“I’m vocally impaired?” Morgan questioned, amused.
“I don’t care what you label it,” Krys told him. “But you’re not to say anything. You open that mouth of yours to say anything and no one is going to mistake you for a journalist. The minute you start talking, there’s no way you’re going to sound like anything except a police detective.”
She was definitely getting on his nerves with all these requirements. “I’ve got to say something,” Morgan insisted. “Otherwise this Peters guy will wonder why you brought me along.” Doesn’t she see that? he wondered.
Krys opened her backpack and dug through it until she finally located her notepad. She pulled it out for Morgan.
Since he was driving, she couldn’t hand it to him, but she did place it between their two seats so he could take it when they arrived at their destination. “Voilà. You can act like you’re taking notes for me.”
“Isn’t that a little old-fashioned, considering this day and age?”
“A lot of these people don’t like being recorded. This way it’s more likely that they’ll be at ease and talk to me—or, in this case, ‘us,’” she amended. “Look, we do it my way or we don’t do it at all.”
Morgan knew when to back off. The intense scowl on her face made him laugh as he shook his head. “And you think I’m pushy?”
“Do we have a deal?” she asked.
“No.” Then, reluctantly, he said, “Yes, we have a deal.”
“Good, then you just stay next to me and look pretty,” she instructed, letting him see that she was completely serious.
Morgan batted his eyelashes at her—lashes that, Krys noticed, were rather thick and long for a man. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.
* * *
Weatherly Pharmaceuticals was domiciled in a state-of-the-art building. It looked as if it might have been more at home sheltering an art museum than a place where cutting-edge research was conducted.
Morgan noticed that Krys grew very quiet as they drove onto the compound. It wasn’t like her.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Krys shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Morgan repeated, not buying it. “Your complexion just got five shades lighter. That’s not ‘nothing.’ That is definitely ‘something,’” the detective stressed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the road and not my complexion?” she pointed out.
“I’m good at multitasking,” he protested. “Now why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
She knew he wouldn’t back off until she told him. “Because whoever shot out my window did it from somewhere over there,” she told him, pointing out the adjacent parking area, which was directly in front of Weatherly Laboratories.
He’d forgotten that. “The chief and his crew already combed that entire area. They didn’t find spent shells lying on the ground or any sort of evidence that you were shot at.”
“Other than my shot-up window,” she reminded him, tongue in cheek.
“Yeah, other than that.” Pulling up in front of the pharmaceutical building, Morgan saw the wary expression in her eyes. He didn’t want to lose the ground he had gained with her. “Look, just because we didn’t find any evidence doesn’t mean we don’t believe you. All it means is that we could easily be dealing with a professional.”
“Like Bluebeard,” she concluded.
“Or a contract killer, someone hired for the job,” he pointed out.
The very suggestion that she might be stalked by someone like that sent a cold shiver down her spine. “You do know how to make a girl feel all warm and toasty,” she said sarcastically.
“Maybe not,” Morgan allowed. “But I do know how to protect one. Stay put,” he instructed as he shut off the engine.
“How am I supposed to do my interview if I stay put?” she asked, then sarcastically suggested a solution. “Ventriloquism?”
“No,” he answered, raising his voice as he rounded the back of his car and came around to the passenger door. “I meant that you should wait until I came around to your side,” he told her, opening the door for her.
She swung her legs out and noticed the way that Morgan stared at them before he forced his eyes back to her face. “Shouldn’t you be looking around the parking lot, then, instead of at my legs?” she asked.
“Multitasking, remember?” Morgan reminded her good-naturedly even while he upbraided himself for getting caught up in the way Krys looked.
Meanwhile, Krys just sighed and shook her head. He seemed to have an answer for everything, even though it might come across like the wrong answer.
“Remember, no talking,” she reminded Morgan.
And then she saw that he was holding the notepad she had taken out of her backpack for him. That was a good sign, she thought. She decided that it was only fair if she said as much to him.
“Oh good, you remembered to take the notepad,” she commented.
Morgan’s eyes crinkled a little as his smile widened. “Multi—”
“—tasking, yes, I know,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, completing his sentence for him. Walking quickly, she went through the automatic doors that sprang open for her.
She braced herself, not looking forward to what lay ahead but doing her level best to be as prepared for it as she could be. After all, the next person she interviewed could very well be the person trying to kill her.
* * *
“And you do this kind of thing all the time?” Morgan asked Krys a little over two hours later as they left the building.
“Exactly what do you mean by ‘this kind of thing’?” she asked, bracing herself for the worst.
“Talk to people who are in love with the sound of their own voice?” Morgan elaborated. He could see by her expression that he had struck a familiar chord. Listening to the research scientist, he could barely keep from falling asleep. “I have never heard anyone use so many words to say so little before.”
Krys smiled at Morgan’s description of the situation. She had run into this sort of thing more than once. Still, she was kind in her assessment. “He didn’t want to give away any secrets.”
Morgan laughed at the description. “Well, if you ask me, he succeeded royally. Tell me, how did you manage to stay awake?” he asked. “Because I almost fell asleep a number of times.”
“By forcing myself to wait to hear that one phrase, that one sentence that would ultimately make everything crystal clear,” she told Morgan.
“Did I miss it?” Morgan asked.
“No, you didn’t,” Krys told him. “Apparently Peters was utterly full of himself and didn’t care who knew it. He’s just part of the research group, not the head of the team. That’s a position being held by Lawrence Jacobs,” she informed the police detective.
“Jacobs,” Morgan repeated. “Is he on your list of people to interview?”
“He definitely is,” she confirmed with feeling.
“When’s the interview?”
“I’m still working on getting an appointment to see him,” she confessed. “Jacobs is not an easy man to get a hold of. He’s been out of town for the last week, working on getting the final funding.”
Morgan wasn’t sure that he followed what she was telling him. “You mean they still haven’t gotten the money for this so-called wonder drug?”
He would have thought that if this drug they had developed was really as wonderful as the company claimed it was, they would be fighting off potential investors shoving money at them, trying to get in on the ground floor.
“The company borrowed the money so they could develop it. Currently, Jacobs is trying to pay that loan off, or at least as much as he can before they launch into the last stage of production.”
“So what you’re saying is that it’s like fraud?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “That’s not the way they choose to see it,” Krys told him. “And if it winds up taking off and doing what they say it does, it’ll return any money put up for it a hundredfold. It’s only fraud if it fails in its actual premise.”
It was growing dark by now. They had been in the building longer than he had anticipated. “You don’t have another interview set up for today, do you?” Morgan asked her.
“I’ve got four set up for tomorrow,” she told him. “The most important of which is with a potential whistleblower first thing in the morning, but no, no more interviews today.” She paused for a moment, and then admitted, “Being a walking target has thrown me off my game.”
He surprised her with his reaction. “Nice to know you’re human.”
She looked at him, confused. “What made you think I wasn’t?”
Morgan grinned. Her stomach did a little flip, which surprised her. “For the sake of our working relationship, I’d better not answer that,” he told her. Changing the subject, he declared, “Okay, back to your place.” With that, he turned his car around and began to head toward her house. “I’m kind of hungry, anyway.”
“Well, if that’s the case, we’re going to have to stop somewhere to pick up something to eat, or have something delivered,” she told him, enumerating their two choices. When Morgan looked at her, waiting for her to elaborate further, she told him, “I suffer from the Mother Hubbard syndrome.”
“How’s that again?”
She put it in simpler terms. “My cupboard is bare—and so’s my refrigerator—unless you’re willing to consider diet soda as a new food group.”
She definitely needed to meet his Uncle Andrew, Morgan thought. If a famine suddenly swept over the city, Andrew could still be able to feed the masses until such time as the famine was over.
“Okay, what are you in the mood for?” Morgan asked.
Krys shrugged. “I’m easy. Pizza’s fine.”
“Pizza is fine,” Morgan agreed. “But you, lady, are definitely not ‘easy.’”
Considering the fact that she had made him jump through hoops several times during the course of the day, Krys decided not to challenge Morgan’s assessment. She did, however, have a point to raise.
“You know, if you’re so worried about keeping me safe, don’t you think that ordering takeout and having it delivered to my house is a bit risky?” she asked. “I mean, do you intend to pat the delivery boy down before you let him hand over the pizza?”
He grinned at the scenario she had just come up with. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it covered.”
Now he had her intrigued. “Care to enlighten me as to how you have this ‘covered’?”
“No big secret,” he informed her. “I’m going to ask one of my brothers to pick up the pizza for us. That way we won’t have to deal with some stranger coming to your door.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” she grudgingly commented.
“There are a lot of us Cavanaughs on the police force. That amounts to several centuries of acquired knowledge among all of us,” he told her.
Just how many of these people are there? she wondered. Nik had never given her a specific number. “Why do I suddenly feel hopelessly outnumbered?”
He had no answer for that, but he did have a way to view the scenario. “What you’re supposed to feel is completely protected,” he told her.
“Yes,” Krys admitted, albeit reluctantly, “maybe that, too.”
Chapter 10
While Morgan methodically checked all the windows and doors in the house, making sure that everything was securely locked, Krys waited silently in the foyer for the pizza delivery. As she waited, she thought over what she had said to the detective in response to his question.
She did feel rather safe and protected—and it was actually the first time she had felt that way in a long, long time. Being on her own and responsible for herself was a given. It had been that way for a while now. She was forever chasing after stories and taking whatever precautions occurred to her to make sure that she was safe while she was doing it.
It almost felt strange to have someone looking out for her, however temporary that turned out to be. Krys told herself not to get used to it.
“Well,” Morgan declared as he walked back into the living room, “unless someone decides to ram into your house with a tank, I’d say that you were pretty safe for the night.”
Is he just being flippant or serious? she wondered. “Just ‘pretty sure’?” she questioned, raising one quizzical eyebrow.
“Barring an earthquake or a wildfire, yes, I’d say I was sure,” Morgan told her.
Krys knew she couldn’t ask for anything better than that. “I guess those are pretty good odds,” she agreed. She nodded toward the linen closet between the two bedrooms. “I’ll go get some fresh bedding for you. You can have the guest room.”
But Morgan shook his head, turning down her offer. “No need to do that.”
Krys stopped walking toward the back. She’d heard rumors to the effect that some of the Cavanaughs were ladies’ men, but until now, she hadn’t thought of Morgan as being one of them. Still, she had been wrong before, she thought.
“Why?” she asked suspiciously. “Exactly where do you intend to sleep tonight?”
“I don’t,” he answered simply. “And besides, I can stretch out on the couch if I need to.”
“But you don’t think you’ll need to,” she guessed by the way he’d said it. “You don’t plan to sleep?”
“I don’t need much sleep,” Morgan informed her. “And anyway, I’m a really light sleeper,” he told her.
“Is that part of being a multitasker?” she asked wryly.
If Morgan thought that she was doubting him, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he left his answer deliberately vague.
“Something like that,” he told Krys. “What are you staring at?” he asked, noticing the way she was looking at him.
“Your nose,” she answered.
His brow furrowed. “My nose? Why?”
“To see if it grows all at once or just by small increments,” she answered and then frowned at him. Just how dumb did he think she was? “Everyone needs to sleep.”
“No argument,” Morgan agreed. “But it just so happens that I don’t need much. And, FYI, if there’s something going on, I can stay awake around the clock without any problem.”
She wasn’t buying into this superhuman image he was trying to portray. “Until you collapse altogether. You won’t be any good to me in that state.”
His eyes swept over her almost intimately. She found herself trying not to react, but it wasn’t easy. There was something about the way he looked at her that unsettled her.
“I promise you won’t have any complaints,” he told her, his voice low and sexy.
It was hard for her to remain detached and distant. Why did she get the feeling that he wasn’t talking about being her bodyguard?
“We’ll see about that,” she answered, her lips feeling oddly dry as she formed the words. Added to that, her heart seemed to suddenly slam against her chest when she heard the doorbell ring.
“That must be Dugan,” Morgan told her.
“Dugan?” she echoed, totally unfamiliar with the name. “Another cousin?”
“No, another brother,” Morgan corrected her. “Remember? I said I’d have my brother pick up the pizza. That way I don’t have to frisk a stranger,” he reminded her, crossing to the door.
“Must have slipped my mind,” she murmured as she watched him look through the peephole. When he flipped open the lock on the door, Krys made a natural assumption. “I take it that that’s Dugan with our dinner.”
He pulled open the door. “If he hasn’t eaten it himself.” The comment was half intended for Dugan as Morgan recalled his brother’s rather fierce, en
dless appetite.
Dugan caught the tail end of his brother’s response to the attractive woman standing just behind him. “You kidding?” he asked, referring to Morgan’s assumption that he’d had some of the meal he was charged with delivering. “Toni’s got dinner waiting at home,” he told his brother, referring to his wife, adding, “She’d skin me alive if I filled up on pizza.”
Handing the pizza box to his younger brother, Dugan smiled broadly at the woman who had asked to have the pizza delivered in the first place. “Hi, I’m Morgan’s older, better looking brother,” he told her, extending his hand to Krys. “And I take it you’re not-Nik.”
Shaking his hand, Krys smiled at Dugan’s greeting. “I take it that Morgan warned you about mistaking me for my twin.”
“No,” Dugan responded, “he warned me not to call you Nik. I figured the rest is self-explanatory. But he was right,” he said, carefully scrutinizing her, “you do look just like her.”
Krys inclined her head as she flashed Dugan a smile. “Hence the word ‘identical,’” she said. And then she noted as she indicated both of the brothers, “You know, you two look rather alike, too.”
“She’s being kind to you, Morgan,” Dugan told his younger brother, and then he turned his eyes on Krys. “He knows I’m the good-looking brother.”
“Ha!” Morgan declared. “I think even Sully and Campbell might have a different opinion on that.”
“When did you say you were going in for your eye exam?” Dugan asked his brother. He looked back to Krys and informed her with a straight face, “His vision is really going. You know,” he said, leaning a little bit closer to Krys, “you might want to think about getting someone else to guard you while this guy’s out there, stalking you.”
Morgan cupped his ear. “I think I hear Toni calling you. You’d better get home before she realizes that she can really do so much better than you.”
Dugan smiled broadly as he looked at Krys. “It was nice meeting you.” With that, he put his hand on the doorknob, turned it and began to leave.
Cavanaugh In Plain Sight (Cavanaugh Justice Book 42) Page 9
