Cavanaugh Watch

by Marie Ferrarella

  She glanced in his direction. Was it her imagination, or was the material clinging to his torso? And why did that look so sexy? “The shirt, it’s different.”

  “I keep a change of clothes in the car,” he told her. Sawyer slipped the coffeepot out and poured its spare contents into the mug he’d used last night. “Several,” he added.

  She should have known. “Prepared,” she acknowledged. “Like a Boy Scout.”

  Boy Scouts tended to group together. He was a loner. Always had been, except for a brief period of time. When Allison had been part of his life.

  “Like a man who’s liable to be sent off on assignment,” he corrected.

  On second thought, she decided, there was nothing Boy Scout–like about this man. Boy Scouts made you think of baseball, apple pie and Mom. Boy Scouts were generally harmless. Harmless was the last word she would have used to describe Sawyer Boone.

  For a second she entertained the thought of dragging him off to breakfast at her uncle Andrew’s house just to see his reaction. The door to her uncle’s house was always open. Rain or shine, no matter what the occasion or lack thereof, every morning the man made breakfast for an army.

  If everyone showed up—and her uncle liked nothing better—it was a scene out of a crowd controller’s worst nightmare. But Uncle Andrew loved it. The more, the merrier. If she hadn’t been lucky enough to have the father that she had, Uncle Andrew would have been her hero. As it stood, it was close to a tie.

  The toast popped. Taking the two slices out, she put them on a plate and pushed it along the counter to Sawyer. He raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment and she nodded back.

  “Margarine’s in the refrigerator,” she told him.

  He picked up the top slice. “I take it dry.”

  “Of course you do.” And at home, he probably slept on a bed of nails—when he slept, she amended.

  She had a hunch that Sawyer would have felt out of place in her uncle’s kitchen, at least initially. But Uncle Andrew had a way of making people come around. And if for some reason he couldn’t, there was always someone present at the table who could. She wondered how long it would take to breathe some life into Sawyer.

  Janelle slanted a glance at him as her own toast popped up. He looked like a hard nut to crack. Hard, but not impossible.

  Might be interesting to experiment. But the next moment she dismissed the thought. Sawyer was nothing to her, other than annoyance. There was no reason to put her family through the ordeal of having to break in yet another surly man at the table.

  Meetings and an unexpected development in one of her other cases kept Janelle from finding the time to pick up the phone and make good on her promise to call her father the next day. And the next. Before she realized it, more than a week had gone by.

  Meanwhile, as she labored and juggled the cases she had on her desk, trying to give each as much time as she was able, she became aware of the fact that she was feeling progressively more claustrophobic. Because of Sawyer.

  Not that he smothered her in rhetoric. If anything, he’d become even more quiet than before. During her long workday, marked by endless incoming calls, mountains of reference texts and a parade of nondescript fast food in overly greasy wrappers, she noticed that Sawyer just sat there, reading the bent, dog-eared book he kept shoved in his jacket pocket.

  Even so, he gave her the impression that he could spring into action at less than a moment’s notice. A coiled snake, ready to strike if there was a need. He was every bit the protector. But that didn’t negate the fact that his very presence seemed to throw a heavy blanket over her very being, pressing her down until she felt almost flattened. And sealed off from the rest of the world.

  She did her best to shake the feeling. When that didn’t work, she tried to ignore it. It only became worse. Worse because she felt that if they truly butted heads, she would be sent flying. She didn’t like feeling as if she were in second place. She hadn’t tolerated it with her brothers and she wasn’t going to tolerate it with Sawyer. But until the Wayne case was over, she was just going to have to make the best of it.

  Pausing for a moment, she opened her drawer and took out a half-empty bottle of extra-strength aspirin. She screwed off the lid and shook out two tablets, then popped them into her mouth, swallowing without the benefit of water. She’d gotten good at that.

  “Those things’ll burn a hole in your stomach.”

  She could have sworn he was reading. Just went to show, he was watching her constantly. The claustrophobic feeling grew worse.

  “They keep my head from falling off,” she informed him.

  “Whatever you say.” He went back to reading.

  She stared at him for a moment, at a loss for words if not emotions. Though he hid the title of the book he was reading, she could have sworn he was back at the beginning again. Was this some philosophical work of nonfiction that he subscribed to? A bible he read and reread, committing it to memory?

  What the hell did she care what he read, so long as he read it away from her?

  Not bloody likely, at least not any time soon, she thought moodily.

  Unaccountably, her thoughts turned to the phone call she’d taken from Marco Wayne. She hadn’t thought about it in days. Now that she did, the discomfort returned. Innocent of any wrongdoing, she still didn’t feel right about keeping this to herself. The man had sounded sincere, but then, he’d probably perfected that, lying to the police and to prosecutors under oath.

  Damn it, Marco Wayne wasn’t innocent and neither was his son, but she was. No real information had been exchanged in that short conversation. All Marco had said was that he wanted what every father wanted, a fair trial for his son. His saying that Tony was framed was a feeble attempt at her sympathy, nothing more.

  And it hadn’t worked, she told herself. She didn’t believe him, not really.

  Her mind played devil’s advocate, reminding her that even though the conversation had been innocent, things could still be said, scenarios misrepresented. Rumors planted.

  She had to be sure she was on safe ground.

  Ordinarily, she knew she should go to Woods and then Kleinmann in turn, but before she went through all that, she wanted advice from a friendlier source.

  Backup, so to speak. Her mouth curved at the familiar police jargon that had popped into her head. There was no denying that she was a cop’s daughter.

  It was time for the cop’s daughter to call her dad, she thought. Instead of using the landline, she took out her cell phone and pressed a single number.

  “Roz? This is Janelle Cavanaugh. Is my father there?”

  “For you? Always,” the woman on the other line assured her. Roz Smith had been her father’s assistant/secretary since he’d taken the position of chief of detectives eight years ago. “Just hang on a minute, let me go round him up.”

  Leaning back in her chair, Janelle drew in a long breath, then let it out. She was aware that Sawyer had raised his eyes from his book and was watching her even before she looked in his direction.

  No doubt about it, the man made her feel naked and exposed. Maybe her father could take care of this problem, too. If she had to have a bodyguard, she wanted a man who truly did fade into the wallpaper, not who made every nerve ending in her body rise to the surface in anticipation of God only knew what.

  The next moment, her father’s rich baritone voice was filling her ear. “So how’s my favorite daughter?”

  Janelle grinned. She was his only daughter, a fact that she rather relished. “Still gorgeous,” she bantered.

  “That would be your mother’s doing,” Brian assured her.

  “Really?” She pretended to be skeptical. There was no denying that she looked very much like her mother. She also looked a great deal like all her female cousins—save for Patience—blond, small-boned and petite. “I always thought my looks came from the Cavanaugh side.”

  “Can’t argue that,” he told her with a chuckle. “Not to rush you, honey, but I’ve a
meeting to go to in ten minutes. Seems our illustrious mayor has some new idea about the patrolmen’s retirement benefits that just doesn’t sound as if it’ll go over all that well with our boys in blue. What’s on your mind?”

  She didn’t waste time. “I need to talk to you, Dad. About Marco Wayne.”

  There was silence on the other end. It lasted so long, she thought she’d lost the connection.

  “Dad, are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.” The humor had left his voice. “What about him?”

  She knew he was in a hurry, but she still wanted to give him a little background before she dropped this little tidbit on him. “I caught the case against his son, and—”

  “You’re the assistant A.D.A. on the Anthony Wayne case?”

  She heard the note of surprise in her father’s voice and put her own interpretation on it. “I know, I know, you’d think he’d want someone with more time on the team at his side. But maybe the man recognizes talent when he sees it,” she quipped. “Anyway, when can we get together to talk? I dropped by your place last Tuesday, but you weren’t there.”

  “I know.” Every word out of his mouth was an effort. He’d thought, believed, hoped that the matter was dead. Just went to show, nothing was ever really over. “Aunt Rose gave me the message. I expected you to call me sooner.”

  “Yeah, well, so did I. But everything’s just crazy around here, Dad. There just doesn’t seem to be an end to the work. Someday, they’ll find me buried under a landslide of case files.” Probably soon, she thought. “How does getting together tonight after work sound? Just you, me and my shadow.”

  A hopeful note elbowed its way into his serious tone. “You have a man in your life?”

  “Unfortunately, I do.” She stretched her lips into a wide, phony smile as she looked at Sawyer. “Detective Sawyer Boone. The D.A. assigned him to guard my body.” Again, there was no response on the other end of the line. Her father was overworked, she thought, suddenly feeling guilty about dumping on him like this. “Dad?”

  “I’m here, Janelle.” And I should have been here for you a lot sooner. He hoped he wasn’t going to wind up paying for that. “How does six o’clock sound? At our favorite restaurant.”

  “Perfect.” She felt better already. Her father always had that effect on her.

  He’d noted her recent absences at Andrew’s table. “It’ll probably the first decent meal you’ll have in a month.”

  “I’ve been eating pizza pretty steadily,” Janelle admitted.

  “Knew it. Andrew’s been asking after you, saying you haven’t been coming around lately.”

  “I’ve been awfully busy.”

  “You should never be too busy for family, Janelle.”

  He sounded so serious. She wondered if there was something going on that she didn’t know about. “Dad, is something wrong?”

  “No. I’ll see you later, honey.”

  But something was wrong, Brian thought as he hung up the receiver.

  He was going to have to tell her.

  He had the meeting with the mayor in less than a few minutes, but somehow, that didn’t seem nearly as important to him now as it had just moments ago.

  The day he’d been dreading for the last twenty-eight years had finally arrived.

  In his time, Brian Cavanaugh had faced down homicidal criminals pointing their weapon at him, gone into the line of fire so many times he’d lost count. He’d done it all feeling a great deal calmer and more confident than he did right now.

  His men always said he had nerves of steel. Those same nerves deserted him now. When he needed them most.

  He was finally going to have to tell Janelle the truth. And he was more than a little afraid of the outcome.

  Chapter 8

  The restaurant was crowded. And, as always, rather dimly lit. Until this moment, Janelle hadn’t really paid that much attention to the limited visibility at the Three Queens Restaurant. The atmosphere seemed perfect for a romantic encounter.

  Janelle glanced at the man inches away from her elbow. The man who had crowded into her life and, as far as she knew, ran on batteries instead of sleep because she’d never caught him at the latter. She had no doubts that to Sawyer, this was probably a good place for a shooting, or, at the very least, a meeting between two parties who didn’t want to be seen together. Having been surrounded by them all of her life, she knew how a cop’s mind worked. Especially one who rarely, if ever, cracked a smile.

  Her father had chosen this restaurant, she knew, because it had been her mother’s favorite and whenever she and her father came to eat here, they both felt close to Susan Cavanaugh.

  Janelle looked toward what had become her father’s favorite booth. It was the one he reserved each and every time.

  Brian Cavanaugh was already there. There was a drink before him on the table. She thought that rather odd because her father rarely drank anything stronger than a beer, except on special occasions. Raising her hand, she waved to him. He nodded in response.

  “Why don’t you get a drink at the bar?” she suggested to Sawyer. “I’ll be right there.” For his benefit, and because she was feeling magnanimous, she indicated where her father was sitting.

  Sawyer swiftly scanned the surrounding area within striking distance of the booth, taking measure of everyone within the vicinity. “Can’t. I’m on duty.”

  About to make her way to her father’s booth, she stopped and looked at him. She did not want the man at the table with her. “Okay, have a peanut at the bar. There’s nothing against nuts on duty, is there?”

  His mouth curved ever so slightly as he eyed her. She had no idea why she thought that looked sexy, or why there was this minute tremor in her stomach. Probably had to do with the lack of food, Janelle assured herself.

  “Run into them all the time,” he told her.

  Not wanting to keep her father waiting any longer than he already had, Janelle didn’t bother answering. Turning her back on Sawyer, she made her way over toward her father’s table. He had a drink waiting for her. A whiskey sour. And there was a shrimp cocktail beside it. All the things she liked. Her father had always had an eye for detail, she thought affectionately.

  “Hi, Dad, thanks for coming.”

  She kissed him before sitting down across from him in the booth. Her father’s smile was strained. An uneasy premonition snaked its way up her spine. She thought of saying something flippant to forestall whatever was coming, but she liked to think of herself as her father’s daughter. That meant meeting challenges head-on instead of shying away from them.

  “What’s wrong?” She spread her napkin out on her lap, then curled her fingers around the chunky glass in front of her.

  Brian Cavanaugh ran a hand through salt-and-pepper hair that had once been as black as the inside of midnight. The wedding ring he couldn’t seem to remove caught a flash of sparse light before retreating into the shadows.

  “Janelle,” he began, then abruptly stopped as fear took away his power of coherent speech.

  She was a student of his face, of every nuance that came or went across what she’d always regarded as a kindly surface. As a kid, she could gauge just how much trouble she and her brothers were in by the way her father’s mouth was set, the way his eyebrows drew together. His cheekbones became really prominent when he was especially angry. They weren’t prominent now, but whatever was on his mind had him really worried.

  When he said nothing beyond her name, she felt her stomach tightening into a large knot. “Dad, you’re scaring me.”

  He thought of taking another sip of his drink. But that was cowardly. Just as not facing this years ago had been cowardly. But he had wanted to protect her. Protect her and protect Susan. And now, matters had taken this out of his hands. He hated not being in control.

  “Janelle,” he began again. “You have to recuse yourself from the case.”

  The case. She almost felt giddy with relief. There wasn’t anything wrong, her father w
as just overreacting to the threats. He was just being a dad. She could deal with that. And he was just going to have to deal with her being in the D.A.’s office.

  “You had me worried there for a second.” Taking one of the prawns that hung over the side of the frosted goblet, she popped it into her mouth without bothering to dip it into the sauce. It felt good to get something, however small, into her stomach. She couldn’t remember eating lunch. “Dad, I can’t just turn and run because someone fired shots outside the courthouse that might or might not have had anything to do with the Wayne case.” His expression remained unchanged. She wasn’t winning him over. “We’ve built a solid case. I’ve worked hard working up the background for this, I’ve been researching cases, we can—”

  “You can’t,” Brian cut in.

  He sounded so final, she thought. So abrupt. And he wasn’t giving her a chance to state her side. This wasn’t like him. She could always reason with her father. “What? Why?”

  This was his fault. The facts only became harder to face with each passing year. “Because if the defense finds out,” he said bluntly, “the case could get thrown out of court.”

  Damn it, how had he found out? “You’re talking about the phone call,” she assumed.

  Her temper immediately flared. Sawyer was the only other person, besides Marco, who knew about the call that the crime lieutenant had made to her. Had Sawyer given her up to her father? Why? To make his job easier? To get rid of her as an assignment?

  She turned and sought out her bodyguard, scanning the people lined up along the bar. Finding him was not a difficult matter. The man had a way of standing out in a crowd, rather than blending in. She imagined he probably found that annoying. As annoying as she found him right now.

  Sawyer was staring straight at her. She suppressed a few choice words that popped into her head and turned back to look at her father. Because she’d been raised to be fair, she asked before mentally castrating Sawyer, “How did you find out?”

  Brian shook his head. “What phone call?”