The Cavanaugh Code

by Marie Ferrarella

She had no doubt that the man was accustomed to getting along on pure charm. She knew any number of women who would probably go weak in the knees just looking at him.

  But the circles she moved around in were full of good-looking men. The Cavanaughs had all but cornered the market and her own brothers didn’t exactly look as if their secondary careers involved house haunting. All in all, that made her pretty much immune to the ways of silver-tongued charmers.

  Her eyes narrowed now. “No, but you’ll talk to me. Turn around,” she demanded, whipping out a set of handcuffs from the back of her belt.

  The stranger obligingly turned around for her. “Now, nothing kinky,” he warned. Taylor found herself wanting to hit him upside his head for his mocking tone. “We haven’t even been introduced yet.”

  As she came close enough to the man to slip on the handcuffs, he suddenly swung around to face her and in a heartbeat, Taylor found herself disarmed. He had the gun now.

  “Never let your guard down,” he counseled.

  The next moment, the tables turned again as the stranger received a sudden, very sharp jab from her knee. Pain shot from his groin into the pit of his stomach, radiating out and making him double over.

  “Right,” Taylor snapped. “Good advice.” She wasted no time as she grabbed one of his wrists, snapping a handcuff into place.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he protested as the second handcuff secured his wrists behind his back.

  Taylor rolled her eyes, stepping back and training her gun on him. “Oh, please, I expected something more original than that.”

  For the first time, the intruder seemed put out, but only marginally, as if he still thought of her as a minor annoyance. “Lady, who kicked you out of bed this morning?”

  “That,” Taylor informed him crisply, “is none of your business.”

  The fact that there was no one in her bed, no one currently in her life, was not a piece of information she was about to share with a lowlife, no matter how good-looking he was or how well he dressed. Given the charm he radiated, she pegged him as a successful con artist.

  The stranger shook his head and a sigh escaped his lips. “Okay, let’s back up here—”

  “Too late,” Taylor countered. She glanced around to see if anything had been moved from this afternoon, when she’d first come on the scene. It didn’t appear so, but she couldn’t swear to it. “This is a crime scene and nobody’s supposed to be here.”

  “You are,” he pointed out glibly, trying to look at her over his shoulder.

  Taylor couldn’t resist tossing her head and saying, “I’m special.”

  He eyed her for a long moment. “No argument, but—”

  The smile on his lips went down clear to her bones. Taylor shook the effects off, but it wasn’t as easy as she would have liked.

  “No but,” she said sharply. “Just move. Now,” she underscored.

  He took a step toward the door, then glanced at her again. “Okay, but I have a perfectly good reason for being here.”

  Taylor fought the temptation to jab him in the ribs with the muzzle of her gun. “This is a roped-off crime scene. There is no perfectly good reason to be here—unless you’re Santa Claus making an early pit-stop or you’re a cop.” Her eyes swept over him. “You’re definitely not Santa Claus. Are you a cop?” she demanded, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t. She knew all the cops on the force, and, due to her mother’s marriage, was now related to more than just a few of them. Even if she hadn’t known so many, she would have taken notice of this one had he been on the force.

  But he wasn’t. She’d never laid eyes on him until a couple of minutes ago.

  “No,” he answered as nonchalantly as if he were taking a telephone survey, the outcome of which had absolutely no consequence in his life.

  “Then, again, you shouldn’t be here. Now move.” She brought her face closer to his. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

  The expression in his eyes said that he knew he could take her. Even with his hands secured behind his back. But then he merely shrugged and grinned affably—as well as irritatingly.

  “No, ma’am,” he answered in a voice that was far too polite to be believable, “you won’t have to tell me again. I’m moving. See?” he pointed out. “Feet going forward and everything.”

  What kind of a wise guy was he? Taylor wondered. In the next moment, she silently answered her own question. The kind, she realized, stopping dead, who had managed to get her to stop her normal mode of investigation.

  For a reason?

  Was there something this man didn’t want her to see? Was he the killer? Or could he be working for the killer? Had he hidden something, or had she come in time to stop him?

  “Hold it,” she ordered.

  The stranger turned around to look at her. “Come to your senses?” he asked mildly.

  “Never left them,” Taylor informed him tersely.

  Moving behind him, she removed one handcuff and then, rather than undo the other the way she knew he expected, she cuffed his hands around the Doric column that rose up from the center of the living room like an ambiguous statement.

  “Now you stay here until I’m finished.”

  To her surprise, he offered no protest, no angry words at being shackled in this manner. Instead, he merely watched her for another long moment, then asked, “And just what is it you’re going to be doing?”

  Why did that sound so damn sexy? As if he was implying that she was about to have her way with him instead of just surveying the apartment the way she intended?

  It occurred to Taylor that she didn’t know his name and hadn’t even asked. But then, she had no doubt that he would probably just give her an alias. There was no point in asking.

  “What I came here to do,” was all she said.

  “Then I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “First right answer of the evening,” Taylor replied curtly. About to walk away, she stopped and tested the integrity of the handcuffs—just in case. To her satisfaction, they didn’t budge. “Now stay put. I’ll be back when I’m finished.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” he called out after her.

  “Damn straight you’ll be waiting,” Taylor muttered under her breath in exasperation as she walked out of the room and headed for Eileen Stevens’s bedroom.

  The last place the criminal lawyer had gone alive.

  Chapter 2

  T aylor stood in the walk-in closet that was bigger than her own bedroom. Surveying its contents, she shook her head.

  How did one woman manage to accumulate so many clothes? Moreover, nearly half of them still had their tags on. Eileen hadn’t even gotten around to wearing them yet.

  Was there some inner compulsion that made her just buy things to have them, not necessarily to use them?

  “Who’s going to wear them now, Eileen?” Taylor asked softly, examining a designer original evening gown that sparkled even in the artificial overhead light. “What drove you, Eileen? What?”

  Taylor stopped talking and cocked her head, listening. Was that…?

  It was.

  The sound of the front door opening and then closing. Instantly alert, her journey in the other woman’s shoes immediately suspended, Taylor pulled out her weapon again.

  Had someone else come in?

  What was going on here, anyway? It felt as if she’d wandered into an open house instead of an official crime scene. Holding her breath, Taylor cautiously made her way to the living room again.

  And then stopped dead.

  The handcuffs she’d used to secure the intruder were neatly lying on the white rug before the Doric column, nothing but air held within the metal circles.

  She rushed over to the cuffs and grabbed them, exasperation bubbling within her veins as she scanned the room. The intruder was nowhere to be seen. He’d pulled a Houdini on her. How? These weren’t fake cuffs or a prop. The average person couldn’t have gotten out of them.

  He
ll, she couldn’t have gotten out of them. But he had. Just who the hell was he?

  “Damn it!” Taylor exclaimed, scanning the room again as if the second survey would somehow uncover the man for her.

  What if the door opening and closing was just to throw her off?

  She looked around for a third time, tension weaving in and out of her. Taylor half expected the stranger to come charging at her from one of the corners.

  Adrenaline still rushing through her veins, weapon drawn, she swept from one room to another, checking closets, bathrooms, the balcony. Anywhere the man could have folded his lengthy form and attempted to hide. All to no avail.

  The man was gone.

  Who the hell was he and how did he fit into all this? she silently demanded, her exasperation growing exponentially. This scenario wouldn’t have gone this way if Aaron had been with her. Damn him, anyway.

  No, Taylor upbraided herself tersely the next moment. This wasn’t Aaron’s fault, it was hers. She was the one who’d gotten sloppy, unconsciously getting too accustomed to someone having her back at all times.

  She knew better.

  On this job, no matter what, you had to remain vigilant because there were no guarantees and even the best of partners could be caught napping.

  Just like she had this evening, she thought in disgust.

  Crossing to the front door, Taylor locked it, then tested the doorknob to make sure it held. It did. Even so, she dragged one of the chairs over and placed it in front of the ornate door. If “Houdini” decided to come back and pick the lock, he’d still wind up hitting the chair. The scraping noise the feet would make against the marble would alert her. She didn’t want to be caught off guard a second time.

  Most likely, she mused, the intruder wasn’t going to come back. He was probably just happy to get away. Not that she planned to let him. She intended to find him, but that was something she’d deal with later. After she did what she came here to do.

  Glancing toward the door one final time, Taylor went back to Eileen Stevens’s bedroom. Somewhere amid all the woman’s things she hoped to get a handle on the late lawyer’s life.

  No doubt about it, Eileen Stevens had led an extremely busy life, Taylor concluded more than ninety minutes later, finally driving home to her own apartment. A busy life, but, as far as she could ascertain, it had been far from satisfying. The few photographs that did grace the walls in the lawyer’s study were of Eileen and the other, older partners from the firm. Eileen appeared very formal in them.

  Didn’t the woman have a personal life?

  From everything she’d found, it didn’t seem so. There were no love letters stashed in a bottom drawer, held fast with a faded ribbon, no secret photographs tucked away in an album of someone who had once made her pulse race. There was nothing to indicate that Eileen had made any kind of personal contact with anyone.

  The only scrapbook the woman had kept was filled with newspaper articles about her cases. Cases she had won. It was all about winning for Eileen.

  Can’t take a court victory to bed with you at night, Taylor thought.

  “Looks like you lost, big time,” Taylor murmured under her breath to a woman who could no longer benefit from any insight she might have to give.

  Is this any better than your life? an annoying voice in her head mockingly asked. Here it is, way past your shift, and what are you doing? Poking around a dead woman’s apartment.

  Taylor unconsciously stiffened her shoulders. Eileen Stevens’s life wasn’t like her life, she silently insisted. She had a life, she had a family. A family that meant the world to her and who were always there for her anytime she needed them, or just wanted to kick back. Just because she wasn’t spending her nights with a lover didn’t make her anything like the dead woman.

  She blew out a breath as she pulled into her apartment complex, a modest collection of garden apartments with carport parking and bright white daisies planted all along their borders.

  “Great, so now you’re arguing with yourself. Maybe you should go back to Brian and have him assign that temporary partner to you,” she said out loud in disgust.

  Taylor pulled into her carport and turned the engine off. For a second she sat there, listening to crickets calling to each other. In the distance was not-so-faint music coming from the pool area. Someone was having another party.

  Someone was always having another party this time of year. She felt no desire to go.

  Maybe you should go, anyway. Might do you good.

  She shook her head. Andrew Cavanaugh saw to her social life. The former chief of police and family patriarch held enough gatherings at his place to take care of any spare time she had.

  Tonight she was just tired. Tired and disappointed in herself for allowing that cocky intruder to get away. Tomorrow would be better, she silently vowed getting out of her vehicle. All she needed was a good night’s sleep and then she’d be back on track.

  The good night’s sleep she’d planned on had eluded her.

  Oh, she’d slept all right, but rather than a restful, dreamless event, her night was packed full of dreams. One dream flowering instantly into another, all involving the sexy intruder.

  The dreams played out so vividly that she’d had trouble separating reality from fiction. In several versions, the intruder got the drop on her rather than she on him. In the last dream, things inexplicably heated up. Her clothes disappeared just as she realized that he wasn’t wearing any either.

  That was when she bolted upright, waking up.

  It was 7:00 a.m. and her pulse was racing. Her breathing was so shallow she thought for a moment she was going to hyperventilate. The downside was that she felt far more tired than when she’d first fallen asleep.

  Exhausted, her breathing finally under control, she dropped, face forward on the comforter for a moment longer.

  Who the hell was that man and how did he fit into Eileen’s life? Taylor wondered for the hundredth time.

  She knew she wasn’t going to have any peace until she answered those questions, especially the first one. Sitting up again, Taylor sighed and dragged her hand through her tousled, long blond hair. First thing this morning, she would see about getting together with the sketch artist, before the intruder’s features faded from her memory.

  She should be so lucky.

  Throwing off the covers, Taylor marched into the bathroom. She rushed through her shower and was drying off in less than ten minutes. Dressed, she ran her fingers through her hair as she aimed the hair dryer at several sections, impatient to be on her way. She was determined to find out the man’s name and bring him in before the day was out.

  Breakfast was a banana she peeled and ate between leaving her front door and reaching her vehicle in the carport.

  She was on her way to the precinct less than half an hour after she’d woken up.

  Tracking down the mysterious intruder turned out to be a lot easier than she ever imagined.

  Arriving at the precinct, Taylor went straight up to her squad room. Her intention was to drop off her purse at her desk and then go in search of the sketch artist.

  She stopped dead ten feet short of her goal.

  The intruder was there, sitting in the chair beside her desk, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Taylor’s first instinct was to draw her weapon, but she banked it down even though training a gun on him would have been immensely satisfying. The man obviously wasn’t a criminal. A criminal didn’t just waltz into a squad room and make himself at home. Although, approaching the scene from another angle as she played her own devil’s advocate, that could actually be the perfect cover.

  Either way, the stranger obviously had a hell of a lot of nerve.

  Taking a deep breath, Taylor crossed the rest of the way through the room to her desk.

  As if sensing her presence, the stranger turned his head and looked right into her eyes a moment before she reached him.

  “You,” she spat out, making the
single word sound like an angry accusation.

  An accusation that apparently left him unruffled. The stranger merely smiled that maddening smile she’d previewed last night.

  “Me,” he affirmed.

  Instead of throwing her purse into the bottom drawer, she dropped it in. But she satisfied her need to blow off steam by kicking the drawer shut.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, barely keeping her voice down. “And how did you get out of those handcuffs?”

  “Handcuffing your dates these days?”

  Focused only on the stranger, Taylor almost jumped. The question came from her brother, Frank, another homicide detective. Frank had chosen that moment to come up behind her. Fresh off solving a serial-killer case and riding the crest of triumphant satisfaction, her younger brother grinned at her.

  “You know the department frowns on taking their equipment for personal use.” He moved so that he stood next to the annoying stranger.

  Taylor struggled to keep from telling her brother to butt out. “This isn’t a date, this is a suspect,” she bit off.

  “A suspect?” the intruder echoed, still smiling that annoyingly sexy smile that seemed to undulate right under her skin, shooting straight to her core and warming it. “For what?” he asked innocently.

  As if he didn’t know. “For the murder of Eileen Stevens,” she snapped.

  “A suspect?” her brother repeated in disbelief, then looked, stunned, at the seated man. “Laredo?”

  Taylor’s eyebrows narrowed over eyes the color of the midmorning sky. “Who the hell is Laredo?” she demanded.

  “I am,” the stranger told her affably. The next moment, he half rose in his seat and extended his hand to her. “J. C. Laredo,” he introduced himself. “I came in to see if we might be able to have a successful exchange of information. I would have asked last night,” he went on, “but you looked a little too hot and perturbed to listen to reason.”

  “Taylor hardly ever listens to reason,” Frank told the man as if he was sharing some sort of a family confidence.