They watch the streets, scouring faces…

…To catch a killer in the shadows

When a civilian disappears, Detective Finn Cavanaugh catches the case. His partner-in-catching-crime? Brainy and beautiful insurance investigator Nik Kowalski, whose method of pursuing people clashes with Finn’s own—and whose charms prove all too alluring. As their missing-person case heats up, Nik and Finn race to find the killer haunting their waking nightmares.

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

Also by Marie Ferrarella

Cavanaugh Justice

Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

Cavanaugh on Duty

A Widow’s Guilty Secret

Cavanaugh’s Surrender

Cavanaugh Rules

Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

Cavanaugh Fortune

How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh or Death

Cavanaugh Cold Case

Cavanaugh in the Rough

Cavanaugh on Call

Cavanaugh Encounter

Cavanaugh Vanguard

Cavanaugh Cowboy

Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Cavanaugh Stakeout

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09455-9

CAVANAUGH STAKEOUT

© 2019 Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The time for inner reflection, for wondering and wavering, had passed.

Because Finn was kissing her.

Nik felt her head swimming. And then she could feel Finn smile against her lips, his lips warming her.

Seducing her.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked.

“Because that was exactly the way I imagined it would be,” he confessed.

And then the reality of what he had just done hit him. Finn sobered, realizing that she might misunderstand what had just happened. “Sorry. That wasn’t the reason I wanted to see you to your door. But I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t to have a few more minutes with you.”

Reviewing their relatively short association, she looked at him skeptically. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

“In the beginning,” he conceded. “But I have to admit that you have a way of getting to a guy. And I have to say that you are pulling your own weight.”

“You sure know how to turn a girl’s head with sweet talk.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to the ever-growing Cavanaugh clan. When Seamus, the eternally young patriarch of the family, is mugged and left for dead one night in the parking lot of one of the buildings his security company oversees, his spirit is crushed and all but drained from him. The rest of the family rallies around him. They all want to find the person responsible for hurting Seamus, but that proves to be far more complicated than it might seem.

Detective Finley Cavanaugh from the robbery division heads up the investigation because Seamus’s car was stolen. But it quickly becomes a homicide investigation when bodies of women start piling up, beginning with the one whose blood was found in the trunk of Seamus’s stolen vehicle. To complicate matters, as a favor for a friend searching for her missing daughter, insurance investigator Nikola Kowalski begins looking into Seamus’s case. It seems that the missing daughter’s fingerprint has turned up on the back of Seamus’s rearview mirror. Try as he might, Finn can’t get the annoyingly inquisitive Nik to back off. And soon, almost against his will, he realizes that he doesn’t want to. Meanwhile, more and more young women are having their lives snuffed out while Finn and Nik find themselves going around in circles, following clues that lead nowhere.

As always, I thank you for taking the time to pick up and read one of my books. I sincerely hope it entertains you, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All my best,

Marie Ferrarella

To

Charlie.

Just When I Think My Heart

Can’t Be Any Fuller,

You Do Something Wonderful

And Make It Grow

A Complete Size Larger.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Publisher

Prologue

He hated the expression “feeling your age.” More than that, the onetime robbery detective hated the fact that getting in behind the wheel of his dark blue sedan was now a two-step, sometimes three-step, procedure that involved lowering himself into his seat, then physically picking up and lifting his left leg in order to maneuver it into position inside the vehicle.

Not that he would ever actually admit as much to anyone. After all, he was Seamus Cavanaugh, the eighty-one-year-old patriarch of the Cavanaugh clan, a family known and respected for its many members within the law-enforcement community.

Cavanaughs didn’t complain, not when it came to things they had no control over.

Like time.

That sort of thing came under the heading of resigned acceptance.

If his sons ever suspected how often various parts of his body ached and gave him trouble, there would be no end to their trying to talk him into permanently retiring from the security firm that he had founded.

A laugh rumbled deep within his chest. As if that would ever happen.

He had tried retirement once and had concluded that retirement, even retirement in comfort, was for the birds—definitely not for him. He liked being active, even if that activity came with a price, like painful knees, aching shoulders and a back that insisted on periodically acting up.

To him the alternative was to slowly wither away and then finally die.

No, thank you, Seamus thought, shifting so that he could get comfortable—if that was even possible—behind the wheel before he started up the engine. The hell with retirement. He needed to be vital. That was why he was out here in one of the industrial-complex areas within Aurora’s neighboring cities long after dark. He was doing an unexpected final check on one of the buildings his security firm protected. There’d been an attempted break-in on the building a little more than a week ago and he just wanted to be sure there were no repeat occurrences in the making despite the fact that the alarms and cameras on the premises had been silent.

Thanks to his grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews, he knew how easily systems could be bypassed or hacked into. The expert IT crew he employed at his firm was considered to be the best in the business, but Seamus was still old-fashioned. As far as he was concerned, nothing beat a hands-on approach.

So he had deliberately gone through all the safety protocols within the building, then driven around the building’s perimeter just to put any apprehensions to bed. Now that he had, he was ready to head home and have that well-loved nightcap he’d been promising himself. His cardiologist, Dr. Benvenuti, a specialist who had treated him for years, frowned on his habit, but his doctor only looked at his year of birth. He did not take into account the patriarch’s spirit.

His age didn’t define him, Seamus thought rebelliously. He was still young at heart, still had a spring in his step, even though, he was willing to grudgingly admit, that spring had gotten just a wee bit rusty of late.

It was going to rain, Seamus thought now, as he was ready to leave. His shoulder, the one he had gotten shot in in the line of duty almost four decades ago, ached the way it always did just before it rained. Fortunately for him, rain was not a regular occurrence where he now lived, in California.

Preoccupied with his aching shoulder, Seamus wasn’t aware of what was happening until it was too late.

One second he had just started to fasten his seat belt—his door was still open because he needed space to wrestle with the belt—the next, someone had come up to his car, aimed a gun at him and growled, “I need your car, old man. Get out!”

Seamus didn’t know which bothered him more—the fact that someone was trying to steal his car, or being referred to as an “old man.” Having a gun aimed at him notwithstanding, his response was automatic.

“The hell I will!” Seamus growled.

The would-be car thief’s expression registered surprise, then darkened. “Wrong answer, old man,” he snapped.

It was the car thief’s turn to be stunned. Seamus didn’t willingly hand over his car keys or his car. Instead, he angrily demanded, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Still partially hidden by shadows, the tall, well-built, dark-haired man’s face went from handsome to foreboding. Despite himself, Seamus felt a chill go up his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, Seamus thought he saw another figure move, but he couldn’t be sure. He was completely focused on the car thief.

“I’m the man who’s going to be driving that car of yours. You’re two steps away from death, old man, and trust me, you won’t be needing it,” the car thief informed him.

“But I’m not dead yet,” Seamus countered as he shot out a hand to grab the other man’s wrist.

With his other hand, Seamus reached for the weapon he carried in his pocket. Although he no longer belonged to any branch of the police department, Seamus had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and he went regularly to the firing range to continue honing his already considerable skills.

“Wrong move, old man,” the other man snarled.

Using leverage, the car thief pulled hard, yanking Seamus out of his car. Seamus put up a fight, but he was at least two decades older than his opponent and it acted against him.

The tug-of-war was short-lived, and Seamus wound up smashing his forehead against the concrete, cutting his temple as he landed facedown in the parking lot.

Seamus had put up more of a fight than the car thief expected. A barrage of heated curses were heaped on Seamus head.

Gaining possession of Seamus’s gun, the car thief laughed in satisfied triumph. “How did you think this was going to turn out, old man?” he demanded, uttering another round of curses. Then, drawing in a deep breath as if to fortify himself for what he was about to do next, the car thief shot at Seamus with the weapon he was holding.

Fighting to remain conscious, Seamus thought he heard a woman’s scream, but that might have just been the buzzing noise in his head. He couldn’t tell.

“That’s what you get when you mess with your betters, old man,” the robber crowed. He began to bend down to check if he had killed the old man who had had the audacity to try to overpower him. He also wanted to grab the watch that had caught his eye. But as he reached for it, he froze.

The sound of an approaching car had him abandoning the watch. Instead, he focused on his own survival. Another string of curses erupted from his lips, as he damned Seamus’s soul to hell after his insides had been ripped out and eaten by rabid wolves.

Seamus couldn’t make out the words. His gut instinct said they were meant for him. Darkness was closing in around him, sealing him away, which was just as well. He couldn’t endure the excruciating pounding in his head any longer.

Just before he slipped into the smothering embrace of a dark world, Seamus thought he heard the sound of two doors being shut.

And then there was the sound of a car—his car?—driving away.

After that, mercifully, there was nothing.

Chapter 1

Former police chief Andrew Cavanaugh immediately thought the worst whenever a phone rang, the shrill noise elbowing its way into his sound sleep, especially whenever it happened after midnight. It was at that time more than any other that icy fear would grip his heart even before he was fully awake. Because of the nature of his job and the jobs held down by so much of his family, half-formed dire scenarios would flood his mind the instant the phone began to ring.

Andrew was groping around on the nightstand, searching for his phone before his eyes were even open or his brain was fully engaged.

His wife, Rose, shared the very same feelings. And fears.

“Who is it, Andrew?” she asked, turning toward him in their queen-size bed.

Andrew didn’t answer her. Fully awake now, he focused on listening to what the voice on the other end of the call was telling him.

The intense look on his face had Rose grasping his forearm, as if that would somehow help her assimilate what the caller was saying to him. Or, at the very least, allow her to share with him whatever burden those words might be creating.

What she was hearing from Andrew’s side of the conversation only fueled her dread.

“When?” Andrew asked, his usually genial face a mask of concern. “How bad? Is he—?” Rose saw her husband exhale a shaky breath, dragging his hand through his hair. For a split second, the man everyone leaned on so heavily looked almost lost. “What hospital?”

By now Rose’s adrenaline had escalated to an exceptionally high level. She quickly got out of bed and, rather than throw on a robe, automatically began to get dressed. Quickly.

The second she was finished, she was laying out her husband’s clothing. She knew Andrew inside and out. She knew that the moment he hung up, they would be on their way to whatever hospital the person that this call was about was in.

With children, brothers and sisters-in-law, as well as an entire extended collection of family members, almost all involved in some capacity of law enforcement, there were many potential candidates for whom that path might have very well ended tonight—or had come very close to ending.

There was no other reason why a call would have suddenly shattered their night this way, or why her husband looked so distressed.

Without knowing whom this call was about or what the actual damage was, all Rose could do was pray as she moved quickly to get Andrew’s clothes ready for him. It was her form of “busywork,” something to keep her occupied so that her mind wouldn’t go to that awful place that it was wont to go thanks to this middle-of-the-night call.

It just went with the territory because she was the former police chief’s wife. A peaceful night’s sleep wasn’t always part of the equation.

Rose had laid out all of Andrew’s clothing as well as his shoes and had just pulled out a pair of socks when her husband hung up the phone.

The moment that he did, she whirled around to face him.

“Who?” she asked breathlessly.

Throwing off the rest of the covers, Andrew’s bare feet hit the cold floor. The change in temperature hardly registered. His mind was racing, unearthing a dozen memories at once. But mainly Andrew was praying. Praying every bit as hard as he had when he had gone looking for his missing wife all those years ago when her car had driven off the road, into the lake.

It had taken him years to find Rose again, but he had, he reminded himself. Finding her when she’d been suffering from amnesia had been, admittedly, an incredible long shot, but he had never given up looking, despite the odds. And, in the end, he had found her.

This was going to be another kind of long shot, but just like before, he had every hope that it was going to work out.

It just had to.

Rose caught hold of her husband’s arm, pulling him and his attention back from wherever it had drifted to and toward her.

Startled, Andrew blinked, as if suddenly remembering that his wife was there.

“Who is it?” Rose asked point-blank.

The answer hurt, and it took him a second to actually form the words to tell her.

“It’s Dad,” Andrew answered, shrugging into his pullover sweater.

Of all the names that had gone rushing through Rose’s anguished, feverish brain, her father-in-law’s name hadn’t been among them.

Armed with this piece of information, Rose’s mind went in an entirely different direction.

“Heart attack?” she guessed quietly as she watched Andrew slip on his shoes.

Grabbing his wallet from the nightstand and putting his cell phone into his pocket, Andrew shook his head. “It wasn’t a heart attack.”

“Then what?” Rose asked, confused.

Andrew drew in a deep breath, as if to insulate himself from the fears that went with what he was about to say.

“As near as the patrolmen who found him can tell,” Andrew said, “Dad was the victim of a mugging. At least that’s the working theory. His car is missing, and he was found lying facedown in the North Tustin Industrial parking lot.”

Horror flashed across Rose’s face. The next moment, she managed to regain control over her emotions.

“But Seamus is all right, isn’t he, Andrew?” she asked, willing her husband to give her a positive reply.

Andrew avoided making eye contact with his wife. “He’s breathing,” he answered, heading toward the stairs. He loved having Rose with him under any circumstances, but he wanted to spare her this. His father was a strong man, but age had a way of eroding strength. Andrew had no idea what he was in for.

“Dad hasn’t regained consciousness since they found him.” Sailing down the staircase’s seventeen steps, he was at the front door in seconds. “I’m going to the hospital,” he told her.

Rose was just a beat behind him. “Not without me you’re not.”

He turned toward her. “There’s no point if he’s still unconscious. Maybe you should just stay here, hold down the fort,” Andrew gently suggested.

The stubborn look he knew and loved so well came into Rose’s eyes. “The fort can hold itself down. I’m not letting you face this alone, Andrew Cavanaugh,” she informed him in no uncertain terms.

This was one of the many reasons he loved her, but even so—or maybe because of it—he didn’t feel right about dragging her with him like this, Andrew thought. “People are going to be calling here, asking questions about what happened.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already considered. “I’m sure they will. Don’t worry about it, we have call forwarding. They’ll find us,” Rose assured him. “After all these years of marriage, that old man is as much my father as he is yours and I’m not about to stay here like a good little soldier, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for word that he’s all right—and he will be all right,” she told her husband in a no-nonsense voice. “Now, let’s just stop wasting time debating this and let’s go,” Rose ordered.

Andrew’s heart swelled with affection as well as gratitude. Sparing himself one moment, he caught his wife up in his arms and kissed her.

Hard.

The next second, he let her go again. “If I haven’t mentioned this to you lately, I love you, Rose McGee Cavanaugh.”

Rose briefly touched his face and smiled at Andrew, all the love she felt for this man who was her entire universe shining in her eyes.

“I know,” she replied. “Now, let’s get moving!” she urged again, pulling open the front door.

“Yes, ma’am,” Andrew answered, utterly grateful that this was the woman who was sharing his life.

Rose had always managed to give him hope.

Rose sat in the passenger seat of the vehicle she had surprised him with last Christmas as they sped off to the hospital. To ensure that they would get there as quickly as possible, Andrew had placed his police lights on the roof. Though he didn’t believe in abusing any of the privileges that were at his disposal, this situation negated his natural impulse for caution.

While the lights on his roof flashed and the siren blared, Rose was busy calling various members of their family to tell them that the man who was responsible for starting the family was very possibly fighting for his life in the hospital. Rose knew that nobody would want to be left out of the loop under the guise of being “spared” the news until morning. Everyone loved and respected the crotchety patriarch and would have been distraught if they weren’t able to be on the premises, pulling for Seamus and adding their prayers to the rest.

This was the sort of thing that transcended everything else. This was about family.

Despite the hour, Aurora Memorial Hospital’s parking lot was teeming with vehicles. Andrew gunned his SUV up and down the aisle, searching for a place to park. As he searched, he spared Rose a glance. “How does it feel being a modern-day Paul Revere?”

“I would have preferred just inviting people to one of your parties instead of telling them to come to the hospital because Seamus has been the victim of some psychopathic thief,” Rose answered grimly. She reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it. “He’s going to be all right,” she promised, her voice thick with emotion. The words were meant to hearten her as much as they were to encourage her husband.

“Of course he is,” Andrew agreed in a voice that was as emotional as his wife’s. “Dad’s too ornery to just give up and…retreat,” he said, finally finding a word he could use without having his voice break.

“There,” Rose said suddenly, pointing over to the side. “There’s a space.”

“Good eye,” Andrew said, temporarily taking refuge in the minutia of ordinary banter.

He angled his vehicle into the rather tight space and was out of the driver’s side in a matter of seconds. He heard the passenger door slamming shut and paused, waiting for Rose to join him.

“Don’t wait for me,” his wife said, waving him toward the ER entrance. “Just go!”

Nodding, Andrew made his way to the rear ER doors quickly. How many times had he been here over the course of his career and then some? Far too many to count, he thought. Once, years back, he’d even been brought here himself.

It never got any easier, he decided.

It took Rose two beats to catch up and be at his side.

“You move fast for an old man,” she told him, trying to tease Andrew and lighten the huge weight that she knew had to be weighing down on him.

“Not that old,” Andrew replied.

Just then the young woman behind the registration desk turned toward them. A look of mild recognition crossed her face.

The next moment the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. “You’re here about Seamus Cavanaugh, aren’t you?”

Under ordinary circumstances, Andrew might have said something light in response, but these were not ordinary circumstances. They were scarier than he could ever remember them being. His father had been beaten, possibly shot. Add to that the man had age working against him. Despite trying to keep a positive attitude, this was not the best of scenarios.

Andrew got down to business immediately. “Yes, we are. How is he?”

“Grandpa’s a hearty warhorse, Dad. You know that,” his oldest daughter, Callie, said as she hurried up to join him.

She was not alone. Behind her was her husband, Benton Montgomery, as well as her two brothers, Shaw and Clay, and her sisters, Teri and Rayn, along with each of their spouses.

Hugging her father, she said, “When Mom called to tell me what happened, I got the word out. Most of the family’s either already here or on their way.”

Rose smiled at her husband when he turned toward her. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a first floor full of Cavanaughs praying for Seamus’s recovery. God can’t ignore this many like-minded people all asking for the same favor.”

Though he tried to mask it, the breath he released was shaky. “Well, that would explain the crowded parking lot. Let’s hope you’re right,” Andrew said to his wife. It was obvious to Rose that he was afraid to be too confident about the outcome.

“I’m always right,” Rose informed him with a confidence she really didn’t feel. She looked around the immediate area. “Anyone know where your granddad’s doctor is?” she asked the ever-growing sea of people.

Dax Cavanaugh spoke up first. “He was here a minute ago,” he told his aunt.

Brian Cavanaugh, Aurora’s chief of detectives, came up behind his son and put his hand on Dax’s shoulder as he addressed his sister-in-law. “I’ll have him paged, Rose.” Turning, Brian spotted an official-looking nurse and headed straight for her. When he saw that she was about to turn away, he called out to get her attention. “Ms.? Excuse me, Ms.!” Brian sped up his pace.

Marsha Williams, whose newly bestowed official title was head nurse of the ER, stopped in her tracks and slowly turned around. The pasted-on friendly smile quickly turned into a wary expression. Before she could stop herself, she murmured, “Oh, lord, they warned me about this.”

Brian cocked his silvery head. “Who warned you about what?” he asked in an amicable voice.

“The last head nurse. Rachel Rubin. She told me that sooner or later—most likely sooner—there would be a flood of you people in here because one of your own was hurt in the line of duty and that you wouldn’t leave until you were absolutely sure that the law-enforcement person was going to pull through.” She had a tablet with her and scrolled through it now, checking on new admissions and recent patients who had been brought into the ER. “But no one like that was brought in.”

“Try again, dear,” Brian’s wife, Lila, instructed the head nurse. There was no mistaking the authority beneath the friendly voice. For the woman’s benefit, the recently retired detective began to fill her in. “Seamus Cavanaugh was brought in unconscious less than—”

Recognition entered the head nurse’s eyes as they came to rest on a recent entry.

“Oh, here he is,” the woman declared. Marsha raised her head. “Dr. Iverson is overseeing his case,” she reported.

“And what’s the name of the doctor who’s actually doing something for my grandfather?” Detective Troy Cavanaugh asked, a note of impatience in his voice.

Marsha Williams’s somewhat high-handed attitude receded. “I’ll go get the doctor,” she replied, moving away.

Having quietly slipped into the circle gathered around the woman, Andrew smiled at the head nurse. “Thank you,” he said in a subdued, civil-sounding voice.

The former chief of police turned toward the rest of his family as the nurse hurried away to find the missing physician.

“Anyone have any more information on what happened than what we already know?” Andrew asked the various members of the family around him.

“Sounds like a mugging gone bad,” his younger brother Sean answered. Several other heads nodded. “Not much to go on yet,” Sean concluded.

“Who found him?” Brian asked, throwing out the question to anyone who could answer it.

“A guy walking his dog,” his daughter, Riley, volunteered. “He called a patrolman.”

“Who was the detective who was first on the scene?” Andrew asked.

“That would be me,” Detective Finley Cavanaugh said, raising his hand as he stepped forward to the front of what was quickly becoming a very large crowd. “I caught the case and I was hoping to have a few words with your father, Uncle Andrew.”

“So are we, Finn,” Andrew replied with feeling. “So are we.” He looked around, hoping to see the ER doctor cutting through the growing gathering of his relatives.

Rose tugged on her husband’s arm. When he looked quizzically in her direction, she pointed toward a rather young-looking man in hospital scrubs quickly walking toward them.

“Looks like maybe the doctor’s finally going to tell us what’s happening,” she said.

Dr. Joshua Logan had recently transferred to Aurora from a hospital located on the opposite coast. He was still getting acclimated to the mild weather. His easygoing manner belied that he was a top-notch emergency-room physician.

Dr. Logan quickly assessed the crowd, then introduced himself. “The good news,” he continued after shaking the hands of the people nearest him, “is that there doesn’t seem to be any internal bleeding or a skull fracture.”

“And the bad news?” Andrew asked since the doctor’s tone clearly indicated that there was a downside as well.

“I’m afraid that your father’s pride was badly wounded.”

Chapter 2

“Wait,” Andrew responded suddenly as the doctor’s words registered. “Does that mean that my father’s conscious now?” There was no missing the eager hope resonating in his voice.

“He was for a few minutes,” Dr. Logan qualified. “But when I told your father that I wanted to keep him here overnight for observation, he started to become very agitated. I thought that it was best if I gave him a sedative.”

Brian wanted the ER doctor to realize that their father wasn’t just being difficult. “The problem is our father doesn’t really like being in a hospital,” he explained.

Dr. Logan nodded, curtailing the need for any further explanation. “I completely sympathize, but I still want to keep your father for twenty-four hours, just to make sure he’s all right before I discharge him.” His expression turned serious. “Your father did sustain a severe blow to his head,” he told the family gathered around him. “I’m sure none of you want any unpleasant surprises suddenly coming up if he goes home too soon.”

“Do what you need to do, Doc,” Andrew told the emergency physician, speaking on behalf of the entire family. “We want to be sure to keep that annoying old man around for a lot more years to come.”

Dr. Logan seemed to take Andrew’s words seriously. “Well, barring any more unforeseen incidents like this one, I’d say that you should probably get your wish. Except for being banged around and getting a number of cuts and bruises, your father appears to have a very strong constitution.”

Andrew blew out a breath. “That’s definitely reassuring. When can we see him?” the former chief of police asked.

While hearing everything that Dr. Logan had just said was definitely making him feel more hopeful, Andrew still felt a very strong need to see his father with his own eyes before he could begin to rest easy.

“Tomorrow morning,” Dr. Logan replied automatically.

As the ER physician turned on his heel to leave, Rose quickly moved directly into the man’s path.

“Doctor, please,” she said, then looked toward her husband.

Logan read between the lines. The woman’s meaning was clear. “All right. But just one of you,” he asserted, raising his voice so that it carried in order for everyone to hear. “And just for five minutes, is that clear? If Mr. Cavanaugh should come to, I don’t want him getting any more agitated.”

“Understood,” Andrew responded solemnly.

Logan nodded. “All right then. You’ll find him in the third bed.” Since all the beds were hidden behind individual curtains, the ER physician offered, “I’ll take you to him.”

Andrew hesitated, looking back at his two younger brothers, silently asking if either of them wanted to go in his place.

But no one contested the decision. “You’re the head of the family,” Brian told him.

“Go on in before the doctor changes his mind,” Sean urged.

With a grateful nod, Andrew quickly followed Dr. Logan out of the area.

They went down a long corridor and then the doctor abruptly stopped.

“He’s right in here,” Logan said, parting the curtain just enough to give Andrew a glimpse inside the interior. “Remember, five minutes,” the doctor cautioned again and then left in order to give Andrew some privacy with his father.

Drawing closer, Andrew very gently took his father’s hand in his. For the very first time that he could remember, his father’s ordinarily strong hands somehow looked and felt almost fragile. They weren’t the powerful hands he recalled, that seemed capable of lifting up and holding anything.

Hands that seemed almost inconceivably strong and incredibly capable.

Andrew squeezed his father’s hand, but Seamus didn’t squeeze back.

When he thought of what might have happened, Andrew felt tears spring to his eyes. He blinked hard to keep them from falling. This wasn’t the time to fall apart, he thought.

“You gave us one hell of a scare, old man,” Andrew whispered thickly to the unconscious man in the hospital bed. The sight of a bandage wrapped around his father’s head, all but covering his right eye, hurt to look at. What if the damage had been worse? “What did those lowlifes do to you?” Andrew asked, trying to control his mounting anger. “And why were you even there at this time of night? You have people for that,” he insisted almost angrily. This didn’t make sense and it didn’t have to happen. “Young people,” Andrew stressed. “Haven’t you learned how to delegate yet?”

Andrew sighed, answering his own question. “Of course you haven’t. You’re a Cavanaugh and you feel you have something to prove—to yourself if not to the rest of us.”

There was no answer forthcoming from his father even though Andrew would have given anything to have heard his father’s voice as the older man attempted to explain his actions.

But he just continued being unconscious.

“I sure hope you can tell us who did this when you come to, because you know that you’ve got every single member of the family dying to make that person pay for hurting you.”

For a second, he could have sworn he saw his father’s eyes flutter. But then they were still and his father continued sleeping.

“Chief?” Logan said respectfully, peering in between the curtains.

Andrew knew that his time was up. “I’ve got to go, Dad.” He leaned over his father’s bed and pressed a kiss to the older man’s forehead. “I’m happy you’re still with us. Happier than you’ll probably ever know.”

Andrew went to retrieve his father’s cell phone from the plastic bag where his clothes and possessions had been placed. Finding it, the former chief of police stepped away from the hospital bed and reentered the corridor.

Despite the fact that his father was unconscious and couldn’t help provide any leads, it was time to get this investigation started. In his experience, there was always someone, whether they knew it or not, who had seen something.

The trick was to find that someone.

With renewed purpose, Andrew went back out to where the rest of his family was waiting. He looked around for Brenda, one of Brian’s daughters-in-law. Brenda was the head of the IT section in the crime-scene investigation lab. He needed the young woman’s expertise at the moment.

Spotting her next to her husband, Dax, Andrew headed over to them. Brenda and Dax were instantly alert the second he approached them.

“How is he?” Dax asked before his wife could.

“Still unconscious. He looks pretty banged-up,” Andrew admitted. “But he’s a tough old bird. He’ll be issuing orders by morning,” Andrew said confidently.

Murmurs of “That’s great” and “Thank God” echoed throughout the area.

Andrew held out the phone he had taken to Brenda. “This is my father’s phone,” he told her. “Pull whatever you can off it so we can retrace his steps before he was attacked.”

Brenda immediately took possession of the cell phone, wrapping it in her handkerchief to avoid smudging any possible fingerprints that might be on it and didn’t belong to anyone in the family.

“Right away, sir,” she promised.

“Once the chief of police, always the chief of police,” Brian commented to his older brother with a smile.

“Look,” Andrew began, “I know that technically I don’t have the authority to ask anyone to do anything, but—”

“Sure you do,” Shaw, the current chief of police and Andrew’s son, said, interrupting his father. “Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll find the SOB who did this to Grandpa,” he promised. “There’ll be so many of us out there combing the area, we’re going to wind up tripping over one another. But we’ll find him.”

Andrew looked over toward Finley, who had been keeping silent, but Andrew could guess what was going on in the young man’s mind.

“Finn was the one who was first on the scene,” he reminded the others. “That makes him the lead detective on this.”

“Once I realized who the victim was, I knew that there would be no shortage of help with the investigation.” Moving toward the center of the group, the tall, good-looking, dark-haired young man’s green eyes swept over the people standing closest to him.

Finley Cavanaugh belonged to the other branch of the family, the branch that Andrew had uncovered when he went to search for Seamus’s younger brother, Murdoch. Murdoch and Seamus had been separated at a very young age when their parents divorced, splitting the family in two and going their separate ways.

Things didn’t always have fairy-tale resolutions, despite the best intentions. Murdoch died before the two brothers could be reunited. Even so, Murdoch’s four children and their families slowly migrated to Aurora and eventually became, to a great extent, part of the city’s police department. Some had already become police detectives before they transferred, while others were eager to prove themselves in this new venue.

All were happy to become part of a larger whole.

And now they found themselves united in a less joyous undertaking: trying to find and bring to justice the cold-blooded carjacker and would-be killer who had done this to one of their own.

“This isn’t a matter of territory and I’m not about to try to pull rank here,” Finn told the group. “We all want to get whoever did this to Seamus and then left him to die in a deserted parking lot,” he said, his voice growing cold and steely.

Several voices resounded in the group, agreeing with what Finn had just said.

Riley shivered. “If that man hadn’t been walking his dog when he was…” Her voice trailed off, as she was unable to finish her thought.

“But he was out in the right place at the right time,” Brian told his daughter. “Focus on that.” Wanting to say something further to Finn along those lines, Brian turned toward the young detective. But the man was no longer there.

Seeing the perplexed look on Brian’s face, Sean asked, “Who are you looking for?”

“Finn. He was just here,” Brian said, still looking around to find Finn. He hadn’t seen the young detective leave.

“Looks like he wanted to get started looking for the person—or persons—who did this to Dad,” Sean said, supplying his take on the matter.

Brian nodded. “He’s got the right idea.” He raised his voice to address them all. “Let’s put all our resources together and see if we can make short work of this. Those of you who have them, talk to your CIs.” He glanced at the members whom his order applied to. “I want answers, people. Was this a random mugging or was Seamus targeted? If it’s the latter, find out why he was targeted and by whom,” the chief of detectives stressed. “We have got one of the finest police departments in the country,” he reminded the people gathered around him. “Let’s put that to good use.”

Everyone knew that wasn’t a suggestion—that was a quietly issued order.

“Well, that certainly didn’t take long,” Sean commented to Finn several hours later as he and two other members of his crime-scene investigation team carefully circled around the abandoned, badly battered vehicle that had been tracked down. The car had been discovered less than ten miles away from the parking lot where Seamus had been found.

Finn had been the one who had found the car, after beginning his search the moment he had left the hospital. As soon as he had verified that the vehicle was the one that had belonged to Seamus, he had immediately placed a call to Sean.

Sean and his team were out there within twenty minutes, snapping photographs and documenting anything that could even remotely be considered evidence.

“When do you think I’ll be able to run prints?” Finn asked Sean. “Provided you find them,” he qualified.

“When we find them, you’ll be the first to know,” Sean assured him. He looked thoughtfully at the smashed-up vehicle. “You know, for a carjacker, this guy was certainly very careful not to leave any incriminating fingerprints around,” he observed.

“No matter how careful, there’s always a slipup,” Finn told the older man, trying to smother the impatience that was mounting within him.

“I hope you’re right,” Sean replied. “By the way, thanks for the heads-up when your men came across this,” he said to Finn.

“My dad always said that if you want the best results, make sure you go with the best,” Finn answered, never taking his eyes off the members of the CSI team as they systematically worked in and around the vehicle. He kept his fingers crossed.

“I’m sorry I never got to meet your father,” Sean told Donnal Cavanaugh’s son.

Finn paused for just a moment, recalling his father. “You would have liked him,” he told Sean. “Come to think of it, he was a lot like you,” he decided. The next moment, he cleared his throat. “I’d better stay out of your way,” he told Sean. “You’ve got my number if you find any prints.”

“Like I said,” Sean told him, getting back to work as Finn began to walk to his own car, “you’ll be the first one I call.”

Finn picked up his phone the second that he heard it ring. He didn’t bother checking the caller ID—he just naturally assumed that it was Sean on the other end of the line.

“Did you find any fingerprints?” he asked immediately.

“It was the cleanest car I’ve ever dusted,” Sean admitted.

He knew going in that it was only a slim chance that the crime-scene investigators would find a print, but even so, Finn felt deflated. “So then the answer’s no?” he asked, disappointed.

Instead of a confirmation, Sean began, “Except—”

Instantly alert, Finn interrupted the head of the crime-scene lab. “Except what?”

“Except that whoever stole that car from my father didn’t stop to think when they went to adjust the rearview mirror. They wiped down every surface except for that one.” He could hear Finn all but champing at the bit, so he put him out of his misery. “We found just one partial fingerprint on the back of the rearview mirror.”

“Do you have any idea who the print belongs to?” Finn asked. If anyone would have asked him for a description of himself, Finn would have said that, in general, he was usually a patient man. But at the same time, there was something about waiting that really got to him. Especially when he was involved like this.

“Not yet,” Sean answered. “But we will. We’ve got Valri running the print, looking for a match. If whoever stole the car is in the system in any manner, shape or form, I guarantee that she’ll find them. Valri’s the best all-around computer tech that we have,” Sean said.

Finn still saw a slight problem with that. “What if the person’s not in the system?”

“Well, then we’re no worse off than we were before,” Sean answered. “But remember, there are a lot more people in the system now than there used to be. People need to be fingerprinted for any number of reasons these days. Keep a positive thought,” he told his nephew cheerfully.

Finn pressed his lips together. “Right,” he murmured.

“Oh, and, Finn?” Sean said just as Finn was about to hang up.

“Yes?”

“There was one more thing.” Sean paused and it was for effect, something he didn’t usually do, but given the nature of this case, he felt he could be forgiven this one time.

“Yes?” Finn asked again.

“We found blood in the trunk.”

“Blood?” Finn repeated, stunned.

“Yes. It looks like there was a body transported in the trunk,” Sean said.

“Talk about burying the lead!” Finn cried. Pulling himself together, he asked, “Do you know who the blood belongs to?”

“Not yet,” Sean answered. “We’ll call you about that, too,” he promised.

“I will be waiting,” Finn said, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

More than an hour later, the phone rang again. Finn had just gotten up from his desk and was about to leave the robbery division’s squad room. The moment he heard his phone, he hurried back and yanked up the receiver. “Finn Cavanaugh.”

“You know that positive thought I told you to keep earlier?”

Finn recognized Sean’s voice immediately. Hope sprang up in his chest. “Yes?”

“We found a match to that print,” Sean told Finn. “Or rather, Valri did.”

Sometimes things really did work themselves out, Finn thought. “Who does the print belong to?”

“It belongs to a Marilyn Palmer,” Sean answered. “There was only one arrest down in her file. Nothing too spectacular. She was part of some sort of group staging a college protest a few years ago. She spent the night in jail, then was released to her mother. As near as Valri could tell, there have been no repeat performances since that date.”

“Until she stole Seamus’s car,” Finn reminded Sean grimly, “and carted off a body in the trunk.”

“Right, until then,” Sean agreed.

“Have you matched that blood yet?” Finn asked.

“No luck so far, but we’re working on it,” Sean said. “Now, if you have a pen, I’ll give you Marilyn Palmer’s address.”

“All right, shoot,” Finn said to the head of the CSI day unit, ready to copy down any and all information that Sean had for him.

Finally, Finn thought in relief, they were beginning to get somewhere.

Chapter 3

“Hey, Finn,” Detective Joe Harley, Finn’s occasional partner, called out as he stuck his head into the robbery squad room. “There’s a woman out here who’s looking for you. She says she wants to talk.” Harley grinned at him. “Looks like you finally got lucky.”

Finn was already on his feet. Armed with the address that Sean had just given him, he was just about to leave the precinct. He wanted to talk to the twenty-year-old who had just become his prime suspect. Unless this was really important, he didn’t have the time to waste on someone coming in to report something that she only thought was missing but in reality had just been misplaced. It didn’t matter how attractive she was. His focus was on something far more important.

“You talk to her, Harley,” he told the other detective.

But the ten-year veteran he sometimes teamed up with shook his head.

“Believe me—” Harley glanced over his shoulder toward the hallway “—I’d like to, but she said she only wants to speak to the person in charge of the investigation concerning the stolen car found in Merryweather Park…and that would be you.”

Finn immediately snapped to attention. Maybe this woman did have something significant to tell him after all. “All right, Harley, show the lady in,” Finn instructed.

Harley pretended to salute as he sighed and retreated. “Y’know, some guys just have all the luck,” he muttered under his breath.

Finn wasn’t sure just how to take that—until the detective returned less than a minute later. Walking beside Harley was a statuesque blonde with a knockout figure that could, in his opinion, bring strong men to their knees and make them salivate, as impossible fantasies began to dance in their heads.

However, despite her other attributes, it was the woman’s clear-water blue eyes that instantly caught Finn’s attention. He knew it wasn’t possible, but her eyes looked as if they could see right through a man, and like the fictional superheroine with her golden lasso, would allow nothing but the truth to fall from his lips.

Getting a hold of himself, Finn managed to regain the use of his tongue just as she came up to him. He put his hand out as he introduced himself. “I’m Detective Finn Cavan—”

The woman slipped her hand into his and Finn could have sworn that there was a momentary spark of electricity shooting up his arm. He dismissed it as adrenaline, with everything that was going on.

“I know who you are, Detective Cavanaugh,” the woman said, cutting him off as she smiled warmly at him.

“Well, that puts you one up on me,” Finn told her. He didn’t like being caught at a disadvantage. “Detective Harley didn’t tell me your name.”

“Well, that’s easily solved. I’m Nikola Kowalski. Nik, to my friends,” she added, putting her other hand over his as she shook it.

Because she seemed so friendly, something within Finn backed off. He didn’t trust people outside the family who were this outgoing. They usually had some sort of a hidden agenda. Women who looked as exceptionally attractive as this one did were usually the type to use their looks to disarm people.

Finn’s voice grew distant as he asked, “Do you know something about the car that was just recovered, Ms. Kowalski?”

Nik picked up on his cool, reserved voice immediately. He was attempting to maintain distance between them. Too bad. She preferred a warmer, friendlier attitude, but she didn’t need him to be all warm and toasty in order for her to do this.

“If you’re going to go the formal route,” she said, referring to his using her surname. “The w is pronounced like a v,” she informed him. “But ‘Nik’ is a lot easier,” she stressed.

He guessed right. The woman who looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of a swimsuit magazine intended to use her feminine wiles to pump information out of him. But he had no intention of being pumped.

“We’re getting off-topic,” Finn told her. “What do you know about the car that was found?”

That hadn’t become public knowledge yet. The details about his grandfather’s brother being savagely attacked and left for dead were being kept tightly under wraps. If she knew about it, then she had to be involved somehow. He looked at her with heightened interest.

She saw the spark in his eyes and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He hadn’t acted as if he was interested in her a moment ago. But she did answer his question just to move this along.

“Well, for starters,” she told the steely-eyed detective in front of her, “I am fairly certain that Marilyn Palmer didn’t steal it.”

Considering that he had only been given the woman’s name a few minutes ago, Finn’s suspicion that the blonde talking to him was somehow involved increased tenfold. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her.

“How would you even know that we thought that?” he challenged. Not waiting for an answer, he decided to approach this squarely and asked, “Are you mixed up in this in some way?”

“Only as a Good Samaritan,” she told him.

“You’re going to have to elaborate on that, Ms. Ko-val-ski,” he said, deliberately stretching out her name.

Nik winced a little at his belabored pronunciation of her last name. It was right even though, at the same time, it somehow felt wrong. Despite that, she wasn’t insulted. “‘Nik,’ please,” she corrected. She had a temper, but it took a lot to arouse it. She decided to just keep it in check. She had a hunch that she would get further that way. “Maybe I should have told you that I’m an insurance investigator.”

His expression didn’t change, other than to allow some of the impatience he was feeling to seep in. “I still fail to see the connection here,” Finn told her between slightly clenched teeth. “It’s far, far too early for any insurance claim to have been filed.”

She had a habit of jumping ahead and burying the headline. Nik took a breath and started again.

“Marilyn’s mother is a friend of mine. She came to me with her concerns. She’s afraid that her daughter might be in over her head, running around with someone she feels might be taking advantage of her and getting her into some sort of trouble.” Her friend hadn’t given her any names yet, but when she heard through her sources about the carjacking, Nik immediately thought that might be a place to start.

He thought of the way Seamus had looked when he’d been called to the crime scene. He’d been on the ground, unconscious, deathly pale, with the gash in his head bleeding profusely.

“I’d say that it looks like she passed the ‘running’ part and is now smack-dab embedded in a very specific kind of ‘trouble.’ Where is she?” Finn asked.

“I have no idea,” Nik answered honestly. “I’m trying to track her down.”

He didn’t believe her. “You could be charged with obstructing an investigation, not to mention vehicular theft after the fact.”

Rather than having intimidated her, Finn was surprised to hear the woman laugh. He hadn’t said anything remotely funny. When he looked at her, puzzled, she said, “I bet you say that to all the girls, Detective.”

As far as he was concerned, this was not a laughing matter. “Only the ones I arrest,” he responded darkly. “I want you to know that if you’re withholding evidence, you’re on very thin ice—”

She stopped him right there. “The only ‘evidence’ I have is her name, which you already know,” she reminded him. “And I’m in the process of trying to find out the name of this ‘mystery’ bad influence her mother is worried about, if her mother got that part right—and there is still a very real possibility that she didn’t.”

“Ms. Ko-val-ski—” Finn began again, his patience running really short.

“Nik,” she corrected again.

“Why are you here?” he demanded, his voice rising along with his temper.

“Well, the simple answer is I thought we could pool our resources and work together since we’re both looking for Marilyn, albeit for different reasons,” she answered.

“Pool our resources,” Finn repeated in somewhat stunned disbelief.

“Uh-huh.” Because he was looking at her as if he expected her to clarify what she meant by that, she said, “You tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what I know. It seems more efficient that way.”

He was not about to work with an amateur, gorgeous or not. If she had anything he could use in his investigation, he intended to hear her out, but he wasn’t about to give her any information. As far as he was concerned, she was in the same class as the press and he made it a rule to always stay clear of the press.

“All right,” Finn replied, tilting his head. “You first.”

She wanted to tell him that she wanted him to go first, but she had a feeling that he would just dig in his heels. She could tell that he wasn’t the type to be receptive to that kind of a suggestion. She supposed that she needed to get this serious, distant man to trust her. The only way to do that was to be agreeable to his terms.

“From what I’ve been told, Marilyn has always been a good girl,” she began, only to abruptly stop. “You don’t need to roll your eyes like that, Detective. There are still good kids left in the world.”

In his experience, that was the sort of thing people said when the exact opposite was true. But for now, he let it ride.

“Go on,” Finn said, doing his best to put a lid on his skepticism, at least for the moment. Anything to hurry this along, although he was losing his patience at what felt like the speed of light.

“According to her mother,” Nik continued, “Marilyn has been acting strangely lately. My friend—Kim—thinks that her daughter has run off with this guy who she feels is a bad influence on her.”

“You already said that,” he reminded her flatly. “This ‘bad influence,’ does he have a name?”

She didn’t care for his condescending manner, but for now she went along with it. “Everyone has a name, Detective,” Nik responded with a smile.

“Then let me rephrase that,” Finn said evenly. “Does this bad influence have a name that you’re familiar with?”

“Not yet, but I’m trying to locate her friends, who don’t seem to be around, either,” she said.

How convenient, he thought sarcastically. “All right, do you have a description of this so-called bad influence?”

“No,” she told him. She hated being unable to answer his questions. As he indicated he was going to leave the squad room, she quickly said, “But I’m working on it.” Even as she said the words, she knew how lame that sounded.

Finn nodded shortly, dismissing her. “Come back when you have something substantial.”

The truth was he could probably get the description himself if this “bad influence” was in Seamus’s car with her as she drove away. Valri was already reviewing all the traffic-cam videos in the immediate area of the mugging, trying to spot Seamus’s car in all the recorded footage. Added to that, he had several members of his team collecting any and all surveillance videos caught on the cameras that were recording activity in the industrial center at what he approximated was the time of the mugging. However, giving the woman an assignment seemed the best way to get her to leave, he thought.

However, as he began to walk away, she placed herself directly in his path and announced, “Your turn!”

“My turn what?” Finn asked. There was an edge in his voice.

“Well, I told you what I know and you agreed to pool our resources, so now it’s your turn to tell me what you know,” she explained in a cheerful voice, which he found exceedingly irritating.

“You agreed,” he pointed out, his voice as dark as hers was light. He saw a fire enter her eyes that, under different circumstances, he might have even found intriguing.

But these weren’t different circumstances. This was about finding who had done this to his grandfather’s brother, and until he accomplished that, nothing else was going to take center stage for him.

“But,” he said evenly, “in the spirit of ‘sharing,’ I’ll tell you that Seamus Cavanaugh was mugged and left to die in the North Tustin Industrial parking lot while the person who did this to him drove away in Seamus’s vehicle.”

When he said that, the words tasted incredibly bitter in his mouth. The idea of someone doing something like that to an old man, let alone a member of his family, galled him beyond words.

“I already know that,” Nik pointed out. Finn wasn’t about to share anything, she realized.

“Well, then I guess you’re all caught up,” Finn told her. He looked toward the doorway and began walking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

To his annoyed surprise, she fell into step with him. When he glared at her, she responded, “Where are we going?”

“I’m going down to the crime lab,” he growled. “I don’t know where you’re going.”

“That’s simple,” Nik answered, still keeping her voice light. “I’m going with you.”

Okay, time to put an end to this. He stopped dead in his tracks. Looking down at her, he told her sternly, “Oh, no, you’re not.”

The man was very uptight and extremely territorial, she thought. Nik decided to rephrase her words to sound less objectionable to him. “I thought I’d throw my lot in with you—temporarily, of course.”

This woman was harder to get rid of than a strip of paper covered in superglue, he thought. “There is no ‘of course,’ Ms. Kowalski,” he informed her.

“Ko-val-ski,” Nik corrected, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to get him to use her first name. At least not yet.

Finn threw up his hands. “Whatever.” And then he fixed her with a penetrating look. “Let me make this perfectly clear for you. We are not ‘working’ together,” he told her. “I’m a professional and you’re not.”

Undaunted, she pointed out, “We’re both investigators.”

“Only in the broadest definition of the word,” he responded, this time gritting his teeth together. She was taking up precious time with this game of hers, he thought.

“Here,” she said, taking out her business card and holding it out to him. When he didn’t take it, she deliberately took his hand and pressed the card into it. “Believe it or not, I am very good at what I do and you might want to change your mind down the line,” she told him.

As Nik walked away, Finn looked down at the card in his hand. “I really doubt it,” he murmured.

“So, do you have anything for me?” Finn asked Valri as he entered the computer lab.

The petite woman glanced up at him from the monitor she had been reviewing now for hours.

“What I have is a huge headache right between my eyes,” Valri told him, massaging the bridge of her nose in an effort to chase away her headache. It didn’t work. “I think I’m going to be seeing Granddad’s car in my sleep for the next six months. However…” She shrugged as she indicated the monitor.

“So, nothing yet?” Finn asked, frustrated.

Valri’s mouth curved ever so slightly. “That’s what I like about you. You catch on fast.” She sighed, turning back to the monitor. “I’ll give you a call if I do find anything.”

“Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one step back,” he murmured. Locating all these surveillance tapes had been the two steps forward. But not finding anything on them felt like a giant step back.

“No time to talk about your dance lessons, Finn. I have a car to find,” Valri told him as she resumed her search.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “I’ll check with Ramirez and Collins, the two detectives I have canvassing the area. Maybe they came up with something useful.”

“There’s always hope,” Valri said, already blocking out his presence.

Other than the dog walker who had placed the 911 call that had brought out the paramedics, Finn and the other detectives and patrol officers working on the case weren’t able to find anyone who could add anything to the slim amount of information they already had.

The worst part of working a case, Finn decided, was that helpless feeling that took over when he ran into a wall.

Back at his desk, Finn closed his eyes and tried to think. There had to be something he was overlooking, a way he could get this case moving, he thought in frustration.

He sighed. After spending a day spinning his wheels and going nowhere, he decided that he needed to go somewhere for a few hours to unwind so he could think. For him, as for so many other law-enforcement agents, that meant either attending one of Uncle Andrew’s parties, or going to Malone’s, the local saloon that was so popular with the police department.

Since Andrew was currently involved keeping vigil over his father at the hospital—Seamus was still lapsing in and out of consciousness—that left Malone’s.

It was misting when he drove up to the popular saloon, a rare occurrence in its own right. It hardly ever rained outside of the rainy season. Finn couldn’t help wondering if this misting was some sort of an omen.

As a rule, Finn wasn’t superstitious, but there was a part of him that he admitted was open to things that he didn’t fully understand.

Walking into Malone’s, he looked around. For once the place wasn’t packed to the gills the way it usually was. Instead of taking a booth, Finn decided to make himself comfortable at the counter. He slid onto the barstool that was closest to him.

Because Malone’s was currently only half-full at this point, the patrons there provided just the right level of noise to allow him to completely submerge his thoughts. Finn promised himself that for the next half hour or so, he was not going to think about anything at all.

Looking all the way down the bar, he spotted Devin Wilson, the bartender who was tending bar tonight, and he waved at the stocky man. To Finn’s surprise, Devin made his way over toward him. He was holding a large, frosty mug in his hand.

He placed the mug in front of Finn.

“I didn’t order anything yet,” Finn pointed out. He didn’t always have the same drink and Devin wasn’t in the habit of second-guessing his patrons.

“No, you didn’t,” the retired police officer, who was one of the owners of the bar, agreed. And then he smiled. “But she did,” he told Finn, pointing toward the other end of the bar.

Finn looked to where Devin had indicated and saw the woman who had turned herself into his own personal royal pain raising her own glass toward him in a silent toast.

He frowned.

It was that annoying investigator woman.

Chapter 4

Glaring down the bar at the woman who Devin had pointed out, Finn made his way over to her. Without thinking, he automatically brought the glass with him.

Once he reached her, Finn asked her point-blank in a low voice, “Are you stalking me?”

Granted Malone’s was open to the general public, but it was a known fact that this was where law-enforcement officers gathered. By definition, that meant that this was supposed to be a haven for cops, not the place where he could be confronted by someone from the outside.

Finn watched as the woman’s lips curved. She obviously saw some humor in this, but he certainly didn’t, he thought.

“Well, considering that I was already here when you walked in, if anything, I could ask you that question.” Nik cocked her head as she looked up at the detective innocently. “So, are you stalking me, Detective Cavanaugh?”

Finn gritted his teeth. “You know the answer to that.”

“Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I don’t,” she answered. “Why don’t you pull up a stool and we’ll talk about it?” Nik gestured toward the empty stool next to hers. “Or about any subject you want, really. It doesn’t have to be about our mutual interest,” she told him.

Dark eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his nose. “We don’t have a mutual interest,” Finn informed her.

“Well, now, that’s not entirely true and you know it,” Nik pointed out sweetly. She paused then, fascinated as she studied his face. “Are you aware that your eyes shoot sparks when you hear something that annoys you?”

Finn laughed dryly as he assured her with feeling, “Oh, lady, I’m tired and frustrated and I am way past being annoyed.”

Nik shook her head. “You know, harboring feelings like that is really bad for your health, Detective,” she began, “if you want my advice—”

“I don’t,” he interrupted sharply.

Rather than back off, Nik continued as if he hadn’t said a thing, “I’d say that you should think about doing something about that.”

“Oh, I’m definitely thinking about it,” Finn assured her. “But unfortunately, what I’m thinking is against the law.”

Nik grinned as she lifted her glass to him, making another silent toast. “It’s reassuring to know you have a sense of humor,” she said.

There wasn’t even a hint of humor evident in Finn’s voice as he told her, “I wasn’t trying to be funny, Ko-val-ski.”

Nik nodded, as if she was evaluating his response to her. “Good deadpan, too,” she commented. Taking another sip of her drink, she waited until it wound down into her system, giving Finn enough time to relax a little—if that was even possible. “So, have you had time to think over my proposition?”

Just then, Miles Crawford, a detective with almost twenty years on the job, came up to the bar to get another refill. It was obviously not his first refill of the evening.

Crawford stumbled a little as he leaned against the counter and fixed Nik with a look. “If he doesn’t take you up on it, I’m free,” he told her.

Finn scowled at him. “Why don’t you try that again when you haven’t had a few too many, Crawford?” he suggested.

Crawford turned his head, then waited as his surroundings came back into focus. “Sorry, didn’t mean to tread on your territory,” he said, addressing Finn. “You Cavanaughs always do get the best pickings.”

That was not the impression he was trying to project. The scowl on Finn’s face intensified. “Nobody’s picking anybody and you owe the lady here an apology,” he informed Crawford.

“Yeah, yeah.” Crawford waved his hand at Finn. Leaning into Nik, he said, “Sorry you wound up with him.” Pushing his empty mug to the very edge of the counter, the older detective raised his voice and called out, “Fill her up, Devin.”

Finn pulled the empty mug over to his side. When Crawford glared accusingly at him, Finn said, “I think you’ve had enough for one night, Crawford. Why don’t I just call you a cab? You’re in no shape to drive anywhere.”

The other detective instantly took offense. “Who the hell died and made you boss of the world?”

“I did,” Devin informed his inebriated customer as he came up to Crawford’s end of the bar. “From where I’m standing,” he continued, “a cab sounds like a really good idea.”

Crawford’s scowl just grew deeper. “Don’t like other people driving me home, putting their hands all over me getting me in and out of the back seat of some guy’s cramped little car,” the police detective grumbled.

Devin spoke up. “It’s either that or sleeping it off on my sofa in the back office.” The bartender looked Crawford over, as if sizing him up. “You look a little big for the sofa.”

Resigned, Crawford sighed dramatically. “Okay, okay,” he said, surrendering. “Cab it is.”

“Smart. Hey, Dan, call this man a cab,” Devin called out to the man he had clearing off the tables.

“Sure thing, boss,” Dan McGuire answered. At six foot five, with a frame to match, it was easy to see that Devin had him doubling as a bouncer whenever the occasion arose. Luckily for Devin, it rarely did.

Exercising great care for a man his size, Dan slipped his arm around Crawford’s tilting form.

As Dan took the swaying detective in hand, Devin looked at Nik and aimed his apology at her. “Look, I’m sorry about that. The people here are usually a lot better behaved.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Nik assured the owner. “Trust me, I’ve been subjected to a great deal worse.” For a split second, she saw a look of mild interest flash in Finn’s dark green eyes, but then it receded as if it hadn’t existed at all. He was going to be a hard nut to crack, Nik thought.

Devin nodded in response to what she had just said. “Still, these are on me,” he told the woman and Finn, indicating the two tall foamy drinks before them on the bar.

With that, Devin moved away to give them the privacy he naturally assumed they were looking for.

Nik turned back toward Finn. “So?” she asked, waiting.

“So?” Finn questioned. Because of Crawford’s interjecting himself into the scene, he had lost the thread of whatever it was that she was asking him—and he was content to let it remain that way.

Because of the previous misunderstanding, Nik decided to reword her question. “Have you thought about what I said regarding our working together?” Before he could answer, she added, “Two heads are better than one, you know.”

Yeah, he’d thought about it, Finn thought. And he’d totally rejected the idea from the get-go. He knew she had to be bright enough to pick up on that. “You are annoyingly persistent, you know that?” he said to the woman.

Again, she smiled, as if they were sharing some sort of inside joke. “I think the word you mean is stubborn. Polish women are known to be very stubborn,” she told Finn. Before he could say anything, she added, “And if you think that I’m stubborn, you really should meet my sister.”

“I think I’ll just pass on that,” Finn told her in a flat tone. He hadn’t wanted to meet her, much less any other stray family member, he thought. All he wanted right now was just to get rid of her.

“Stubbornness really is an asset in my line of work,” Nik assured him. Hoping he might be weakening, she added, “You’ve got nothing to lose if we work together…and everything to gain.”

Finn finished off his beer in one long draw. It was clear to him that he was not about to get that peace of mind he’d come in for so he might as well leave.

“I’m not in the market for a hundred-pound headache,” he told her, putting his empty mug squarely down on the bar.

Nik considered his remark. He obviously was referring to her. “Flattering,” she called out to his back. “But I’m actually a hundred and twenty pounds.”

“Even worse,” Finn said over his shoulder as he walked out of Malone’s.

For a moment Nik thought about following him out and continuing to try to win him over, but although she was every bit as stubborn as she claimed, it wasn’t in her to try to wear him down by making a pest of herself. She was fairly confident that Cavanaugh would come around eventually.

And if he didn’t, she had other contacts to turn to. Contacts who would let her know if and when Finn Cavanaugh and his team made any headway in the search for Marilyn and why she’d been part of that carjacking.

She remained where she was, nursing her drink until she was certain that Cavanaugh had driven away, and then she left Malone’s.

The phone rang at a little after two o’clock in the morning, jarring Finn out of an unusually sound sleep. Focusing on the light his cell phone emitted, he was almost tempted to ignore it, thinking that that pushy woman had somehow gotten his phone number.

But being a cop was too ingrained in him to let his phone ring without answering it.

He picked up the cell and swiped open the screen. “Finn Cavanaugh,” he all but barked into the phone.

“Yeah, I know,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, Cavanaugh, but I think you’re going to want to hear about this.” Recognition sank in. The voice belonged to the man who was sometimes his partner, Joe Harley.

Sleep instantly evaporated from his brain. Instincts honed on the job, as well as at family gatherings, told him this had to be about his current case.

“Go on,” he urged.

“It looks like that woman who carjacked the chief’s father’s car might have just added murder to her list of offenses,” Harley told him.

Maybe he was sleepy, Finn thought. He wasn’t processing what Harley had just told him. Taking a breath, he waited for the information to make sense. “Start from the beginning,” he insisted.

“Okay.” Harley paused, then said, “A homeless guy looking for food in a Dumpster behind a restaurant found more than he bargained for.”

Impatience flared. “Harley, I’m not in the mood for games.”

“You’re even less fun after midnight than you are before,” his occasional partner complained. Enunciating very slowly, Harley told him, “A homeless guy found the body of a woman. She’s been dead for less than a day,” he added.

The way Harley had worded it, the body didn’t belong to their suspect. So why—? “And you’re telling me this because—?”

“The dead woman was clutching a piece of paper in her hand,” Harley said. “CSI managed to get a print off it.” He paused dramatically. “Guess who that print matches?”

At this point, Finn was really having trouble holding on to his temper. “Surprise me,” he said between gritted teeth.

“It belongs to that girl you’re looking for in connection with your granddad’s mugging.”

Since this investigation had started, he had already corrected Harley three times, explaining that Seamus was his grandfather’s brother, not his grandfather. He decided that there was no point in restating that fact to Harley again. Besides, that wasn’t the important part.

“Where’s the dead woman now?” Finn asked, throwing off his covers and getting out of bed. There was no way he was going to be getting back to sleep at this point.

“They just took her body to the medical examiner for an autopsy.”

So far, that was standard procedure. “And where are you?” Finn asked.

“Still at the crime scene.” There was a pause and Finn assumed that the man was checking with someone, or looking at a street sign. “McFadden and Adams,” Harley added.

“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Finn said, walking toward his closet to get his clothes.

“The CSI night-shift team is almost finished collecting all the data they found near and around the body,” Harley told him.

“Still want to see the crime scene for myself,” Finn said, juggling his phone against his ear as he pulled on his slacks. They might have overlooked something. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened, Finn thought.

Harley sighed. “Knew you’d feel that way. I’ll stay here.”

Almost dressed, Finn looked around for his shoes. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he promised.

“That’s about the only good thing about coming out at this time of night,” Harley responded. “There’s no traffic to hold you up.”

That didn’t mitigate the fact that he would have much rather slept through the night. “I’ll try to remember that,” Finn said just before he terminated Harley’s phone call.

Jake Newman, the head of the night-shift team, was just about to finish packing up so he and his people could leave, when Finn arrived. Newman’s perpetually pained look deepened as he looked up to see who had pulled up.

“Can I help you, Detective Cavanaugh?” the rather nondescript, slightly hunched man asked.

“Did you find out the victim’s name yet?” Finn asked as he came toward Newman.

Instead of answering him, Newman had a question of his own. “Things rather slow in the robbery division, I take it?” he asked as he snapped shut his kit.

Finn didn’t care for the man’s attitude, but he wasn’t about to get into an argument with him if he could help it. “I have reason to believe that this is tied into Seamus Cavanaugh’s carjacking case.”

Newman sighed. He knew when to back off. “I won’t have any answers for you until I’ve had a chance to go over everything. I’ll leave anything I find for your uncle on the day shift.” Newman couldn’t help himself and let off one zinger. “Or do you people just operate by using mental telepathy?”

“No telepathy,” Finn replied in a voice that was completely devoid of any emotion. “Just the regular forms of communication.”

Newman frowned, picking up his case. “I’ll try to remember that,” the night-shift CSI leader said coldly.

Finn bit his tongue to keep from uttering a retort. Mainly he did it because he realized that the somewhat belligerent night-shift leader was using some of the same chip-on-his-shoulder comments that he had used when he’d talked to that stubborn insurance investigator.

He didn’t care for being on the receiving end, he thought.

And she probably didn’t care for it, either, Finn admitted. He supposed that he owed her some sort of an apology.

Later.

It took him until five in the morning to finish going over the crime scene to his own satisfaction, and also to stop wrestling with his conscience. He found the business card that the insurance investigator had given him. At the time, to keep from littering, he had shoved the card into his pocket. And then promptly forgot about its existence.

Because he’d changed his clothes, it had taken him a little while to locate the card. When he finally did, he called the number printed on it, expecting to talk to a recorded announcement at best. He was prepared to leave a message.

He wasn’t prepared to hear the phone on the other end ring only once before it was picked up. And he definitely wasn’t prepared to hear her voice breathing huskily in his ear. Nor was he expecting to feel that warm shiver dancing down his spine in response.

“Hello?” He had woken her up, he thought. Why that threaded a warm, sexy feeling through him was completely beyond him—and definitely not welcome.

Recovering, he asked, “Is this the pushy pain in the neck?”

Any trace of sleep on Nik’s end vanished instantly. “Detective Cavanaugh, how lovely to hear from you. What can I do for you?” she asked.

He heard rustling on the other end and assumed that she was getting out of bed. He instantly shut down that image and forced himself to focus on the reason he was calling. “You can wipe that smile off your face for openers.”

Nik grinned. “I’m not smiling, Detective.”

There was no way he was going to believe that. “Yeah, you are.”

“And what makes you say that?” she asked, looking for her clothes. She wasn’t the neatest person when it came to her own things.

“Because you know I’m calling you because I—” He paused as he forced himself to form the words. She deserved to know why he was calling.

“Because?” she prompted, waiting.

It took him another minute before he could get the words out without choking on them. “Because I might need your help.”

Chapter 5

Finn’s somewhat surly, tersely worded statement left her speechless.

Almost.

“Wait,” Nik responded after a beat had passed by, “let me look outside my window and see if there are four horsemen riding up to my door.”

Finn blew out an annoyed breath. “What the hell are you talking about? What four horsemen?” he demanded. Was the woman still asleep, or was she just given to babbling nonsense?

“You know,” Nik answered him calmly, knowing that would probably irritate him even more. “Like the ones that are supposed to be approaching when the end of the world is coming.”

The biblical reference caught him off guard. His mind hadn’t been going in that direction. He’d been trying to make sense out of what she was saying.

“Very funny,” Finn retorted darkly. “Are you interested or not?” he demanded.

It was obvious to Nik that the detective was one second away from hanging up. She kept her voice cheerful as she backtracked.

“Oh, you had me at ‘because,’” she said. “I am definitely interested.” But he had also piqued her curiosity for another reason. “Am I allowed to ask you what caused this sudden change of heart?”

Finn knew that the insurance investigator would find out what had motivated him to call her once she got here, but every word he volunteered was uttered grudgingly. “A woman was found in a Dumpster last night.”

“Okay.” That didn’t really answer her question. Nik waited for more. When the detective didn’t enlighten her any further, she tried prompting him as she held her cell phone close to her. “And?” she asked as she pulled clothes out of the closet and quickly began to get dressed.

He knew why this was hard for him. He didn’t like asking for help, even if there was no way around it. Besides, he felt this somehow put her in the driver’s seat. “And they found a note in her hand.”

She felt as if she was pulling every word out of his throat. Calling her was his idea, not hers, but she refrained from pointing that out. She didn’t want him being any more defensive than he already was.

“What was in the note?” she asked.

Belatedly he realized that he hadn’t asked that question and thus had no answer for her. That was a grave oversight and one he wasn’t about to admit to. “That’s not the important part.”

“All right, what is the important part?” Nik queried. There had to be some sort of a connection for Cavanaugh to have called her.

“There was a partial thumbprint on the paper,” he said.

Nik finished pulling on her jeans and zipped them. “Let me guess. Marilyn’s?”

“Give the lady a cigar,” he said, imitating the voice of a game-show announcer. “You got it on the first try.”

Pulling her hair out from inside her sweater, she shook her head to let her hair fan out down her back. “Where are you?”

“Still at the scene of the crime,” Finn answered.

Getting information out of this man was definitely like pulling teeth—slowly. But at least she was getting it, she thought. That was something.

“And the scene of the crime is?” Nik asked, her voice going up at the end of the question.

“McFadden and Adams.”

She knew where that was. One of her favorite Mexican restaurants was located there.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she told him. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes. Finn did a quick calculation. If it took her twenty minutes to get here, that meant that she lived somewhere in his vicinity, he thought—unless she was coming from another direction, he amended. He supposed he could get Valri to find out where the annoying investigator lived—if he was really interested in finding out.

The next minute he decided that he would just be buying trouble if he went that route.

“All right, get a move on. I’ll wait,” he told the woman grudgingly.

Finn realized that he was saying the last part to a dead phone. The insurance investigator had terminated the call.

Saying a few choice words under his breath, Finn tucked away his cell phone.

Nik got to where the detective was waiting in just under seventeen minutes.

As she came to an abrupt stop, he stepped to the side and waited for her to get out of her car.

“How many lights did you go through?” Finn asked her the second Nik got out of her car.

“None.” Nik saw the skeptical look on Cavanaugh’s tanned, handsome face. “I learned how to time the lights,” she said. She could tell that he didn’t believe her, so she explained. “If you get the first one and keep going at a certain speed, you can catch a green light at all the intersections. I learned that from my dad.”

“Your dad,” Finn said.

He still sounded as if he thought she was making things up, she thought. “Yeah, my dad was part of the original work detail that put in the traffic lights back when Aurora was still in its planning stages.”

Finn didn’t really know how to respond to that. He certainly didn’t want to travel down memory lane with this woman, so instead he focused on the reason he’d called her in the first place.

“Let’s go. It’s this way,” he said.

Finn brought her to the location where the body had been discovered. They both looked over the area very carefully, although there really wasn’t anything to be found.

“I’m not really sure if this has any sort of a connection to the woman we’re looking for,” the detective admitted.

“You said there was a note,” she reminded him. That would mean a connection, Nik thought.

“Yes, and her thumbprint was on it, but for all we know, the dead woman might have just picked the piece of paper up and had it on her person when she was killed. I don’t know if it actually had anything to do with her murder.”

And she got the impression that he really didn’t know what was on the note, so there was no sense in asking him that again, Nik thought. She tried another tack. “How did the woman die?” Nik asked him.

That much he could tell her, even though the information was secondhand. “According to my partner, who called me, she was stabbed through the heart.”

Nik filled in the blanks from the way the detective worded his answer. “Then you didn’t see her?”

Finn looked at her sharply. “And what makes you say that?”

Nik answered automatically. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” she teased. Then, seeing that the man appeared to be in no mood for a lighthearted answer—why didn’t that surprise her?—she replied seriously. “It was the way you phrased your answer.”

“Well, you’re right.” She was surprised he actually admitted that. “They had already taken the body to the medical examiner when I arrived,” Finn told her, his voice sounding exceedingly serious.

Nik automatically glanced at her watch as she asked, “What time does the medical examiner’s office open?” She began to walk back to her car.

This was a mistake, Finn thought. He had really managed to open up a can of worms by calling her. Whatever she could add to the investigation, it wasn’t worth having to put up with this would-be insurance detective stomping through his investigation.

“Why do you want to know that?” he asked her.

She stopped and turned around. She would have thought the answer to that would have been pretty self-evident. “So we can confirm her time of death and the manner in which she was killed. Why are you asking me ‘why?’” she asked. “I know this isn’t your first investigation—and, believe it or not, it’s not mine, either. You called me so you obviously want me here. Why don’t you stop pretending that you find me annoying and let’s get on with this and be on the same page?” she told him.

“I’m not pretending about finding you annoying,” he replied. “But let’s just put that on hold for now.” This wasn’t just a mistake—this was a huge mistake. A huge mistake for a number of reasons. But he wasn’t about to say as much to her out loud. She would undoubtedly go on and on about that if he did.

Finn sighed. “All right,” he agreed like a man who was resigned to his fate, “but before we go anywhere, I want to make certain things perfectly clear.”

Uh-oh, here it comes, Nik thought, bracing herself for another lecture. “Such as?”

“Such as that as long as you’re with me on this investigation, you’re going to play by my rules. If I tell you to do something, you won’t argue with me, you’ll just do it.”

His wording left something to be desired. “First, I don’t think there’s going to be any time for ‘playing,’ Cavanaugh. And as for the second part of that ‘commandment,’ people have gotten into trouble adhering to that.”

He frowned. “This isn’t the time for cracking jokes, either,” he informed her. “Now, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”

“Oh, I take my job very seriously, Detective. I always have.” She looked up into his eyes, a silent challenge in hers. “How about you?”

“I take everything seriously,” he informed her somberly.

“I can believe that,” she quipped. “You know,” she continued, “that just might be your problem.”

About to get into his vehicle, he looked at her sharply. “Are you actually analyzing me?” he demanded.

Her expression was innocence personified. “No, just trying to be helpful.”

Yeah, right, he thought. “Well, don’t,” Finn ordered.

Nik cocked her head, looking at him. “Message received. To the medical examiner’s?” she asked, waiting for him to confirm that that was their next destination.

But it was obvious that Finn had a different idea. “You said you were friends with Marilyn Palmer’s mother—or was that an exaggeration?”

“No, that wasn’t an exaggeration.” She could feel herself getting annoyed and banked down the feeling. He probably didn’t realize that he was accusing her of making things up.

Pressing her lips together, she studied him for a moment, trying to decide whether working with this man was going to be a mistake. Well, she was here, so she might as well see where this led. But she did want to get something out in the open. “You don’t play well with others, do you?”

His expression darkened again. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you really don’t know me, but you just accused me of making things up to further what you assume is my agenda.” She waited for him to deny it—or to have an epiphany, if that was possible.

His darkened expression only lightened by a fraction. “Sorry if I insulted you,” he said sarcastically.

Finn wasn’t prepared for the smile that came over her face—it seemed to light up the whole immediate area, even though the sun had already risen.

“Okay,” she said brightly. “Apology accepted,” Nik told him.

He scowled at her. He didn’t like having her think he was apologizing for anything. “I take it you’re not acquainted with sarcasm.”

“Oh, I’m acquainted with it,” she assured him. “I was just hoping that your lack of social skills made what you meant as an apology sound as if you were being sarcastic.” She grew serious. “I think that if you stop thinking of me as someone interfering in your investigation and start thinking of me as an asset to utilize, we stand a chance of getting along a whole lot better.”

Finn chose not to reply to that. Instead, he told himself that the sooner he and the others working with him on this case could pull all the stray pieces together, the sooner he could be rid of this irritating woman.

At least he could hope.

“Do you think that Marilyn Palmer’s mother will be up yet?” he asked Nik.

“Oh, I know that she is,” Nik assured him. When he raised his eyebrow, appearing doubtful because of the hour, she explained. “She hasn’t really slept since Marilyn didn’t come home the other night.”

That wasn’t all that unusual, he thought. Nodding, he suggested, “Why don’t you lead the way?” And then he added, “Slower, this time,” he added.

“I didn’t speed,” she told him, throwing a grin over her shoulder. “I was just anxious to see you and, like I said, it turned out that all the lights were in my favor.”

There was laughter in her eyes, most likely at his expense, Finn thought. Ordinarily, he would have taken offense that she was laughing at him, but for some reason, he didn’t.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered. “Let’s get going,” he ordered, waving a hand at her car.

“I’ll go slow so you don’t lose me,” Nik said, remembering his instruction with a smile as she pulled open her driver’s-side door.

“I should be so lucky,” Finn murmured under his breath.

“I heard that, Detective,” Nik responded with a laugh.

“Just go. Don’t worry about losing me.” Even if she did, he had the address to the Palmer house.

Finn got into his vehicle. Again, he told himself that he really needed to have his head examined for having called this woman. Still, he supposed that there was an outside chance that this woman that Nik Kowalski was initially looking for was involved in not just Seamus Cavanaugh’s carjacking, but in the murder of the woman who had been found in the Dumpster as well.

In any event, he wanted to interview Marilyn Palmer’s mother and he had a feeling that taking this annoying blonde chatterbox with him to run interference might make things a little easier. She was right about one thing, he grudgingly acknowledged. He wasn’t as good as some of his cousins and siblings when it came to questioning people and getting them to trust him.

Finn started up his vehicle, pulled up directly behind her and they departed.

It didn’t take him long to realize that if this woman was driving any slower, she could have been accused of actually going backward.

He trailed behind the woman ahead of him for approximately three city blocks. Then, having had enough of this charade, he sped up and passed her.

Which was when she did the same thing.

Finn suppressed the urge to speed up again. He wasn’t usually competitive, but there was something about this woman with the laughing eyes that certainly had a way of pressing all his buttons, he thought.

This, too, shall pass, he promised himself.

Maybe it would, he thought, but definitely not soon enough for him.

They wound up reaching Kim Palmer’s house faster than he had intended. The modest one-story house had all the lights on despite the fact that it was now a little after seven in the morning. There was no need for so many lights to be on—unless they had been deliberately left on overnight to act as a beacon for her missing daughter.

“What was that all about?” Finn asked, getting out of his car at the same time that Nik emerged from hers.

She looked at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, her eyes wide.

“You started out going slow, but you sped up,” he told her.

“Oh, that,” she responded.