Cavanaugh Watch

And she had no doubt that the D.A. knew exactly who to call. And how to get someone to do what he wanted when he wanted it. A great many people in Aurora owed him favors. She knew damn well that any kind of protest voiced on her part was useless and might even work against her. You didn’t go far in this office if you got on D.A. Ezra Kleinmann’s bad side. And you got there one of two ways. By consistently losing cases or by going up against him.

She knew enough to pick her battles carefully. Her father had taught her that. It was one of the first lessons she’d ever learned.

Brian Cavanaugh had taught her something equally important, as well: how to lose graciously. Not that losing had ever been a large factor in Brian Cavanaugh’s professional life. Personally, however, was another story. He’d lost his wife of twenty-five years, a woman he had looked forward to spending the rest of his natural life with. The loss had been difficult to come to terms with. It caused him to teach his children to be prepared for the worst—just in case.

This was one of those times to step back from the line of scrimmage. Janelle forced a smile she in no way felt. Protesting being assigned a bodyguard, someone who would perforce intrude into the fabric of her life, imposing his will over hers, might be useless, but no one said she had to like it.

“How soon are we getting the bodyguards?” Woods asked.

He sounded eager and relieved, Janelle thought. Relieved that he didn’t have to appear as if he were less than manly because he really wanted someone watching his back until this case was over.

She knew that had been on the assistant D.A.’s mind for the last half hour. It had been apparent in their conversation as they’d returned from the courthouse. She’d asked him several questions regarding the finer points of some of the procedures they were implementing. The answers she’d gotten had been rendered by a man whose thoughts were severely distracted and scattered.

Growing up with three brothers had made her competitive. It had also made her motherly on occasion. She felt the A.D.A’s discomfort, both over the threat and at his reaction to it.

Changing direction, she’d abruptly asked, “Wasn’t that Adam Shepherd I saw outside the courthouse just before the gunshots went off?”

Her question had sliced through the fog and Woods had looked at her. “Yes.”

She grinned. Shepherd was a highly sought after divorce lawyer famed for getting his clients exorbitant alimony settlements.

“So maybe the shooter was a disgruntled ex-husband looking to get revenge because Shepherd had raked him over the coals.”

Woods had looked at her then, a tired smile on his lips, as if to tell her that he knew what she was up to. “I don’t think so, Janelle. But it’s a nice theory.”

“Might be more than a theory. People surprise you sometimes.”

He’d nodded, looking directly at her. “Yes, they do.”

Now, without waiting for further comment or questions, the D.A. pressed a button on his telephone console. “Doris, send the two gentlemen in.”

A soft, disembodied voice informed him, “There’s only one here, sir. A Detective Novak.”

Kleinmann frowned. “Where’s the other?”

“Hasn’t gotten here yet, sir,” Doris told him. “But he did call in,” she added, “said he’d be here shortly. Had something to do first.”

The frown on Kleinmann’s brow deepened as he released the button.

Not that the D.A. said anything outright, but Janelle could see that the vein in his neck was a bit more prominent than usual. That was always an indication for those who worked with the D.A. to tread lightly until the vein returned to its normal size.

The door to the D.A.’s inner office opened and an average-looking man with dark brown hair and a nondescript, slightly wrinkled suit entered.

Detective Novak, Janelle thought.

The man looked vaguely familiar. Their paths had crossed somewhere along the line, she assumed. When their eyes met, she nodded at him.

The detective went on to extend his hand to the D.A. “John Novak, sir.”

Kleinmann took the hand that was offered. “Detective Novak, this is Assistant District Attorney Stephen Woods. It’ll be your job to see that not a single one of the many hairs on his head come to any harm. That goes for the rest of his body, as well.” The D.A. permitted himself a very dry chuckle.

The chuckle was blotted out by the sound of a door being opened and then closed in the outer office. A quick exchange of voices followed. The look on Novak’s face indicated that he recognized the voice of the person who had entered.

Her bodyguard, probably.

Bracing herself, Janelle turned around. Only to discover that she wasn’t quite braced enough. Walking into the D.A.’s office was the very same man who had thrown himself on top of her less than an hour ago.

This day, she thought grimly, just kept getting worse and worse.

Chapter 3

Sawyer made no attempt to mask his displeasure, no attempt to allow his facial muscles to relax out of their current frown.

Other than undercover work when it was necessary, sometimes even to save his own life, Sawyer didn’t believe in lying. The way he saw it, looking pleased right now would have been lying.

He didn’t much like the idea of being asked to babysit. Which was how he saw his new assignment. He was too old for that and too experienced to be wasted on a menial detail. And to Detective Sawyer Boone, a not-so-recent LAPD transplant, that was exactly what being a so-called bodyguard for some bit of fluff currently attached to the district attorney’s office was: the job of glorified babysitter.

Sawyer wasn’t looking to be, nor did he want to be, a glorified anything. He wanted to be on the streets, working undercover. Facing life-and-death situations where maybe, just maybe, death would someday be the viable alternative.

That way, he wouldn’t have to do it himself. Wouldn’t have to actually take his own life. There didn’t seem to be another way to end the unending onslaught of nightmares. The nightmares that haunted him both waking and sleeping. Nightmares about Allison.

Allison had been senselessly wiped out less than a month before their wedding, killed because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While two worthless pieces of scum had been trying to even some imaginary score.

She’d been in her car, stopped at a light, when she’d been caught by a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting. A gang member had peppered a rival gang member’s home. And snuffed out his Allison’s life.

If Allison hadn’t been so damn altruistic, if she hadn’t been part of that free legal aid firm, if she’d just gone into practice with that Beverly Hills firm that had wanted her instead of following in her father’s foot steps, she would be here today.

Or rather, Sawyer thought, his expression dark as he looked from one person to the other in the D.A.’s office, he would have been there. With her. Living with Allison in Southern California instead of here, being asked to do stand guard over the chief of detectives’ little darling because the woman had been spooked by the sound of gunfire.

His superior, Lieutenant Richard Reynolds, had been waiting for him when he’d gotten back from testifying in court. At first, he’d thought the man had been just making conversation, informing him of what he’d just heard had happened. Maybe even waiting for Sawyer to fill in the details. But it had very quickly become apparent that he was being given an assignment. The only kind of assignment he would have turned down. If he’d been given a choice, which he hadn’t.

The incident had taken place less than an hour ago and already the call for bodyguards had been put out and filled. No paperwork or red tape to impede anything.

Apparently, he thought cynically as his eyes washed over the petite blonde in the navy suit, when necessary, things moved fast within the halls of the Aurora police department.

Protesting the assignment would do no good. He’d just wrapped up a case and was considered free. The fact that he didn’t have a relationship of any sort with the woman or any of her family was considered a plus.

“She’s a mite headstrong, I hear,” Reynolds had told him. “All the Cavanaugh women are,” he’d added after lowering his voice. “The D.A. requested someone she couldn’t bully into her way of thinking.”

Well, that was him, all right. He wasn’t about to be bullied by anyone, least of all a woman who thought her name earned her privileges.

Sawyer took slow, careful measure of her now, the way he would have any assignment he’d been given, any person he encountered on the job. Survival usually depended on observation.

He had to admit that, at about five-four, with no spare meat on her bones and honey-blond hair worn up and away from her face, the woman was fairly easy on the eyes. But it wasn’t his eyes that concerned him. He had no desire to be a glorified babysitter under any circumstances and, while the crime organization in question was a formidable one, he was of the personal opinion that what had happened in front of the courthouse an hour ago was an isolated incident, meant as a warning, nothing more.

The man Marco Wayne bore allegiance to was not about to waste money or manpower getting into an unofficial war with the members of the Aurora police department or the district attorney’s office over some lowlife, even if that lowlife was Marco’s son. Marco Wayne had to be acting on his own. And treading a very fine line. In order not to do anything that would put him in disfavor with his boss, or jeopardize his own life, he would have only done something to shake up the D.A.’s office, nothing more.

And the sooner he was done with this assignment, the better, Sawyer thought.