the way Aaron sometimes unconsciously whistled through his teeth, even though it had driven her crazy periodically.

Taylor half smiled to herself as she pulled up in front of an impressive, sprawling four-story apartment complex where the cheapest lease went for the paltry sum of $4,000 a month.

You just never know, do you? she mused. Right now, she’d welcome that awful sound Aaron made. It meant that he was thinking. And two heads were always better than one.

Entering the parking structure, she drove underground and parked in one of the spots designated for guests. Taylor got out and walked toward the elevator located against the back wall.

The late Eileen Stevens’s apartment was on the fourth floor. That made it The Villas—as this particular complex was whimsically named—penthouse. And, given the fact that the building was situated at the crest of a hill, anything above the second floor actually had a decent view of the ocean in the distance.

The Villas, a nine-month-old complex with rounded corners and panoramic windows, was situated directly across the street from a newly constructed, exceedingly popular outdoor mall. The mall boasted pricey stores of all sizes, exotic restaurants, a twenty-one-screen movie-theater complex and even had a merry-go-round located smack in the middle. It also promised a skating rink for the winter months. With Christmas less than a month away, there was one now. Hordes of humanity seeking entertainment and diversion swarmed there every Friday and Saturday night. The rest of the week saw a healthy dose of foot traffic, but it was the weekends that put the mall on the map.

Eileen Stevens would no longer be among the people frequenting that mall, Taylor thought, getting out on the fourth floor. Because Eileen Stevens, thirty-eight-year-old dynamo and newly made partner at her prestigious law firm, was found dead in her opulent, cathedral-ceilinged bedroom this morning. With a key to the apartment for emergencies, her personal assistant had come by to see why Eileen hadn’t shown up at the firm this morning and wasn’t answering her pager or her cell phone.

Upon seeing her dead boss, the young woman, Denise Atwater, had become so hysterical she’d had to be sedated by one of the paramedics summoned to the scene.

Death could be ugly, Taylor thought.

Marble met her heels. The resulting contact created a soft, staccato sound as she made her way from the elevator to Eileen’s apartment. In direct contrast to the holly decorating the walls, yellow tape was stretched out across the extra wide door, warning everyone that a crime had been committed here and that they were not allowed to cross the line.

With a sigh, Taylor lifted the tape, slipped beneath it and began to unlock the door. As she turned the key, she realized that there was no need. Someone had failed to lock up.

Sloppy.

Probably a patrolman. Good help was hard to find these days, she mused wryly. But then, life moved at such a fast clip, everyone she knew was juggling three things at once. Oversights were no longer as rare as they had once been. Made the job that much harder to do.

According to the thumbnail bio she’d gotten from the woman’s law firm, Eileen Stevens was currently juggling twice that. A criminal lawyer intent on leaving her mark on the world—and making a great deal of money while she was at it—Eileen was regarded as being at the top of her game. The list of clients that the law firm’s office manager had surrendered earlier indicated that all of Eileen’s clients were high-profile people, people who could pay top dollar for top-notch representation.

Someone obviously didn’t think that Eileen was so “top-notch.”

Closing the door behind her, Taylor stood for a moment just inside the foyer, trying to imagine what it felt like to come here at the end of a long, bone-wearying day. A sense of antiseptic sterility slowly penetrated her consciousness. Even the Christmas tree, silver with ice-blue decorations, felt sterile as it stood aloof in the center of the room.

“Home” to her had always meant a feeling of warmth and security.

Well, not always, Taylor silently amended.

A feeling of warmth and security was the atmosphere her mother strove to create for her and her three siblings when they were growing up. It had actually been achieved only when her father was out on assignment. An undercover cop, his work would take him away for weeks at a time. Her mother, Lila, also on the police force, came home nightly, no matter what. She was there to check their homework, to make sure they behaved. There to give them the love and support they needed so that they could turn out to be decent human beings.

To give him his due, her father had been an okay guy in the beginning. Taylor could remember laughter in the house when she was very young. But the laughter faded in the later years as jealousy started to eat away at her father. He blamed it on her mother’s partner, Brian Cavanaugh, a kind, handsome man who came off larger than life. Initially friends, it got to the point that her father loudly complained that he couldn’t compete with or compare to Brian. The growing insecurities that haunted her father, giving rise to arguments, made for an atmosphere of almost stifling tension whenever he was home.

And then everything changed.

Her mother was wounded in the line of duty. Lila McIntyre would have died if Brian hadn’t stopped the flow of her blood with his own hands, holding her until the paramedics arrived, refusing to be separated from her even as she was driven to the hospital.

Her father used the incident as an excuse to shame Lila into retiring from the force, saying a mother of small children had no business putting herself in harm’s way. Wanting only peace, Lila went along with it for the sake of her marriage—and her children—until Frank, the youngest, was in high school. Against her husband’s wishes, she came back to the police department. Trying to compromise, she took a desk job rather than go back on the street.

Life took a few really strange twists and turns after that. Taylor’s father, still working undercover, was suddenly executed, a victim of a drug dealer’s hostility. Only it eventually turned out that it had been her father who was the hostile one, staging his own death and stealing the enormous amount of money that was to have been used to stage a sting.

In the end, justice was served. Her father was really dead now and Brian Cavanaugh, a man she had tremendous respect and admiration for, was her stepfather. It was only fitting since over the years he had been more of a father to her and her sister and brothers than her actual father had been.

Brian, now chief of detectives, had been the one to send her out on this case. He’d also offered to restructure a few things within the department so that she could have a temporary partner assigned to her until Aaron and his whistling teeth came back.

But she hated disrupting things and said she’d go solo until Aaron’s leave of absence was up. Besides, she didn’t relish the idea of breaking in someone new, especially if it was just for a finite amount of time. She could muddle through.

Taylor frowned now as she looked around. She had no doubt that what Eileen had probably spent to furnish just the living room could have kept the children of a third-world nation eating oatmeal for breakfast for the next two years. Maybe three. And yet, for all its tasteful, enormously expensive decor, there was absolutely no warmth to be found in the room.

No warmth anywhere, she concluded as she moved about the area with its snowstorm-white furnishing, making her way to a state-of-the-art kitchen that was too immaculate.

All amenities seemed for show, with no soul evident anywhere. Was the late Eileen Stevens an ice princess, or just haughtily devoid of color and shading?

Taylor found herself feeling sorry for the woman.

“What were you trying to prove, Eileen?” she murmured.

Plastic gloves on, Taylor skimmed her fingertips along the pots hanging from the ceiling like so many slavishly dusted, oversize wind chimes. There had to be a reason for all this decadent hemorrhaging of money, she thought.

“What were you trying to make up for? Were you trying to bury your conscience? Or was there an insecure little girl hidden inside those Prada suits, thumbing her nose at anyone and everyone who had ever made fun of her while she was growing up?”

She made a mental note to find out if the woman had any relatives in the area.

Living well was supposedly the best revenge. And although this was not living well—just living expensively—Taylor knew that many felt their success, their actual self-worth, was reflected in the amount of “toys” they managed to amass.

“Didn’t do you any good, did it, Eileen, spending money on all this?” she murmured under her breath. “You still turned out to be mortal.” She walked back to the living room. “Who got to you, Eileen? Who did this? An ex-lover? A jealous underling you treated like dirt? Or some client who wanted his money back because you couldn’t get him off the way you promised?”

She had yet to carefully go through Eileen’s caseload. She made a mental note to do that first thing in the morning, review the woman’s past clients as well as her current ones. With any luck, by morning the medical examiner would have gotten around to doing the autopsy. He was a prickly man who marched to his own drummer and refused to listen to anyone else’s. But he was good.

“She didn’t have any lovers.”

Her heart instantly jumping up to her throat, Taylor spun around on her heel. She had her weapon out before she completed the turn. Both hands were wrapped around the grip, its muzzle pointed and meaning business, by the time she found herself facing the source of the voice behind her: a tall, good-looking, dark-haired man in his early thirties.

“Hands in the air!” Taylor ordered, aiming her revolver dead center at his head.

Rather than jump to obey, the stranger watched her as if she was the one who was out of place, not him. “Hey, calm down, honey,” he cautioned. “I’m one of the good guys.”

Honey?

The hell he was. Taylor found the man’s deep, steady voice with its hint of a smile irritating, not to mention patronizing.

Honey? Was he for real?

“Hands in the air!” she ordered again. She cocked the trigger, her blue eyes blazing. “I’m not going to tell you a third time!”

“Yes, ma’am.” The stranger acquiesced. But when he raised his hands, they went only as high as his shoulders. At what looked like six-three and in excellent physical condition, he all but towered over her.

There was definitely amusement in his eyes.

Was he a psychopath, coming back to review his handiwork? Eileen Stevens had been found bound and gagged. Cause of death looked like strangulation. From the wet marks on the comforter beneath her body, a wet leather strip had been tightly tied around the woman’s throat and then apparently allowed to dry. As it did, it slowly shrank, depriving her of air until she finally choked to death.

It had struck Taylor as a particularly cruel way to kill someone.

Was this man capable of that? She tried her best to make a quick assessment.

In the meantime, more immediate questions needed answering. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He began to shrug and drop his hands. She quickly motioned for him to raise them again. Her eyes told him she meant business. Or thought she did. For the sake of peace, he raised his hands again.

“Same as you,” he answered casually. “Looking around.” And then he added with an amused smile, “Except I’m not talking to myself.”

She had no doubt that the man was accustomed to getting along on pure charm. She knew any number of women who would probably go weak in the knees just looking at him.

But the circles she moved around in were full of good-looking men. The Cavanaughs had all but cornered the market and her own brothers didn’t exactly look as if their secondary careers involved house haunting. All in all, that made her pretty much immune to the ways of silver-tongued charmers.

Her eyes narrowed now. “No, but you’ll talk to me. Turn around,” she demanded, whipping out a set of handcuffs from the back of her belt.

The stranger obligingly turned around for her. “Now, nothing kinky,” he warned. Taylor found herself wanting to hit him upside his head for his mocking tone. “We haven’t even been introduced yet.”

As she came close enough to the man to slip on the handcuffs, he suddenly swung around to face her and in a heartbeat, Taylor found herself disarmed. He had the gun now.

“Never let your guard down,” he counseled.

The next moment, the tables turned again as the stranger received a sudden, very sharp jab from her knee. Pain shot from his groin into the pit of his stomach, radiating out and making him double over.

“Right,” Taylor snapped. “Good advice.” She wasted no time as she grabbed one of his wrists, snapping a handcuff into place.

“You’re making a mistake,” he protested as the second handcuff secured his wrists behind his back.

Taylor rolled her eyes, stepping back and training her gun on him. “Oh, please, I expected something more original than that.”

For the first time, the intruder seemed put out, but only marginally, as if he still thought of her as a minor annoyance. “Lady, who kicked you out of bed this morning?”

“That,” Taylor informed him crisply, “is none of your business.”

The fact that there was no one in her bed, no one currently in her life, was not a piece of information she was about to share with a lowlife, no matter how good-looking he was or how well he dressed. Given the charm he radiated, she pegged him as a successful con artist.

The stranger shook his head and a sigh escaped his lips. “Okay, let’s back up here—”

“Too late,” Taylor countered. She glanced around to see if anything had been moved from this afternoon, when she’d first come on the scene. It didn’t appear so, but she couldn’t swear to it. “This is a crime scene and nobody’s supposed to be here.”

“You are,” he pointed out glibly, trying to look at her over his shoulder.

Taylor couldn’t resist tossing her head and saying, “I’m special.”

He eyed her for a long moment. “No argument, but—”

The smile on his lips went down clear to her bones. Taylor shook the effects off, but it wasn’t as easy as she would have liked.

“No but,” she said sharply. “Just move. Now,” she underscored.

He took a step toward the door, then glanced at her again. “Okay, but I have a perfectly good reason for being here.”

Taylor fought the temptation to jab him in the ribs with the muzzle of her gun. “This is a roped-off crime scene. There is no perfectly good reason to be here—unless you’re Santa Claus making an early pit-stop or you’re a cop.” Her eyes swept over him. “You’re definitely not Santa Claus. Are you a cop?” she demanded, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t. She knew all the cops on the force, and, due to her mother’s marriage, was now related to more than just a few of them. Even if she hadn’t known so many, she would have taken notice of this one had he been on the force.

But he wasn’t. She’d never laid eyes on him until a couple of minutes ago.

“No,” he answered as nonchalantly as if he were taking a telephone survey, the outcome of which had absolutely no consequence in his life.

“Then, again, you shouldn’t be here. Now move.” She brought her face closer to his. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

The expression in his eyes said that he knew he could take her. Even with his hands secured behind his back. But then he merely shrugged and grinned affably—as well as irritatingly.

“No, ma’am,” he answered in a voice that was far too polite to be believable, “you won’t have to tell me again. I’m moving. See?” he pointed out. “Feet going forward and everything.”

What kind of a wise guy was he? Taylor wondered. In the next moment, she silently answered her own question. The kind, she realized, stopping dead, who had managed to get her to stop her normal mode of investigation.

For a reason?

Was there something this man didn’t want her to see? Was he the killer? Or could he be working for the killer? Had he hidden something, or had she come in time to stop him?

“Hold it,” she ordered.

The stranger turned around to look at her. “Come to your senses?” he asked mildly.

“Never left them,” Taylor informed him tersely.

Moving behind him, she removed one handcuff and then, rather than undo the other the way she knew he expected, she cuffed his hands around the Doric column that rose up from the center of the living room like an ambiguous statement.

“Now you stay here until I’m finished.”

To her surprise, he offered no protest, no angry words at being shackled in this manner. Instead, he merely watched her for another long moment, then asked, “And just what is it you’re going to be doing?”

Why did that sound so damn sexy? As if he was implying that she was about to have her way with him instead of just surveying the apartment the way she intended?

It occurred to Taylor that she didn’t know his name and hadn’t even asked. But then, she had no doubt that he would probably just give her an alias. There was no point in asking.

“What I came here to do,” was all she said.

“Then I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“First right answer of the evening,” Taylor replied curtly. About to walk away, she stopped and tested the integrity of the handcuffs—just in case. To her satisfaction, they didn’t budge. “Now stay put. I’ll be back when I’m finished.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he called out after her.

“Damn straight you’ll be waiting,” Taylor muttered under her breath in exasperation as she walked out of the room and headed for Eileen Stevens’s bedroom.

The last place the criminal lawyer had gone alive.

Chapter Two

Taylor stood in the walk-in closet that was bigger than her own bedroom. Surveying its contents, she shook her head.

How did one woman manage to accumulate so many clothes? Moreover, nearly half of them still had their tags on. Eileen hadn’t even gotten around to wearing them yet.

Was there some inner compulsion that made her just buy things to have them, not necessarily to use them?

“Who’s going to wear them now, Eileen?” Taylor asked softly, examining a designer original evening gown that sparkled even in the artificial overhead light. “What drove you, Eileen? What?”

Taylor stopped talking and cocked her head, listening. Was that…?

It was.

The sound of the front door opening and then closing. Instantly alert, her journey in the other woman’s shoes immediately suspended, Taylor pulled out her weapon again.

Had someone else come in?

What was going on here, anyway? It felt as if she’d wandered into an open house instead of an official crime scene. Holding her breath, Taylor cautiously made her way to the living room again.

And then stopped dead.

The handcuffs she’d used to secure the intruder were neatly lying on the white rug before the Doric column, nothing but air held within the metal circles.

She rushed over to the cuffs and grabbed them, exasperation bubbling within her veins as she scanned the room. The intruder was nowhere to be seen. He’d pulled a Houdini on her. How? These weren’t fake cuffs or a prop. The average person couldn’t have gotten out of them.

Hell, she couldn’t have gotten out of them. But he had. Just who the hell was he?

“Damn it!” Taylor exclaimed, scanning the room again as if the second survey would somehow uncover the man for her.

What if the door opening and closing was just to throw her off?

She looked around for a third time, tension weaving in and out of her. Taylor half expected the stranger to come charging at her from one of the corners.

Adrenaline still rushing through her veins, weapon drawn, she swept from one room to another, checking closets, bathrooms, the balcony. Anywhere the man could have folded his lengthy form and attempted to hide. All to no avail.

The man was gone.

Who the hell was he and how did he fit into all this? she silently demanded, her exasperation growing exponentially. This scenario wouldn’t have gone this way if Aaron had been with her. Damn him, anyway.

No, Taylor upbraided herself tersely the next moment. This wasn’t Aaron’s fault, it was hers. She was the one who’d gotten sloppy, unconsciously getting too accustomed to someone having her back at all times.

She knew better.

On this job, no matter what, you had to remain vigilant because there were no guarantees and even the best of partners could be caught napping.

Just like she had this evening, she thought in disgust.

Crossing to the front door, Taylor locked it, then tested the doorknob to make sure it held. It did. Even so, she dragged one of the chairs over and placed it in front of the ornate door. If “Houdini” decided to come back and pick the lock, he’d still wind up hitting the chair. The scraping noise the feet would make against the marble would alert her. She didn’t want to be caught off guard a second time.

Most likely, she mused, the intruder wasn’t going to come back. He was probably just happy to get away. Not that she planned to let him. She intended to find him, but that was something she’d deal with later. After she did what she came here to do.

Glancing toward the door one final time, Taylor went back to Eileen Stevens’s bedroom. Somewhere amid all the woman’s things she hoped to get a handle on the late lawyer’s life.

No doubt about it, Eileen Stevens had led an extremely busy life, Taylor concluded more than ninety minutes later, finally driving home to her own apartment. A busy life, but, as far as she could ascertain, it had been far from satisfying. The few photographs that did grace the walls in the lawyer’s study were of Eileen and the other, older partners from the firm. Eileen appeared very formal in them.

Didn’t the woman have a personal life?

From everything she’d found, it didn’t seem so. There were no love letters stashed in a bottom drawer, held fast with a faded ribbon, no secret photographs tucked away in an album of someone who had once made her pulse race. There was nothing to indicate that Eileen had made any kind of personal contact with anyone.

The only scrapbook the woman had kept was filled with newspaper articles about her cases. Cases she had won. It was all about winning for Eileen.

Can’t take a court victory to bed with you at night, Taylor thought.

“Looks like you lost, big time,” Taylor murmured under her breath to a woman who could no longer benefit from any insight she might have to give.

Is this any better than your life? an annoying voice in her head mockingly asked. Here it is, way past your shift, and what are you doing? Poking around a dead woman’s apartment.

Taylor unconsciously stiffened her shoulders. Eileen Stevens’s life wasn’t like her life, she silently insisted. She had a life, she had a family. A family that meant the world to her and who were always there for her anytime she needed them, or just wanted to kick back. Just because she wasn’t spending her nights with a lover didn’t make her anything like the dead woman.

She blew out a breath as she pulled into her apartment complex, a modest collection of garden apartments with carport parking and bright white daisies planted all along their borders.

“Great, so now you’re arguing with yourself. Maybe you should go back to Brian and have him assign that temporary partner to you,” she said out loud in disgust.

Taylor pulled into her carport and turned the engine off. For a second she sat there, listening to crickets calling to each other. In the distance was not-so-faint music coming from the pool area. Someone was having another party.

Someone was always having another party this time of year. She felt no desire to go.

Maybe you should go, anyway. Might do you good.

She shook her head. Andrew Cavanaugh saw to her social life. The former chief of police and family patriarch held enough gatherings at his place to take care of any spare time she had.

Tonight she was just tired. Tired and disappointed in herself for allowing that cocky intruder to get away. Tomorrow would be better, she silently vowed getting out of her vehicle. All she needed was a good night’s sleep and then she’d be back on track.

The good night’s sleep she’d planned on had eluded her.

Oh, she’d slept all right, but rather than a restful, dreamless event, her night was packed full of dreams. One dream flowering instantly into another, all involving the sexy intruder.

The dreams played out so vividly that she’d had trouble separating reality from fiction. In several versions, the intruder got the drop on her rather than she on him. In the last dream, things inexplicably heated up. Her clothes disappeared just as she realized that he wasn’t wearing any either.

That was when she bolted upright, waking up.

It was 7:00 a.m. and her pulse was racing. Her breathing was so shallow she thought for a moment she was going to hyperventilate. The downside was that she felt far more tired than when she’d first fallen asleep.

Exhausted, her breathing finally under control, she dropped, face forward on the comforter for a moment longer.

Who the hell was that man and how did he fit into Eileen’s life? Taylor wondered for the hundredth time.

She knew she wasn’t going to have any peace until she answered those questions, especially the first one. Sitting up again, Taylor sighed and dragged her hand through her tousled, long blond hair. First thing this morning, she would see about getting together with the sketch artist, before the intruder’s features faded from her memory.

She should be so lucky.

Throwing off the covers, Taylor marched into the bathroom. She rushed through her shower and was drying off in less than ten minutes. Dressed, she ran her fingers through her hair as she aimed the hair dryer at several sections, impatient to be on her way. She was determined to find out the man’s name and bring him in before the day was out.

Breakfast was a banana she peeled and ate between leaving her front door and reaching her vehicle in the carport.

She was on her way to the precinct less than half an hour after she’d woken up.

Tracking down the mysterious intruder turned out to be a lot easier than she ever imagined.

Arriving at the precinct, Taylor went straight up to her squad room. Her intention was to drop off her purse at her desk and then go in search of the sketch artist.

She stopped dead ten feet short of her goal.

The intruder was there, sitting in the chair beside her desk, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Taylor’s first instinct was to draw her weapon, but she banked it down even though training a gun on him would have been immensely satisfying. The man obviously wasn’t a criminal. A criminal didn’t just waltz into a squad room and make himself at home. Although, approaching the scene from another angle as she played her own devil’s advocate, that could actually be the perfect cover.

Either way, the stranger obviously had a hell of a lot of nerve.

Taking a deep breath, Taylor crossed the rest of the way through the room to her desk.

As if sensing her presence, the stranger turned his head and looked right into her eyes a moment before she reached him.

“You,” she spat out, making the single word sound like an angry accusation.

An accusation that apparently left him unruffled. The stranger merely smiled that maddening smile she’d previewed last night.

“Me,” he affirmed.

Instead of throwing her purse into the bottom drawer, she dropped it in. But she satisfied her need to blow off steam by kicking the drawer shut.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, barely keeping her voice down. “And how did you get out of those handcuffs?”

“Handcuffing your dates these days?”

Focused only on the stranger, Taylor almost jumped. The question came from her brother, Frank, another homicide detective. Frank had chosen that moment to come up behind her. Fresh off solving a serial-killer case and riding the crest of triumphant satisfaction, her younger brother grinned at her.

“You know the department frowns on taking their equipment for personal use.” He moved so that he stood next to the annoying stranger.

Taylor struggled to keep from telling her brother to butt out. “This isn’t a date, this is a suspect,” she bit off.

“A suspect?” the intruder echoed, still smiling that annoyingly sexy smile that seemed to undulate right under her skin, shooting straight to her core and warming it. “For what?” he asked innocently.

As if he didn’t know. “For the murder of Eileen Stevens,” she snapped.

“A suspect?” her brother repeated in disbelief, then looked, stunned, at the seated man. “Laredo?”

Taylor’s eyebrows narrowed over eyes the color of the midmorning sky. “Who the hell is Laredo?” she demanded.

“I am,” the stranger told her affably. The next moment, he half rose in his seat and extended his hand to her. “J. C. Laredo,” he introduced himself. “I came in to see if we might be able to have a successful exchange of information. I would have asked last night,” he went on, “but you looked a little too hot and perturbed to listen to reason.”

“Taylor hardly ever listens to reason,” Frank told the man as if he was sharing some sort of a family confidence.

“Taylor also has excellent hearing and is standing right here,” she pointed out angrily to her brother, struggling to hang on to her temper.

She felt Laredo’s eyes slide over her torso as they took full measure of her. Slowly they went from her head down to her toes. It took all she had not to shiver.

“You most certainly are,” Laredo agreed in a voice that told her he highly approved of the body he’d just inventoried.

Frank leaned his head in toward Laredo and said, “I think you got her angry. I’d be careful if I were you. Taylor bites heads off when she’s angry.” With that, Frank began to retreat.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Laredo promised. His eyes shifted over to Taylor. “Taylor, is it?” he asked, rolling the name over on his tongue as if he were tasting it for sweetness. Satisfied, he smiled. “I think we got off on the wrong foot last night.”

Frank was obviously still within hearing range because she heard her brother chuckle to himself and murmur, “Like that never happened before.”

Taylor took a deep breath, struggling to get her surprisingly frayed temper under control. She was going to kill Frank when she got the chance. Never mind that he was two months shy of his wedding. She’d be doing her almost-sister-in-law a favor. Frank could be god-awful annoying when he wanted to be.

“All right,” she said, her voice straining to sound civil as she faced the man sitting at her desk. “This is the season for goodwill toward men. I’m listening, Laredo. What were you doing at Eileen Stevens’s apartment last night?”

Since the man had gotten out of the handcuffs, she saw no point in asking how he had managed to elude the security guards in the building’s lobby. That had obviously been child’s play for him.

Laredo answered without missing a beat. “Probably the same thing as you.”

She didn’t like playing games unless they involved a board and little colored game pieces. “You said you weren’t a cop.”

The look on his face was innocence personified. “I’m not.”

“Then you weren’t doing the same thing that I was,” Taylor concluded curtly. “And you weren’t supposed to be there.”

Instead of arguing the point with her, Laredo surprised her by nodding his head. But just as she began to wonder why he was being so agreeable, he admitted, “I bent the rules a little. But I am investigating her death.”

She highly doubted that there were two investigations going on at the same time. They hardly had enough people to sufficiently cover all the city’s crimes now. If another branch of law enforcement was involved, someone would have told the Chief of D’s, who in turn would have warned her.

Handsome or not, this character, she concluded, was full of hot air. “By whose authority?” she asked, thinking that she was just giving him enough rope to hang himself.

She wasn’t expecting the answer he gave her.

“Indirectly, her mother, Carole Stevens. I’m actually doing this as a favor to my grandfather. He used to date the dead woman’s mother,” he confided.

Taylor felt far from enlightened. Was this man just making this up and hoping his charm would fill in the gaps?

“You’re contaminating a crime scene as a favor to your grandfather?” she challenged incredulously.

“I know enough not to contaminate the crime scene,” Laredo assured her in a voice that she found as irritatingly patronizing now as she had the night before. The next moment, he reached into his pocket. Every nerve ending went on the alert and she started to reach for her sidearm out of habit.

Laredo noted her reaction. “Relax,” he told her in a voice that could have easily been used to gentle a wild animal. “I’m just reaching for my wallet, not my Saturday night special.”

She deeply resented the smirk she heard in the man’s voice.

“Do you own one?” she wanted to know.

The term referred to a weapon that was the common choice of thugs and penny-ante thieves more than two decades ago, before far more colorful, sophisticated and seductively affordable weapons hit the streets.

“I own a lot of guns,” he informed her easily, placing his wallet, opened and face up, in the middle of her desk.

Taylor looked down at the private investigator’s license he was showing her. The photograph in the corner was a surprisingly good one. But then, the thought whispered along the perimeter of her mind, the photograph was of a surprisingly good-looking man.

“John Chester Laredo, private investigator,” she read out loud.

Taylor raised her eyes quizzically to his. Chester? Who named their kid Chester these days, even as a middle name?

“That’s me,” he responded, taking his wallet back and tucking it into his pocket.

Taylor blew out a breath, trying to put a positive spin on things. At least she didn’t have to waste time with the sketch artist. Now, instead of arresting the annoying man, she just had to get rid of him.

“All right,” she allowed, “for the time being, let’s just say you’re on the level.”

Was it her imagination, or did his grin just get more annoying? “Let’s,” he agreed.

She frowned. “That still doesn’t give you the right to be there, ‘bending rules,’” she said sarcastically, “and poking around.”

“I wasn’t ‘poking,’” he corrected affably, “I was looking. And obviously, if I thought the police would object to what I was doing—” he leaned forward slightly “—I wouldn’t have come out and made myself known to you last night, now, would I?”

For a second, he had her. She was willing to admit he had a point.

But then, the next moment she realized that there was no way for him to have known that she was with the police department. She could have been with the housing management—or even a thief, drawn to the apartment by the yellow crime scene tape to see what she could make off with.

“You’re a little large to hide, even in a place as big as that,” she pointed out. “It seems to me, given a choice, you decided that it was best to take the bull by the horns.”

His grin was really starting to get to her, which made her increasingly uneasy.

“I wouldn’t exactly use the term bull,” Laredo told her. “I have a lot of friends on the force. I didn’t think anyone would mind.”

Taylor’s eyes narrowed. Think again, Laredo. She didn’t like anyone even remotely messing with her crime scene. “Well, then you thought wrong,” she informed him tersely.

Chapter Three

Laredo had gotten to his position in life by reading people correctly. Innate instincts had trained him to be an excellent judge of character. Consequently, he knew when to push and when to step back.

He also knew when a little extra persuasion might help him wear down barriers. He had a feeling that the sexy-looking blonde with the serious mouth did not respond favorably to being either opposed or coerced.

Moving slightly forward in the chair so that his face was closer to hers, Laredo looked into the woman’s eyes. They were a shade lighter than his own. And very compelling. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they looked at you and her eyes never wavered, never looked away.

“C’mon, Taylor,” he coaxed, “what’s the harm in sharing information?”

She didn’t want him getting familiar with her. He wasn’t her friend, he was an annoying man and she was still debating having him arrested for tampering with evidence.

“It’s Detective McIntyre,” she informed him stiffly, and then added, “and I don’t talk about ongoing investigations with civilians.” And that, she hoped, would bring an end to any further discussion of Eileen Stevens’s murder.

The corners of Laredo’s mouth curved in what she could only think of as a devilish grin. A wicked expression flared in his eyes as he said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Taylor would have felt better if she’d thought that the air-conditioning system had broken down that morning. At least then she would have had something to blame for the sudden overwhelming wave of heat surging through her body, leaving no part untouched.

Stalling for time as she tried to get a grip, Taylor blew out a breath. Laredo’s eyes, she noted, never left hers.

The way she saw it, she had three ways to go here. She could keep sparring with this annoying private investigator and, most likely, get nowhere while taking precious time away from her investigation. That option held no appeal because she was already behind without a partner’s help.

Her second choice was to get someone to eject this overconfident ape from the premises, but she had the uneasy feeling that Laredo wasn’t lying about having friends in the department. If he knew her brother, he had to know others as well. Trying to get him thrown out might make her seem like a shrew—and it probably wouldn’t work anyway.

Or, door number three, she could toss Laredo a crumb in exchange for finding out exactly what he knew. There was the chance that he had stumbled across something. After all, he had managed to get to Eileen Stevens’s penthouse apartment before she had. Who knew how long he’d been there or what he might have seen—and taken?

Door number three it was.

Taylor braced herself. “All right, what do you have?”

She watched as his smile unfurled further. Why did she get the feeling that he was the spider and she was the fly, about to cross the threshold into his open house?

“I believe I said, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’ That means that you go first, as it should be,” he added, “since my mother taught me that it should always be ladies first.”

Try as she might, Taylor just couldn’t form a mental picture of the woman who’d given birth to this larger-than-life, annoyingly sexy specimen of manhood.

“You have a mother?”

The question had slid from her mind to her tongue before she could stop it. What the hell was he doing to her manners and, more importantly, why was she letting him do it? Once this case was over, she was definitely going on vacation. Her batteries needed recharging.

“Had,” Laredo quietly corrected, his seductive grin toning down several wattage levels—and becoming all the more lethal for it.

Taylor did her best to steel herself. For all she knew, Laredo could just be orchestrating this to make her feel guilty. If she felt guilty enough about stumbling onto this sensitive area, he might think she’d fold easily.

It made sense, but even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just stomped across ground she shouldn’t have. She was extremely sensitive when it came to matters that concerned family. Family was, if anything, her Achilles’ heel.

Her family was chiefly responsible for who and what she was today. She’d joined the force and become a police detective because her mother had been one before her. And, because of what she’d seen transpiring in her family as a child, she was gun-shy when it came to relationships. The moment one appeared to go beyond being an inch in depth, she bailed, remembering what her mother had gone through with her father. No matter that her mother’s second marriage seemed made in heaven; it was the tempestuous first one that had left its indelible mark.

Taylor found it ironic that while she had implicit trust in the men she’d been partnered with when it came to life-and-death situations, she absolutely refused to trust any man with her heart. Taylor staunchly opposed revealing her vulnerability.

Rallying, Taylor squared her shoulders. “Okay, here’s what I’ve got.” She deliberately ignored the touch of triumph she saw enter his eyes. “Graduating fifth in her class from Stanford Law School, Eileen Stevens worked her way up extremely fast. She became a much sought-after criminal lawyer who rarely lost a case. None in the last five years. Her list of clients reads like a who’s who of the rich and famous—or infamous,” she added, thinking of a couple of so-called “wiseguys” who were on the list. “She was made partner at her law firm six months ago. According to the electronic calendar they found by her bed, the woman ate and slept work 24/7. She didn’t appear to have a social life that wasn’t connected to the firm.”

Taylor paused for a moment, wishing she understood how a woman with no social life could end up the victim of a very personal crime. “But someone hated her enough to tie her up and wrap a wet piece of leather tightly around her neck, then wait for the strip to dry and strangle her. My guess is that the process took at least a couple of hours.”

“How do you know they waited?”

Laredo didn’t look impressed by her conclusion, just mildly curious, like someone asking study questions they already knew the answer to.

She told him anyway. “The carpet is thick and lush—my guess is that it’s fairly new. There was a set of shoe prints set in it next to the bed, like someone had stood there for more than just a minute. The killer, watching her die.” The comforter beneath the woman’s body had been all tangled, as if Eileen had thrashed around while tied to the bedpost, trying to get free, but Taylor didn’t add that, waiting to see if Laredo would.

He didn’t. Instead, he merely nodded at her narrative. “So far,” the private investigator told her, “we’re of a like mind.”

“And you have nothing to add?” she demanded. He was playing games with her, just trying to find out what she knew. She didn’t like being duped.

“I didn’t say that,” he told her evenly, his gaze locked on hers.

“So?” she asked impatiently.

“I don’t have anything from the present—yet,” Laredo qualified. “But what I do have is more of a background on Eileen.”

Taylor crossed her arms before her, waiting. “Go ahead.” It was an order, not a request.

Laredo obliged and recited what he’d learned since his grandfather had come to him with this.

“Eileen Stevens was thirty-eight and the complete epitome of an obsessed career woman. But she wasn’t always so goal oriented. When she was a seventeen-year-old high school junior, Eileen got pregnant.” He saw the surprise in Taylor’s eyes and knew she wouldn’t be challenging the worth of the exchange between them. “Her mother wouldn’t allow her to have an abortion. The baby, a boy, was turned over to social services the day he was born. From what I gathered, the experience made Eileen do a complete one-eighty. She turned her back on her former wild life and buckled down to become the woman she is today.”

“Dead,” Taylor couldn’t help pointing out.

A hint of a smile touched his lips. “I don’t think that was in her plans.”

If Laredo was trying to undermine her by laughing at her, he was in for a surprise, Taylor thought. She’d survived growing up with Zach and Frank, expert tormentors both.

“Anything else?”

Laredo spread his hands wide. “That’s it so far.”

She doubted it, but she had no way of keeping him for interrogation at the moment. “And who did you say you were working for?”

“I’m doing this as a favor,” he told her even though he was fairly certain that she hadn’t forgotten. She was probably just trying to trip him up, which was all right, he thought, because in her place he probably would have done the same thing. “My grandfather used to date Eileen Stevens’s mother. Carole Stevens was a single mother who worked double shifts as a cocktail hostess to make ends meet. That didn’t exactly leave her much time to be a parent and from what I gathered, as a kid Eileen needed a firm hand. After she graduated high school, they became estranged for a number of years—”

“Because her mother refused to allow her to have the abortion.” Taylor guessed.

Laredo inclined his head. “That was part of it, yes,” he acknowledged.

So he did know more than he’d just admitted. “And the rest of it?”

He shrugged. “Just the usual mother-daughter animosity.”

She didn’t like the way he just tossed that off. Taylor felt her back going up. Something about him made her want to contradict him no matter what he said.

“It’s not always ‘usual,’ Laredo.”

Her defensive manner aroused his interest. “You never clashed with your mother for no other reason than just because she was your mother?”

She definitely didn’t like his way of stereotyping people, she thought. “Not that it’s any business of yours,” she told him coolly, “but no.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. It seemed rather obvious to Laredo that Taylor McIntyre was headstrong and stubborn. He couldn’t visualize her being easygoing about things and letting them slide unless she wanted to.

“Not once?” he prodded.

“No,” she repeated. Less-than-fond memories had her adding, “That was for my father to do.” Then, realizing that she had said far more than she’d wanted to, she shot another question at him. “If Eileen and her mother were so estranged, why is her mother asking you to investigate who killed her daughter? Is there a will involved?”

As far as she knew, the police hadn’t even found out that the murder victim had a mother in the state. She’d left her next-of-kin information blank on the law firm’s employment form.

“I don’t know about a will,” Laredo admitted. “But as far as Carole and Eileen’s estrangement went, my grandfather said they’d reconciled just a few months ago. According to him, the reconciliation was all Carole’s doing,” he added. “Carole said she felt that life was too short to let hurt feelings keep people apart. Personally, I think my grandfather gave Carole a little push in the right direction.”

For a reason? Taylor wondered. “And your grandfather, how does he figure into all this? Beyond the little push, of course.”

Sarcasm always rolled off his back. Most likely, the long-legged detective was trying to get something more out of him, some “dirt” she probably thought he’d conveniently omitted.

Sorry to disappoint, Taylor, Laredo thought, doing little to hide his amusement.

“He’s just a nice guy who’s there for his friends, that’s all.”

“Or, in this case,” she reminded him, “volunteering you.”

He certainly couldn’t argue with that, Laredo thought. But then, in the scheme of things, it was the least he could do. If he spent the rest of his life as his grandfather’s right-hand man, he wouldn’t begin to repay the man for everything that he had done for him.

“Something like that,” he agreed.

Time to stop dancing, she decided. She’d already spent too much time getting next to nothing. “What is your grandfather’s name and where can I find him if I want to talk to him?”

“His name’s Chester Laredo,” a familiar, deep voice behind her said.

Taylor didn’t need to turn around to know that the voice belonged to her stepfather. At the same time, she thought to herself, so much for the mystery of why Laredo’s middle name was Chester.

The next moment, Brian Cavanaugh, Aurora’s chief of detectives, came around her desk, extending his hand to the man she’d been trying to pump for information. Brian smiled broadly at Laredo.

“Frank mentioned he saw you here. How are you, Laredo?” he asked warmly, shaking the younger man’s hand. “And what’s your grandfather up to these days?”

“I’m fine and he’s been running a security firm for the last five years,” Laredo told him, sitting down again.

“A security firm?” Brian laughed, shaking his head. “I never thought he’d leave The Company. I thought they’d have to take him out, feet first.”

“He thought it was time,” Laredo told him. “He didn’t think he could move as fast as he used to.”

“Chet?” Brian asked incredulously. “That man could pop open any lock and disappear faster than anyone I ever knew.”

That would explain the handcuffs, Taylor suddenly thought. And then the initial sentence played itself over in her head.

“The Company?” Taylor echoed, looking from her stepfather to the man at her desk. “Your grandfather was with the—”

“Yes,” Laredo said, cutting her off before she could mention the CIA. “He doesn’t like it getting around these days. Afraid it might scare off more clients than it attracts,” he explained.

Brian looked as if that made perfect sense to him. “Well, tell him I said hello and if he ever feels like catching up, he knows where to find me.”

Okay, this was another new turn, Taylor thought. What did Brian have to do with a member of the CIA? “Catching up?” she asked.

Brian left it deliberately vague. “We collaborated a couple of times back in the day.”

Taylor blew out a breath. She wasn’t going to get any more than that and she knew it. For all his affability, Brian Cavanaugh was extremely closemouthed when he wanted to be.

She moved on. “So you’re vouching for him?” She nodded at Laredo as she asked.

“Absolutely. I’ve known Laredo for as long as I’ve known you,” he told her. “Bounced you both on my knee—just not at the same time,” Brian added with the wink that she knew was her mother’s undoing. Brian shifted his eyes toward Laredo. “If I can help you in any way, just let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” Laredo promised. “But right now, I’ve got no complaints with the way Detective McIntyre is taking care of me.”

Brian smiled, affection brimming in his eyes as he looked at his older stepdaughter.

“Never doubted it for a moment. She’s one of our finest. Good seeing you again, Laredo,” Brian repeated just as his cell phone began to ring. He sighed. “No rest for the weary,” were his parting words as he walked away quickly, taking out his phone. “Cavanaugh here.”

“He’s a great guy,” Laredo said to her. There was genuine admiration in his voice. There, at least, Taylor thought, they were in agreement.

“Yes, I know.” She turned her attention back to the man at her desk. “I guess if he vouches for you, I can trust you.” She couldn’t help the grudging note that came into her voice.

“With your life.” Laredo sounded completely serious as he said it.

But she still couldn’t help wondering if he meant it, or was trying to throw her off. Ordinarily, if Brian vouched for someone, that was enough for her. But something about the way Laredo looked at her had her struggling to keep her guard up.

For the second time, she told herself to wrap it up. She had witnesses she needed to question and an investigation to kick off. Damn, but she missed Aaron. The man wasn’t due back for another six weeks. They stretched out before her like a long, lonely desert.

“All right,” she announced to Laredo, “if you have nothing else to tell me—”

The same sexy, lazy smile traveled along his lips, straight into her nervous system.

“I have lots of things to tell you,” he assured her, his voice deliberately lower than it had been, carrying only the length of her desk. “Preferably over a lobster dinner with soft music in the background and some champagne chilling beside the table.”

Nine times out of ten, that line probably worked, she thought. But not on her. “You’re a player.”

He smiled. If it bothered him to be caught, he didn’t show it. “When the occasion arises. The rest of the time, I’m pragmatic.”

You had to admire a guy who didn’t give up, she thought despite herself. “And plying me with liquor would be which?”

He looked at her for a long moment before saying, “A little bit of both, most likely.”

If she hung around him any longer, she was in danger of getting lost in those blue eyes, Taylor warned herself. “Well, I have a job to do, so if you’ll excuse me.” With that, she rose to her feet.

Laredo did the same. And as she went out of the squad room, he was right there, his steps shadowing hers until they both reached the elevator.

She had no recollection of issuing an invitation, Taylor thought.

Pressing the down button, she turned to face him. “Look, if you think you’re coming with me just because my stepfather bounced you on his knee—”

A touch of surprise entered his eyes. “Brian Cavanaugh’s your stepfather?”

It was something she assumed everyone knew because, in the world she inhabited, for the most part they did. “Yes.”

He nodded, as if approving. “Your mother’s got a good man.”

She was not going to get sidetracked. “Be that as it may, you’re not coming with me.”

“I didn’t think I was.”

She pressed the down button again. “Then why are you following me?”

“I’m not,” he told her innocently.

Where was the damn elevator? There weren’t that many floors. “Right.”

“In case it might have slipped your notice, ‘Detective,’ cars are supposed to be parked outside the building and I haven’t trained mine to come when I call so, consequently, if I want to use it, I have to go to the car.” He gave her an amused look. “Same as you, I suspect.”

She was about to press for the elevator a third time when it arrived. She saw that the car was almost filled to capacity. Ordinarily, she would have waited for the next car, but she wanted to get away from this man as quickly as possible. So she slipped into the car, trying to make the most of the space that was available.

As did he.

Taylor discovered that ignoring a man she found herself pressed up against was next to impossible no matter how hard she tried.

Chapter Four

Hours later, out in the field, Taylor could swear she could still feel the blush from that morning creeping up her neck. It lingered, breathing color along her cheeks as they traveled down in the elevator to the first floor.

To his credit, Laredo had made no reference to being packed against her like an amorous sardine, but it was obvious that he was thinking about it. One look at the smile in his eyes told her that.

Damn annoying man, Taylor thought now, not for the first time. If her stepfather and Frank hadn’t indirectly vouched for Laredo by the way they’d both greeted and interacted with the man, J. C. Laredo would have definitely been at the top of her list of suspects to investigate. She wasn’t sure if she would have bought into his story about investigating Eileen’s murder as a favor to his grandfather if it hadn’t been for them.

Even so, she still might look into his background once she finished interviewing the people on the victim’s list of clients. She’d been doing that for a good part of the day, as well as talking to the other tenants in Eileen’s building. So far, she felt as if she was just spinning her wheels. Slowly.

After getting back into her car, Taylor closed the door and then just sat there for a moment, looking over the remaining names on the list of clients. Because they were all celebrities of varying degrees, getting past their bodyguards and arranging for a few minutes of conversation was turning out to be almost a Herculean effort. She wouldn’t mind if she felt that this helped the investigation, but it didn’t.

A gut feeling told her that she was probably just wasting her time. Maybe she needed to talk to Eileen’s mother.

That was when it occurred to Taylor that she’d been so eager to get away from Laredo, she had completely forgotten to ask for Carole Stevens’s address.

With a sigh, she dug out the card the private investigator had pressed into her hand just before they parted company.

“In case you change your mind and decide you want to collaborate,” he’d said, punctuating his statement with a rather unsettling wink just before he’d sauntered off to his car.

She recalled thinking, almost against her will, that Laredo had the tightest butt she’d ever seen on a man. That was when she’d almost thrown his card away. But there weren’t any trash containers in the immediate vicinity, so she’d temporarily stuffed it into her jacket pocket.

Looking now at the plain white card with its bold, raised black lettering, Taylor read the cell number twice, repeating it under her breath before putting it into her own phone.

The phone on the other end rang four times. She was fairly certain it would go to voice mail, but then she heard a noise. The next moment, a deep male voice rumbled against her ear and she was certain she had the real deal, not a recording.

“Laredo.”

Something suddenly and unexpectedly tightened in her gut. Annoyed with herself—and him—Taylor almost flipped the phone closed. Damn it, she was acting like some indecisive schoolgirl, she upbraided herself. This just had to stop. Now.

“That you, Detective McIntyre?” she heard the deep voice ask when the silence stretched out. She could swear she heard a smile in his voice.

“Yes,” she bit off grudgingly. “It’s me.” How had he known? It wasn’t as if she’d indicated that she was ever going to call him, at least, not until such time as the Winter Olympics took place on the frozen terrains of hell.

As if reading her mind, he said, “Didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Miss me?”

“Like a toothache.” Taylor could almost see the smirk on his lips. “I need Carole Stevens’s phone number and address.”

He was the soul of cooperation. “Sure thing. Got a pencil and paper?”

“Of course I do,” she answered, quickly opening her glove compartment and tossing things onto the passenger seat in a frenzied attempt to locate the items.

“I can wait,” he offered, as if he could see her rummaging.

The man made her exceedingly uneasy. “The address,” she repeated, issuing the words like a direct order.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carole Stevens lived in the older part of town, Taylor thought as she wrote down the street address. Had those been Eileen’s roots as well? she wondered, quickly writing down the phone number Laredo recited.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, Detective McIntyre,” he replied cheerfully.

Last time, Taylor countered mentally. She quickly terminated the connection before he could say anything else.

Why the hell was her heart racing? Taylor silently demanded as she turned the key in the ignition. There was absolutely no reason for it to be beating as if she’d just completed a hundred-meter dash.

She really needed to go on that vacation. The minute that Aaron came back, she would take off for a couple of weeks. Let him go solo for a while. It would serve him right, leaving her in a lurch like this.

What was the matter with her? Taylor thought the next moment, guiding the car to the main thoroughfare. She was happy for Aaron. She knew how much he and his wife, Rachel, had wanted this baby, how long they had tried to get pregnant. They deserved to enjoy their little girl.

Taylor sighed, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. Just when had she turned into the Wicked Witch of the West?

Since her path had crossed Laredo’s. There was no point in denying it. She didn’t know what it was about the tall, muscular private investigator with the intrusive manner, but he made her feel as if she was walking on a foundation made of gelatin.

What she needed, until she could go off on that mythical vacation, was to hang out a few mornings at Andrew’s house. The former chief of police threw his doors open every morning, making gastronomically thrilling breakfasts for whichever member of his family happened to wander into his house. The man loved to cook and he loved his family. And everybody knew that. The atmosphere within Andrew Cavanaugh’s house was energizingly positive and right now, she could use a little positive reinforcement.

Since her mother was married to Brian, Andrew’s younger brother, that connected her to the family patriarch. Not that she actually needed an excuse to show up. Andrew considered most of the people on the police force his extended family.

How the hell did that man manage to keep enough food around to feed everyone? she couldn’t help wondering. It was like one of Aesop’s fables come to life, the one about the bottomless pitcher of milk. No matter how many glasses were poured, the pitcher always remained full. In this case, it wasn’t a pitcher, it was a bottomless refrigerator.

Someday she would have to ask Andrew about that.

There were two cars in Carole Stevens’s driveway when Taylor pulled up twenty minutes later. Did the woman have company? she wondered as she parked her car at the curb.

Maybe it was a friend, offering condolences to the poor woman. Taylor was grateful that she wouldn’t have to break the news to Eileen Stevens’s mother about her daughter’s murder. There was nothing worse than having to tell a parent that their child wasn’t coming home again.

There should be a chaplain on the force who took care of that sort of thing. It was hard enough getting through each day alive, always running the risk of being shot—or worse.

Making her way up the front walk, Taylor took out her detective shield and ID. She held it up so that it would be the first thing that the woman would see.

There was a Christmas wreath on the door, in direct contrast to the sorrow that now resided within. Taylor rang the bell. It opened almost immediately.

“Mrs. Stevens?”

The question was merely for form’s sake. The tall, thin woman who opened the front door was an older version of Eileen Stevens. And, eerily like Eileen, the light had been drained out of her eyes.

“Yes.”

Taylor raised her shield slightly, calling attention to it. “I’m Detective McIntyre—”

“Yes, I know.” It was then that the woman opened the door further, allowing Taylor to see that Carole Stevens wasn’t alone. She had a six-foot-three guardian angel next to her. “Laredo told me you’d be coming.”

Taylor’s eyes shifted to Laredo, who smiled at her. She allowed her mouth to curve, but there was no humor in the expression.

“How thoughtful of him.”

Laredo acted as if they’d just exchanged a hearty greeting. “Nice to see you again, Detective.”

“I can’t say the feeling is mutual,” Taylor murmured under her breath. Eileen’s mother didn’t seem to hear her, but she was certain that Laredo did. His smile widened.

“Laredo is just here to support me,” the woman told her, her voice echoing the hollowness that she obviously was feeling inside. Carole glanced at the man beside her and did her best to smile her gratitude. “Chet thought it might be a good idea.”

Taylor looked from Laredo to the woman. Where’d she heard that name before? “Chet?”

“My grandfather,” Laredo reminded her.

The man had a gift, she thought. Without uttering a single, derogatory word, he made her feel as if she were the intruder.

Taylor got down to business. “This isn’t going to take long, Mrs. Stevens,” she promised the woman, doing her best to cut Laredo out of the mix by turning her back toward him.

“I’ve got nothing but time,” Carole told her sadly just before she turned on her heel to lead the way into the living room.

Mrs. Stevens sat down on the sofa, clasping her hands before her as if doing so would give her strength to get through this horrible ordeal. Laredo sat down beside her. Leaving Taylor to take a seat on the chair opposite the sofa. Again she felt isolated, like an outsider.

“I really don’t know how I can help you,” Carole confessed. “I don’t know much about her life.” It was obvious that the admission was painful for the woman. “Eileen and I just recently got back together again. She’d been angry at me for years, holding me responsible for nearly ruining her life.” The sigh that escaped her lips was ragged. “Those were her words, not mine.” Carole raised eyes that were bright with tears. “Do you have any children, Detective?”

The fact that Laredo eyed her with interest, waiting for her answer, didn’t escape Taylor. “I’m not married.”

A sad smile curved the thin lips as a faraway look came into Carole’s eyes. “Neither was I.”

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