What could she say without sounding as if she was arguing with herself?
Don’t nominate the man for sainthood yet, Kenzie. He might still have something up his sleeve, she silently warned.
“You can dig into that pile,” Kenzie told him quietly, pointing to the stack that was on the edge of her desk.
“Okay.” Leaning over his desk, Hunter reached out to grab the stack. He pulled it over closer to his desk. “I will.”
* * *
To her surprise, there was a minimum of conversation. Consequently, they were able to discard a lot of the files because there were no matches to the array of torso photos the medical examiner had taken. It was progress, she told herself.
At least of a sort.
Hunter sent out for lunch for both of them despite her protests to the contrary. And, despite those same protests, she ate with gusto.
* * *
By the end of the day, having gone through a great many of the missing person files and attempting to match them to the photographs of the torsos lying in the morgue, they managed to identify another unknown torso. It turned out that Jerry Wiley had a profile on the Second Time Around website, too.
“I think that we’ve definitely found the black widow’s hunting grounds,” Kenzie said with an air of triumph.
“Just in time,” Hunter commented. “It’s getting late. All in all, I think this has been a really productive day.” Pushing his chair back away from the desk, he stretched his legs as well as rotated his shoulders to get some blood flowing through his limbs. “What do you say we call it quits for the day?”
She looked at him, torn between wanting to say yes and telling him that she was going to stay and work a while longer.
But the truth was that she felt as if she was fading fast. Her whole body felt stiff and her eyes were really tired after reading for so long.
“Maybe you’re right,” she agreed reluctantly.
Hunter looked at her in surprise. “Did I just fall asleep at my desk?” he asked. “Because I could swear I was dreaming.”
She was too tired to get annoyed. “I could take it back,” Kenzie offered.
“No, no, don’t do that,” he said. Hunter switched off his computer. The light disappeared from his monitor. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he neatened up his desk just a little. “We can go grab a bite to eat,” he added quickly. “I’m buying.”
Kenzie began to shake her head. “That’s okay,” she began.
He didn’t want her turning him down. They’d gotten some good work done today and his adrenaline was running high. Hunter rose from his desk and came to stand over hers.
“It can be any restaurant—your choice,” he told her. “Crowded,” he added for good measure, thinking that might help to seal the deal.
Kenzie rose from her seat, as well. “I think I’ll just go home and turn in,” she told him.
When he didn’t try to talk her into changing her mind, she had to admit she was surprised. So much so that as they walked out of the squad room together, she decided—maybe recklessly so—to give him a compliment.
“Thanks for your help, Brannigan. You did good today,” she added as if an afterthought.
“Okay, now I know I’m dreaming.” His eyes crinkled a little as he grinned warmly in response. “But you’re welcome.”
Because there was no one getting on or off at this time, the elevator acted like an express, sailing directly down to the ground floor after they got on and pressed the first-floor button.
“I’ll see you at the celebration tomorrow,” he said, getting off behind her.
Caught up in the work today, Kenzie had almost forgotten all about her uncle’s party. Surprise crossed her face as reality returned.
“Oh. Right.” The words emerged in slow motion. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Hunter spared her a thoughtful look just before they parted at the parking lot, each going in the opposite direction.
“Tomorrow,” he repeated.
Why did she have this uneasy feeling that she was being put on notice?
The thought haunted her all the way home and long after she had crawled into bed.
* * *
Immersed in her work from first light, Kenzie was rereading some of her notes the following morning when her apartment doorbell rang.
Suddenly alert, she looked at her watch, not seeing it at first. When the analog face came into focus, she saw that it was ten thirty.
Ten thirty on a Sunday morning.
Sunday.
“Oh damn.”
The person on the other end of that doorbell had to be Brannigan, she thought, growing annoyed. She wouldn’t put it past him.
Kenzie decided to ignore the doorbell and just wait him out.
“C’mon, Kenzie,” a deep male voice called out to her, “we know you’re in there. Open the door.”
We.
Recognizing the voice, she stopped playing possum and hurried over to the door. Flipping the lock, she opened the door wide and found herself looking up at not one brother, but two.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Finn and Murdoch, both of whom towered over her.
“We’re your escorts, Cinderella. Did you forget you were going to the ball, Cinderella?” Finley Cavanaugh, the taller of the two men in her doorway, asked. Not waiting for an invitation, both Finn and Murdoch made their way into her modest apartment.
“You guys have never come by to see if I was going to any of Uncle Andrew’s other parties.” She regarded them suspiciously. “What’s up?”
“New policy,” Murdoch announced. He regarded her outfit and quickly found it lacking. “Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked. He and Finn exchanged looks. “You really have let yourself go, haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t let myself go,” she informed her brothers, annoyed. She knew there was affection behind the remark, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear it. “I was just working on a case.”
“Well, stop working and get yourself spruced up, Kenz,” Finn told her, physically turning her toward her bedroom. “Your chariot awaits and the horses are getting restless, so get a move on.”
Fisting her hands at her waist, Kenzie turned back around to scrutinize their faces. “Brannigan put you up to this, didn’t he?” she asked. She half expected the detective to pop up in her doorway now as she looked around Finn’s shoulder.
Finn dramatically put his hand to his chest. “Are you saying we’re not capable of having independent thoughts?” he asked his younger sister.
Kenzie answered without any hesitation. “In this case, yes.”
Murdoch took over. “Stop talking and get presentable,” he instructed. “Uncle Andrew wouldn’t care if you come wearing a shower curtain, but the rest of us would.”
“Want me to help you pick out something suitable to wear?” Finn called out after her. “I’m getting pretty good at it.”
Kenzie rolled her eyes. “Just stay put,” she ordered. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Finn made a show of looking at his watch. “What is that in sister language? One hour or two?” he asked.
Tempted to retort, she didn’t. She knew her brother was asking that just to spur her on.
And it worked.
She hated being stereotyped. Hurrying into her bedroom, Kenzie pulled out a deep blue sleeveless dress she had bought on a whim but hadn’t worn yet. After her breakup with Billy, she’d buried the dress deep in her closet. It still had the tags on it.
Pulling them off now, Kenzie slipped the dress on. It fit better than when she’d bought it, thanks to the weight that she had lost. That, too, was a result of her breakup.
She applied a smattering of makeup and quickly combed her hair. Looking herself over in her mirror, she slipped on a pair of high heels last.
Done.
Kenzie was out in ten minutes. The rather stunned look on her brothers’ faces made it well worth the rush.
“Ready?” she asked innocently.
Murdoch grinned as he opened the front door for her. “You know, I forget,” he told her, “you really do clean up well.”
Locking her door behind her, Kenzie could only shake her head. “With a golden tongue like that,” she told Murdoch, “it’s a wonder you’re still single.”
* * *
She would have preferred taking her own car to the gathering. That way, she would have been free to leave and get back to the case whenever she felt she could slip out unobserved. Being driven to the celebration by her brothers, she knew that her fate for the next half day or so was entirely in their hands.
But, at the same time, since this promised to be one of her uncle’s larger parties, finding parking within the residential neighborhood would have proved to be tricky, even if most of the residents in the development parked inside their garages.
Finding suitable parking was also one of the reasons she guessed that her brothers had hustled her so that they could arrive at the party early. While the company and the excellent food were always a huge draw, unfortunately, finding decent parking within the development was also a factor.
“I hear he’s going all out,” Murdoch said as they pulled up, finding a perfect spot just two blocks away. “I hear that Uncle Andrew’s been getting everything prepared since yesterday.”
“I think I can smell the food from here,” Finn said to the others, taking in a deep breath as they got out of the car.
“You can’t smell anything from here,” Kenzie told him. “That’s just your imagination.”
Murdoch laughed. “Trust me, his imagination has no sense of smell,” he said to his sister.
It wasn’t unusual for them to be able to walk right into the chief’s house. He left the front door unlocked specifically for that purpose whenever he held his famous gatherings.
But because this was such a special occasion, Kenzie felt that they should ring the doorbell. At the very least, that would alert the chief that more guests had arrived.
Kenzie took the initiative and rang the doorbell. The door swung open even as she was dropping her hand to her side.
It took effort for her not to allow surprise to register on her face.
Hunter was standing, bigger than life, in her uncle’s doorway.
“Are you moonlighting as a doorman these days?” Finn asked his friend with a laugh.
“If you’re expecting a tip, you’re out of luck,” Murdoch chimed in. Suddenly realizing that his sister hadn’t taken a step into the house, he glanced at her and prodded, “Kenzie, get a move on. You’re blocking the doorway.”
“The chief asked me to open the door for him. He’s got his hands full with the briskets, and Mrs. Cavanaugh’s busy putting out more glasses on the side table,” Hunter said, explaining why he was the one who had opened the door for them. The explanation was meant not for his friends but for Kenzie, who was looking at him with extremely accusing eyes.
“‘Mrs. Cavanaugh’ covers a lot of territory in this house,” Finn told his friend. “I take it that you’re talking about Aunt Rose.”
“Right, your aunt Rose,” Hunter answered like someone in a trancelike state. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Kenzie since he’d opened the door to let them all in.
Almost reluctantly—and feeling extremely self-conscious—Kenzie walked into the house. She could feel his eyes following her every step.
“You’re staring, Brannigan,” she complained under her breath.
He realized that he was and cleared his throat, as if that would somehow help him clear the air, as well. Taking a breath, he told her, “You look nice in blue. The color suits you.”
Kenzie made no response.
“Take the compliment and say thank you to the nice man, Kenz,” Finn prompted his sister. “She’s housebroken,” he told his friend. “But she’s still kind of skittish around strangers.”
Kenzie glared at her brothers, totally ignoring Hunter as she walked past him. “I’ll see you clowns later. Since I’m here, I’m going to go say hello to Uncle Andrew.”
“The chief’s in the kitchen,” Hunter told her, falling in beside her.
Finally forced to acknowledge him, she frowned. “You don’t have to guide me there. I know where the kitchen is,” she informed him.
But he kept up with her. “We had a nice moment yesterday at the end of the day. Let’s say, just for the sake of this occasion, we continue having that moment, okay?” Hunter suggested.
She stopped walking and swung around to look at Hunter. “I seem to recall that you said if I didn’t want to see you at this party, I wouldn’t.”
“I can still give that a good try,” he told her, “but to be honest, I forgot how crowded these parties can get.” He nodded toward the kitchen, which was just a few feet away. “But let me bring you to the chief. I promised him I’d bring you to him the minute you got here.”
She looked at Hunter skeptically. “The chief actually asked you to bring me to him the minute I got here?” She found that hard to believe.
“Would I lie?” Hunter asked her, his face looking like the very picture of innocence.
“All the time,” she informed him. And then she laughed because the situation struck her as being so totally absurd. “Okay, c’mon,” she told Hunter. “Let’s go.”
“Right this way,” he said, ushering her into the kitchen.
Chapter 17
Andrew Cavanaugh was moving around his industrial-sized kitchen faster than a bead of water dropped on a sizzling-hot frying pan. Lifting lids, he was checking on the progress of the different side dishes and meals he was preparing in the various pots that were on the stove. He also looked into both of the side-by-side ovens, which were going full blast.
“It has to be hotter in here than in hell,” Hunter whispered as an aside to Kenzie.
“You’d be the one to know,” she responded in an equally low whisper.
Andrew, the tall, lean, muscular gray-haired man who looked more than a decade younger than his years, seemed oblivious to the heat all this cooking generated. Atypically, he was also oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t alone in the kitchen.
Belatedly, Andrew saw Kenzie’s reflection in one of the upper oven doors.
“Kenzie,” he declared with pleasure, turning around to face her. He was all but beaming as he greeted her. “You came.”
“Of course I came,” she replied with a large dose of enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t miss Shaw’s celebration for the world.”
Kenzie barely got the words out before she found herself being enfolded in a deep, heartfelt bear hug. The scent of familiar aftershave lotion seeped into her senses.
She returned the hug even as she fully expected to hear Hunter speak up behind her, saying something to the effect that she was here only because he had taken it upon himself to prod her into coming.
When he didn’t, she glanced over her shoulder at Hunter, raising an eyebrow in surprise. He was looking on at the filial exchange, smiling. Kenzie couldn’t help wondering what he was up to.
“You said to bring Kenzie in to see you the second she arrived,” Hunter amicably told the former chief of police. “So here she is.”
“Brave man,” Andrew commented with a chuckle as he released his niece. “Everyone knows that Kenzie doesn’t appreciate being ordered around. I’m glad you came, Kenzie,” he told her warmly. Then, changing course, he told both Kenzie and Hunter, “Go, mingle, you two.” He waved them off. “I’ve still got a lot to do before we can get dinner on the table.”
“Can I help?” Kenzie asked even though she knew ahead of time what the answer would be.
“Yes,” Andrew replied, then repeated more fo
rcefully, “Go. Mingle.”
Inclining her head, Kenzie turned around and retraced her steps back to the living room.
The moment she was out of earshot, she turned toward Hunter. “Why didn’t you take credit for telling me to come here?” she asked.
Instead of giving her a snide answer, Hunter replied, “Because I didn’t want the chief to think you had to be coerced to come here. That would ruin having you here for him. Besides,” he continued in a lower voice, “I’m not nearly as shallow as you think I am,” he told her.
Kenzie regarded the man beside her in silence for a moment, thinking back to several recent incidents. Maybe she was being too hard on him.
“I guess you’re turning into a real human being after all.” Then, unable to let the remark stand on its own, she added, “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Hunter didn’t look annoyed. Instead, he laughed under his breath and said, “Just think of me as a late bloomer,” he cracked.
The remark caught her off guard and delved into her before she could stop it.
All right, back away before you say something you’re going to regret, she silently ordered herself.
“I try not to think of you at all,” she told him, doing her best to sound cold as she walked away.
* * *
She would have thought, Kenzie mused that afternoon, that in a place so full of people, people she knew, it would be relatively easy—emphasis on the word relatively—to avoid crossing paths with the one person she didn’t want to run into.
Yet it seemed that almost every time she turned around, went anywhere, talked to anyone, there he was. Brannigan.
It didn’t matter if she had made her way to the huge backyard, or the patio, to the living room, or to the recently remodeled and expanded dining room. Everywhere she went, everywhere she looked, there he was.
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