Cavanaugh Stakeout

by Marie Ferrarella

  Was there something else? Something she had overlooked?

  “You’re still here,” Nik told her, expecting that to rouse him and finally make him go. But he didn’t move a muscle. “Why?”

  He nodded at her door. “You haven’t unlocked your door.”

  “You mean that’s part of the process?” she asked him in disbelief.

  “Sure. What did you think I meant when I said I needed to see you home?”

  Talk about the old-fashioned type, this man actually belonged in a museum.

  “Obviously I wasn’t thinking of what you meant. Does this include you clearing each room in the apartment, or is my unlocking the front door enough?”

  His mouth curved into the smallest semblance of a smile. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t like to do things in half measures,” he said, reminding her of what she had told him earlier.

  Nik sighed. “I suppose I had that coming,” she commented.

  His grin grew just a little wider. “Yes,” he agreed. “That and so much more,” he said. “But I’ll settle for this for now.”

  “Very decent of you,” she quipped.

  When she turned from her unlocked door, holding her key tightly in her hand, Nik realized that she was standing much closer to Finn than she had thought.

  Chapter 15

  Time seemed to stand still. Nik could have sworn the electricity between them was all but crackling audibly.

  And then she felt a wave of heat flash through her, making her very skin tingle.

  For one long, heart-pounding moment, she thought Finn was going to kiss her.

  Or maybe she was even going to kiss him. She was certainly tempted. All her thoughts were all jumbled up in her head.

  Nik’s breath caught in her throat as she waited to see if either of them would make the first move—or if their senses would make a sudden return, preventing them from making a mistake.

  Because it would be a mistake, right? Nik silently argued. After all, she couldn’t allow herself to get carried away like this. There was absolutely no future for her with Finn and she wasn’t the type who gravitated toward relationships that were, by definition, just casual. That just wasn’t her, she insisted.

  But despite this mental debate she was conducting, Nik couldn’t shake the overwhelming desire that was gripping her, making demands and causing the guard that she usually kept up to just splinter apart into a thousand little pieces.

  But what would it hurt? the little voice in her head whispered. One kiss, one small contact. Would it really be so bad?

  Would it—?

  And then, just like that, the time for inner reflection, for wondering and wavering, had passed.

  Because Finn was kissing her.

  Nik felt his arms encircling her, felt his breath on her skin as he brought his face down to hers. Her heart slammed against her rib cage as his lips covered hers.

  When it happened, it was hard to say who was more surprised, Finn or Nik.

  Or which of them was more pleased.

  She tasted of everything sweet, just exactly as he thought she would. He could feel his pulse racing as he tightened his arms tightened around Nik, bringing her slender, supple body closer to him. The scent of her hair filled his head, intoxicating him.

  Nik felt her head swimming. And then she could feel Finn smile against her lips, his lips warming her.

  Seducing her.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked hoarsely as she tried to drag air back into her lungs.

  “Because that was exactly the way I imagined it would be,” he confessed.

  And then the reality of what he had just done hit him. Finn sobered, realizing that she might misunderstand what had just happened. “Sorry, that wasn’t the reason I wanted to see you to your door.” And then he decided that confession—in this case—was good for the soul. “But I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t to have a few more minutes with you.”

  Reviewing their relatively short association, she looked at him skeptically. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “In the beginning,” he conceded. “But I have to admit that you do have a way of getting to a guy.” He was saying too much and making this way too personal. He dialed it back a little. “And I have to say that you are pulling your own weight.”

  “You sure do know how to turn a girl’s head with sweet talk,” she told him wryly.

  Okay, maybe he was being a little too cautious. “You know what I mean.”

  And then she smiled, taking pity on him. The man would never be accused of having a silver tongue. But at least he was trying. And he was honest, which meant a great deal to her.

  “Fortunately, I do,” she told him. “See you tomorrow?” She assumed that she would, but she knew she couldn’t appear to take that for granted, just in case that would cause him to change his mind.

  Finn nodded in response. “Sure. Monroe’s desk is still free and we’re still looking for a lead, so I expect you to be in the squad room.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” she replied, trying not to sound as pleased as she felt. Nik turned away and started to go inside her apartment.

  She heard Finn’s cell phone ringing just as he began to walk away. Something—instinct, a sixth sense maybe—made her turn around again and listen to Finn’s end of the conversation.

  “When?” he asked the person on the other end of his call.

  The second he said that to whoever had called him, she could feel goose bumps popping up all along her arms and upper torso.

  This had to be about the case, she thought.

  Another body? So soon?

  “Yeah, I’ll be there as soon as I can. It’s not like I was going to go home and sleep or anything,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “’Bye.”

  Ending the call, Finn tucked away his cell. After a beat, he turned around to face Nik. He knew she’d been listening.

  “It happened again?” she asked, fairly certain she knew the answer to that.

  “It did, but they’re not sure about the time of death yet. The victim has started decomposing,” he told her. “That means she’s been dead for a while.”

  Instantly her heart went out to the poor woman who would never see another sunrise. “Same MO as the others?” she asked.

  “It sounded that way,” Finn admitted, although Harley had been short on details. “I’ll know more when I get there.”

  She didn’t like the way he said that. “You’re not going solo on me now, are you?” she asked.

  “Actually,” he told her, “I thought I’d let you get some rest...”

  Nik frowned. Was the man serious? “Right, like I could sleep now,” she scoffed. “Just give me a couple of minutes to put on a fresh shirt and change my shoes. These are killing me,” she confided.

  Finn looked down at her footwear. The woman had been wearing heels all day. “I was wondering how you managed to walk around in those shoes,” he quipped.

  “They don’t usually bother me, but eighteen hours is my limit,” she confessed. “C’mon in,” she told him, opening her door all the way. “You can wait for me on the sofa.”

  Finn followed her inside, but he didn’t take her up on her suggestion. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stand,” he told her. “If I get comfortable on the sofa, I might wind up falling asleep waiting for you.”

  “I’m not going to take that long,” she said, laughing softly.

  Finn found himself reacting to her laugh. Something in his gut tightened and quivered just for a second. What was that about? She must have laughed before, he told himself. Why was the sound affecting him this way now?

  Maybe he was getting punchy, he thought. He’d been able to go around-the-clock before, he argued, but he had to admit that was back when he was a rookie.

  Face it, Cavana
ugh, he told himself. You’re getting old.

  It wasn’t something he accepted easily. Nor was it actually true, but at the moment, he felt older than his years.

  The noise coming from behind him caught his attention. When he turned around, he saw that Nik had changed her whole outfit, and instead of high heels, she was wearing a pair of shoes that had heels only half as high.

  To each his own, he mused. “That was fast,” he told her.

  “Well, to be honest, I thought if I took too long, you’d use that as an excuse to leave without me,” she confessed.

  His mouth curved as he glanced at his watch. “You still had five minutes left,” he teased.

  Apparently, that kiss had not only broken the ice between them, but it had also been instrumental in having him gain a sense of humor.

  “Well, luckily, I don’t need the extra time. I’m ready now,” she told him. “So, what do we know about this victim?” she asked as she locked up her apartment and followed him into the courtyard.

  “Not much except that it does look like the work of the same guy.” When she suddenly stopped walking, Finn looked at her, confused. “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “I was just wondering if we should take separate cars,” Nik told him.

  “Why?” he asked. Then he said, “Don’t like me bringing you home?”

  “I don’t like imposing,” Nik said, correcting him.

  “You’re not. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when you’re imposing,” he promised her. And then his voice became serious as he instructed her, “Just get in the car.”

  Nik suppressed her smile as she opened the passenger door and did as he directed.

  * * *

  “Is it just me, or are there more police cars out than there normally would be?” Nik asked, taking in the area as Finn pulled up to what appeared to be the crime scene.

  “No, it’s not just you,” he assured her, scanning the entire block. “There have to be at least twice as many cops, detectives and crime-scene investigators than usually come out for a homicide, even one involving a serial killer.”

  Finn turned off the engine, then got out of his car and approached the head of the crime-scene investigators. He was surprised to see that Sean was still at work.

  “Chief?” he said, raising his voice as he tried to get Sean’s attention.

  It took two attempts before Sean heard him. “I thought I’d see you here,” Sean commented. “And I see you brought your lovelier sidekick with you.” Sean smiled wearily at Nik. “Sorry to have to see you so soon again under these circumstances,” he told her.

  “Speaking of circumstances,” Finn said, taking the opportunity to bring the conversation back around to the reason they were all here, “I take it that the MO is the same for this victim as it was for the others.”

  “No question about that,” Sean confirmed.

  “Harley told me that you said this one might have been killed before some of the others we’ve found,” Finn said.

  Sean nodded. “As near as I can tell at the moment, this one was killed six days ago. You’d think that by this time, there’d be fewer young women out there, risking their lives by dancing the night away. I don’t understand why our possible victim pool hasn’t been thinned out, at least a little,” Sean confessed, shaking his head.

  “It probably has been,” Finn ventured. “Imagine how many more dead women there would be by this time if it hadn’t been.”

  “Shh,” Nik warned. “Don’t say that. You’ll jinx it and they still might turn up.”

  “I didn’t know you were superstitious,” Finn said, looking at her.

  “I’m not. Usually,” Nik qualified, looking at the woman who was still lying near a Dumpster. Just like the first victim they’d found, she thought. This serial killer was treating his victims like trash. He hated women even more than most killers, Nik couldn’t help thinking.

  Finn squatted down beside the victim’s body, taking a closer look at the woman.

  She appeared younger than the other victims, he thought. “Do we have an identity for this one yet?” he asked Sean.

  “No wallet, same as the others,” Sean told him. And then he said the same thing that Finn had been thinking. “She looks younger than his usual prey.”

  That was when Nik leaned over Finn and took a closer look at the girl.

  He heard Nik suddenly draw in her breath. Both he and Sean turned to look at her.

  “What?” Finn asked. It was obvious that something had struck her about the dead woman and he asked what.

  Nik let out a long, shaky breath. “I think I know her,” she told the two men. “In fact, I’m sure of it.” Her eyes swept over both of them. It was obvious to her that they didn’t recognize the woman on the ground. “I think that this case just got hotter.”

  “I don’t—” Finn began, shaking his head.

  He got no further before Nik interjected, “That’s Senator Clark Heaton’s daughter, Gretchen.”

  “Are you sure?” Finn asked.

  “I’m positive. They did a story on her in the Sunday supplement of the paper last month. You know, what it means to be the daughter of an up-and-coming senator, the so-called responsibility that position holds, that sort of thing.”

  Finn still looked rather dubious. “And you’re sure it’s her?”

  “It’s an easy enough thing to check out,” Sean told them. “If you’re right,” he said to Nik, “then you know that you’re going to have the senator breathing down your necks, demanding you find the killer, the second he finds out about this.”

  Finn frowned. “Demanding,” he repeated. “Like these other women don’t deserve that sort of concentrated investigation on our part.” Rising to his feet, he said, “I’m going to need a bigger task force on this before the higher powers decide to take this investigation totally out of my hands.”

  “All you need to do is tell me what you want,” Nik said. The smile that came to Finn’s lips when she said that told Nik that she had chosen the wrong words in this case.

  Rousing himself, Finn turned toward Sean. “As soon as you can pinpoint the approximate date and time of death, we can get started requisitioning and reviewing any and all surveillance videos in the area. I can’t let go of the feeling that someone must have seen something, and the second we can find some sort of a match to someone else popping up on those other videos, then we’ll be in business.”

  Nik took in a deep breath. “You realize that we need to talk to the senator, see if there’s anything he can tell us about his daughter that might help us find her killer,” she said. “Her habits, people she hung out with, places she might have frequented where she could have come in contact with the killer. These women have to have something in common besides being fancy dressers and in their twenties. Or, in the senator’s daughter’s case,” she said, glancing down at the body, “almost twenty.”

  Finn looked down at the face of the young woman whose life had been so abruptly cut short. “Wonder what made him change his ‘type.’”

  “I don’t think he changed his type so much as he might have broadened his scope,” Nik answered. “Look at her. Her makeup is practically wiped off, but I’m guessing that when she had her war paint on, Gretchen was able to pass for someone older, maybe more glamorous and sophisticated. And that seems to sum up his type.

  “Or the type he’s trying to eliminate,” she suddenly suggested. “This might be someone he’s trying to get back at, over and over again. Maybe his mother, or some woman who rejected him.”

  “Hey, hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Finn cautioned. “Let’s operate one step at a time, okay? Sometimes hoofbeats just means a horse, not a zebra,” he counseled.

  “Okay,” she agreed, although it was obvious that the wheels in her head were still going at top speed.

  Suddenly, the ar
ea lit up as bright as day. Headlights were bearing down on the scene at what seemed like top speed. The next second, a white, high-end Mercedes came to a screeching halt barely two feet away. Within moments, an ashen-faced, well-dressed older man all but exploded out of the vehicle. He was followed by another, far more solemn-looking man, most likely his bodyguard, Nik thought.

  “Is it true?” the first man, Senator Heaton, demanded. Not waiting for an answer, he fired out another question. “Where is she? Where’s my daughter?” The cry came out almost hoarsely as he scanned the area, his eyes all but wild.

  “Senator, I don’t think you want to see her this way,” Finn said, attempting to place himself between the man and the sprawled-out body on the ground.

  Suddenly seeing the form, the senator pushed aside Finn, displaying an extraordinary amount of strength for a man of his age and build. Finn chalked it up to adrenaline.

  The second the man realized that he was looking at what was left of his daughter, an almost inhuman sound emerged from his lips. In less than a second, the senator transformed from a raging bull to a man who had his very life drained from him.

  The man with the senator did his best to stabilize the senator’s slumping figure.

  Coming around and collecting himself, Senator Heaton looked around the crowd, frantic, angry and wild-eyed.

  “Who did this?” he cried. “Who did this to my little girl?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir,” Finn told the grieving father.

  The senator suddenly turned on him, incensed, and shouted, “Try harder, damn it! Try harder,” he repeated just before he completely broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Senator, Detective Cavanaugh has been doing everything he can to find whoever has been killing these young women,” Nik began, “and he and his task force won’t stop until these women—all these women—have justice, and the person who did this horrible thing to them is brought to trial.”

  The senator blinked, looking at her. “Who are you?”

  “Just someone who wants justice, too,” Nik answered simply.