Cavanaugh Watch

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You believe him?”

  He’d already checked Conway out. The man was a good cop. No evidence of his ever having been compromised. Not everything was a conspiracy. “No reason not to.”

  “Did they try to trace the call?”

  He shook his head. “The woman didn’t stay on the line long enough for them to do that.”

  Her eyes widened. This was the first she’d heard of a woman placing the call. She’d just naturally assumed it was a man. Which made her as guilty as everyone else when it came to stereotyping and profiling. “A woman?”

  “Yeah.” He liked the surprise on her face. Liked her face, he thought. He knew he was on dangerous ground here and he was really going to have to watch his step. For his own sake. “According to Conway, she said something about Wayne Jr. supplying her brother and that the kid had overdosed on the stuff, which was why she was calling us. For revenge and so that no other kid could die like her brother did.

  “But then she was gone. Conway said she sounded genuine and the department had been trying for a long time to get something on Wayne that would stick.”

  Janelle pointed out the obvious. “But this is Wayne Jr.”

  He nodded, indicating that he went along with her thinking. “They figured it was a start.” Sawyer took a breath, waiting until the two detectives who were walking down the hall had passed them before he continued. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought I was the one who was supposed to chase down leads.”

  She supposed that had been the original division of labor, but she hadn’t really been paying that much attention to rules, not when all heaven breaking loose had followed. “I got restless.”

  To her surprise, Sawyer laughed ruefully, running his hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Her eyes met his. And she knew exactly what he was saying. Neither of them was talking about the restlessness that came from dealing with unresolved cases. It was far more basic than that.

  Sawyer took a breath, as if making up his mind about something. “You know, we’re not that far from my place.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she tried to absorb the meaning behind the words. “You’re inviting me over to your apartment?”

  He glanced at his watch. “It’s lunchtime.”

  Janelle took his wrist and held it so that he could see his watch more clearly. It wasn’t that late yet. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

  He shrugged as he dropped his hand. “So, make it an early lunch.”

  She regarded him for a moment, mystified. “You could actually eat after everything that my uncle loaded on your plate?”

  His eyes held hers for what seemed like an eternity. “Who said anything about eating?”

  This, she told herself, was where she cut the line and ran. Or at least turned on her heel and walked away. This was not a man a woman could build a future with. He was the last word in rootlessness and the sooner she wrapped her mind around that, the better it would be for her.

  Knowing this, believing this, she was surprised to hear herself say, “You lead, I’ll follow in my car.”

  Sawyer didn’t say a word. Not okay, not fine. Not even a quick nod of his head. But the grin on his face remained with her the entire short trip from the police station to his modest garden apartment complex.

  She was so intent on keeping Sawyer’s car in sight, she hardly took note of the route, which was bad. Had she abruptly decided to retrace her steps, she wouldn’t have been able to do that without first pulling over to the side in order to examine the road map she kept tucked away in the passenger door.

  Although the tips of her fingers felt damp, there were no sudden decisions to turn around and go back. If anything, the anticipation kept building with each tenth of a mile that passed.

  Because of the hour, there were a lot of empty spaces in the complex. She passed where he parked his car in order to slip into a space two aisles over.

  The moment she pulled up her hand brake, the door on her side opened and Sawyer was pulling her out. Pulling her out of the car and into his arms.

  Any protest or pretense at surprise faded in the wake of the heat instantly traveling up and down her body. His mouth covered hers and she found herself melting as she threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Doing what she’d been thinking about doing ever since she had left his bed this morning.

  Janelle could feel her body responding, could feel it tightening like an instrument being tuned. Primed. Ready for the concert that was coming.

  She didn’t remember how she got from the parking space to his apartment. It was almost as if she had been teleported across the distance. Neither did she remember taking off her clothes or having them removed. One minute, she was standing out in the open beside her car, fully clothed, kissing and being kissed. The next, she was inside his apartment, naked and completely on fire.

  They made love faster than she would have ever thought possible. The all-consuming desires that ricocheted through her body all but exploded within what seemed like minutes. He’d gotten her to climax in breathtaking speed.

  And when it was over, they did it again. And again. Until neither one could move and they both lay together on the floor, only several feet into the apartment, trying desperately to regulate their breathing or, at the very least, their pulse rate.

  Janelle waited for the embarrassment, the regret, to overtake her. Neither made an appearance. Another wave of desire came instead, along with an almost debilitating tenderness that flooded her veins.

  She had no idea what to do with it.

  Her breathing a tiny bit steadier, she covered her eyes with one of her hands, trying somehow to pull herself together.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever done it that quickly before.” Dropping her hand, she turned her head slightly to look at him. “Or that often.”

  He looked at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “I believe in making the most of my time,” he told her softly. Though drolly delivered, the response struck her as funny. So funny that she started to laugh. Once she got started, she couldn’t seem to stop. Janelle laughed so hard, she wound up getting hiccups.

  “Now see—hic—what you’ve—hic—done. I’m—hic—supposed to—hic—be in—hic—court this—hic—afternoon.” Concern grew as she tried to stop and found she really couldn’t. “How—hic—am I—hic—supposed to—hic—ask the—hic—judge for—hic—no remand—hic—like this—hic?”

  Sawyer couldn’t keep the amusement he felt from showing. But he did his best to appear concerned. “You’re right. This is serious.” He rolled over onto his stomach, his upper torso half covering hers. “I could try scaring you.”

  “If this—hic—isn’t scary—hic—enough,” she said, referring to how quickly they had come together, “I—hic—don’t know—hic—what is—hic.”

  He drew her even closer, so that their breaths mingled along with their heartbeats. “By ‘this’ you mean making love with me?”

  She could feel herself heating again. Longing. Even as her chest kept heaving from the damn hiccups. “Yeah—hic.”

  “Okay,” he said gamely, “then we’ll try more of the same.”

  Before she could protest, he brought his lips down over hers, momentarily stealing her breath away. At first, her hiccups echoed inside his mouth as well as her body. But gradually, as he kissed her over and over again, his hands passing along her flesh, claiming her the way he had before, the hiccups subsided until they finally disappeared altogether.

  She felt as if she were spinning out of her own body and into space.

  “Does the AMA know about this method?” she murmured the moment his mouth left hers and began to trail along her throat. Her hiccups might have been gone, but her body vibrated like a tuning fork struck against a goblet filled with champagne.

  “Haven’t had time to notify them,” he answered, his breath gliding along her skin, heightening her arousal with every passing second. “You can take the credi
t for it if you want.”

  There was only one thing she wanted right now and credit had nothing to do with it.

  Janelle had no idea what was going on or why Sawyer had this effect on her. All she knew was that she desperately wanted it to continue for as long as possible. Somehow, in the space of less than twenty-four hours, she had gotten utterly and incredibly hooked on a man she knew was bad for her.

  Bad only because she knew that this would end one way. Badly. At least, for her. But it didn’t stop her from wanting to be with him. From wanting to make love with him. Over and over again until she expired.

  From out of a haze, she heard his voice against her ear. She shivered even as it brought a blanket of warmth with it.

  “We’ve only got fifteen minutes left,” Sawyer whispered urgently.

  Fifteen minutes. The blink of an eye, or eternity. It all depended on the way it was handled.

  “Then we’d better make the most of it,” she told him. Before he could digest her words, she pushed him onto his back and began to move along his body. Straddling him, she did her very best to bring him as close to a climax as physically possible before she drew back and retreated.

  She did it not once, but three times. When she heard him groan, a wicked, pleasure-filled laugh escaped her lips. It was nice, just this once, to be in control. There was so little of it where he was concerned.

  But as she went to move away the third time, Sawyer surprised her as he caught her wrists and pulled her down to him.

  “Not this time,” he warned. There were sparks in his eyes. She could feel an electrical current pass through her. Holding her fast, Sawyer switched their positions until he was the one on top. And then he proceeded to do things to her that she could only term as sweet agony. Every nerve ending raced up to the surface, eager to take part. To feel.

  Sawyer anointed her body with his tongue until she was primed and moist, ready to come apart at the seams.

  Poised over her body, his hands joined with hers, he looked down at her, a grin on his face. His eyes teased hers. “Tables are turned, Cavanaugh. Tell me, how does it feel?”

  She raised her head. “I won’t tell you, I’ll show you.” The next minute, she stretched as far as she could. Her lips captured his.

  It was all the encouragement he needed.

  Unable to resist her or the demands slamming through his body any longer, Sawyer sank down into the heated kiss. After a beat, he parted her legs with his knee. The next moment, they were joined and urgently racing toward the final moment that they had been anticipating. When they reached it, the movement kept it escalating for as long as humanly possible.

  Neither wanted it to end. Or to have reality descend before absolutely necessary.

  Chapter 15

  Very slowly, but faster than she was happy about, the euphoria lifted and receded. Reality arrived to nudge her, however unwillingly, back into her everyday world. At the same moment, strains of “Tara,” the theme song from Gone With the Wind, intrusively elbowed its way into the atmosphere.

  Confused, still a little disoriented, Janelle turned only her head toward Sawyer. “Do you have music that goes on automatically?” He didn’t strike her as the type. That kind of scene belonged to a Romeo, something Sawyer definitely was not.

  “If I did, it wouldn’t be that.” Sawyer sat up, listening. At first he thought the music might be coming from a neighboring apartment. But it sounded too close, as if in the same room with them. “That’s coming from your purse,” he realized. Sawyer frowned. Didn’t she recognize her own phone? “That’s a hell of a ring tone for your cell phone.”

  Mixing modesty and pragmatism, Janelle had already slipped on her underwear while Sawyer was trying to determine the origin of the music. Getting to her feet, she grabbed her blouse and punched her arms through the sleeves. She reached for her purse, lying beside her discarded skirt. The theme was still continuing, but who knew for how long.

  “That’s not my phone.”

  “Phonesitting?” he guessed as she pulled a cell phone out of the bowels of her purse. The phone looked as if it had been kicked around a bit.

  Janelle held her hand up to silence him as she flipped open the cell. “Hello?”

  “Mariel?” the voice on the other end was male and sounded uncertain.

  “No, I—”

  Before she could say another word, or ask anything, the connection went dead. Frowning, she flipped the cover closed again. “Guess that answers that,” she commented more to herself than to Sawyer.

  “You come with subtitles?” Sawyer asked. She turned around to see that he was behind her and had already pulled on his jeans.

  She supposed he deserved an explanation and told him as much as she knew. “I found this phone in the parking lot this morning. I was going to try to find out who it belonged to, but then I got caught up doing things at work and completely forgot about it.” She looked at the item in her hand. “The cell phone belongs to Mariel. Collins,” she added after a beat.

  She could see the name meant absolutely nothing to Sawyer. Why should it?

  “She’s one of the assistants in the D.A.’s office,” Janelle explained. A fragment of a scene played back in her head. “No wonder she looked so upset this morning,” she realized. “Mariel was probably looking for her phone.”

  Picking up her skirt, she was about to step into it when she suddenly paused. Something wasn’t right. “Then why didn’t she say anything?” Her eyes met Sawyer’s. It was obvious to her that he was waiting for her to start making sense. “When I asked her if anything was wrong—because she looked really upset and nervous about something—she said no. Why wouldn’t she tell me she was looking for her cell phone? Or ask me if I’d seen it?”

  “Maybe because she had something to hide.” Slipping on his dark shirt, he began to button it. “Usually when people don’t ask for help it’s because they don’t want any attention drawn to the problem.”

  “Either that, or they’re super macho and have an ego problem.”

  “Wouldn’t know about that,” he commented absently. His mind juggling disjointed pieces of the puzzle, Sawyer suddenly stopped buttoning his shirt and took the phone from her. Tapping an icon in the center, he opened the menu screen and began to scroll down.

  He looked like a man with a purpose, she thought. “What are you doing? Besides invading privacy,” she qualified.

  The phone was tiny. His fingers were not. It was difficult getting to the right screen. “Seeing who this Marion—”

  “Mariel,” Janelle corrected.

  “Mariel,” he repeated, this time committing the name to memory. “Who this Mariel was making and getting calls from recently.”

  Janelle made an attempt to look over his shoulder, but he was just too tall and too broad-shouldered. Giving up, she settled for looking at the phone upside down.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  He swallowed a curse as he found himself on a screen he didn’t want. Going back, he tried again. This time, the icon for recent calls came up. He pressed it and moved on to a menu that gave him a choice between incoming and outgoing.

  “To find out what she had to hide.”

  She thought of Mariel. Glasses of water had more to hide than the mousy woman. “What if there’s nothing to hide?”

  Sawyer didn’t bother shrugging. “Then no harm, no foul.” He slanted a glance in her direction. Janelle was, after all, a lawyer and probably very wrapped up in truth, justice and strict guidelines. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  It was hard to debate a person’s right to privacy when she was talking to a man whose shirt was only half-buttoned. But she still couldn’t come out and condone what he was doing, so she refrained from commenting on his last words, turned away and finished getting dressed.

  “Interesting.”

  “What is?” she asked despite herself. Dressed, she turned back around to face him. His shirt was still partially open and he looked like one of tho
se brooding heroes who graced the covers of historical romances. She tried not to dwell on that.

  “Mariel seems to be calling a particular number quite a lot.” He pointed it out to her.

  Craning her neck, she looked at the recent history of the calls. There were a lot. But that didn’t mean anything. “Maybe it’s her boyfriend.”

  He shut the phone and slipped it into his pocket. “Not unless she’s going with someone from Charlie Wentworth’s house.”

  The name had her doing a mental double take. She looked at Sawyer sharply, growing wary. Why had he plucked that name out of the air? That was the man Wayne had claimed was behind framing his son. “How would you know his number?”

  “My life didn’t start the day I took on being your bodyguard,” he reminded her. Although, he added silently, there had been a few minutes, like just earlier and last night, when he might have felt tempted to say otherwise. “I worked undercover for three years. Let’s just say some of the paths I took led me through organized-crime territory.”

  “And you remember Wentworth’s personal number.”

  The expression on Sawyer’s face negated her doubts. “I’ve got total recall.”

  Did that apply to things written down on a page, or to events, as well? She felt a little vulnerable. “Should have warned me earlier.”

  The smile was small. Its effect was not. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  She could feel herself responding to the look in his eyes. To him. Janelle struggled to bank down her reactions, but it wasn’t easy. “Why would an assistant to the A.D.A. be calling someone like Wentworth?”

  “That’s the big question,” he acknowledged. “But for the time being—” he began buttoning his shirt again “—I think you might have found your leak.”

  “You found my phone!” Mariel cried when Janelle got directly in front of her in the woman’s office and held the cell phone up before her.

  Janelle had been in the building less than five minutes. The moment they’d walked in, she’d asked Sawyer to go to the crime lab and check on the tech’s progress with finding any fingerprints on the bags of cocaine confiscated in Anthony’s apartment. They separated at the front entrance, with her going up to the D.A.’s floor to confront Mariel.