Cavanaugh Watch

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Walking me to my car?” she asked as she went down the corridor to the elevator.

  “And places beyond,” he added.

  Janelle stopped abruptly in front of the elevator. An uneasiness wafted over her as she punched the down button. She hadn’t thought about this part. Hadn’t thought about anything except how annoying it was to have this man assigned to following her around all day while she was at work. She had no doubts if she’d gone out for lunch instead of ordered in, Sawyer would have been right there beside her in the restaurant.

  But for some reason, she had just assumed that when her workday ended, the detective would just fade into the woodwork.

  He wasn’t fading.

  “What parts?” she asked, more than a hint of suspicion in her voice. Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.

  Prayers weren’t always answered in the affirmative. She’d learned that long ago, but didn’t particularly like having it reaffirmed now.

  “I’m supposed to go wherever you go.”

  The elevator car arrived, its silver doors opening wide. Janelle stepped inside, never taking her eyes off him.

  “And what?” she demanded heatedly. “You’re going to guard me 24-7?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “How?” she asked, her voice rising since it was just the two of them in the elevator. “What are you, a robot? Don’t you sleep?”

  He took no exception to her irritated tone. He didn’t have to. Although he didn’t want this assignment, he liked being told to get off it even less. “Don’t need much.”

  Janelle nodded, taking his words in as if they were gospel. “Just an occasional can of oil,” she assumed sarcastically.

  He didn’t so much as blink an eye. “Not even that,” he countered without cracking a smile.

  This was really getting to be unacceptable, she thought. It was bad enough having him around all day. She refused to have him around after hours. “I’m going to go see my father.”

  “All right.”

  “Alone,” she underscored.

  The elevator was going straight down to the first floor without making any other stops. For all she knew, she was going straight down to hell. It certainly felt that way.

  Sawyer retracted his approval. “Not all right.”

  As she turned toward him, her eyes were shooting daggers. He found it mildly diverting. “My father is the chief of detectives—”

  The knowing expression on his face infuriated her. “Wondered when you’d get around to saying that to me. Just how much mileage do you figure you get off that little phrase, say, in a week’s time?”

  She wondered if there was any place in the basement where a body could be hidden. “We’ve had that conversation, Detective Boone. And frankly, it’s getting a little old. My point was, he’s the chief of detectives, and someone would have to be pretty stupid to try to hurt me while I’m with him. So you don’t have to tag along,” she concluded.

  “In my experience, people in organized crime aren’t generally card-carrying members of Mensa. They don’t even have to have double-digit IQ. They just have to know how to take orders and that there are consequences if they don’t carry them out.”

  Janelle pressed her lips together. She wasn’t going to lose her temper, she wasn’t. She would remain calm—even if it killed her. Although she would have much preferred that it killed him instead.

  “Okay,” she said as they walked out of the building. “You can come. But you’ll stay in the car.” She was going to stand firm on this point. What she had to say to her father was private and this walking annoyance was a stranger, even if he had been privy to the phone call she wanted to discuss with her father.

  His expression gave nothing away. “As long as I get to crack a window.”

  “Are we going in my car?” Even as she asked, she braced herself for an answer she wasn’t going to welcome.

  But he surprised her. “I’ll follow you in mine,” he told her. “And if you’re thinking of losing me,” he added, “don’t. I’ve tailed the best.”

  Just who exactly was this man? she wondered. Dax hadn’t given her much to go on. She needed to talk to him, find out more. Better yet, maybe her father knew him. Her father was more likely to give her a straight answer. She’d ask him—once she talked to him about Wayne’s phone call.

  She walked ahead of Sawyer to her car. “So you say,” she responded. She didn’t look over her shoulder to see if that annoyed him, but she could hope.

  She had ten miles. Ten miles in which to try to calm down. Ten miles in which to try to lose the source of her frustration.

  Janelle did her best to accomplish both.

  Ten miles turned out not to be enough. She failed miserably on the second count and succeeded only marginally on the first. Which ultimately didn’t matter. As it turned out, she didn’t need to be calm for her father’s sake.

  There were no lights on in her father’s house when she pulled up in the driveway. At least, none coming from the inside of the house. There was a light on by the front door. Being the only handy one in the family, she and her father had spent one Saturday putting in an old-fashioned street lamp at the beginning of the walk. Her father had it set on an automatic timer. Five o’clock in the winter, seven o’clock in the summer.

  It was after seven, and there was no indication that anyone was home.

  Janelle tried anyway.

  Getting out of the car, she went up the front walk. Behind her, she heard Sawyer pull up in his sports car. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he’d parked along the curb. The tail end of his car was over in the driveway just enough to block hers.

  He’d done that on purpose, she thought. To make sure that she couldn’t peel out once she was done. She didn’t like the fact that he was one step ahead of her.

  Janelle frowned as she approached the front door. Annoying as he was, right now, her mind wasn’t on Sawyer, it was on the Wayne case. And on the fact that her father wasn’t where she needed him to be. He couldn’t still be at work. She’d called his office just before winding down and the assistant had told her that he’d left for the day.

  She’d assumed that he’d left for home, as usual.

  Like her siblings and her uncle, she had a key to the house. After ringing the doorbell once to give her father fair warning in case he was entertaining a lady friend—which would have been a first since none of them had been able to get her father to agree to even a single date with a woman—Janelle let herself in.

  “Dad?” Despite the furnishings, her voice echoed as it penetrated the darkness. “Dad, are you home?” Turning on the light, she walked into the living room.

  The second she did, Janelle was immediately aware of someone right behind her. She swung around, her fist raised defensively, ready to punch, gouge, whatever was necessary.

  She muttered an unflattering oath as her fist was completely swallowed up by Sawyer’s hand.

  Sawyer pushed her hand down to her side. “Down, champ.”

  She was edgy. And with good reason. Having a bodyguard around spooked her. “I thought you said you were staying in your car and cracking the windows.”

  “That was when you were going in to talk to your father.” He gestured around the empty house. “There’s no one home.”

  He made her want to prove him wrong. Desperately. “Dad?” Janelle raised her voice so that it could be heard on the second floor.

  No response.

  “Should have called ahead,” Sawyer told her mildly. And then he paused for a moment, as if to gauge her thoughts. “Do you want to go check out the rooms upstairs?”

  She absolutely hated that he kept second-guessing her this way. He didn’t know her; how did he know what she wanted to do?

  Without answering, she turned on her heel and headed toward the stairs.

  “Dad?” Janelle called again, even louder this time. She still got the same response. Silence.

  Stubbornly, she checked
out the rooms on the second floor. They’d all moved out a while ago, but Brian Cavanaugh had left his children’s rooms intact, in case they ever needed to stay over for some reason. She supposed in a way, it helped him cope with being alone after all these years.

  Her father wasn’t home. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. He never went out after work. Unless…

  “Ready to go home?” Sawyer asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she took out her cell phone and she pressed a familiar number. Someone on the other end picked up after two rings.

  “Hello? Aunt Rose? This is Janelle. Is my father there?”

  “Hi, Janelle,” a warm voice responded. “He’s right here. Do you want to speak with him?”

  She shifted beneath Sawyer’s gaze. This wasn’t the time to go into anything, not while he was listening. “No, not right now, Aunt Rose. Just tell him I’ll call him later tonight. Or tomorrow,” she added, to take the urgency off. She didn’t want anyone worrying.

  “Does he know what it’s about?”

  “Probably.” Janelle smiled to herself. “He knows everything.” Or so he always told her and her brothers. For a long time, she’d believed him. “Bye.” She shut her phone and slipped it back into her purse.

  Sawyer was leaning against the wall opposite her, his hands in his pockets. His indolent pose didn’t fool her for a moment. He was as alert as a rattler, ready to strike.

  “Do you want to wait for him here?” Sawyer asked. “Or are you ready to go home?”

  “Home,” Janelle answered.

  The minute the word was out of her mouth, she suddenly realized that home, her apartment, wasn’t going to be the haven she’d come to regard it. Not if Sawyer was coming with her.

  She raised her eyes to his. And knew. There was no talking him out of it. Under any circumstances.

  Chapter 6

  “You’re coming home with me.”

  It wasn’t a question so much as a shell-shocked statement. One that, Janelle hoped, if uttered out loud, would be summarily negated by the man leaning against the wall in front of her. She didn’t want this man coming home with her. What would it take to make him go to his own place for the night and resume this little charade in the morning?

  Sawyer straightened, moving away from the wall. Ready to leave. “If that’s where your body’s going.”

  How could such a flat, emotionless statement evoke anger, panic and a sense of invasion all in one fell swoop? She had no answer and that only made her feel more unsettled. Janelle juggled all three reactions, doing her best not to come across like a hysterical female, even though, if she were being honest with herself, she was very close to being just that.

  She didn’t want this man in her apartment. Wasn’t putting up with him all day enough? She tried to reason with him despite the sinking feeling in her stomach that she was just wasting words. “Look, this is really above and beyond the call of duty—”

  “This is duty. Don’t worry, counselor, you won’t even know I’m there.”

  “That’s like saying a Tibetan monk doesn’t know that the Himalayas are there.”

  Sawyer couldn’t exactly say why, but he was enjoying this. Maybe it was a case of misery wanting company. He didn’t know, then again, he was never much into analyzing things.

  A hint of amusement was reflected in his eyes as he looked at her. “You saying I’m covered in snow?”

  “No.” Not that I wouldn’t want to bury you in it up to your neck. “I’m saying that you’re a little hard to miss.”

  He nodded, as if he were taking her comment under consideration. “I’ll try harder to blend in.”

  The only way this man could “blend in” would be if she threw a slipcover over him and left him in the spare bedroom with the rest of the things to be dealt with at a later date. Periodically, she would go through the room and clean it out. Currently, however, it looked like the nesting ground for abandoned creatures who found shelter beneath bridges and inside collapsing cardboard boxes.

  Fighting a sense of mounting desperation, Janelle walked out of her father’s house. She locked the front door and pocketed the key before finally looking at the man she now regarded as her own personal albatross.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she insisted. “I won’t tell if you don’t tell.”

  It didn’t work that way for him. You weren’t guilty only if you were caught. You were guilty if you did something wrong. Witnesses didn’t count.

  He looked at her for a long silent moment, wondering if she was just talking or if her moral foundation was built on lies. “But I’ll know.”

  “And honor is that important to you.”

  “Shouldn’t it be?”

  Normally, yes, she thought. But not in this instance. “Terrific, I draw Dirty Harry with a conscience.” Well, she might as well make the best of it, she supposed as she opened the driver’s side door. “You can have the sofa.”

  Woman certainly jumped around from topic to topic, he thought. “To do what on?”

  “Sleep.”

  Sawyer laughed shortly, shaking his head. “I don’t intend to sleep.”

  Janelle stopped just short of getting into her car and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?” When he made no effort to confirm her supposition, she felt compelled to point out a glaring fact of life. “Everyone sleeps, Detective.”

  He’d been in the marines and seen fighting. He’d been an LAPD officer and seen more. Somewhere along the line, he’d developed the ability to sleep sitting up with one eye open. That way, he rested, but the slightest noise would instantly wake him up.

  “If you say so.”

  His “agreeableness” was anything but. She didn’t like his patronizing attitude. But she was too tired, too edgy, too stressed to debate this situation any further.

  Taking one last look around the area to see if her father’s cream-colored sedan was approaching, Janelle did her best to suppress her frustration and got behind the wheel of her car. She didn’t even remember turning on the ignition. As far as she was concerned, it was all automatic pilot from door to door.

  The roads were empty. She did sixty all the way. Sawyer kept up with her. He wasn’t that far behind her when they pulled up into her apartment complex. Janelle drove straight into her carport without so much as a backward glance in her rearview mirror, leaving her shadow to find a space in guest parking if he could. What with many of the apartments having at least two occupants if not more, this time of the evening there were usually very few empty spaces to be found.

  His problem, not mine, she thought.

  Maybe if he couldn’t find a place to park, he’d go away. At least it was something to hope for.

  For a very short time.

  Sawyer was only two steps behind her when she reached her front door. She pressed her lips together to keep from ordering him home. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, except make her unstable. She was determined not to appear weak around him.

  Inserting the key into the lock, she opened the door and entered.

  “You know, you could have gotten a ticket back there.”

  Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Lucky for me there were no dedicated police officers around.”

  She switched on the light in her apartment. For the first time she found herself wishing that she’d listened to her father when he’d suggested she get an attack dog after she’d first moved out. Her reasoning against it had been that she didn’t have enough time to properly take care of a pet. But right now, she would have loved to see Sawyer’s reaction if a snarling dog came lunging at him.

  He’d probably shoot it, she realized suddenly. The man struck her as the type to shoot first, ask questions later.

  Brooding about this wasn’t going to help. If life threw lemons at you, you made lemonade, right? She’d get through this, she promised herself.

  Taking in a deep breath, she tossed her purse down on a nearby chair.

  “You hungry?” she a
sked as she crossed to the refrigerator. Opening it, Janelle found herself looking at empty rack space. She hadn’t had time to go shopping for food and nothing had magically appeared on her shelves.

  Her mouth twisted in a fond smile. Every so often, Uncle Andrew, dabbling in what amounted to his third passion, right after his family and law enforcement, would experiment with a new recipe and leave a sample of whatever he’d created in her refrigerator. He, along with her father and siblings, had a key to her place. She was the only unattached Cavanaugh and as such, had no one to help her out. No one to fill an empty refrigerator.

  Obviously, if Uncle Andrew was experimenting, he and Aunt Rose were consuming whatever it was he was creating.

  “I could eat,” Sawyer allowed. Coming up behind her, Sawyer looked into the interior of the refrigerator. “Invisible food?” he guessed.

  He was mocking her, she thought, struggling with a flash of temper. She was also struggling with another unsettling feeling. An unwelcome warmth spread through her. The man was standing too close for her comfort.

  Janelle swung the refrigerator door shut a little too hard. “I was thinking of ordering takeout. Chinese? Pizza?”

  To her relief—and suspicion—he’d left her side and the kitchen. “Didn’t know the Chinese made pizza.”

  Very slowly, Sawyer looked around, absorbing the lay of the apartment. Moving like a panther that was ready to pounce on a stalking enemy in less than a heartbeat, the detective went from room to room, making sure they were all empty and free of any surveillance equipment. The pretty woman in the other room struck him as a tad naive, especially considering her family background.

  “Whatever,” he tossed in as an afterthought.

  Janelle frowned at the careless answer. She’d asked him for a reason. To make a choice. Whatever was not a choice. It would, however, probably give him a chance to complain about whatever it was she did select.

  “How about cattle feed?” she asked sarcastically.

  Sawyer raised what was almost a perfectly shaped eyebrow as he looked at her over his shoulder. “Didn’t take you for someone whose tastes ran in those directions.”