A Cavanaugh Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  She was challenging him. But this wasn’t going to work if she wanted him to jump through hoops. That wasn’t the way he worked.

  “That depends.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as did her mouth. “On what, exactly?” she asked.

  Tom minced no words. She didn’t strike him as the type who valued subtlety, but would rather get to the point.

  “On whether you intend to carry around that chip on your shoulder the entire time you’re here, because I can tell you right now, that chip isn’t going to fit into my car.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw LaGuardia looking at him in utter surprise. Ordinarily, if he was any more easygoing, he’d be accused of being asleep. But easygoing didn’t mean pushover, and he had no intentions of being run over by this woman, no matter how sexy she appeared to be.

  “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder,” Kait informed him. He continued looking at her, as if silently saying that they both knew better than that.

  Kait frowned. Coming here was a bad idea, but what else could she do? She needed both the authority and the file access that being connected with the local police department afforded. She’d left on her own, telling Lt. Blackwell that she was taking a vacation—the first that anyone had known her to take.

  The lieutenant had looked at her with suspicion in his eyes, but said nothing about the case or her direct involvement in it. He’d merely nodded.

  And then, on a parting note, he’d said almost under his breath, “You have to do what you have to do.”

  It told her that even though he didn’t want to be officially “informed,” Lieutenant Philip Blackwell knew what she was up to. Knew that she was determined to act on her own despite the fact that their police department was far too understaffed to have any of its detectives go running off to parts unknown in hopes of bringing down a predator and returning a child into her parents’ arms. And she could see that the lieutenant privately wished her well. And that he could be counted on to keep her spot open for her until she returned. By Christmas. The way she’d promised.

  “All right,” she said purely for Cavanaugh-Cavelli’s benefit and not because she intended to behave any differently than she normally did. “I’ll see about parking my so-called ‘chip’ somewhere for the duration.” Her gaze all but heated his chair to the boiling point. “Now will you come with me?” she asked.

  Tom was already on his feet. He slipped his somewhat rumpled jacket on over his holstered, department-issued firearm.

  “To the ends of the earth,” he quipped.

  Terrific. Just what she needed as a temporary partner. A comedian.

  “Just to the car-rental agency will suffice. It’s located on Third and Grand,” she added since he needed to know where he was heading. She started walking toward the doorway.

  “Hold it,” he called after her. “I’ve got to tell Lt. Chambers that I’m going to be—”

  “It’s already been taken care of,” she assured him, then because he looked at her skeptically, she added, “I was there when your uncle called Lt. Chambers in order to—”

  Just the slightest trace of irritation broke through the carefully varnished veneer as Tom tersely informed the woman, “He’s not my uncle.”

  She was certain she’d gotten the family connection right. Since she’d been denied family for most of her life, she had a kind of built-in radar when it came to things like that. Why would the chief of detectives refer to the detective as his nephew if it wasn’t so?

  “Family feud?” she guessed. The tone of her voice sounded so detached that it seemed to indicate she couldn’t really care less if he was feuding with the chief of Ds or not, as long as it didn’t get in the way of her finding the little girl.

  The term family feud was far too leading as far as Tom was concerned. He knew Brian Cavanaugh from two brief meetings. Both times he’d been part of a group. He’d accompanied his father and his siblings when they had gone over to the former chief of police’s rambling and surprisingly welcoming house.

  During those two times he’d exchanged perhaps half a dozen words with Brian Cavanaugh, perhaps less.

  But of course he knew the man by reputation. Everyone did. Brian Cavanaugh was a fair man and a good leader, never asking anyone to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself. Those closest to him—not just his family but also the officers who served under him—would gladly follow him to hell and back if he asked.

  Outside of a handful of criminals, the man had no known enemies. Everyone respected and liked the chief of detectives. And even though Tom wasn’t as reluctant to be assimilated by the Cavanaugh clan as some of his brothers and sisters were, he still wanted to do it at his own pace, on his own terms. As Popeye had so eloquently put it, he’d quipped to his father after the first en masse meeting, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” And changing his surname from one thing to another made no difference to the man he was deep down at the core.

  In like fashion, he always had and still did like to have a vote when it came to things that affected his life, be it privately or in the field. And, in this case, what it boiled down to was that he didn’t like not being consulted before being thrust headlong into this investigation.

  In essence he was being shipped off to wet-nurse this woman-with-a-mission, and no one had asked him whether or not he had any objections to his new assignment.

  Now who’s acting as if he has a chip on his shoulder? a small voice in his head wanted to know. He was irritated with himself and with the fact that he’d allowed his reaction to show enough so that even this stranger had taken notice.

  “No,” he replied quietly. “Just going through a period of adjustment, that’s all.”

  She glanced at him, puzzled. “You lost me.”

  No such luck, Tom thought, the thin smile on his lips never wavering. She might not be a Native American by blood, but she looked as if she knew how to track a man through a snowstorm. Something about her demeanor told him she had the tenacity of a bulldog when it came to following a trail.

  He supposed she’d already proved that, since she’d tracked down the kidnapper’s van to the point of origin. All they needed right now were some answers, and as long as she was right about the van, they might just be lucky enough to get those answers. Quickly.

  “Long story.” He tossed off the words carelessly, hoping she’d take the hint and drop the subject.

  She slanted a look in his direction. He couldn’t tell if that was amusement or impatience on her face. Probably the latter. “Part of the one you’re saving for a rainy day?”

  He nodded. “One and the same.”

  There were windows running along the length of the back wall. She looked in their direction just before they left the squad room. “How often does it rain here?”

  “Not often,” he answered. “Although, when it does, it usually rains in the winter—and then it pours.” They had an official rainy season—when it rained at all, which hadn’t been often these past few years.

  “Weatherman forecasts sun for the next week,” she told him. Kaitlyn had checked that online just before coming here. She had wanted to be as prepared as she could for any and all possibilities.

  “That’s what we pay him to do,” Tom quipped, tongue in cheek.

  Just as he began to cross the threshold out into the hallway, Tom found he had to back up a little instead. Brian Cavanaugh had just gotten off the elevator and was on his way into the squad room at the same time.

  Since two objects couldn’t occupy the same space and still coexist peacefully with the laws of physics, Tom stepped aside so that his chief of detectives had dibs on the space.

  The man nodded first at the willowy, attractive visitor who had just been in his office less than twenty minutes ago, then at his newly discovered nephew. His smile was easy, genuine. “I see Detective Two Feathers found you.”

  Tom forced a smile—or what passed as one—to his lips. “That she did.”

  And then the chief
of detectives did something that Tom hadn’t been expecting. He apologized. In a manner of speaking.

  “I know I didn’t ask you for your input on this—or how you felt about being teamed up with someone else, but from what I’ve been hearing from Chambers, you’re the right man to lend the detective a hand.” He paused, swiftly scrutinizing the younger man. “Unless you’re working on something and would rather not walk away from it right now. If that’s the case, I could assign someone else to help out Detective Two Feathers.”

  This left Tom with nothing to feel slighted about. Since the chief of Ds was consulting him about how he felt about being lent out, there was no reason for him to feel as if he had no say. And no reason, really, for him to turn the chief down.

  Especially since he and LaGuardia had just closed a case two days ago—complete with a happy ending—and for a change no new case had come across their desks. And no one had asked either of them to work any of the cold cases that involved missing persons.

  The only leg he might have had to stand on in order to beg off was if he had a genuine phobia about being forced to work with a new person. One of the other detectives in the squad room went through a chemical reaction each time one of his partners left, but Tom had no such difficulty adjusting. He liked different things. He felt they kept him fresh and on his toes.

  And he had a hunch that the same description could be applied to working with Detective Kaitlyn Two Feathers. Besides, he found that he had a very deep desire to find out just exactly what made the sexy redhead tick.

  “That won’t be necessary, Chief.” He glanced in her direction. “I’m looking forward to helping Detective Two Feathers any way I can.”

  Brian smiled, nodding. “Knew I could count on you, Tom.” He looked to both of them. “Well, I’ll get out of your way, then. And keep me posted,” he called after them.

  “Will do,” Tom promised just before he stepped into the elevator behind the detective from New Mexico.

  Chapter 3

  For a moment back there, when they’d encountered the chief of detectives, Kaitlyn could feel her heart lodging itself in her throat. She was waiting to hear what the tall, genial-looking man wasn’t saying. That he had gotten in contact with Lt. Blackwell about the case and had discovered that she was working this on her own. That she had come here unofficially, without any authority and completely without her superior’s blessings, which meant that the chief of detectives was under no obligation to provide her with aid of any kind.

  As a matter of fact, that would put him within his rights just to send her back to Taos with a warning never to come back.

  When no mention had been made of any of this, Kait breathed a sigh of relief inwardly and felt—almost literally—that she had just dodged a bullet. At least as far as her career on the police force went. Privately, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. She wouldn’t have given up and docilely returned to New Mexico; it would have just become more difficult for her to proceed.

  Difficult, but not impossible.

  The way Kait saw it, she had already beaten the odds. By all rights, thanks to her grandmother, she really should have been dead a long time ago. Which meant that, as far as she was concerned, she was living on borrowed time and anything she accomplished on this “borrowed” time was simply her way of paying back whoever was watching over her.

  She liked to think that the one watching over her these days was Ronald Two Feathers.

  It only made sense. After all, he’d been nothing short of her guardian angel while he was alive, so why not really take over the role after he’d died?

  The elevator came to a stop on the first floor and she and the detective got out. She found that in order to keep up with Tom and his incredibly long stride, she had to lengthen and quicken her own just short of skipping along. She wasn’t a small woman, but neither was she six foot two the way he apparently was.

  It wasn’t until they’d gone down the ten steps from the front of the building to the parking lot situated in the back of the precinct that he turned toward her and said anything.

  “Mine or yours?” he asked.

  Caught off guard, she stared at him, trying to make sense of the question. “Excuse me?”

  “Do you want to use my car or your car?”

  Ordinarily, he would have just walked up to his own vehicle, an unmarked white Crown Victoria. But he had the feeling that when it came to this woman, presuming anything would irritate her.

  To be truthful, Kait hadn’t given something as trivial as mode of transportation any thought. Her mind was filled with the larger details, such as finding out the identity of the man or men who had abducted Megan Willows.

  Since he asked, she gave him the first answer that came into her head. “What’s wrong with my driving mine and you driving yours?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s wasteful,” he replied. “Overkill,” he elaborated, then added, “I know the city, so it only makes sense that I drive.”

  Her eyes narrowed. He found himself intrigued rather than annoyed.

  Did he think she was directionally challenged? Or that she couldn’t read a map? She obviously could. She’d looked up the agency’s exact location as soon as she obtained the actual address during her initial search. And she’d obviously driven her car from Taos to Aurora. She hadn’t just stumbled onto the city through a stroke of dumb luck.

  He didn’t look like a Neanderthal, but looks could be deceiving. She had encountered enough men who dragged their knuckles and thought of her as being completely incapable and unsuitable for a law-enforcement career. She needed to set him straight right from the get-go.

  “I didn’t exactly wander into Aurora by accident. I do know how to find my way around.”

  There was just the slightest hint of humor in his eyes, even though he kept the smile from his lips as he nodded. “You’re a natural-born pathfinder. Okay, you drive,” he told her with no qualms. “I haven’t got a problem with that.”

  Privacy was a very large component in her life these days. She didn’t particularly like having to share a vehicle. At the very least, driving this man anywhere meant being responsible for driving the detective back to the precinct, and she preferred to be free to go wherever she needed to—whenever she wanted to. “I’d rather we went separately.”

  He eyed her for a moment, dissecting her words to get at her thought process. Rather than agree to drive separately, he took a guess at her motivation for isolation. “You have trust issues, don’t you?”

  The observation rankled her. Especially since it had come out of nowhere and was uncomfortably close to the truth. She nailed him with a pointed glare.

  Rather than deny his assumption, she went on the attack. “I have ‘issues’ with people who try to analyze me.”

  He raised his hands to chest level, fingers pointed toward the sky as if in surrender. “Not trying to analyze you,” he told her. “I’m just trying to find a way to get along with you.”

  She blew out an annoyed breath. “You have a very strange way of showing it.”

  Kait felt herself growing edgier. They didn’t really have the time to stand around out here like this and argue like two dogs trying to mark their territory. Every wasted moment was a moment less she had to find Megan. Alive.

  “All right, we’ll go in your car,” Kait bit off, then urged, “just let’s go.”

  “Whatever you say,” Tom responded, then gestured for her to follow him. “It’s right over here.”

  Whatever you say. His phrase echoed in her head. Yeah, right. As long as I say what you want, she thought, struggling to keep her annoyance under wraps. She couldn’t show him how much he irritated her. She needed this man. At least for now.

  “How long have you been in missing persons?” Tom asked the transplanted New Mexican detective once they had pulled out of the parking lot and were on their way to the car-rental agency.

  “I’m not,” she answered stiffly, correcting his initial assumption. When he looked a
t her curiously, she explained, “We don’t have divisions in the department the way you do out here. The police department back home is too small for that. Everyone on the force handles whatever comes our way—or at least we try to,” she added almost under her breath.

  Cutbacks had hit not just the big cities, but hers, as well. They were making do with a reduced police department, which was why no one had replaced her when she’d been taken off the case. That left only Juarez to carry on what there was of the investigation. Never mind that the man couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag and he was trying to work the case from his desk rather than from the road.

  “Can this thing go any faster?” she asked Tom impatiently. She had her doubts about the accuracy of the speedometer. It was registering sixty-five but it felt to her as if they were crawling.

  “It can,” he allowed. “But that would be really going over the speed limit.” He spared her a glance. “Wouldn’t want me breaking any laws now, would you?”

  She was accustomed to the men on the force back home bending the rules whenever they needed to, sometimes just because they wanted to. She was surprised that this detective didn’t. Especially since he was related to the chief of detectives and had a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  “Where I come from,” she told him, “we do what we have to do.”

  “We pretty much do that here,” Tom agreed. “We just don’t abuse it.”

  “Meaning you think I would?” she challenged, taking offense.

  “Just stating a fact, Detective. Don’t look now,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I think that chip of yours just hitched a ride in the back of my car.”

  She bit her lower lip to keep from retorting. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the road. It occurred to her that she’d mentioned the car rental agency’s location only once during her initial conversation with the man and his partner. More than likely, he hadn’t been paying close attention.

  In her experience, men took it as an affront to their manhood to be put in a position where they had to ask for directions, but she had no intentions of having him drive around aimlessly.