Praise for Marie Ferrarella

“Expert storytelling coupled with an engaging plot makes this an excellent read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Cavanaugh Undercover

“Strong writing, good pacing, sizzling chemistry and cool tension is plentiful in this lively read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

“A thrilling intrigue with just the right amount of sizzle to keep the pages turning faster and faster.”

—RT Book Reviews on Racing Against Time

“Marie Ferrarella brings readers back for a visit with her Cavanaugh Justice family and, once again, raw emotion, hot sex and real characters rule!”

—RT Book Reviews on The Strong Silent Type

“Sizzles with sexual tension, and the plot is edgy, dark and suspenseful. Ferrarella has penned a guaranteed page-turner!”

—RT Book Reviews on Internal Affair

“In Broad Daylight combines danger and conspiracy with breathtaking desire to produce an electrifying read!” —The Romance Readers Connection

“Ms Ferrarella creates fiery, strong-willed characters, an intense conflict and an absorbing premise no reader could possibly resist.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Match for Morgan

* * *

Be sure to check out the next books in this exciting new series: Cavanaugh Justice Where the law and passion collide …

Cavanaugh Fortune

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

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To Tahra Seplowin

Welcome to Happy Chaos

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

About the Author

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

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Detective Alexander Brody opened the front door of his ground-floor garden apartment, bent down and picked up the morning paper from his doorstep.

As was his habit every morning, he took the paper inside and dropped it on the counter beside his struggling coffee machine. The less than peak-performing machine was what commanded all of his attention at the moment. Gurgling, it gave every indication that it was just about in its last throes of life.

None of his coffeemakers were long-lived and he’d been through this before. Alex judged that he’d probably have to buy a new coffeemaker sometime in the latter half of next week—if not sooner. As a rule, he hated to shop, but this was more important than his dislike for standing in a checkout line. He could function fairly well with little to no sleep and a lot of other things, but he couldn’t function at all without that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Usually followed by a second cup—and a third if he was skipping breakfast.

The newspaper was part of his morning ritual, as well. Not that he usually had time to read it. Most days he took off a couple of minutes after he brought the paper into the apartment. Like so many of his under-thirty-five generation, most—if not all—of his news came from the internet. And, on occasion, from the radio he listened to while driving in to work.

Still, he wouldn’t dream of terminating his newspaper subscription. He considered it a tragedy that the written word was dying out. A great many newspapers around the country had already permanently closed their doors, ending, in his opinion, a fine old tradition. He was not about to add to that and help bury that longtime industry by withdrawing his support from the local Aurora paper. Though basically not an optimist, he did still hang on to the very clichéd belief that every little bit helped.

Alex had a soft spot in his heart for newspapers. He always had. For a while, when he was about ten or so, he had delivered newspapers to people’s doorsteps in an attempt to earn some money of his own.

Honest money.

Even then, honest money had been a rarity in his family.

But he’d tried.

Alex poured himself a travel mug’s worth of thick black liquid, guaranteed to wake up every fiber of his body whether he wanted it to or not. The people he worked with in the department claimed it could probably also be used to fix the cracks in the street asphalt.

Preoccupied, he wound up filling the mug too high. Some of the coffee escaped as he screwed on the top of the mug. Slipping down the sides of the steel-gray thermos, the black liquid began leaking onto the front page of the newspaper.

Swallowing a few choice words that normally didn’t get voiced until he was already a couple of hours into his shift, Alex reached for the dish towel hanging off the handle on his stove.

With quick movements he tried to wipe away the coffee before it blurred the front headline.

Which was when he read the words.

And how he wound up reading the article instead of leaving for work right at that point.

The headline that fairly screamed across the front page this morning was about a robbery. Specifically, a break-in in one of Aurora’s high-end developments. Apparently, according to the journalist covering the local story, it was the third such robbery of its kind in a short period. The owners of the house had been away in Europe and returned to find that their priceless art collection had been stolen.

Nothing else had been taken.

Alex read the article from start to finish, carefully taking in every word. A wave of nausea came over him as he read.

“Oh God,” he muttered under his breath as he came to the end of the article, no more reassured now than he had been when he’d started reading. “This isn’t you, is it?”

The question was addressed to a man who was not there.

Alex’s voice, and the question he’d asked, echoed about his small kitchen, haunting him with the possible implications.

Alex tossed the newspaper back on the counter. This was supposed to be behind him, he angrily thought.

Who are you kidding? It’s never going to be behind you.

The words, coming from deep inside him, taunted Alex.

The pinched, sick feeling he had been experiencing in the pit of his stomach accompanied him all the way to the precinct.

With luck, he’d catch a case and be distracted.

Alex crossed his fingers.

Chapter 1

Brian Cavanaugh, chief of detectives of the Aurora Police Department, was well aware of the very fine line that existed between nepotism and utilizing the right person for the right job. He’d walked that line countless times since assuming his present position.

To his own satisfaction, he had never been guilty of nepotism, although there were those who would swear differently. They were the ones whose potential did not measure up to the job and they found it easier to point fingers and complain than to undertake the hard work of evaluating and improving themselves.

Brian didn’t much care when the insults, born of bruised egos, were directed at him. After all his years on the force and in this chair, he’d become used to fielding the ones that needed to be dealt with and ignoring the ones that would die of their own accord. But he was always extra judicious because he did mind if the person he was singling out for a special assignment came under fire through no actual fault of his or her own, other than having the same surname as he did.

Granted there were a great many Cavanaughs spread through the different divisions within the police force, but as a rule, Cavanaughs worked twice as hard as the person beside them to do the job and prove that they had earned the right to be where they were. Not a single Cavanaugh had ever been promoted without first demonstrating that he or she not only had the necessary potential to do the job—whatever it might be—but also knew how to use it.

As was the case with the blonde, blue-eyed patrol officer who was currently standing, looking somewhat uneasy, before him in his office.

“You can sit, you know, Officer Cavanaugh,” he told the young woman.

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to stand.”

Standing made Valri Cavanaugh feel just a little more in control and slightly less vulnerable than if she were sitting, although in this particular situation, the petite blonde had a feeling that the nervousness wouldn’t abate even if she were hanging from the ceiling like a circus trapeze artist.

“I don’t mind,” Brian assured her in his easy, deep baritone voice. “But if you’re worried, I can guarantee that there won’t be any need for a quick getaway on your part.”

In response, Valri offered him a quick, somewhat embarrassed smile and then slowly lowered herself into one of the two chairs situated before his desk.

He couldn’t help noticing that his cousin Murdoch’s youngest daughter made contact with the seat as if she were anticipating being forcefully propelled out of it at any second. In what he could only assume was an attempt for stability, he observed her fingers wrapping around each of the armrests in what looked to be a death grip.

Her attention, however, appeared to be focused entirely on him.

“Do you know why I asked to see you, Officer Cavanaugh?” he asked gently, although ever mindful of the positions that separated them. Privately, he was family, but professionally, he was the chief of detectives and her ultimate superior. It was as the chief of Ds that he was presently speaking to this unusually gifted officer.

“No, sir,” Valri answered honestly, then added, the corners of her mouth curving ever so slightly, “but I think it might have something to do with computers.”

“It not only ‘might’ have something to do with computers, it most definitely does. The head of the computer lab recently brought your considerable skills to my attention.”

It was a known fact that the head of the computer lab was an absolute wizard with computers. She was also Brenda Cavanaugh, married to Detective Dax Cavanaugh and one of the chief’s daughters-in-law.

“She said that you were invaluable, taking on some of the overflow from her desk last month. She also mentioned that you recently helped get the goods on those two women who were killing senior citizens.”

The case had been an involved one that seemingly had no connection at first. These were older people with no families who were dying from what at first appeared to be heart attacks. After some considerable cyberdigging, it turned out that each of these people had crossed paths with two seemingly kindly volunteers who ingratiated themselves to the senior citizens and offered to take out and pay for insurance policies that would cover all their funeral expenses when the time came. The time, for all of them once they signed on the dotted line, came a lot quicker than anticipated.

One of the investigating detectives, Duncan Cavanaugh, had prevailed on his younger sister to do a little virtual research and she had been the one who had uncovered the insurance fraud.

“I’m glad I could help, sir,” Valri murmured, wondering where all this was going.

She had already met the man sitting behind the oak desk a number of times at her granduncle Andrew’s house. Tall, distinguished with a touch of gray at his temples, the man inspired loyalty and respect. She knew that he was always ready to listen, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of being informal with him in his office. This was the job. It required that she be a consummate professional in every way. The last thing she would have wanted was for the chief of Ds to think she was trying to cash in on the fact that she was a Cavanaugh and related to him.

Suddenly finding out that there was a large branch of the family in Aurora had motivated her to apply for the police department here instead of remaining where she was, on the force in Shady Canyon, the city she had grown up in. But she hadn’t done that with the idea of advancement foremost in her mind.

She’d also come here because she wanted to get to know her relatives better. After all, it wasn’t every day that a person discovered there was a whole cache of relatives less than fifty miles away whose paths had never crossed their own.

“CSI Cavanaugh tells me that you’re quick and extremely good at what you do,” Brian went on, referring to his daughter-in-law. Brian watched the young officer closely as he spoke.

She didn’t preen in response to the praise, which was in her favor, he thought.

“She was being kind,” Valri told him.

While she loved being appreciated and complimented, those were the very things that also caused Valri to fidget somewhat. She never knew quite what to say when she was on the receiving end of merited praise.

“Yes, CSI Cavanaugh is kind,” Brian agreed. “But at the same time, she makes a point of being very accurate. Being in a league of her own, she is not impressed easily. And you, Officer Cavanaugh, impressed her, which is enough for me.”

“Enough, sir?” Valri clearly didn’t understand what the chief meant by that.

“Hunter Rogers was found dead in his apartment this morning,” Brian told her, then asked, “Is that name familiar to you?”

She knew the name and the man. There’d been a time when her sphere of interest had been completely different from what it was now. Now her life was all about law enforcement and family. Then it had been the captivating and addictive world of gaming. In leaving that world behind, Valri felt she had definitely traded upward.

“He’s a gamer, sir. Rogers makes—made,” she corrected, taking what the chief had just said into account, “his living taking on challengers in competitions around the country. He was always the one to beat,” she added. “In the last year, he more or less disappeared off the grid. He’s dead?” she questioned, surprised. She would have expected the man to have turned up playing in some tournament, not this.

Brian nodded. “He was murdered.” The case, only a few hours old, had come to his attention rather quickly. Moreover, his gut told him that there was more to this than just possibly an argument that had gone wrong. “Turns out that he might have been a little bit more than just a gamer.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Valri asked.

Brian noticed that the young officer was no longer clutching the armrests, nor was she perched on the edge of her seat, ready to take off. Her whole body appeared to be focused on what he was telling her.

“Rogers was shot from behind and whoever did it also smashed his laptop.”

Now her interest was really aroused. Uncooperative computers had a way of igniting tempers like nothing else could. She’d known people who’d lost their tempers with computers to such an extent that they’d punched the keyboard or thrown their laptop on the floor, but this sounded as if there had been more involved than a flash of temper.

“Smashed, sir?” she asked, hoping he would dole out a few more details describing what had been involved in this murder/machine-icide he was informing her about.

Brian sat back in his chair, telling the young woman he’d summoned the details he’d been given so far.

“The detective on the scene said it looked as if a sledgehammer had been taken to it. Someone apparently wanted to get rid of whatever was on that computer. The quickest way would have probably been to take the laptop with them and then wipe out the hard drive, but I’m guessing whoever did it didn’t want to take a chance on being caught with Rogers’s computer.” Brian watched her expression as he gave Valri his theory. “And I’d assume that taking a sledgehammer to a laptop pretty much renders it a total loss.”

“Not every time,” she told the chief, choosing her words carefully. It wasn’t something she was accustomed to doing. For the most part, she talked to coworkers and friends, not superiors, and while she didn’t babble, there was always an unbridled enthusiasm to her tone. One that she was consciously restraining.

Brian looked at her with interest. “Oh? So the information on the hard drive wasn’t completely destroyed?”

“There might still be data that can be lifted,” she told him. She didn’t want to raise the chief’s hopes too high, but at the same time, there was a very small chance that all was not lost. “It depends on how hard the hammer came down on the laptop, the angle it hit, things like that.”

It was a whole new world out there than when he had been this officer’s age, Brian thought, silently marveling at what he was hearing. “You mean that the data might be retrievable?”

“Not all of it,” she was quick to qualify, again not to raise his hopes too high. “But it’s conceivable that a little here and there might have been spared and could still be gathered—but it won’t be easy,” she warned.

“Nothing worthwhile ever is,” Brian said, more of an aside than as a direct comment. “If I gave you the laptop to look over, do you think that you might be able to extract the data—provided that it can be extracted?” he added.

Brian wanted the young officer to know that there was no pressure attached to the directive. He didn’t expect miracles. But if there was one to be had, from what he had been told, he felt that she was the one to pull it off.

Valri took in a deep breath before answering. “I’d do my best, sir,” she told him.

“Can’t ask for anything more than that,” he told her. “Officer Cavanaugh, I’m going to pull you off your present assignment and set you up with a desk and a computer in Homicide.”

“Homicide?” she repeated, surprised. She had just assumed that if the chief wanted her to do tech work, that her desk would be down in the computer lab, where the rest of the CSI unit was located along with all of its specialized equipment.

“That’s where the case initially landed. The man is dead,” Brian reminded her.

“Right.” For a second, focusing on what the chief was saying about the laptop, the homicide had slipped her mind. Valri cleared her throat, which drew the chief’s attention to her. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir,” she interjected.

“Ask any question you want, Officer Cavanaugh,” he told her. “This is the time to clear things up.”

She knew that he really didn’t have to answer this. Law enforcement agents had the luxury of deflecting questions by saying that the answer would compromise an ongoing investigation. It was an all-purpose excuse that cast shadows on any beams of light that might be attempting to squeeze their way out.

But she knew she at least had to make the attempt to find out the basics here.

“What is it about this gamer, about Hunter Rogers, that makes his laptop important enough for you to try to get it resurrected?” It had to involve something other than his gaming strategies, but what?

“Turns out that Rogers wasn’t just a gamer, he was a hacker,” Brian told her. “And as for his laptop, we’re trying to find out if something on there got him killed—or possibly, might get someone else killed.” At present, he had no idea what they were up against, and it frustrated him no end. He didn’t like operating blindly.

Valri watched the chief. “You’re thinking that whoever killed Hunter knew what was on his laptop and what? Decided to save the world from it?”

“Not exactly,” he corrected her misconception. “We’re thinking that whoever killed Rogers wants to use whatever is on the computer and doesn’t want to share that information with the rest of the class.” He spread his wide palms on top of his desk blotter and leaned slightly forward for a better look into her eyes. He found a good many of his answers there when he spoke to people. “So, Officer Cavanaugh, are you up for this?”

Valri could barely sit still and contain the energy that she felt surging through her. “I love a challenge, sir.”

Brian smiled, nodding his head. He’d made the right call. “So I’ve heard.”

“Where is the laptop now, sir?” Valri wanted to know.

“Temporarily, it’s still locked up down in Homicide,” Brian told her. “Detective Brody has custody of it at the moment. Are you acquainted with Detective Alex Brody?” he asked.

The name was vaguely familiar, but she had no idea why. Most likely she’d overheard it being mentioned by one of the other uniforms. In any case, she had no personal recollection of the man.

Valri shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Well, you will be. I’m having the two of you partner up for this case. Temporarily,” he added on.

“He’s good with computers, too?” she asked, assuming that was why the chief was putting the two of them together.

Brian laughed rather heartily in response to her question. Valri had her answer before the chief opened his mouth and said a word.

“Not to hear him tell it. But Detective Brody is good with people and he’s a damn fine detective to boot.” He could see by the look on his younger cousin’s face that she was trying to follow his reasoning and she wasn’t succeeding. “I’m putting the two of you out in the field together,” he explained. “You’ll each supply strengths that the other is lacking.”

“Won’t Detective Brody feel resentful, being paired up with a beat cop?” she asked. She wasn’t a rookie, but she had a feeling that Brody would think of her in that light.

“Possibly,” Brian acknowledged. “Which is why I’m issuing you a temporary promotion to detective for the duration of this investigation.”

“Promotion? To detective?” she repeated in an awed whisper, never taking her eyes off the chief. “Seriously, sir?”

Valri was certain that at any second now, he’d come back to his senses, say he’d made a mistake and apologize just before he told her that she was going to remain a patrol officer.

“You have a problem with that, Officer Cavanaugh?” he asked her in all seriousness.

“What? Oh no, sir. No, I don’t. It’s just that—” Her words all but evaporated as her voice trailed off into something that sounded like a squeak.

“It’s just that...?” he repeated, waiting for her to finish her sentence.

She had to be honest with him. Yes, she had joined the police force with dreams of eventually making detective. But even in her wildest dreams, it took some time to get there. She’d been on the force only a little over two years.

“I didn’t expect to have it happen so fast,” she finally said.

A comfortable as well as comforting smile slipped over his lips. “Life happens fast, Officer Cavanaugh. We have to try to keep up. And besides, the promotion is temporary, not permanent,” he reminded her. “At least, not yet,” he added with an encouraging note in his voice. “But it’s been my experience that as a whole, Cavanaughs are a very tough bunch to keep down.” His eyes held hers. “I’d like to believe that the same can be said for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Valri replied with conviction, beaming. The next second, she realized that it probably sounded to the chief as if she was bragging so she made an attempt to backtrack and say something a bit more humble. “I mean, I’m not trying to get you to think that I—”

“One thing you will learn, Officer,” Brian said, raising his voice and cutting through her statement, “is that no one ‘gets’ me to think anything.”

“No, sir,” she responded quickly, then realized that she was interrupting him while he was talking. “I mean—sorry, sir.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, Officer. And I’m proud to say that I’ve never been known to bite a single officer, so relax, Officer Cavanaugh.”

“Easier said than done, sir.”

He laughed then at the simple truth she had uttered in desperation.

“Yes, I imagine that it is,” he agreed with a soft chuckle. “So, tell me—and think carefully—are you up for this?” he asked her again.

There was no hesitation in Valri’s voice this time as she gave him her answer. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded, pleased.

“Good.” And then he hit the button on his intercom, connecting him to his administrative assistant out front. “You can send him in now, Raleigh,” he told the woman who had once patrolled the streets of Aurora, along with Lila, his wife.

“Right away, sir,” the feminine voice on the intercom promised.

The next moment, the door to Brian’s inner office was being opened and a tall, broad-shouldered detective with dirty-blond hair that was slightly longer than regulation dictated came walking in as if he owned every square inch of space he passed.

Sparing an appreciative glance at the officer sitting in front of the chief of Ds—Brody was not one who didn’t take note of beauty wherever he came in contact with it—the detective then focused his attention entirely on the man who he’d been told had requested his presence in his office.

Alex had spent his morning with a dead man in a dingy apartment that desperately needed a thorough cleaning and a massive dose of fresh air. The chief’s immaculate, spacious office was a very welcome contrast.

Alex stood behind the only empty chair in the room, waiting to find out if this was going to be something he needed to sit down for, or if this was just a quick, “touch base” sort of a meeting.

“You sent for me, sir?” he asked the chief.

Brian smiled. Gesturing for the young detective to sit down, he said, “I did indeed, Detective Brody.”

Chapter 2

“Detective Brody, this is Officer Valri Cavanaugh,” Brian told the new arrival. “Officer Cavanaugh, this is Alexander Brody, the homicide detective who caught the case we were discussing.”

Alex nodded at the woman to his left. Surprised when she put out her hand to him, he shook it belatedly, then glanced back at the chief.

“One of yours, sir?”

He’d put it in the form of a question, but the query was obviously rhetorical in nature. It was a given that all the Cavanaughs were related to each other in one way or another. It was one of the first things he’d learned when he came out of the academy and joined the Aurora PD.

The second thing he’d learned was that having all these related people around him was not really such a bad thing. The ones he had encountered so far—especially the detectives he’d worked with—were all at the top of their game.

The chief gave him an indulgent smile. “You’re all ‘one of mine,’ Detective,” Brian informed him.

Coming from anyone else, the words might have sounded a bit patronizing, but because of everything he’d heard—and his own limited experience with the man—the chief of Ds actually meant that. Brian Cavanaugh had been around for quite a while and he regarded everyone on the force as part of his extended family.

And, like a family, members were to be kept safe whenever possible, and when it became necessary, they all pulled together to get the job done and protect their own. Anything short of that was deemed unacceptable.

The funny thing was, Alex knew for a fact that nearly everyone tried to live up to those standards to the very best of their ability.

“Sorry, sir,” Alex apologized to the chief. “I meant no disrespect.”

“None taken,” Brian replied. “Let’s get down to business,” he continued, drawing his chair in closer and leaning forward over his desk. “Lieutenant Latimore tells me that you caught the last case.”

“Are you referring to the gamer who was found dead this morning?” Alex asked, wanting to be completely certain that he and the chief were talking about the same murder. When the chief nodded, Alex confirmed what the man already knew. “Yes, sir, that’s mine.”

Brian had one last piece of information he wanted to verify before going ahead with his plan. “Lieutenant Latimore also told me that your partner’s currently laid up in the hospital.”

Alex nodded. The incident was only a week in the past. “Detective Montgomery had a slight difference of opinion with a suspect driving a Jeep Cherokee SUV. The suspect thought he’d win the argument by running my partner over.”

“As I recall, you shot him from quite a distance. Most people play it safe and go for a kill shot from that far away, but you didn’t,” Brian said.

“He can’t talk if he’s dead, sir,” Alex told him simply.

“Very true,” Brian agreed. His eyes never left the detective’s. “Detective, I’m going to be giving you a temporary partner for this assignment.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex replied stoically.

He was trying his best to have his mouth offer at least a half smile, but he wasn’t quite succeeding at the moment. He was having better luck at steeling himself for what he sensed was going to be a bomb landing squarely on him.

Brian laughed softly. “It’s a temporary partnership, Detective. Not a life sentence,” Brian told the detective. “Loosen up a little.”

“Of course, sir,” Alex answered, struggling to restrain his uptight feeling, or at the very least, to keep it from showing. But he had worked long and hard to get to this position within the police force. He hadn’t done it to be turned into what, in his book, amounted to a glorified babysitter.

He slanted another, longer look at the officer sitting in the other chair. Even though she was in uniform, wearing her dress blues, she still seemed more like a cheerleader playing dress-up for Halloween than an actual police officer.

Judging by her face alone, he wouldn’t have said that she was actually old enough to be wearing the uniform. But she had to be, right? He sincerely doubted that the chief would have bent the rules and gotten her into the academy if she were underage. That wasn’t the kind of thing that Brian Cavanaugh would do.

Besides, that sort of thing was out of the chief’s hands, as far as he knew.

Still, none of that changed the fact that he felt as if he were being asked to supervise a totally wet-behind-the-ears beat cop.

Alex had never been the kind of man who stewed about something in private until it all but exploded inside him. Though restraint was his first order of business, if there was something he couldn’t docilely accept, the thought of registering a complaint was not beyond him. He didn’t want to rock the boat—this was the first professional interaction he’d had with the chief—but he wasn’t about to meekly accept the situation without a few facts.

“Could I ask why, sir?”

“Why what?”

“Why me?” Alex asked bluntly, for once not relying exclusively on his ability to charm people. The chief, he well knew, was a man who appreciated directness.

Brian paused for a long moment, studying both his cousin and the young detective. “You mean why am I saddling you with someone who is completely green when it comes to being out in the field as a detective?” Brian asked.

“Not exactly in those words,” Alex replied a tad uneasily, aware that the officer was looking at him intently. “But, well, yes. I’m really not much good at teaching anyone anything.”

It wasn’t modesty that prompted the disclaimer but rather honesty. He knew his strengths, of which he felt he had many, and his weaknesses. Mentoring or, more bluntly, teaching was among the latter.

The chief’s mouth curved ever so minutely. “Actually, I thought that Detective Cavanaugh—” he glanced toward his niece and saw that she brightened at the sound of her new title “—might be able to teach you a few things.”

Alex blinked. Now he was really lost.

“Sir?” Alex asked, requesting an explanation for that last statement.

“You’re dealing with a dead gamer who, I’m told, was also rather a well-known and proficient hacker. Both professions, from all indications, do not promote lasting friendships. It’s more of a case of the exact opposite being true. A lot of people hated this man’s guts. His ego, his bravado, all that made Hunter Rogers a walking target.

“I want to find out who decided to indulge in target practice and why. I also want to find out if Rogers’s laptop can be salvaged.”

There, at least, he could offer the chief some definitive information—or so he believed. “Only if you’re interested in hanging on to a very unique doorstop,” Alex told him.

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew what he’d just said was wrong. The look on the chief’s face said as much.

“You and I see it that way,” Brian said. “But that’s where Detective Cavanaugh comes in.” He gestured toward her. “She thinks that there might be something that can be saved on that laptop.”

Alex remained unconvinced and he shook his head, contradicting what the chief had just said.

“No way,” Alex said firmly, then turned toward the woman and said, “No offense, Officer, but I saw it and you didn’t. That thing is now just a thin, broken waffle.”

Her interest fully engaged, she wasn’t about to let the detective stand in her way. “Then you won’t mind me looking it over.”

Alex shrugged. He knew when fighting city hall was useless. And this was one of those times. “Hey, knock yourself out. Look all you want. You still won’t find anything.” He turned back toward Brian. “It’s a waste of time, sir.”

“Duly noted, Detective,” Brian replied in a tone of voice that told Alex the chief still intended to have this pseudo-detective take a look at it.

Well, it was her time to waste, Alex supposed. And if she was busy playing detective and attempting to resurrect that wreck of a laptop, well, then, she wouldn’t be getting underfoot and in his way, would she? And, if for some remote reason she did find a scrap of viable information on the laptop, so much the better. Alex saw it as a win-win situation.

“Take her up to Homicide,” Brian instructed the detective. “I’ve given permission for Detective Cavanaugh to take over a desk and a computer. She’ll be using Montgomery’s for the time being, until he gets back,” he told Alex.

“And then what, sir?” Alex asked. He wasn’t one to plan too far ahead, but he did believe in having something in place against a future that didn’t treat slackers kindly.

“Well, by then I expect you and Detective Cavanaugh to have the murder solved,” Brian informed him in a voice that could be described only as confident. “That’ll be all for now,” he told the duo, dismissing them. “Oh, and Detective?”

Both he and the cheerleader he’d been saddled with said “Yes?” at the exact same moment. Alex did his best not to appear annoyed.

Brian smiled at the stereo response. “Keep me posted,” he instructed before getting back to reviewing the report that was currently on his desk.

“Yes, sir,” Alex replied, trying not to clench his jaw too hard.

“Absolutely!” Valri declared happily.

Alex suppressed a sigh. It was going to be a very long investigation.

As they left the outer office and went into the hall to get the elevator, Valri found she was having trouble containing a surge of enthusiasm.

“This is exciting,” she announced, feeling as if her feet were barely touching the ground. Just this morning, she’d been wondering how long it would take her to work her way up to detective, and now here she was, trying the role on for size. It just did not get any better than this.

Reaching the elevator half a step before Alex did, she pressed the up arrow and continued talking to her new partner.

“I mean, it’s not exciting for Hunter. He’s dead. But this is going to be my first case.” That wasn’t quite accurate, so she backtracked a little. “Well, my first case that I get to solve. All the other times, I just got to be there at the start, putting up yellow tape, taking notes, then handing them over to the detectives who took the case.”

She was fairly floating as she continued, taking no notice of the fact that there was no feedback coming from her tall, dark blond, handsome green-eyed partner.

The elevator car arrived, opening its doors slowly.

“But this time around, I get to be a detective. God, I hope I don’t screw up,” she said as she got into the elevator car.

“That makes two of us,” Alex said under his breath. He hadn’t intended for her to hear, but she did. Rather than insult her, it seemed to reinforce what she was thinking.

“You can tell me when I’m out of line,” Valri told him. Then, as if he’d said something to decline this request, she went on to assure him that criticizing her would be all right. “I’m the youngest in my family and I’m used to being criticized, so you won’t hurt my feelings.”

Right now, hurting this effervescent officer’s feelings was the furthest thing from his mind. “Good to know.”

If she heard the sarcasm in his voice, she gave no indication.

“Have you been a detective long?” she asked as the doors again opened on the fifth floor and she fairly bounced out of the elevator.

He spared her a glance. “Longer than you.”

Again, Valri didn’t appear to take any offense at his tone. “Everyone’s been a detective longer than I have,” she said with a laugh that he would have thought was charming if he wasn’t currently being so annoyed at the spot he found himself in.

It wasn’t that he resented getting a new partner, temporarily or otherwise. He’d had a couple already, and besides, it was the chief’s prerogative to pair up anyone he wanted. But what he did resent was the unspoken instruction that he needed to watch over this chattering blue-eyed blonde magpie and make sure that he returned her to the chief at the end of this assignment in the same condition that he’d received her.

That meant he couldn’t strangle her.

Granted, this energized temporary detective was very easy on the eyes, and in another scenario he might have even made a play for her. Beautiful women were a weakness for him even though he changed them a little more frequently than he had his jackets dry-cleaned.

But this wasn’t another scenario, it was this scenario and she was a Cavanaugh, which, drop-dead gorgeous or not, meant hands off unless, of course, he wanted to risk losing those same hands.

The moment he walked into the Homicide Division with her, he saw heads turning in their direction. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was as if they’d tripped some sort of an invisible wire that immediately set off a silent alarm, heard only by the other homicide detectives who populated the squad room.

Heads turned and conversations slowly died out. Alex knew they weren’t looking at him. It was a given that news traveled approximately at the speed of light around the building.

If he hadn’t already figured it out before, he could see now that his new albatross wasn’t shy. Leaving his side for the moment, she worked the room, waving and saying “hi” to just about everyone and, from all appearances, schmoozing with various people in the department.

Detective Albatross was probably related, in one way or another, to all of them. Which meant that all eyes would be on them—and on him—to see if they were doing a good job.

If he was doing a good job mentoring her.

This was going to be a challenge, Alex thought grudgingly. A definite challenge for him, both as a detective and as a man. He would have to be sharp as the former and very hands-off as the latter.

The first part was not going to be nearly as much of a challenge as the second.

He waited as Valri made the various rounds through the room. He didn’t bother calling her over or saying anything to her until she finally rejoined him.

“I didn’t realize there were so many Cavanaughs in Homicide,” she told him.

“Murder attracts them, I guess,” he quipped. “Now, if you’re finished playing homecoming queen, I’ll show you where your desk is.”

“Brody, are you annoyed with me for some reason?” she asked, following him.

“What possible reason could I have to be annoyed with you?” he asked sarcastically, thinking that would put her off for a little while.

He should have known better.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” she told him.

“I’m not annoyed,” he lied. “Just preoccupied.”

“With the case?” she asked.

He bit his tongue and gave her the appropriate answer, not the real one. “Yeah, with the case.”

She turned her face up to him and smiled. “Then let’s get started.”

He couldn’t strangle her here—or even vent. There were too many witnesses. All he could do was mentally shrug and let it go.

Alex brought her over to his desk. Butted against it was Jake Montgomery’s desk. The contrast between the two work surfaces was like night and day.

When it came to neatness, Alex was definitely not a stickler, but his desk looked like the last word in tidiness when compared with Montgomery’s. His partner’s desk had been officially dubbed no-man’s land the first week the guy had taken it over. Alex used to say that Montgomery never met a scrap of paper he didn’t like.

He had no idea how Montgomery could lay his hands on reports when he needed them, but the man could and he did, each and every time. Alex figured that a little bit of magic was involved, but he asked no questions, afraid of the answer he might get.

Now that he thought of it, the very sight of Montgomery’s desk might make this pseudo-detective turn tail and run.

“That’s your desk,” he told Valri, gesturing at the piece of office furniture hidden beneath piles and piles of papers, files and old candy wrappers. “Computer’s right there—somewhere,” he added since at the moment, the laptop that Montgomery was using just before he landed in the hospital was not visible.

His guess was that it had to be buried somewhere beneath all the various documents.

Valri stood in front of Montgomery’s desk, stunned. She was definitely not a neatness freak, but this was a whole different ball game. She glanced toward her partner to see if he was putting her on. But he looked dead serious.

“How can you tell?” she asked Alex, eyeing the disaster area.

The papers were all precariously stacked and she had a feeling that if she tried to remove so much as a single page, an avalanche would result. Maybe this was some sort of a prank that was religiously played on the “new kid” on the block. She glanced in Alex’s direction, hoping to be proved right.

His expression gave nothing away.

“Easy. I remember seeing it there just before he wound up in the hospital. He used it every day,” Alex told her.

Valri squared her shoulders. “Okay. If you say so,” she said as she began to feel around in the general vicinity, spreading her long, graceful fingers beneath the scattered papers.

Alex thought it would take her a while to locate the laptop, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that like most of her family, Valri was born with a stubborn streak that wouldn’t allow her to give up. It had her tackling each challenge as if she was competing for first place in a marathon. Nothing less would do.

Within a few minutes, she was grinning broadly, her eyes all but dancing as she glanced up at Alex. He found himself wishing that she looked more like his absent partner than a beauty pageant winner—bubbly, with a flawless complexion and what looked to be killer curves beneath her clothes. His partner was 0 for 3 in that department. “You’re right,” she cried, sounding as if she had just located buried treasure rather than an MIA laptop. “It’s right here.”

Almost in slow motion, Valri extracted the laptop from beneath a pile of papers, careful not to dislodge any of the documents.

To Alex’s surprise, she actually managed to do it, leaving the stacks upon stacks of papers almost exactly the way they were.

And then, as she held up the laptop for his benefit and her own delight, it happened. As if the piles of papers had been set on a ten-second delay timer, suddenly the less than well-ordered stacks began to fall, fast and furious, to the floor right before her feet.

And on her feet, as well.

Within seconds, there was an entire off-white mountain of papers engulfing her practically up to her knees.

Chapter 3

“Brody, what’re you trying to do, lose another partner before she even gets started by burying her alive in Montgomery’s useless garbage?”

The sharply voiced question came from behind Alex. He didn’t have to turn around to know who the gravelly voice belonged to. Only one person in the squad room talked like that. Len Latimore, the lieutenant who had recently taken over the Homicide Division, had a voice that sounded as if he had spent the past twenty-nine days drinking hard liquor that went down anything but smoothly.

“I’m not trying to bury her, Len,” Alex said, although now that he thought of it, that didn’t sound like altogether a bad idea. “She was trying to locate Montgomery’s laptop, which was supposed to be in there somewhere.”

Of medium height and build, and appearing as if he were permanently rumpled, Latimore scowled as he circumvented the off-white avalanche around the newest addition to the division.

“Looks like she found a lot more than that.” If there was anything Latimore hated, it was clutter not of his own making. “Get a large box out of the supply room and clean this stuff up,” he instructed.

“Yes, sir,” Valri responded. She’d just assumed, since she was low woman on the totem pole and, after all, she had been the one to disrupt the precarious stacks in the first place, that the lieutenant was talking to her. “Which way is the supply room?” she asked.

“Not you,” Latimore snapped. “You, I want to see in my office. You—” he turned to face Alex “—can get all of Montgomery’s junk cleared away.”

“Montgomery’s going to want all this when he gets back,” Alex pointed out. It wasn’t that he was particularly fond of the mess that his partner made, but he knew how he would have felt if someone had come and moved all of his things while he was in the hospital, especially since he’d been put there by job-related injuries.

“Yeah, well, what he wants and what he gets are two damn different things. This isn’t his squad room, it’s mine, and I don’t want to see this when I come out again,” he warned, pointing to all the papers scattered on the floor around the chief’s cousin. “Do I make myself clear?”

“It’s my fault, sir.” Valri was quick to speak up. “I caused the papers to fall.”

The last thing she wanted was for this to cause any hard feelings between her and Brody. She might still be green, but she knew that wasn’t the way to start a new partnership, temporary or otherwise.

Latimore’s frown deepened. “I’m not talking about whose ‘fault’ it is, Cavanaugh. I’m talking about cleanup.

“In my office, Cavanaugh,” Latimore ordered gruffly. “Now.”

Valri had no choice but to do as she was told. She couldn’t risk getting the lieutenant any angrier than he already seemed to be. Otherwise, she would have remained to help clean up the blizzard of pages before she went into the short, bull of a man’s office.

Valri glanced over her shoulder at her partner. She fervently hoped that the detective wouldn’t hold this against her. He didn’t look overly thrilled to be working with her to begin with. Having to clean up a mess she had caused, accidentally or not, was only going to make matters worse.

She was acutely aware of garnering covert glances as she followed the lieutenant to his office.

Reaching the glass-enclosed lair that looked barely larger than a small walk-in closet, Latimore waited impatiently until she had crossed the threshold. The second she did, he closed the door behind her.

He walked to his desk and sat down, waving at the chair that faced him and expecting her to take the hint. When she didn’t, he ordered, “Sit,” as if he were training a dog. Rumor had it that Latimore was better with dogs than he was with people.

Valri didn’t remember bending her knees and dropping into the chair, but she must have because the next moment, she was sitting and uneasily facing the lieutenant.

All but holding her breath, she waited for the man to speak.

Not one for being delicate or standing on ceremony, Latimore got right down to the question he wanted resolved.

“You got any trouble looking at dead people?”

For a moment, the question caught her completely off guard. Of all the things she had anticipated that Latimore could ask her, this was not one of them.

“I don’t know,” Valri answered honestly after a beat. “I’ve never looked at a dead person.”

Latimore grunted. He didn’t look as if he was satisfied with her answer. “How long have you been on the force?”

“A little more than two years, sir.”

“And in all that time, you never saw a dead homicide victim?” he questioned skeptically.

“No, sir. I’ve dealt with a couple of victims who had been shot, but they were still alive. Mostly,” she enumerated quickly for his benefit, “I’ve dealt with break-ins, home invasions and robberies.”

“How do you think you’ll react to seeing a dead body?” he asked.

She took a breath before answering. “It’s not something I’d look forward to, but it’s part of the job.” And she was here to do her job.

Latimore looked far from satisfied, scowling at her. “Not answering my question, Cavanaugh. If you’re going to fall apart, I need to know up front—like now,” he emphasized, narrowing his eyes as he pinned her with them.

“I’m not going to fall apart because it is part of my job,” she replied in a surprisingly calm manner, given her penchant for bubbliness. “I wouldn’t be much good to Brody or the victim if I fell apart,” she added. Not to mention that she would have felt that she was letting down a whole legion of Cavanaughs, both here and in Shady Canyon.

Latimore rocked back in his chair, which squeaked to signal the new position. His small brown eyes never left her face. “So you’re telling me it’s mind over matter for you, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant surprised her with a quick, spasmodic smile as he nodded his approval. “Good. Oh, and one more thing.”

So near and yet so far, she thought, all set to escape only to be pulled back. “Yes, sir?”

“That laptop that was found near the body, you really think you can get something off it?” There was genuine interest in his voice rather than any condescending note, tendering the notion that she was going to fail.

She tried to read the man in an effort to know what kind of answer he expected from her. If she said yes right off the bat, he’d undoubtedly think she was bragging and high on herself. So she couched her answer carefully. “I know I’d like to try.”

“Yes or no, Cavanaugh. I don’t have any time for your modesty or your aw-shucks routine. Give it to me straight. Can you do this?”

“Yes—probably,” she tacked on. There were always problems that could crop up and she didn’t want him berating her, or reminding her that she’d misrepresented herself and her abilities.

Latimore surprised her again by laughing in response. “I guess that’ll just have to be good enough for now. Brody tends to like to work alone, so you’re going to have to stay sharp in order to keep up and not get left behind.”

Latimore made it sound as if Brody had never worked with anyone before. “But he had a partner,” she protested.

“Montgomery usually handled the paperwork part of it—or mishandled it,” the lieutenant tacked on, clearly not pleased with Montgomery’s work ethic.

“I gathered that much,” Valri said, unaware that her comment elicited a muffled laugh from the lieutenant that the man managed to hide.

“The one time they went into the field together, Montgomery wound up in the hospital,” Latimore told her. “That made Brody more convinced than ever that he worked better alone. You’re going to change that.” It wasn’t a comment, or a prediction, it was an order.

Was that her actual assignment? she couldn’t help wondering. To get the detective to come around and get back into the swing of working with a partner? She supposed that she could do that.

“I’ll give it a try, sir,” Valri told the lieutenant.

“I don’t want you to ‘try,’ I want you to ‘do,’” he ordered in a no-nonsense voice. “Do I make myself clear, Cavanaugh?”

She squared her shoulders, every inch the consummate professional. “Crystal, sir.”

Latimore nodded, satisfied—for now. “Good talk, Cavanaugh.” He waved her out of the chair and out of the room. “Close the door on your way out.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. Valri lost no time leaving.

When she got back to what was now her desk, Brody was still picking up the fallen files and haphazardly dumping them into a large rectangular box. The box had held a six-month supply of paper for the printer ten minutes ago. The reams of paper were now stacked in a corner.

Without a word, Valri began picking up Montgomery’s documents and depositing them into the box. Two could make the job go faster.

Alex raised his eyes for a moment. “So?” he asked as he got back to clearing the floor. He didn’t bother organizing the papers. That was a job for Montgomery, not a man who valued his sanity.

Valri took a guess as to what her new partner was asking her. “The lieutenant wanted to officially welcome me into the office.”

Alex stopped dumping pages for a moment and looked at her. The expression on his face told Valri that he didn’t believe her.

What he said next confirmed it. “That man wouldn’t ‘officially welcome’ the Three Wise Men if they came into the office.” He frowned slightly as he got back to picking up papers. He tried not to notice that her close proximity was undermining his ability to concentrate. But then he’d always been an admirer of shapely limbs and a killer smile. It was nothing personal, he silently insisted. “We’re not going to work well together if you lie to me, Cavanaugh.”

She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to level with him. After all, she hadn’t done anything to merit the lieutenant’s strange question to begin with. “He wanted to know if I got sick looking at dead bodies.”

Alex laughed, nodding to himself. “Now that sounds like Latimore. Do you?” he asked her as a sidebar.

“I don’t know.” He glanced at her again, this time raising a skeptical eyebrow. She could see the question in his eyes. “It’s what I told the lieutenant, too. I’ve never seen a dead body before.”

There were times that he wished he could say that. “All the more reason for you to stay here, working on the smashed laptop, while I go and try to find some of the late Hunter Rogers’s friends.” Picking up the last of the papers, he tossed them into the box, which was now close to overflowing. “Speaking of which, do gamers even have friends?” he asked her out of sheer curiosity. To the best of his knowledge—having never had any interest in spending endless hours competing against people he didn’t know—gamers were all a bunch of socially awkward, highly intellectual, obsessed-with-winning geeks.

“In a manner of speaking,” Valri told him, then thought to expand her response. “I guess it all depends on your definition of friends.”

That was easy. “Someone who knows all your secrets and still likes you.”

The words had come to him automatically. It was something his father had once said to him.

By that definition, he himself had no friends, Alex thought. Because he had secrets he felt he couldn’t—and thus didn’t—share with anyone. Secrets that would create chasms between himself and the people he knew.

“If that’s your criteria,” Valri countered, “I guess what it comes down to is you actually define the word likes.”

Alex blew out a breath. He was right. This world was a dog-eat-dog existence. “The gaming world doesn’t sound very warm and friendly,” he quipped.

“Well, that might be because it’s not,” she told him with an amused laugh. “It’s all about competing and winning and coming up with a better game or, barring that, a better strategy.”

“And you’re part of all that?” he asked her.

Alex liked to think that he was a fair judge of people, and she didn’t seem the type to enjoy that sort of bloodless, cutthroat competition. Nor did she seem the kind of person who liked spending time locked away, focused on a screen and annihilating the two-dimensional “enemy.”

“I was,” Valri acknowledged. “A long, long time ago, in another lifetime,” she told him. “My horizons have become broadened since then, but I do like to keep my hand in the game every so often, just for practice,” she admitted without any qualms, then added, “Keeps me on my toes.”

“So would a pair of six-inch stilettos,” he commented. Enough talk. He had to hit the streets and get cracking. “Okay, I’ll have one of the uniforms sign out the smashed laptop from the evidence lockup and you see if you can resurrect the dead while I go back to Rogers’s apartment and see if I can find something that’ll lead me to one of his buddies—if he had any.”

It hit her like a bolt out of the blue. “Randolph Wills,” she called out to her partner’s back as he was about to leave the squad room.

That stopped him in his tracks. Alex turned to look at her. He appeared somewhat skeptical at this sudden revelation. “What?”

“You said you wanted the name of one of Hunter’s ‘buddies.’ Randolph Wills hung around him a lot, trying to absorb his technique as well as his expertise. He’s kind of a leech, but his heart’s in the right place.”

“Most people’s hearts can be found in the same place,” he told her in an abrupt voice. “And you know this about Wills how?”

She made no attempt at building up the suspense. Instead, she told him point-blank, “Word of mouth.” And then she smiled. She was leading him to a sunrise and his eyes were firmly shut. “The gaming community is both larger and smaller than you think.”

Alex looked at her as if she had begun babbling gibberish. “Is that some kind of riddle for the ages?”

His sarcastic tone didn’t faze her. Growing up as the youngest had allowed her to be ready for anything and had given her a hide like a rhino. Her heart, though, was still her own and it was, for the most part, soft.

“Just a piece of information to contemplate,” she told him with a smile. “And I really think that you’re going to want me to go with you.”

They had different definitions of the word want, he thought. And his definition had nothing to do with the job and everything to do with this gut reaction he was experiencing. If ever there was a “tread lightly” situation, this was it.

“And why is that?” Alex asked her.

“Well, for one thing I think I know where you can find Wills,” she told him.

“And for another?” he asked because she clearly was building up to something.

“You’re liable to need a translator,” she told him, using the word liable out of consideration for the ego he had to have. Everyone was born with an ego and she had a feeling that his might be affected if what Wills told him—probably in a matter-of-fact voice—went straight over his head.

Alex was taking her words literally and he scowled. “He’s foreign?”

“No, born right here in Silicon Valley,” she attested, “but he might toss around terminology in his explanation that’ll confuse you.”

He wondered if she realized that she had just insulted him. “I’m not exactly a functioning illiterate.”

“It has nothing to do with literacy, Brody,” she assured him. “Gamers and hackers live in a different world from regular people—normal people if you will,” she tacked on for his benefit. “I’m just saying that he might start tossing around terms that won’t mean anything to you—and why should they? Gaming isn’t your world.”

She saw that her explanation didn’t sit well with him. Most likely because she’d hurt his pride. She gave him a way out.

“Besides,” she reminded him tactfully, “how can you be my mentor if I’m here in the office and you’re out there in the field? How am I supposed to learn from you?”

Alex shrugged dismissively. “That wasn’t my first thought,” he told her.

Not to be put off, Valri suggested gently, “Maybe you can find a way to work it in.”

She might look like a ball of fluff that was an easy pushover, but she was tenacious, he’d give her that. And he didn’t feel like arguing the point. It wasted too much time.

“You want to come along that much, okay, fine. You’re coming along,” he told her, throwing in the towel for now. “Let’s go.”

“Can I drive?” she asked brightly, falling into step with him as he went into the hall.

“No.” The single word was filled with finality, leaving absolutely no room for argument. Or so he believed.

“But I’m the one who knows the way,” Valri pointed out.

He punched the down button on the wall, summoning the elevator car. “You also know how to talk—God knows you know how to talk,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “That means that you can tell me how to get to Wills’s place while I’m driving.”

“It’d be easier if I just drove,” she informed him a tad stubbornly.

That was not his definition of easy. Nothing about this exuberant, temporary detective was easy—and he’d bet his last dime that she knew it.

“That all depends on whose point of view you’re looking at this from—yours, or mine,” he told her. “And since it’s my car, I win. You can still stay back in the office and play twenty-one pickup with the laptop, you know. Nobody’s stopping you.”

“I’ll ride shotgun,” she said, resigning herself to sitting in the passenger seat. She was not about to petulantly remain in the office because she didn’t get her way.

“Nice of you to come around,” Alex told her.

It was the first time since they had been introduced in the chief of Ds’ office that she had seen her new partner smile.

She had an instant reaction to the smile, starting with the very center of her stomach. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that it had done a complete flip, spinning around a full 360 degrees and causing something akin to a tidal wave.

This man could very well be lethal, given the right set of circumstances.

It would be up to her to make sure that those circumstances never came together, at least not where she was concerned. She was here to learn, to advance, not be the target for advances.

Despite her wise words to the contrary, it took a while for her stomach to settle down.

Chapter 4

Buckling up, she gave Alex the gamer’s address, then resisted the temptation to offer directions once he had pulled out of the parking lot and was on the main thoroughfare.

Since Brody was the native—or so she assumed—and she was the transplant, Valri figured that he knew the streets of Aurora far better than she did. Following that logic, she knew it was to her advantage not to offer a running commentary about distance, speed and the availability of shortcuts.

Even so, it was a temptation she had to do battle with, albeit silently. She’d learned long ago that men like Brody didn’t enjoy following someone else’s lead in any manner if they could help it. She’d seen that same trait manifested in her brothers, and while she could simply ignore it to her heart’s content when it came to Brennan, Duncan, Bryce and Malloy, they were family and had to get along with her no matter what. That was just the Cavanaugh way: criticize all you want, but always be there for family when the chips were down.

Brody, on the other hand, could just up and dump her if the mood moved him, so she had to take care not to annoy him—at least not until they had a more secure partnership going. And she knew that nothing annoyed a man more than being given directions when they weren’t asked for. For some reason that sort of thing was at the top of the list of things that seemed to threaten their manhood.

“You run out of words, Cavanaugh?” he asked her, curious as to what brought on this sudden, atypical silence. Alex glanced at the woman in the passenger seat to reassure himself that she hadn’t fallen asleep for some reason. She hadn’t. But she had been quiet for at least ten minutes. So far, from what he’d seen, that seemed out of character for her. Maybe if he knew what triggered it, he could use the information to cause her silence when he needed to.

As if deep in thought, Valri jumped in her seat at the sound of his voice. “What?”

“I asked if you ran out of words,” he repeated. “You’re being quiet,” he added by way of an explanation for his question.

Valri laughed shortly. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

“When the wall of noise suddenly just breaks apart like that, a person tends to notice.” After all, she’d been talking almost nonstop before they got into his vehicle.

Valri shrugged. “I didn’t want to get on your nerves.”

If that had been her goal, she pretty much failed, Alex thought.

“Too late for that,” he quipped. In case she was one of those overly sensitive types, he added something for her to focus on. “Let’s just call this our ‘get-acquainted period.’” Alex paused, letting that sink in.

Then, as if to live up to his word about getting acquainted, he asked her a question out of the blue. “Did they force you?”

Valri stared at the man whom fate and the chief had made her partner. Where had that come from? And what, exactly, was he asking her?

“Did who force me to do what?”

“Your family. Did they force you to become a cop?”

“No. Why would they?” Actually, Brennan as well as her father had tried to talk her out of it when they heard that she had decided to apply to the police academy.

Alex shrugged. “Well, every Cavanaugh I’ve run into or even heard of seems to be part of one division or other in the department. Even the one who isn’t directly in law enforcement, that vet, I think her name is Patience, the police department has her down as the doctor on call for the K-9 unit in case any of them get hurt.”

Valri offered a smile in exchange for his speculation. “I guess to serve and protect is just built into our DNA. I believe it’s supposed to be a voluntary gene, though.” Her teasing tone changed to one that was a little more serious. “Why would you think I had to be forced into joining law enforcement?”

“Because from what you said, you seemed to have other interests—interests that could have taken you in a completely different direction.” The way, he couldn’t help thinking, that his family’s “occupation” could have taken him in, thereby drastically changing the direction of his life. “Besides, you look like you should be a cheerleader for some professional football team, not tackling would-be bad guys.”

“Cheerleader, huh?” She seemed to roll that idea over in her mind. “Is that a compliment or a put-down?” she asked.

“It wasn’t meant as either,” he told her. “Definitely not a put-down. Why would you be insulted to be called a cheerleader?”

In his opinion, the first requirement for a cheerleader was to be absolutely gorgeous. Flexibility was only a secondary requirement. He had a feeling she was both. She was certainly the first.

“Because the way you say it, it sounds as if you think cheerleaders are bubbleheaded women who share a communal brain. At the very least, they are incapable of a single creative idea.”

“All that came out of one sentence, huh?” Alex marveled, impressed. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you do belong in law enforcement. And, in case you’re wondering, that was a compliment.” His eyes met hers for a moment. He felt the undercurrent of something stirring, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. His sense of survival told him that it might be safer that way. “But level with me—” he began.

“Wouldn’t dream of doing anything else,” Valri responded.

He looked to see if she was putting him on, but she appeared serious enough.

“Yeah, well...” His voice trailed off for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure if he should challenge the veracity of her statement, but then he let it go. “Then what did make you want to become a cop?” he asked, really curious now. “Was it because you wanted to ‘belong’?”

“Belong?” she asked.

“Yeah. Belong,” he repeated. What was so hard about the word? It seemed simple enough to him. “Everyone else in this huge family of yours is a cop, so you want to be one, too. That way you can have that in common with the others.”

Valri shook her head, shooting down his theory. “Being a Cavanaugh is having something in common with the others,” she reminded him. She could see that he was waiting for her to say something a little more substantial than the obvious. “And I thought I could do some good.” That sounded hopelessly syrupy to her own ear, even though it was the truth. “Knowing that you’re helping other people is just the best feeling in the whole world. Besides,” she added, “I love solving puzzles. Where else can I do that and make an actual difference in people’s lives but as a law enforcement agent?”

Easing his foot onto the brake as a light turned to red, Alex looked at her as if to confirm that she was indeed a flesh-and-blood female. “You can’t possibly be that altruistic,” he told her.

“Sure I can,” she told him, not taking offense at the negativity behind his response. “And I am.” With that, she changed topics. “What about your family?”

He was on his guard instantly, even though he doubted that she knew the first thing about his less than ordinary family. He’d done a good job burying their connection to him.

“What about them?” he asked guardedly.

“Are you following in anyone’s footsteps?” she asked innocently.

Alex almost laughed at that. The thought that she knew about his family ceased being a concern. The innocent question told him that she didn’t have a clue about what his family business was all about—or what they were really like. If he had “followed” in their footsteps, it was for an entirely different reason than the one he had suggested to her. With him it would’ve been a matter of being hot on one of his sibling’s or his father’s trail. He had been careful not to have that happen.

“They’re not in law enforcement,” he told her, trying to sound casual.

“What are they in?” she asked.

It sounded like an innocent enough question, but Alex wasn’t 100 percent certain about that. She could very well be pretending to be innocent and actually feeling him out. His family’s world was one of deceptions and illusions.

“Entrepreneurs,” he responded. “They’re entrepreneurs.”

“That sounds like it could be really interesting,” she commented. “Why didn’t you join them?”

“Not interested,” he told her. What he really wasn’t interested in was staying two jumps ahead of the law. Granted there’d been a time—a very short period—when he’d found that exhilarating, but that was long in the past. Before he’d been labeled the official black sheep of the family.

“How many are there in your family?”

The questioning bothered him more than the silence had and he wished he had never disturbed it. At the very least, Alex didn’t want to discuss his family dynamics—or anything else about them—so he turned the tables on his inquisitive partner and asked, “How many in yours?”

“Immediate or extended?”

He lifted one shoulder in a vague shrug. “Start with immediate.”

“I’ve got six brothers and sisters—four brothers, two sisters,” she explained.

That was bigger than his by threefold, he thought. “And extended?”

She laughed. “Oh God, I’m still counting. Ever since the day that Brennan saved the former chief of police from becoming that bloodthirsty serial killer’s next statistic, it feels that the number just keeps growing.”

“That was your brother?” he asked, surprised.

Alex was aware of the incident that she was referring to. Who lived in Aurora and hadn’t been aware of the killing spree that had appeared to be mounted by a serial killer?

The latter had turned out to be the wife of a former police officer who had killed himself after he was fired from the police force. Blinded by grief, she decided to get even with everyone she felt had been involved in her husband’s taking of his own life. But at the time, no one knew if the killer was deliberately targeting law enforcement agents or if the murders were random and the victims had just accidentally been members of the law enforcement community.

“That was Brennan all right,” she confirmed. “He had to blow his cover in order to save the chief, but that’s what the job’s all about, right? Making judgment calls and saving people. Funny how things just seem to link up.”

Where was she going with this? “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if Brennan hadn’t come to Uncle Andrew’s rescue, none of us would have found out about this entire branch of the family that had gone missing.” She grinned as she replayed her own words in her mind. “Of course, in their opinion, we were the ones who had gone missing all this time, but that’s just splitting hairs.”

“Gone missing?” he asked. She had picked up speed as she talked, and at this point her train had jumped the rails and she had completely lost him. He remembered hearing something, but since it didn’t affect either him or his work directly, he’d just ignored the rest of the details as they came out.

He was beginning to realize that he shouldn’t have.

His partner obligingly filled in the gaps in his education. “It seems that my late grandfather was the former chief of police’s younger brother. Their parents split up when Grandpa was about eight. His mother took him while his father had custody of Shamus—Uncle Andrew’s father,” she threw in to help Alex keep things straight. “She apparently took off for parts unknown with Grandpa. Time passed and Shamus lost track of the family.

“About a year ago, Shamus decided to find out what happened to his brother before any more time had gone by. Uncle Andrew did some digging—”

“And out you popped,” Alex deadpanned.

If she thought he was being sarcastic, she didn’t show it.

“Not exactly, but close enough,” she allowed.

Valri knew when someone wanted to draw a subject to a close and she was aware of the fact that there were people who claimed to be overdosing on Cavanaughs. She, on the other hand, was thrilled to submerge herself in the family’s history, learning all she could about the various members.

But it was all still very fresh and new to her, despite the fact that she had never lacked for family in any manner, shape or form in the first place. She and her siblings numbered seven and there was nearly a triple-pack of cousins, thanks to her two uncles and one aunt, so family gatherings had already become practically standing-room-only affairs. With the influx of this heretofore “hidden” branch, the current number of family members was all but overwhelming.

And Valri got a tremendous kick out of that, out of there being, according to one observer, “Cavanaughs as far as the eye can see.”

“How many in your family?” she asked Alex.

He thought he’d put her off that trail by asking for details about hers. How had this come full circle back to him?

“Not nearly as many as yours,” he replied, adding a silent “thank God” at the end of his sentence.

The “thank God” wasn’t in reference to the fact that he found the number overwhelming, but to the fact that even though there were only three members doing something illegal at any one time, he couldn’t allow his mind to even imagine more people working his family’s business. Even three were too many in his opinion.

Yet it was the only way of life his family had ever known.

“So what is that?” Alex was asking. “Five? Ten? More?” She continued looking at him, waiting for his answer.

Damn, but she was like a pit bull, clamping down on something and refusing to let go. And he wasn’t comfortable discussing his family even in the vaguest of terms.

Determined to steer her clear of this sensitive topic, Alex tried to divert her again. “Are we almost there?” he asked. After all, she was the one who professed to know the man.

Valri glanced up, focusing on the street sign they were just approaching. “Waverly,” she read out loud, then pointed to the residential community’s entrance. Bird of paradise plants flanked both sides like colorful, welcoming guardsmen. “You turn in at the end of the block.”

He’d already assumed that, but pretended that this was news to him. “Thanks.”

Valri studied his profile for a moment. His jaw, she noticed, was all but rigid.

“But you already knew that, didn’t you?” she said. When he glanced in her direction, trying to look puzzled, Valri started to explain her thought process. “You’re the native, right?”

“If you mean California, yes,” he qualified. “But I’ve only lived in Aurora for the last ten years.” He’d gone to college here and then just decided to stay. Aurora seemed to be as good a place as any to begin a new life. A life where he wasn’t related to con artists and art thieves.

“What made you become a cop?” she asked him, feeling that turnabout was only fair play.

Alex smiled to himself. For him, becoming a police officer had been a matter of atonement. He’d started out to make up for the rest of his family’s sins. At the time, he hadn’t thought that he would like the work as much as he did, or get such a feeling of satisfaction out of it. That was a bonus.

“Same as you. I wanted to do something that mattered,” he told her, thinking that would be the end of it.

But after a few minutes, it seemed like only the beginning.

“Why homicide?” she asked. It seemed to her that having to deal with seeing people on the worst day of their lives would be hard on a person, certainly not something that someone would volunteer for. Yet Brody obviously had.

“I think your twenty questions are up,” he told her. “And just in time,” he realized. “That Wills’s place?” he asked, pointing out the rather quaint-looking single-story slightly weather-beaten house to his left.

She leaned toward his side of the vehicle, looking at the house he’d pointed out. It had been a while since she’d moved in those circles, but she recognized the house.

“That’s it,” she told Alex.

Alex slowed his car, taking a closer look. The house appeared to be in good condition, although the front yard had been neglected. The building itself resembled a hacienda and there appeared to be a fresh coat of light gray paint on the stucco.

“Pretty nice,” Alex commented. “Wills must be doing well.”

She debated letting him think that, but there was no point in it. “It’s his mother’s house. She left it to him in her will so he wouldn’t wind up living in a cardboard box under some bridge after she was gone.”

He took another long look at the residence. Closer examination had him picking up on the chipped paint at the corners, and there appeared to be a couple of tiles missing from the roof.

“You’re telling me that he’s not doing so well, then.”

“What I’m saying is that Wills had a tendency to come in third or fourth in the competitions that did have a payoff. He lives for the game and the glory.” Her mouth curved in an ironic smile. “Money is something that he borrows, not earns.”

That sounded like a philosophy that was dog-eared for extermination. “That could get old fast,” Alex commented. “Didn’t he run out of ‘friends’ to tap?”

“He did,” she told him. “That’s why he liked hanging around Rogers. He got the spotlight that he craved by being in Rogers’s sphere and Rogers liked being the big man and tossing Wills a scrap or two, something he never did quietly.”

“Meaning?” Alex asked, wanting to have everything as clear as possible before going in.

He pulled up in the driveway.

“Meaning that Rogers would make a big deal out of whatever so-called good deed he did so that everyone knew that he was being ‘magnanimous’ and keeping Wills afloat.”

Well, that certainly went along with what he was thinking. “Not much of a stretch envisioning Wills killing Rogers for revenge and whatever pocket money the other had.”

But Valri wasn’t buying it. She shook her head. “Don’t think so. Wills loved being in Rogers’s spotlight. I think he hoped some of Rogers’s skills, as well as his luck, would rub off on him. But I could be wrong,” she allowed. This was just another theory she was formulating.

“Well, no time like the present to find out.”

Alex pressed the doorbell, but heard nothing in return. He tried again with the same results. Doubling up his fist, he pounded on the door.

“Randolph Wills, this is the Aurora Police Department. Open up!”

When there was still no response, Valri nudged him out of the way and knocked rather than pounded on the door. “Hey, Randy,” she called out through the door, “it’s Wren295. I’ve got to talk to you about The King.”

Alex stared at her as if she had suddenly slipped through the rabbit hole right before his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Before she had a chance to answer him, the front door opened.

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