Loe raamatut: «Cavanaugh Undercover»

Chapter 1

“You’ve been nursing that beer for the last hour. Something bothering you, son?”

Brennan Cavanaugh was lost in thought as he leaned against the cool white stucco wall and watched people who constituted his newly discovered family enjoying themselves. It took him a moment to zero in on the man asking the question.

Brennan had an aptitude for names and faces—in his line of work, or former line of work, he corrected himself, he’d had to. He knew the man speaking to him to be Brian Cavanaugh, the Aurora police department’s chief of detectives, younger brother of the man whose life he had saved, an act that had, as he’d silently predicted, terminated an active part of his own career, since he had to blow his cover in order to save Andrew Cavanaugh—his long lost uncle. He couldn’t help thinking that truth could be a lot stranger than fiction.

“Not really,” he replied.

It was the easiest answer to give. In his experience, when people asked how you were doing, or if something was wrong, they really didn’t want to know and certainly not in detail.

But Brian obviously did not fall into that general category, because he pressed a little. “Fakely, then?” Brian asked with an understanding smile.

Brian knew all about people’s reluctance to talk. He’d witnessed it initially from his early days on the force when he questioned victims and suspects. He was aware of it currently because of the office he’d held for a number of years.

Since becoming the chief of detectives, he had come across more than one person who was afraid to share his private feelings because he thought it might affected his work life adversely. Brian’s gift was that he knew instinctively how to separate the two and how much weight to give to what he heard in both capacities: as the chief of detectives and as a relative/friend.

“All right, let’s just say, for the sake of hypothetical argument, that there was something causing you some minor concern. What would that be?” he asked when Brennan made no response to his earlier joking comment.

Because he wasn’t quite ready to talk about it, Brennan went with the most obvious answer. “I’ll be the first to admit that I grew up in a crowd scene. Every holiday, birthday or miscellaneous celebration, there were always acres and acres of family—but this, well, this gives a whole new meaning to words like overwhelmed. I’ve heard of family trees, but this, this is damn near a family forest,” Brennan quipped with a grin that took its time in forming.

Brian laughed. “You have that right,” he readily agreed. “But at the risk of harping, that’s not what’s bothering you.” He saw the suspicious way Brennan looked at him. “Don’t look so surprised, boy. I didn’t get to where I am on good looks alone.” The statement was accompanied by another, this time deeper, laugh. “I’m a fair hand at reading people.” And there was definitely something bothering this young man who had saved his older brother’s life. Brian intended, eventually, to get to the bottom of it. “Now, if you don’t want to talk, I understand. But if you do,” Brian continued, “I am a good man to talk to. I listen.”

Brennan shrugged as he stared down at the light that was being reflected in what was left of his beer. The overhead patio light shimmered seductively on the liquid surface, as if it were flirting with him.

“It’s nothing, sir,” he finally said. “I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself come Monday morning, that’s all.”

Brian appeared slightly puzzled. “I thought you were working undercover for the DEA. Something to do with drug smuggling.”

Brian left the statement vague despite the fact that he knew exactly what the young man next to him had been up to when he rescued Andrew. The moment he’d done that, Brian had made it his business to find out everything he could about the tall, strapping DEA agent with the same last name.

Brennan nodded, avoiding his eyes. “I was.”

“Was,” Brian repeated as if he was trying to see if he’d heard the word correctly.

At the last moment, Brennan withheld a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

Brian was about to tell the younger man not to call him sir, but he knew it would be a wasted effort, so he let it pass. “But you’re not anymore.” It was now an assumption.

Brennan frowned, though he thought it hid it. “No, sir.”

“Case over?” Brennan asked. Obviously his digging hadn’t turned up the whole story.

Brennan shook his head. “No, sir.”

“I see,” Brian replied quietly. And he did because all the pieces suddenly came together. “You blew your cover saving my brother.”

Brennan didn’t want any accolades. He’d done what needed doing. That it cost him wasn’t the victim’s fault. “I had no choice.”

“Some people might argue that you did have a choice.”

At bottom it was an argument that debated the responsibilities of a cameraman. Does he or she watch a scene unfold and film it as it happens no matter what that might be or interfere if what is being filmed depicts something immoral or illegal? Some felt it was their duty to record events as they happened; others felt duty-bound to come in on the side of right.

Brennan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what anybody argues. Way I see it, I didn’t have a choice. He would have been dead if I just stood and watched.”

Brian smiled and nodded. “Good answer—for all of us. So, does this mean you’re currently out of a job?” he asked.

“Change of venue,” Brennan corrected. “They put me on desk duty.”

“Until we can trust you to keep your assignment foremost on your ‘to-do’ list and not play superhero, you stay behind a desk,” Lieutenant Lisbon, his direct superior, had shouted at him. As fair skinned as they came, Lisbon had a habit of turning an almost bright red whenever he was angry and he had been very angry the day he’d thrown him off the case.

Brian looked at him knowingly. “Let me guess. You’re not a desk duty kind of guy.”

“Nope.”

Brian didn’t even pause before asking, “Have you given any thought to having a different sort of change of venue?”

Was the chief of Ds being philosophical, or—? “What do you mean, ‘different’?”

Brian felt him out slowly, watching Brennan’s eyes for his true response. “Let’s just say going from the DEA to being a police detective on the Aurora Police Department?”

Brennan’s electric blue eyes narrowed as he stopped taking in the people in the immediate vicinity and focused completely on the man he was talking to.

“Are you offering me a job, sir?” he asked a little uncertainly.

The politely worded question almost had him laughing out loud. “Boy, after what you did, you can write your own ticket to anything that’s within this family’s power to give, so yes, I am offering you a job. As a matter of fact, something recently came to my attention that you would undoubtedly be perfect for, given your undercover background.”

Brennan could feel himself getting hopeful. He needed to nip that in the bud if this wasn’t going to pan out. “You’re not just pulling my leg, are you, sir?”

“I have been known to do a great many things in my time, singularly or on an ongoing basis. However, leg pulling does not number among them, so no, I am not pulling your leg.”

Setting his own glass—now devoid of beer—aside on the closest flat surface, Brian turned his attention completely to the subject he was about to share with this new member of the family.

“Word has it that we’ve had more than our share of runaways lately. There have always been one or two in a year. However, the number went up dramatically recently. Ten in two months.”

“You don’t think they’re runaways?” It was a rhetorical question.

“I do not,” Brian confirmed. Runaways were bad enough. What he was about to say was infinitely worse. “Rumor has it that these missing girls are being ‘recruited’ one way or another for the sole purpose of becoming sex slaves, used to sate the appetites of men whose sick preferences tend toward underaged girls. Preferably untouched underaged girls. I’m putting together a task force to track down the people in charge of this sex-trafficking ring, and I could use a man like you on the inside to do what you normally do.”

“And that is?” Brennan asked, curious as to how the chief perceived him.

“Get the bad guys to trust you,” Brian said simply, humor curving the sides of his mouth.

This definitely sounded as if it had possibilities and it certainly beat the hell out of sitting behind a desk, aging.

“Who would I have to see about applying for the job?” Brennan asked.

“You’re seeing him,” Brian assured him, then Brian laughed softly to himself as he shook his head and marveled, “Who knew it would be such a small world and that someone from the very branch of the family that Andrew set out to track down wound up saving his life.” Brian straightened, moving away from the wall. “I guess that’s what they mean when people talk about ‘karma.’”

“Maybe,” Brennan allowed.

He certainly had no better or other plausible explanation for why he’d been where he was that fateful night. He hadn’t even known that his late grandfather had had any family other than the four children he had fathered.

The life Brennan had chosen didn’t allow him to make any unnecessary contact with anyone from his “other” life for months at a time. Since he wasn’t married and his last semimeaningful relationship was far in the past, he was a perfect candidate for the job he’d had.

Emphasis, Brennan reminded himself, on the word had.

Brian grinned at him as the man straightened and indicated a keg several yards away. “Let’s see about getting you that refill now,” he prompted.

Brennan looked down at the glass he was holding and noticed that it was empty. Without realizing it, as he’d talked to Brian, he’d consumed the rest of the beer.

He flashed a grin now and said, “Sure, why not?”

Brian clapped an arm around his shoulders, directing him toward the keg. “Can’t think of a single reason,” he confirmed. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“A little overwhelming, isn’t it?” the tall, broad-shouldered man who had joined Brennan nursing something amber in a chunky glass, asked, amused.

The dinner had been served and now everyone had broken up into smaller groups, some remaining in the house, some drifting outside. All in all, Andrew Cavanaugh’s “get acquainted” party was teeming with Cavanaughs. Brennan was still trying to absorb everything that his chance action several weeks ago had brought about.

So many names, so many faces, he couldn’t help thinking.

Brennan looked now at the man who was addressing him. They were around the same height and there was something vaguely familiar about him.

Or maybe it was that the amicable man looked a great deal like the lion’s share of the men who were meandering about the house and grounds, talking, laughing or, in some instances, just listening.

“You could say that,” Brennan agreed.

“Don’t be shy about it. First time I attended one of these ‘little’ family gatherings, I thought I’d wandered into a central casting call for Hollywood’s answer to what a family of cops was supposed to look like.”

“The first time,” Brennan repeated, having picked up the term. “Does that mean that you’re not a Cavanaugh?”

“Well, yeah, actually, I am,” the other man more than willingly admitted, then grinned as he remembered the confusion that had ensued over this discovery coming to light. “But at the time, I thought I was a Cavelli.”

If this was some kind of a riddle, it left him standing in the dark. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t follow.”

Thomas laughed. “At the time, neither did I. I’m Thomas,” he said abruptly, realizing that he hadn’t introduced himself.

Shifting his glass to his other hand, he offered it in a handshake, which Brennan easily took. “Brennan,” Brennan told him.

The expression on Thomas’s face told him that he didn’t need to make the introduction. His name had made the rounds. “My father’s Sean Cavanaugh, the—”

“—head of the daytime crime scene investigative unit,” Brennan completed. “I looked over the roster at the department before I came here.” Even so, he couldn’t untangle the confusion associated with what Thomas was telling him. “But if your father’s a Cavanaugh, then I don’t—”

Thomas decided to tell this story from the beginning. “There was a time when he didn’t know he was a Cavanaugh. You notice the strong resemblance between my father, Sean, and the former chief of police, Andrew—the guy whose life you saved,” he added.

Brennan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, so did a lot of other people a few years ago. They thought that the chief was snubbing them and flat-out ignoring them. Since he was doing no such thing and wasn’t even in these places they claimed to have seen him, he did a little detective work of his own to see if he could track down this man who supposedly had his face.

“That led to tracking down a few important details—like where he was born, when, all that good stuff. Turns out that the day my dad was born, so was another male baby. And if that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, they were both named Sean. One was a Cavanaugh and the other was a Cavelli—Two Cs,” he emphasized.

“And let me guess, the nurse got them confused.”

“Give the man a cigar. Story goes she’d just been told her soldier fiancé had been killed overseas by a roadside bomb. She was completely beside herself and just going through the motions to keep from collapsing in a heap. To add to our little drama, the infant the Cavanaughs brought home died before his first birthday.”

“I guess that trumps a divorce and estranged brothers,” Brennan quipped.

Thomas held up his hand, indicating that he not dismiss the matter so quickly. “Not when the reunion brings twenty-four more Cavanaughs to the table.” He laughed.

Brennan looked around. He knew that all his siblings and cousins, not to mention his father, aunt and uncles, hadn’t all been able to make this gathering. Despite that, it still looked like a crowd scene from some epic, biblical movie.

“Just how many Cavanaughs are there?” he asked, looking at Thomas.

“You asking about Cavanaughs strictly by birth, or are you including the ones by marriage, too?”

Brennan shrugged. “The latter, I guess.” He’d heard that once you entered the inner circle, you were a Cavanaugh for life.

“Haven’t a clue,” Thomas admitted honestly, keeping a straight face. “But I’m betting we could have easily had enough people to storm the Bastille back in the day.” The oldest of the Cavanaugh-Cavelli branch—not counting his father, Sean—Thomas grinned as he raised his glass in a toast to Brennan. “Welcome to the family.”

Brennan laughed. “Thanks,” he said, draining his own glass. Being part of what was perceived to be a dynasty felt rather good from where he stood.

* * *

Tiana Drummond didn’t pray much anymore.

It was an activity she’d given up even before her father, Officer Harvey Drummond, had died. There didn’t seem to be much point in engaging in something that never yielded any positive results.

The official story given out about her father’s untimely demise was that he’d died on the job, in the line of duty. That, strictly speaking, was true—as far as it went. But the whole truth of it was that her father had died because he’d been drunk while on duty and it had drastically robbed him of any edge he might have had. Drawing his weapon faster than a punk bank robber hadn’t even been a remote possibility and consequently, Officer Harvey Drummond had died by that bank robber’s hand.

At the funeral—a no-frills version mercifully paid for by the patrolmen’s union—she and her younger sister, Janie, had heard glowing words about a man neither one of them recognized, much less knew. It was the way his fellow officers on the beat knew him.

The father that she and her sister remembered was a man who’d been both too bitter and too strict to do anything but give them the minimal basic shelter while trying to verbally and physically break their spirits every opportunity he got. For her part, rather than run away from home the way she’d been tempted to do more than once, Tiana had done what she could to protect her sister. She got between her father’s punishing hand and Janie time and again. Some of the scars didn’t heal.

Harvey Drummond blamed both of his daughters for the fact that his wife had left him, disappearing one day while they were at school and he was at work. Sylvia Drummond had left nothing in her wake but a note secured by a fish-shaped magnet to the refrigerator that said “I can’t take it anymore.”

The note had been written to him, but Harvey maintained that it was their behavior she couldn’t take, hers and Janie’s. He took his rage out on them every time he was drunk. Which was often.

Tiana and her sister endured hell on a regular nightly basis.

But once their father no longer walked among the living, life got better. Harder financially despite his pension, but better because she and Janie were finally allowed to pick up the pieces of their souls and do their best to reconstruct those pieces into some sort of workable whole again.

But the years they had had to endure with their father had left their mark, affecting them differently. Tiana, always self-sufficient, became more closed off. More distrustful of any man whose path crossed hers. Any relationships that looked as if they might have some sort of potential she quickly shut down before they ever flourished.

Janie, on the other hand, desperately craved attention, hungered for affection and was starved for approval—the three As Tiana called them—and looked to any man hoping that he would provide her with them. Janie, Tiana had asserted more than once, was far too trusting, while Tiana only trusted men to stir up trouble and make situations worse. She knew that she wasn’t being altogether fair in her estimation—but at least she was being safe.

Tiana would have been the first to admit that their late father was good for one thing—he had, without really meaning to, provided her with valuable connections. Connections on the police force. While Tiana had never wanted rules bent in her favor, she wanted to make sure that they weren’t bent against her, either. All she had ever wanted was a fair shot at whatever she set her sights on. In this case, it was becoming part of the police department.

Eventually, while taking college courses on her computer at night, Tiana joined the San Francisco police force, managing to impress them with her physical stamina—another unintended “bonus” of surviving her father’s brutal treatment.

Once she joined up, it wasn’t long before she found her way to the crime scene investigative unit, a subject that had always fascinated her.

Every penny Tiana earned that didn’t go to cover basic living expenses went toward Janie’s education. Her only request was that Janie attend a college within the state so she could keep an eye on her. Janie was very disgruntled at what she perceived to be a restriction. “You’re just like Dad,” she’d railed.

The words cut her deeply, but Tiana had remained firm on this one condition. She had to since she felt that Janie, while not exactly outwardly rebellious toward her, was far too naive and prone to making bad judgment calls.

Like the boyfriend she’d gotten mixed up with, a supposed senior at the same college that seventeen-year-old Janie was attending—the University of San Francisco.

When she first met Wayne Scott, the light of Janie’s life, Tiana had felt really bad vibes coming from this man. The occurrence took her by surprise because she generally didn’t believe things like that were possible. There was just something about him; he was too verbally obliging, too ready to take her—Tiana—anywhere she wanted to go. There were a few times she could have sworn the college senior was actually coming on to her.

Tiana tried as gently as possible to encourage Janie to see other guys. But for her sister, the sun rose and set around Wayne’s close-shaved head. Tiana instinctively sensed that the more she’d say against Wayne, the more Janie would defend him and dig in her heels, at the same time turning her back on the only family she had.

So Tiana had kept her peace and even refrained from saying anything when it became apparent that Janie was cutting classes to hang out with this loser.

But when one of Janie’s friends called to ask if Janie had quit college altogether, all sorts of red lights and alarms had gone off in Tiana’s head. When she asked around, it came to light that no one had seen Janie either in her classes or at the part-time job she’d gotten to help with her schooling expenses approximately two weeks ago. Sick with worry, Tiana only became more so upon learning that according to her roommate, Janie hadn’t been to her dorm room for those same two weeks.

And no one had seen her boyfriend, either.

Tiana immediately went into high gear to try to track down her sister’s movements and current whereabouts. Accessing local cameras around the college and the places that her sister had frequented had ultimately yielded eyestrain and nothing else. For all intents and purposes, both Janie and her boyfriend had completely disappeared from the San Francisco area.

Tiana tried calling Janie on her cell phone both day and night to no avail. All her calls went straight to voice mail until finally, the metallic voice told her that the mailbox was full.