Cavanaugh Judgment

by Marie Ferrarella

  Alexander eyed her hand without taking it. “And who’s going to keep you safe and out of harm’s way?” he asked gruffly.

  Greer never hesitated. “You, sir. We can watch each other’s backs.”

  The answer couldn’t have pleased Alexander more. He nodded his full head of silver-gray hair as he took the hand she was still offering. He shook it firmly and noted that she returned the handshake in kind. “I was a marine, you know.”

  The look in the man’s eyes told Greer that she’d scored points. “I could tell by your bearing, sir. Once a marine, always a marine.”

  “You bet your a—backside,” Alexander concluded, stopping himself at the last minute from saying the word he ordinarily used.

  Greer grinned, silently telegraphing that she appreciated the courtesy.

  Releasing her hand, Alexander looked at his son. “So, aside from getting shot at, losing a prisoner and gaining a bodyguard with killer legs, how did the rest of your day go?” he asked.

  “That about covers the highlights,” Blake replied. Shedding his jacket and tie, the judge left them slung over the back of the first chair he came to on his way to the liquor cabinet.

  When he took out a decanter of scotch, Greer tactfully suggested, “Shouldn’t you have something to eat, first?”

  Suppressing an irritated sigh, Blake glanced at her over his shoulder. “Detective, you were assigned to be my bodyguard, right?”

  “Right.”

  He placed the decanter on the counter. “Unless I’m mistaken, that means you’re supposed to guard the outside of my body, not the inside.”

  He was going to fight her all the way, wasn’t he? No matter what she said. Well, she didn’t join the force expecting it to be a piece of cake.

  Greer crossed to him. “Having something in your stomach reduces the effects of the alcohol. I just wanted to make things easier on you.”

  His eyes met hers. His were a piercing blue, a shade darker than his father’s, she noted. “What would accomplish that is if you folded your tent and disappeared into the night.”

  She refused to rise to the bait. Instead, she smiled brightly. She had a hunch that it drove him crazy. “Night doesn’t come for several hours yet, Your Honor,” she informed him.

  “Is that when you leave?” Alexander asked, joining her.

  “No.” As far as she knew, there weren’t going to be shifts. There was just going to be her. She had a feeling, though, as the assignment stretched out, adjustments would be made. “That’s just when the judge would want me to leave.”

  Alexander snorted dismissively as he waved a hand in his son’s direction. “Don’t pay any attention to him. Outside the courtroom, Blake doesn’t have the sense he was born with.”

  “I’m standing right here, Dad,” Blake pointed out, raising his voice.

  Alexander spared his son a withering glance. “You’re six foot two, boy, and my vision’s still good. I can see you.”

  “Then don’t talk about me as if I’m not in the room,” Blake suggested.

  “Even when you are, half the time you’re not.” Alexander looked back at Greer and confided in a voice that had never quite dipped down to the level of a whisper, “His mind wanders worse than an old man’s. Not that I’d know anything about that.” He chuckled.

  Greer nodded. “Didn’t think you would. Mr. Kincannon—” she began, only to have the senior Kincannon interrupt.

  “Gunny,” he told her. “Call me Gunny. I was a gunnery sergeant in the marines.”

  She inclined her head, wordlessly thanking the older man for the privilege of calling him by the common nickname awarded to all those who served as gunnery sergeants in the corps.

  “Gunny,” she echoed. “Could I ask you to show me around your house?”

  The older man beamed, then cleared his throat as he went through the motions of summoning a sterner look. “I suppose I can find time for that.”

  The corners of her mouth curved. “I’d appreciate it, Gunny.”

  Squaring his shoulders, the still exceedingly robust retired marine began leading her to the next room. “Okay, that was the living room. Over here you’ve got your…”

  As his father’s voice faded away, taking his unwanted houseguest with him, Blake could only shake his head. He was far from happy about this unexpected turn of events. He hadn’t lied to Detective O’Brien just to make her back off. He had been threatened before, threatened verbally with physical harm, he’d just never told anyone. And, because he’d never registered a complaint with the police, his life had remained his own.

  Moreover, no one had come to shoot him dead. The threats had remained empty.

  As empty as this one probably was. The only difference was that this time, the threat had been witnessed, so to speak, by the chief of detectives. That had made it official and there was no getting around the rules.

  That didn’t mean he had to like it. Or even think that the slip of a woman the chief had assigned to him would make a difference. If that despicable excuse for a human being, Munro, wanted to do away with him, Blake knew that, bodyguard or no bodyguard, the drug dealer was damn well going to try to kill him.

  However, he liked to think that he was at least smarter than a hood like Munro no matter how much money the drug dealer had tucked away in a Cayman Islands bank account. And he didn’t want the likes of Detective O’Brien getting in the way and possibly getting caught in the ensuing cross fire.

  He didn’t need her on his conscience. He already had Margaret.

  Blake poured himself two fingers worth of scotch and brought the glass to his lips. He was about to take a hearty swallow when he stopped and then set the glass back down on the counter. With a sigh, he looked down and contemplated the contents he’d just poured.

  Drinking wasn’t going to make the situation or the detective go away and it just might have an unwanted effect his judgment. With another sigh, Blake took the glass and ever so slowly poured the amber liquid back onto the decanter.

  He’d just put the stopper back into the mouth of the bottle when he heard his father’s voice. It sounded as if the man was getting closer. The unnerving thing was that it was unusually jovial—for his father.

  At least this detective had done one thing, he thought. She’d managed to tame the savage beast that beat within his father’s chest.

  The woman, he mused, apparently had some hidden talents.

  Walking into the family room, Greer glanced at the glass on top of the small bar and immediately noted that it was empty.

  “Finished your drink so soon?” his father asked. There was a touch of admiration in his voice. “Didn’t realize you could pack ’em away so fast, son.”

  “A lot of things you didn’t realize,” Blake replied mildly.

  He was caught off guard when his so-called bodyguard not only came closer, she invaded his personal space. Glancing back at her guide, she said, “Your son didn’t have a drink.”

  Blake said nothing, but their eyes met and held for a long moment, as if he expected her to follow up her theory with hard evidence.

  His father picked up the glass from the counter. “Glass is coated.”

  “He poured it back into the decanter,” Greer told him.

  Okay, he wanted to know how she’d pulled off this parlor trick.

  “And how would you know that?” Blake asked.

  “Easy. You would have had to down the drink quickly and your breath would have reflected your consumption,” she explained diplomatically. “There is no scotch on your breath. And the sides of the decanter have a little bit of an amber coating to them.”

  “Forensics 101?” Blake asked in a mocking tone.

  Greer shook her head. “No, Agatha Christie. Miss Marple,” she added, naming one of the famed mystery writer’s more famous characters. “I forget which one of her books.”

  She heard Kincannon’s father chuckling behind her. At least she’d won one of them over, Greer thought.

  Chapter 6<
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  Greer spent the next couple of hours going over every inch of the first floor of the house, inside and out, securing it wherever necessary so that the front door was the only way for anyone to enter or exit.

  The judge had a security system which she reprogrammed after advising him of the change and the new code. She did it just in case someone at the security company’s home base had hacked into the system and acquired what was now the old code. Changing it, she’d told the judge, was going to be an ongoing daily proposition until the threat was over.

  Kincannon hadn’t looked overly happy about the idea of having to remember a new pass code every day, but at least he hadn’t offered any resistance. He seemed far more interested in having her leave his office so he could get back to working on whatever it was that had claimed his attention.

  She staked out the sofa, intending to spend the night on it. From there, she had a clear view of the door. Since she was an incredibly light sleeper to begin with, she had no doubt that any intruder attempting to enter the house would have her awake and on her feet in a matter of seconds.

  Finished with her preparations for now, she walked back into the living room only to have Alexander ask her, “What’ll you have, pizza or Chinese?”

  Greer stared at the barrel-chested man, caught off guard by his question. “Excuse me?”

  He raised the telephone receiver he was holding in the air as if to clarify that he was about to order in. “Food. So what’ll it be?”

  “You don’t have to go to any special trouble for me,” Greer protested.

  “This isn’t special,” he informed her. “This is what we do every night.”

  Her eyes narrowed as the meaning of his words sank in. “You order in every night?”

  “It’s either that, or starve,” the retired marine told her.

  She shuddered to think what ingesting processed foods every night had to be doing to their digestive tracts. But then, maybe the old man was just exaggerating. “You don’t have any food in your refrigerator?”

  “Sure we’ve got food,” he informed her matter-of-factly. “Leftovers.”

  “From the takeout,” she guessed. Alexander nodded his head. Didn’t either of them have any idea about the value of proper nutrition?

  “Well, yeah, sure,” Gunny replied as if the answer was a no-brainer.

  Very politely, she removed the receiver from his hand and replaced it in the cradle. “How long has it been since you had a home-cooked meal, Gunny?”

  The senior Kincannon paused to think. And then he smiled as the memory obviously came back to him. “Well, there was that cute little Fraulein in Berlin… But that was about two years ago.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Greer said incredulously.

  “Why would he kid about something like that?” Blake asked. Drawn by the voices, he walked into the room. Now what was this woman up to?

  Greer shifted in order to look at both Kincannon men. “Let me get this straight, neither one of you has had a home-cooked meal in two years?” She stressed the last two words.

  “You deaf, girl?” Alexander asked impatiently. He began to reach for the phone again, but she rested her hand on the receiver, immobilizing it.

  “No, but I am stunned,” Greer admitted.

  “What’s the big deal?” Alexander wanted to know. “It’s all just fuel and it all turns into the same thing on its way out.”

  “Colorful,” Greer commented. “Be that as it may,” she continued, “you’re not doing yourselves any favors with all that takeout food.”

  Curious and wanting to see for herself, Greer passed the judge’s father and went into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. There were several bottles of beer, domestic and imported, a partial loaf of white bread, the wrapper only loosely tied and most likely harboring stale slices, and a lone stick of butter.

  “You weren’t kidding,” she murmured under her breath as she shook her head.

  “So, what’ll it be?” Alexander repeated, on his way back to the landline. “Pizza or Chinese?”

  “Hang on a minute,” she called out. Crossing back to the living room, she took out her cell phone and went through the directory. She found the number she was looking for and pressed the buttons that would connect her. As the phone rang, she waited for someone to pick up on the other end.

  Her wait wasn’t long.

  “Hello? Uncle Andrew?” The word uncle still felt foreign on her tongue, but she was getting more accustomed to it and she had to admit she liked the whole concept, liked the way it made her feel to be part of something bigger than just herself and her brothers. “This is Greer. I was wondering if you’d mind having three extra at the table for dinner tonight?”

  “Mind? You obviously haven’t been part of the family long enough,” the man on the other end of the line told her with a pleased laugh. “C’mon over,” he urged heartily. “The more the better.”

  “What time’s dinner?” she wanted to know.

  The answer was one that she would eventually learn to expect. “What time can you get here?”

  Greer didn’t bother trying to hold back the smile that rose to her lips. The man was every bit the legend he was made out to be. Warm and generous to a fault. The father figure every family patriarch should be.

  “Just so you know,” she told the former chief of police, “I’ll be bringing Judge Blake Kincannon and his father.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” he answered. “I’ll make a point of calling Callie and telling her that Brent’s presence is requested.”

  She was vaguely aware that Callie, Andrew’s oldest daughter, was married to a judge. The two had met several years ago when Callie was assigned to find his kidnapped daughter.

  “That’s really not necessary,” Greer assured the patriarch.

  Andrew saw it differently. “Of course it is. Your judge gets to talk to another judge and Rose and I get a reason to make our daughter and her family drop by. It’s a win-win situation.”

  They were right, Greer thought. There was no arguing with Andrew Cavanaugh. Not that she really wanted to. “We’ll be there in forty minutes,” Greer promised.

  “Any time is fine,” he answered as he broke the connection.

  “We’ll be where in forty minutes?” Blake wanted to know.

  She would have had to have been deaf to miss the edge in his voice. “At Andrew Cavanaugh’s house. We’re invited to dinner.”

  “You invited yourself over,” Blake pointed out. He was far from pleased with the turn of events. When not in court, he tended to prefer staying at home to going anywhere.

  “Just beating Uncle Andrew to the punch,” she told him cheerfully. “If I’d stayed on the phone long enough, he would have been the one doing the inviting. He really likes nothing better than to have a full house at every meal.”

  It was one of the first things she’d learned about the former chief of police. The only thing Andrew Cavanaugh loved more than cooking was having his family and friends over, eating his cooking. Any time, night or day, there was always something on the stove, always an extra chair to be pulled up at the custom-built, extra-long table.

  No one who came over ever left hungry—or lonely.

  “That’s all well and good,” Kincannon told her, a note of finality in his voice, “but I’m staying in tonight.”

  “You can stay in after we get back,” she informed him cheerfully.

  His eyes narrowed, darkening. “Detective, as I understand your assignment, you’re supposed to guard me, not order me around.”

  “I have to do whatever it takes to keep you safe and well,” she countered. “In case you’re wondering, this comes under the ‘well’ heading.”

  He had no intentions of giving in. If he gave this woman an inch, he was certain that he was going to lose the proverbial mile.

  “Look, Detective, my life’s disrupted enough already. Much as I might appreciate the gesture, I don’t feel like dropping everything and running over to
the former chief’s house.”

  To Greer’s surprise, it was Alexander who came to her aid. “Oh, lighten up, Blake. You’re not running anywhere, she’s driving us. Right, O’Brien?”

  “That’s the deal,” she answered with a broad smile. And then she turned to the judge. “I’ll make you a bargain, Your Honor. You come with me tonight and tomorrow, I’ll get someone on the squad to go shopping for me and I’ll make dinner here.”

  “You cook?” Blake asked in surprise. A woman who looked as good as she did didn’t have to know how to cook. He could see men falling all over themselves for the privilege of wining and dining her.

  “Almost as good as Uncle Andrew,” she said with just the right touch of modesty.

  He did his best to remain steadfast, although he felt the ground beneath his feet turning to sand. And the vibrant detective who probably had no clue that she was getting to him at the speed of light was the sandstorm. Damn, under any other circumstances…but it was what it was and he had to remember that. This was a professional situation. He couldn’t allow himself to let it get personal. Or intimate.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You let me be the judge of that—no disrespect intended,” Greer added.

  “None taken.” This time, the judge fairly growled his response.

  “Good, you came. We can get started,” Andrew Cavanaugh declared heartily less than thirty minutes later. Rubbing his hands together in anticipatory pleasure, Andrew had walked out to greet Greer and his other two guests just as she pulled her vehicle up into the driveway.

  Andrew positioned himself on the passenger side of the sedan so that Blake and his father had no choice but to greet him and shake the hand that the former police chief offered.

  “Hello,” he said warmly, “I’m Andrew Cavanaugh, Greer’s uncle, and this is my wife, Rose.” He nodded at the youthful-looking woman beside him.

  The man was a hell of a lot more than that, Greer couldn’t help thinking. He ran a 24/7 kitchen and was a saint to boot. Everyone in the family turned to him when they needed emotional support. That was definitely far and away more important than just being her uncle.