She thought of saying yes, then decided to go with the truth. “No, but I am related to a computer wizard. We’re taking this to Valri,” she told him. “If she can’t break the password, then it can’t be broken.”
“Valri,” he repeated. Something in his brain clicked. “Valri Cavanaugh,” he remembered. “I’ve heard that she’s good.”
“Good?” she echoed, then all but laughed at his assessment. “Mint chip ice cream is good. Apple pie is good,” she said dismissively. “Valri is fantastic.”
Hunter thought of a problem. “If she’s that fantastic, isn’t she swamped with work?”
She’d never approached her cousin with anything, but her brothers had and she knew Hunter’s concern was legitimate. “She is, but she’s also family.”
“So are all the other Cavanaughs who work at the police department.” His point was that they might all be converging on this computer wunderkind.
Kenzie got his meaning. “You know, Brannigan, you can be a real downer sometimes. Actually, most of the time,” she amended. “We just made some headway. We had no clues when we got here. Now we have clues,” she declared as if they had just discovered a brand-new world. “Focus on that for a while.”
He gave her a properly subdued expression. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrowed as they walked out of the house with the laptop. “You’re not fooling me with that ‘ma’am’ business.”
Hunter looked at her, the complete picture of innocence. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to fool you, Kenzie.”
He was getting under her skin. “If you call me Kenzie one more time, I’m going to leave you here and you can walk to the station.”
“No, you won’t,” he said knowingly.
He was right, damn him. She didn’t want to waste time by leaving him here. The man had proved he had a head on his shoulders and they needed all the help they could get. She tried to focus on what he added to the investigation and not how distracting being so close to him was turning out to be. Where were these thoughts coming from and for pity sake, why now?
“Just shut up and get in the car,” Kenzie retorted.
“Yes—” Kenzie looked at him sharply and he concluded his sentence with an obedient “—Detective Cavanaugh.”
“That’s better,” she told him, getting into her vehicle.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Hunter murmured under his breath as he got in on his side. He tried his best not to be aware of her presence just inches away. When did the inside of the car get so small? Did it shrink?
Kemzie glanccd in his direction. “Excuse me?”
Hunter pretended to be preoccupied with buckling his seat belt. When it slid into its slot and clicked, he answered, “Nothing.”
Kenzie started up the car, keeping her eyes forward. “I didn’t think so.”
She turned up the radio, temporarily blocking out the need for any conversation.
It helped.
A little.
Chapter 9
Detective Valri Cavanaugh was the police department’s go-to computer wizard. Mentored by the chief of detectives’ daughter-in-law, Brenda, in an incredibly short amount of time, Valri had managed to surpass her teacher.
So much so that Brenda felt free to reduce her huge amount of hours down to the size belonging to regular highly skilled computer technologists. These days Brenda even took occasional vacations.
Valri, on the other hand, hardly ever left her desk during the week and there were times when she came in on weekends. She had also transformed from a soft-spoken young woman who accepted any and all assignments to a woman who knew how to stand up for herself and to say no if the situation warranted it.
So when she saw Kenzie carrying a laptop and walking in with another detective she vaguely recognized, Valri braced herself for battle.
She allowed her cousin to state her case quickly, heard her out and then shook her head.
“No.”
Stunned because her brothers had told her that Valri was a godsend who had helped them whenever they asked for her assistance, Kenzie momentarily found herself speechless.
And then, finding her tongue, she said, “Valri, please.”
Valri didn’t even look up from her keyboard as her fingers flew across the keys, summoning a database. “Then take a number,” she murmured.
Kenzie held up the laptop, using it as a visual aid, but her cousin ignored it, never even looking up.
Kenzie tried again. “This computer belonged to a man who was recently murdered,” she told Valri with a sense of urgency.
Valri swept her hand around the immediate area surrounding her desk, the movement taking it all in. There were scores of laptops, phones and tablets on every flat surface near her.
“Like I said,” Valri repeated, “take a number.”
But Kenzie wasn’t about to give up so easily. “The guy could have been a victim of a serial killer, Valri,” she told her cousin, trying to arouse Valri’s interest. “You wouldn’t be helping to solve just one murder but several—maybe dozens.”
This time Valri did raise her deep blue eyes and she looked at Kenzie. “And this is different how?” she asked. Serial killers were apparently more common than had once been thought and the police department had seen more than its fair share. “Look, I’m not heartless, I’m just really overworked. I haven’t seen the top of my desk in weeks—maybe months,” Valri complained.
Before Kenzie could say anything further, Hunter spoke up. “We didn’t mean to put any pressure on you,” he told the computer tech. “It’s just that we’re stumped and we didn’t want to waste any more time trying to figure out the password when you could do something like that blindfolded—literally. But we didn’t realize how swamped you were.” Hunter picked up the laptop from the edge of her desk. “We’ll just find a way to figure it out,” he told her as he started to walk away.
Valri sighed deeply and held out her hand. She knew she was being played, but at the same time, she couldn’t just ignore a plea for help either.
“All right, give the laptop to me,” Valri told Hunter.
But Hunter continued to hold on to it and he shook his head. “No, you’ve got all these other things to get to. We can—”
Valri’s eyebrows drew together in a formidable V.
“Give it to me,” she repeated, sounding sterner this time.
Looking properly grateful as well as contrite, Hunter relinquished the laptop and placed it next to Valri, making sure to turn the screen toward her.
She glanced at the dormant screen for a moment, thinking. “Can you give me any information about the owner—other than he’s dead?” Valri qualified.
Kenzie produced the form that Connie had filled out when she had come in to the Missing Persons Division, hoping to have the police locate her father.
“This is all I have right now. His daughter filed this when she was worried that he was missing,” Kenzie explained.
“Good instincts,” Valri commented grimly. Glancing at the form, she folded the papers and put them on the side of her desk. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises,” she added.
“Understood,” Hunter responded. He smiled at her warmly. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Valri answered, waving the two detectives away.
Taking her cue, Kenzie thanked her cousin and then withdrew. She walked ahead of Hunter back to the elevator bank.
When he caught up to her, Kenzie slanted a look at him that he couldn’t quite read.
She pressed for the elevator before speaking what was on her mind. “So, that’s you turning on the charm?”
“No, that’s me being my charming self,” he told her. “I just wanted your cousin to know that we understood the pressure she was under and that we didn’t want to add to that load.”
Yeah
, right. Kenzie eyed him skeptically. “Knowing full well that by playing the understanding detective-in-need, Valri wouldn’t turn you down, is that it?” she asked as the elevator arrived and its door opened.
Kenzie looked at him before stepping into the elevator. His expression was the very picture of innocence.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective,” Hunter answered.
Kenzie sighed. This was pointless, she thought as she pressed for her floor. The steel door slid closed. She focused on the plus side.
“Well, at least it got Valri to take a look at the laptop,” she said.
Kenzie could almost feel the other detective’s smile as it curved the corners of his rather sensuous mouth and made its way up into his eyes.
“Yes, it did, didn’t it?” Hunter asked.
The man was proud of himself. She resisted the urge to pummel him. “Are you expecting me to say thank you?” she asked.
“No, I’m just expecting to make a little headway on the case,” he answered innocently as he looked up into the air. The floors between the basement and Kenzie’s squad room seemed to go by in slow motion. “But if you feel compelled to say thank you—”
“I don’t,” she retorted.
He shrugged as if he’d been expecting that answer. “Then problem’s solved, isn’t it?” he asked. The door opened and they walked out.
They had no sooner turned the corner, about to walk into the Missing Persons squad room, than Kenzie felt her cell phone ringing. Digging it out of her pocket, she announced, “Cavanaugh.”
“Kenzie, it’s Valri,” the voice on the other end of her cell said. “I unlocked that laptop you and Mr. Tall-Not-so-Dark-and-Handsome brought in.”
Kenzie stopped walking. She knew that Valri was quick, but this was fast even for her cousin.
“Already?” she cried incredulously. “We haven’t even reached the squad room yet.”
Hunter made no pretense of not hearing her. “She got in, didn’t she?” he asked her, grinning.
Kenzie waved him away as if he were no more than an annoying gnat. “We’ll be right there,” she told her cousin.
“You’re the best, Valri,” Hunter praised, leaning in and saying the words into Kenzie’s phone.
Hearing him, Valri responded, “That’s why you brought it to me,” before she terminated the call.
Kenzie had no idea if Valri’s response was to her or to Hunter, but she had her suspicions. Putting her cell phone back in her pocket, she realized that Hunter had turned on his heel and was already on his way back to the elevator they had just vacated.
She quickened her pace, managing to catch up to him at the bank of elevators. A sense of triumph blended with the desire to fillet the detective. She glared at Brannigan.
“You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?” she said.
He looked at her and asked in seemingly all innocence, “Should I be?”
Kenzie frowned. They’d gotten this far this quickly in part due to Hunter flexing his very obvious sexuality. She knew that, but she didn’t want to condone his behavior—exactly.
“Ask me again when we catch Kurtz’s killer,” she told him.
He smiled broadly at her. “I’ll do that,” he said, getting back into the elevator.
She’d never wanted to strangle someone this much before. She tried to sublimate her reaction by being cryptic.
“Careful, your insecurity is showing,” Kenzie told the detective.
Hunter merely grinned in response.
She’d always believed in being fair no matter how much it cost her to do it. “All right, you did good,” Kenzie said reluctantly between clenched teeth.
He looked at her as if he was surprised to hear her speak. “Excuse me?”
Her eyebrows drew together. “You heard me.”
“I did,” he confessed, unable to suppress the twinkle in his eyes. “I just wanted to hear it again.”
She closed her eyes, searching for strength. “You are a very difficult person to work with,” she finally told Hunter. For more reasons than one, she added silently.
He was completely unfazed by her declaration. “Don’t worry, I’ll grow on you.”
That was exactly what she was afraid of. “Ha!” she deliberately laughed. “So do warts and fungus and I wouldn’t look forward to experiencing either—or you,” she added pointedly.
“We’ll see,” was all Hunter said to her in response.
The elevator door yawned open. Getting out, they headed back to the computer lab. Kenzie was surprised when instead of letting her enter first, Hunter walked into the computer lab ahead of her and went straight to Valri’s desk.
“Valri,” he said warmly, “we can’t thank you enough for unlocking the laptop for us. You saved us an awful lot of effort and time.”
Surprised by the enthusiasm in the handsome detective’s voice, it took Valri a second to respond. “It was basically very simple,” she told the duo. “Mr. Kurtz used his late wife’s birthday.”
Kenzie looked at her in surprise. “How did you know her birthday?” she asked. “Or that John Kurtz even had a late wife?” she added now that she thought about it.
Valri smiled at her cousin. It was the same sort of tolerant smile that an indulgent mother bestows on a very young, very slow child. “The internet is a wonderful source of information if you know how to use it,” she told Kenzie glibly.
“I know that,” Kenzie responded, trying not to sound impatient or insulted. “I just meant that I didn’t think you had enough time to find all that out.”
Valri gave her a knowing look. Kenzie wasn’t serious, was she? “You came to me because you knew I was quick and thorough, right?” she asked.
That was why they had come to Valri in the first place, Kenzie thought. Because she was the quickest computer tech anyone had ever encountered.
“Right,” Kenzie granted. “And it’s not that I don’t appreciate this, really—”
Valri cut her off. She didn’t have time to listen to accolades. “If you want to show me how appreciative you are, just take the laptop and go so I can get to the rest of all this,” she said, nodding at the paraphernalia on her desk, paraphernalia that Kenzie could have sworn had somehow managed to get even higher in the last ten minutes.
Hunter took possession of the laptop. Kenzie began to edge out of the room, but Hunter stood where he was, assessing the situation.
“You need help,” he told her.
“I have help,” Valri responded, smiling her gratitude at Hunter. It wasn’t lost on Kenzie. “He’s been out sick for the last couple of days. Now please go—and shut the door behind you.”
Kenzie jerked her thumb at Hunter. “I could leave him posted at your door to keep the riffraff out,” she volunteered.
Valri was already working on her next challenge and just waved them both out of the room.
“That woman is amazing,” Hunter commented as they walked down the hallway back to the elevator for a second time within a few minutes. “Is there any way that the department can clone her?”
Kenzie shook her head. “She’s in a league by herself—and they’ve probably tried,” she added regarding his cloning comment.
Hunter glanced down at the laptop he had tucked under his arm. “I just hope this turns out to be worth her effort and has something other than videos of cute animals falling all over themselves in their race to get to the dinner dish.”
“Not much chance of that,” Kenzie responded. “The description Connie gave me of her father doesn’t make me feel that he was the type to spend his time watching videos of kittens no matter how cute or what they were doing.”
“According to Connie, Kurtz wasn’t the type to get caught up in dating again either,” Hunter reminded Kenzie, looking at her pointedly.
K
enzie inclined her head. “Point taken.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him grinning at her as they got back on the elevator. “What?” she asked in barely concealed exasperation.
“You just agreed that I had a point,” Hunter answered. “You know, you and I might just wind up having a decent working relationship yet.”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to smile at the optimistic comment. “Don’t let it go to your head,” Kenzie warned.
Amusement curved his lips. “Does that mean I should be braced for disappointment?”
“At the very least,” she answered.
Arriving at her floor, she led the way into the squad room. Kyle Choi was on his feet the moment he saw her walking in.
“We’ve been given the back room,” he told her. He nodded a greeting at Hunter.
“Just like that?” Kenzie asked, surprised.
“It might have had something to do with the chief of Ds calling the lieutenant to make the arrangements,” Choi confided, deliberately dropping his voice.
“That reminds me,” Hunter suddenly said. “I still get to ask Valdez to work with us, right?”
He asked her the question out of a sense of courtesy, not wanting Kenzie to feel that he was steamrolling over her.
But it was Choi who answered him. “He’s already here. He looked like a guy who had been sprung from a trap. Just how dead are things up in the Cold Case unit?” he asked Hunter.
“Very,” Hunter answered without a second’s hesitation.
“Let’s get cracking on this,” Kenzie told the two men, taking hold of the laptop and sliding it away from Hunter before he could tighten his grip on it.
“After you,” Hunter told her, gesturing toward what he assumed was the back room.
Holding the laptop almost defensively against her chest, Kenzie led the way into the back room.
Jason Valdez was seated at the rectangular table. The only other furniture in the small room, other than the six chairs that were around the table, two on each side facing one another, one at each end, was a large rolling bulletin board. The bulletin board sported a row of silver tacks along the upper edge, waiting to be pressed into service.
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