“You might want to go back there,” Andrew suggested, “clear things up, move out your things.”
“Anything of value I had I took with me. Far as I’m concerned, they can have the rest. I don’t intend to set foot in that place again.” For a moment, he paused, watching as the sun began to dip in the sky, preparing to set. Sunrises and sunsets always filled him with wonder. At his age, he was grateful to see each one. “Besides, I’ve got more important things on my mind.”
Now they were getting to it, Andrew thought. “Like what?”
Shamus took another pull from his bottle. “Andy, you ever think about expanding this security firm that you’ve set up?”
Well, he hadn’t seen this coming. “I already have. As the company got more clients, I hired on more guards, more software techs to monitor the security systems.”
“No, not that kind of expanding,” Shamus said with a touch of impatience as he shook his shaggy head.
His father had momentarily lost him. “What other kind is there?”
Warming to his topic, Shamus leaned forward, closer to his son. “Adding another wing to the business,” he said, mystified that Andrew couldn’t see that. “Like private investigations.”
“Are you talking about having private detectives, Pop?” Andrew asked.
Shamus’s face lit up. “Glad to see we’re on the same page,” he declared heartily.
Andrew held his hand up, as if to slow his father down for a bit. “I’m not on a page, Pop, I’m just looking at the title on top.” He’d begun the company with a certain focus in mind, providing decent, affordable security for the average family, and, as far as he was concerned, he was accomplishing that. “Why would I want to have private detectives?”
His father looked at him as if the answer was self-evident. “Well, most of the guys who work for you are retired cops. The way I see it, having a private detective section available to your clients would just be a natural progression of things.”
A hint of amusement played across Andrew’s face. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” Shamus affirmed with feeling.
Andrew felt as if he was back on the force, trying to draw reliable information out of a witness. “And just what kind of ‘things’ do you see us investigating?”
Shamus shrugged his wide shoulders, then took another long pull from his bottle.
He was stalling, Andrew thought. Why? For dramatic effect? Or because this was hard for him to talk about?
“Oh, I dunno,” Shamus finally said loftily. “Maybe specialize in locating lost family members, that kind of thing.”
It was time to get to the heart of the matter. His father, now that he thought about it, had the ability to dance around a topic all night. “What’s this really about, Pop?”
“Can’t a father look out for his son’s interest?” Shamus asked, growing defensive again.
“Sure he can,” Andrew responded soothingly. “And I appreciate it, I do.” He eyed his father as he continued. “He can also level with his son, which would be even more appreciated.”
Shamus laughed self-consciously. Andrew saw right through his roundabout approach. “Once a cop, always a cop, huh?”
“Something like that,” Andrew conceded. “Now give, Pop. What’s on your mind? Why do you need a private investigator? Investigating what?”
Shamus grew quiet, thoughtfully regarding the near empty bottle of beer. He tilted it to and fro, watching the remaining liquid inside move from one side of the bottle to the other. Finally, he asked, “You remember my telling you about your grandfather and grandmother?”
“You told me Grandpa was a homicide detective, that he liked to drink a little more than he should and that was why he and his wife split up.” People took a dim view of divorce back then, usually condemning the woman because it meant that she didn’t try hard enough to keep her marriage together. He knew his father hadn’t had an easy time of it, coming from a broken home. He’d turned out incredibly well-adjusted and kind, given what he’d had to endure.
There was no humor to the smile that was now on his lips. “Your grandfather used to like to drink a lot more than he should,” Shamus corrected. “My mother put up with it as long as she could, and then she just took off,” he said, his voice sounding as hollow as he’d felt at the time of his abandonment.
It was time to call him out, and then end this, Andrew decided. “Okay. Where’s this going, Pop?”
Each word he uttered left a bitter taste on his tongue. “Well, when she took off, my mother took my younger brother with her.”
Very few things surprised Andrew. At this point in his life, he’d seen and heard it all, far more than the average citizen. But this caught him completely off guard.
“You had a younger brother?” Andrew asked, stunned by the words his father had just uttered. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
At first it seemed as if his father hadn’t even heard his question. “At the time I was pretty hurt that she took Jonny and left me. I kept waiting, night after night, for her to come back, to say she’d made a mistake and meant to take me with her instead—or at least too. After a year, I decided she wasn’t coming back, that she’d left me with Dad on purpose because she didn’t want to have anything to do with either one of us.” He looked at Andrew, shame and sadness mingling in his eyes. “I didn’t tell you or your brothers about it because I was ashamed that your grandmother didn’t think I was worth taking with her.”
Andrew didn’t see it that way and it hurt to see how wounded his father was by this even after all these years. “Could have been a lot of reasons why she picked him over you,” he offered. “From what you said, your brother was younger. Maybe he was sickly.”
The shaggy head moved from side to side. “Nope.”
Andrew wasn’t about to give up. “Still could have been a logical reason why she chose him and left you. Maybe she thought you were strong enough to look after your dad because he needed someone to keep him from drinking himself to death.”
Shamus blew out a breath as he shook his head. “I doubt if she was being that thoughtful, but thanks for trying.”
“Does this have anything to do with you wanting to expand the security company?” Andrew asked, trying to tie the whole thing together and get his father talking about the present rather than just exclusively the past.
“Absolutely,” Shamus said with feeling. “I’m in my seventies, Andy. I don’t know just how much time I’ve got left—”
“About thirty years,” Andrew countered without even a hint of a smile. “If they don’t catch a bullet,” he continued, thinking of his late brother, Mike, who had died in the line of duty, “Cavanaughs are generally very long-lived.”
The key word here being “generally,” Shamus thought. “Yeah, well, until I find that carved in stone by the Big Guy,” he nodded toward the sky, “I’m going to move forward as if there’re no guarantees on that.”
For now, he tabled the discussion on how much time he had left. That wasn’t the important part. “Anyway, I want to have Jonny tracked down, see what happened to him, if he’s still alive. If he ever got married and had any kids. It’s been bothering me lately, not knowing,” Shamus confessed.
He could well understand that—and sympathize with it. “I don’t have to expand the company for that,” Andrew told his father.
“No, but it’s not a bad idea,” Shamus insisted, then pointed out, “That way, we’d have all these resources available to us twenty-four/seven. And the investigator would be on your clock, not someone else’s,” he pointed out. “People tend to do better for their own than for some stranger who hires them.”
“Worth thinking about,” Andrew agreed, then suggested, “Until then, though, why don’t you give me all the information you do have on this long lost brother of you
rs? That way, I can start looking into it for you.” He saw the skeptical look slipped over his father’s face. “Don’t give me that look, Pop. I tracked down Rose, remember? Everyone told me to give up, that she was dead and I was just torturing myself by not accepting it. But I refused to listen because we never found a body when Rose’s car went over the embankment.
“And,” he added triumphantly, “everyone else was wrong and I was right.”
“Right about what, dear?” Rose asked as she came out to the patio to join her husband and father-in-law. They’d been out here for a while now and dusk had settled in like a warm throw on a chilly autumn evening. It was time to find out what was going on.
“Right about saying that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Andrew volunteered, holding the bottle of beer aloft as he pulled her onto his lap with his other hand.
She knew when she was being kept in the dark. She also knew that it was never anything major, so for now, she played along.
“Can’t argue with that,” she said, giving her husband a quick kiss. And then she looked from her father-in-law to her husband. “But what are you two really talking about?”
“Expanding the company,” Andrew answered. For now, the fact that he might have an uncle floating out there would remain between his father and him. He had a feeling that his father wasn’t quite ready to share his secret with the rest of the family just yet.
Rose thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds like a good idea,” she agreed.
Shamus beamed. Leaning forward again, he gave his daughter-in-law’s hand a quick squeeze. “Always said I liked this girl.”
Rose laughed. “And I really like being called that,” she told her father-in-law.
Andrew watched the two interact, amused. But he never took even one moment he had with Rose for granted.
Even so, the wheels in his head were furiously turning as he considered the investigation he was about to undertake.
A long lost uncle, who would have ever thought it?
Chapter 10
Years of working on his own had predisposed Esteban to working best alone.
Which was why he thought he’d get an early start this morning and come in while the office was still empty. But the moment he walked into the squad room, he saw that he’d thought wrong.
Because it was more than an hour before the morning shift came on, the rest of the area was still empty. However, the desk butted up directly against his was not. Kari was there, although it was anyone’s guess whether she was conscious or not. She’d obviously put her head down to grab a few winks.
Apparently the winks were still going on. Her head was resting on her arms, which she’d drawn close together and crossed in order to afford herself a tiny bit of comfort.
Not that they would give her all that much, he judged. From what he’d seen of them, her arms were rather toned. It was obvious that she liked to keep herself fit. He could relate to that.
He could almost, he thought, relate to her, as well.
Though he wouldn’t admit it to her, she was right about remembering him from high school. All sorts of memories came flooding back to him. They had gone to school together, although he’d been a year ahead of her.
Even so, they’d shared a couple of academic classes. He might have been a jock back then, but he was determined to use his athletic abilities to propel him up the road to getting a higher education. Securing a football scholarship meant he could spend more time studying, less time working to pay for that education. He’d set his sights on lofty goals.
And she was a junior with looks and brains—and if he recalled correctly, she’d been far more interested in using those brains, rather than her feminine wiles, to get ahead. He found that admirable.
And, at the time, rare.
He also remembered another very pertinent thing about her. She was not part of the circle of girls he had found perpetually clustered around him. She was always off somewhere in the background. He’d catch her looking his way once in a while. Looking, but not joining.
He remembered wondering if she was shy.
He also vaguely remembered being intrigued by her. But there were so many more willing and available girls back then that he didn’t have time to find out what her story was.
Even though he’d wanted to.
And then he’d graduated and gone off to college.
But those brilliant blue eyes of hers, and that certain tilt of her head when she smiled—that he remembered. That stayed with him.
Now that all seemed like it had happened a hundred years ago, he thought, putting the tall container of coffee he’d bought at the coffee shop down on his desk. The person he’d been, that jock with the world at his feet—that was someone else from another lifetime.
The life he now had had begun when he’d been called out of his class at the academy and taken aside by the chief of police. The man—ironically the brother of the current Chief of D’s—had told him as gently as he could about his mother and brother’s deaths and what his stepfather had done to avenge Julio.
It had all taken place within a twenty-four-hour period.
Only twenty-four hours. And just like that, the light had gone out of his life.
Out of his world.
Avenging his family by taking down all the members of the cartel that he could seemed like the only reason for him to go on drawing breath. So he’d done just that. And he’d done it well.
And then, even that had been taken away from him.
The Chief was right. He’d had to flee or die. As if the latter mattered.
Every morning, he got up, wondering why. And yet, he did...and he found himself putting one foot in front of the other. And, these past few days, somehow arriving here. To work with a vibrant woman he pretended not to recognize.
Sometimes he wondered if all sense had left his world, as well....
Drawn back to the present, he couldn’t help but note that Kari was still out like a light. She must have put in one long night.
Rounding his desk, he came around to her side and lightly tapped his partner on the shoulder. When that didn’t seem to rouse her, he did it again, a little harder this time.
He was about to do it a third time—it was either that or yell in her ear—when Kari abruptly jerked her head up from her desk, as if suddenly aware of not being alone anymore.
She looked up at him and blinked, trying to focus eyes that were still somewhat blurry from lack of a decent night’s sleep. She was acutely conscious of his almost overpowering aura. That, and his intense blue eyes. With effort, she struggled to pull herself together.
“You spend the night here?” Esteban asked gruffly.
It was a rhetorical question. She was wearing the same thing she’d had on yesterday, so unless she was particularly attached to the light blue pencil skirt and jacket, she hadn’t gone home to sleep or even to get a change of clothes.
God, but her neck hurt, Kari thought as a razor-sharp pain speared through her. She rubbed her hand across the area, trying to get back a little feeling into it. She wasn’t having much luck. Kari stifled a gasp when she felt his hands on her neck, kneading and creating more tense muscles than he was eliminating. She pulled away.
“I’m okay,” she said a bit too quickly. The last thing she needed was having him touch her like that. “I guess I must have fallen asleep,” she muttered. She certainly hadn’t intended to do that when she’d sat down at her desk last night. She had only wanted to review a few things, but as usual, time had gotten away from her.
“Is that for me, or did you just decide to redecorate yourself?” he asked, allowing a glimmer of amusement to show through.
When she looked at him, obviously confused by his question, Esteban leaned over and plucked off the Post-it note that had s
omehow gotten itself attached to her forehead. He held it up for her to see.
There was nothing written on it.
“Using invisible ink again?” he drawled.
“Keep it,” she muttered. She didn’t recall writing a note to anyone. “Consider it a gift.”
He glanced down at the steaming-hot coffee on his desk. The lid was still on, but tiny whiffs of steam were escaping from the sides.
“Here.” He picked up the container and placed it on her desk. “I think you need this more than I do.”
Removing the lid, she proceeded to take the container into both her hands as if it held life-affirming liquid. She looked at it longingly, but refrained from taking that first sip.
Instead, she protested, “But then you don’t have one.”
“I can get one from the coffee machine down the hall. As long as it’s hot, that’s all that matters. Besides—” he nodded at the container she was holding “—that’s not my first one of the morning. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you had my coffee than I had your bullet lodged somewhere in my torso because you were half-asleep when the gun went off.”
Having heard enough, she took a deep sip and then sighed contentedly. “And they said that chivalry was dead.”
“They,” Esteban replied as he headed out into the hallway to get a container of coffee to replace the one he’d just given her, “were right. This is a purely selfish move on my part. I figure I need to stay alive if I’m ever going to dance on Jorge Lopez’s grave.”
The name meant nothing to her, but she ventured a guess as he walked back into the room three minutes later. “Jorge Lopez. I take it that he’s the one who runs the drug cartel.”
“Yes, he is.” The answer was automatic. And then the significance of her rhetorical question hit him. “What do you know about the cartel?” Esteban asked suspiciously, watching her closely.
Still cradling the cup in both hands, Kari realized that she might have slipped. Was she supposed to know the drug lord’s name or not? She hated playing games like this.
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