The Woman Who Wasn't There

There was no point in their hanging around. She didn’t relish making this report to the head of the department. Or calling the D.A. for that matter. She knew that the detectives would probably take care of it, but she’d been the one to make the initial suggestion to the D.A., letting him know about Clyde’s connection to Mendoza. Taking pity on Clyde.

Look where her pity had gotten him.

“And just for the record,” Troy called after the woman just as she and the two men began to file out, “what’s your first name?”

“I think he means you,” Jorge growled. “Want me to take care of it?”

Delene shook her head, then glanced at the detective. “Something you don’t need to know,” she told him just as she began to walk out the door.

Troy raised his voice. “I’ll need a full statement.”

“You’ll get it,” she promised. “After I give it to my boss.” With that, she exited. Jorge and Adrian followed.

Approaching Troy, Kara made a series of small, undefinable noises that indicated her enjoyment of what had just transpired. “Well, she sure put you in your place, didn’t she?” Kara laughed.

“Did she?” Troy murmured, getting down to work. “I hadn’t noticed.”

But he was going to make Agent D’Angelo sit up and take notice. He was never one to walk away from a challenge, and everything about the petite blonde had been a challenge.

“Why haven’t you hit on me, Cavanaugh?”

The question came without any preamble, moments after Troy had once more stuffed himself into his partner’s torture chamber of a car. He was busy counting the seconds until they reached the precinct, trying to ignore the very real pain in his back. Two minutes into the ride and his legs were a lost cause.

“Right now I’m seriously thinking of just hitting you for letting yourself get talked into buying a car left over from the Spanish Inquisition,” Troy muttered, more to himself than to her.

And then as her question penetrated, he looked at his partner. She slowed her vehicle to a stop at the first light they reached. Kara Ward was a lively, attractive woman with a pretty face and a sharp mind. But he thought of her as he thought of Janelle. As a sister. They had chemistry, but as partners, not as a man and a woman.

“Why?” he asked, uttering his words slowly. “Would you like me to hit on you?”

She lifted a single shoulder in a dismissive shrug. The light turned green and she shifted her foot onto the gas pedal. “I’d like to feel you thought I was worth the effort.”

Since he loathed getting into any kind of physical altercations, diplomacy had become second nature to him.

“Kara, you are very much worth the effort,” he assured her with warmth. “But what we have now works, and if I hit on you and somewhere down the line you decide that you don’t want any part of me—” he was careful to make it seem like all the choices were hers “—where would that leave us? Looking for other partners. Partners who might not be as in tune to us as we are to each other. So, for the sake of work relations, I don’t act on any impulses I might have about you.”

She slanted a glance at him, not quite buying into what he was selling, but playing along for the fun of it. “But you do have impulses about me.”

He offered her his most solemn expression. “All the time.”

Kara was no more a fool than Troy was. “Oh, really?”

“Scout’s honor.” If he could have managed it, he would have raised one hand up in the scout salute, but his hands were tucked against his chest, lodged in by his knees. Early Christian martyrs had been more comfortable than he was.

After taking a corner, she eyed him again, her mouth curving. “And you just bank them down?”

“Yup.” He tried to take a deep breath and found that he couldn’t. His knees were keeping his chest from expanding. “Plus, I take a lot of cold showers.”

She laughed. “Good answer.” With a sweeping turn of the steering wheel, Kara pulled her vehicle into the precinct’s parking lot and guided it to a spot in the second row.

After getting out, she rounded the all-but-nonexistent hood and came over to his side, opening the door for him. “Need help getting out?”

Troy ignored the smirk on her face. “Just find me the name of the rental agency the department uses,” he told Kara, then gritted his teeth as he maneuvered out of the death grip the passenger seat had on him.

“You think he was good-looking?”

They’d all pulled into the county’s probation department’s parking lot at the same time and walked into the building together. Jorge had waited until they stepped out of the elevator before asking Delene his question.

Preoccupied thinking about Clyde and the phone call she was going to have to make to the D.A., Delene didn’t immediately follow Jorge’s line of thinking. “Who?”

Jorge frowned. “That pretty boy at the motel.”

Delene looked up at him innocently before entering the general office. “Clyde?”

“No, not Clyde,” Adrian put in impatiently, backing up Jorge. “That detective. Cavanaugh.”

“Cavanaugh?” Delene rolled the name over on her tongue. The man hadn’t shown them any credentials. “Was that his name?”

“Yeah, heard he was the chief of detectives’ son. One of them anyway,” Adrian corrected, frowning. He pushed the door open for Delene. “Cavanaughs move around that precinct as if they owned it.”

Jorge snorted. “With eleven of them in the department, they might as well own it.”

“Eleven?” she asked in surprise. The disdainful note in Jorge’s voice was not lost on her. And it did make her wonder. There were twenty-one in Jorge’s family. He was the last person she would have thought to be critical of large families.

“No, not eleven,” Adrian corrected. “Nine.” There were nine Cavanaugh detectives on the force, three of them female. “Not counting the chief of detectives.”

Jorge paused, then asked, “What about the old man?”

Delene glanced from one man to the other. “What old man?”

“The chief of police,” Jorge told her. “Andrew Cavanaugh.”

“He’s not there anymore,” Adrian reminded him. “Retired some years back. He doesn’t count.”

They entered the large bull pen that comprised their office. Cubicles divided up the area as far as the eye could see.

“Try telling that to one of his relatives,” Jorge interjected.

The conversation went on, doing very well without any input from her. But something Jorge had just said made her think. And wonder wistfully, if just for the moment, what it had to be like to be part of a large family, instead of alone and on the run.

It wasn’t something she figured she’d ever find out firsthand.

Burying her thoughts, she went to her cubicle to make that call she was dreading. The one to the D.A.

Chapter 3

Clyde Petrie’s body had long been officially pronounced dead, tagged and removed. All that was left to mark the passage of his life was a chalk outline on the rug, a dried pool of blood that had gone outside the lines and several piles of greasy fast-food wrappers.

The room was quiet, even if the surrounding area was not. Muffled voices came from the next unit. Whether they were coming from people or a television set, Troy wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He blocked out the sound.