Cavanaugh Watch

Janelle’s eyes met the detective’s. The connection was instantaneous. She could read his every thought. And it wasn’t flattering.

Janelle squared her shoulders.

Damn but this man thought he could walk on water. It was evident in his eyes, in his expression, in his very gait as he strode into the office. If anything, the man looked even more surly now than he had when he’d pushed her down onto the pavement.

And covered her body with his own, she reminded herself.

Even at her most annoyed, she always tried to be fair. And the truth was, she supposed, she owed this man. She could have been seriously hurt, or worse, if he hadn’t shielded her.

Only in the recesses of her mind did she admit to herself that she wasn’t the superwoman she pretended to be. Janelle frowned. Being somewhat in debt to him, however unintentionally and however unwillingly, meant that she couldn’t protest too loudly about his being assigned to be her bodyguard.

Damn, she thought again.

She shifted her eyes over toward the man whose name appeared on her paychecks.

“Do you really think this is necessary?” she asked, trying to appeal to his legendary frugal nature. This kind of thing cost the department more than just a little money. “Maybe we’re overreacting.” She said we and hoped that it wasn’t overly evident that she actually meant that he was overreacting.

Kleinmann beckoned her over to his desk. Feeling a little foolish, bracing herself for a lecture, she came forward. Her boss lowered his voice, as if to keep it from carrying to the other three occupants of the room. Of them, she noticed that only Woods seemed to be straining a little to hear what was coming next.

Her detective looked like a stone statue. He wasn’t even blinking. Dutifully, Janelle leaned in toward the D.A.

“Your father would cut off my head and have it mounted on a pike in the middle of the city if I ignored this incident and then something wound up happening to you.”

“If anything did—which it won’t,” she interjected, “I’d take the blame, tell him it was my fault. That I refused protection.”

The look on Kleinmann’s face told her she might as well have been reciting The Iliad in the original Greek for all the impression she was making on him with her rhetoric. Kleinmann had made up his mind and there was no budging him.

Having her father as important as he was in the hierarchy of the police department was at times more of a curse than a blessing. She was proud of him, but there was no denying that she’d put up with her share of grief because of who he was, as well. Her own pride and determination had never allowed her to take advantage of the Cavanaugh name, but that never stopped people from thinking she’d advanced quickly because she was the daughter of the chief of detectives and had prevailed on her father to fast-track her.

It was damn frustrating. She expressly didn’t mention anything that went on in the D.A.’s office whenever she did get together with her father.

There were times like this, when she was made to pay the price of nepotism without ever having reaped any of the rewards, that almost made her wish she had taken advantage of the Cavanaugh name. She knew that the thinking was, with so many of her relatives embedded in law enforcement, and her cousin Callie even married to a judge, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t get done, no ticket not taken care of.

Except that she didn’t work that way, hadn’t been raised that way. None of them had.

Virtue is its own reward, her father had taught her. It had to be, she thought now, because nothing else sure as hell was.

Janelle struggled to suppress a resigned, less-than-thrilled sigh. Didn’t matter if she was raised that way or not, she was going to wind up being made to pay for just having the Cavanaugh name.

Okay, she could make the best of this, Janelle told herself. Or at least be civil.

Turning toward the man fate and the D.A. seemed determined to saddle her with, she put her hand out to him. “So, I guess you and I are going to be spending some time together.”

He looked down at her hand and after a beat shook it once before dropping it. The man acted as if any contact outside of the line of duty was distasteful to him. “I guess so.”

Oh, this is just going to be a barrel of laughs, Janelle thought.

And how was it possible, unless you were some sort of a trained ventriloquist, to utter words without moving your lips? she wondered, dropping her hand to her side. Her unwanted bodyguard seemed to be communicating through clenched teeth and barely moving his lips. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that he was using mental telepathy. Except that it was obvious to her that she wasn’t the only one who had heard the deep, rumbling voice.

She found it difficult to keep her annoyance under wraps, but she was determined not to make any undue waves. When she’d signed on to the D.A.’s office, she’d known it wouldn’t be all fun and games, that there would be times she’d find trying, but she’d just assumed it would have to do with the workload and hours spent, not with having to put up with Darth Vader’s better-looking cousin.

Her eyes shifted toward Kleinmann. The man looked rather satisfied with himself for some reason. Sure, why not? He wasn’t the one who had to put up with this tall, hulking shadow.

“How long?” she asked.

“Until the trial is over.” Kleinmann appeared to consider his answer, then added, “Maybe longer.”

Janelle’s eyes widened. Was this some kind of torture devised for assistants to the A.D.A.? Like an initiation for a fraternity?

She glanced over toward the assistant district attorney, hoping to get an inkling of support. But Woods didn’t seem put off by the idea of having a constant companion wherever he went. Well, maybe he didn’t mind, but she did. A line had to be drawn somewhere, didn’t it?

“Longer?” she echoed, staring at Kleinmann. “Why longer?”

“Retaliation—for when we do convict,” he added in a voice that refused to entertain the possibility of anything less than a conviction. No one liked to lose, but Kleinmann had made it known that he passionately hated it.

“Maybe I can get his lawyer to accept a plea,” Woods suggested.

Kleinmann shook his head. “I doubt it. Not after he hears about the attempted shooting. He’ll feel as if his side has all the marbles.”

“It’s not about marbles,” Janelle interjected. “It’s about justice.” She saw Sawyer roll his eyes. Was that contempt she saw on his face, or just badly displayed amusement? She turned on him, her patience at an end. “What? You have something to say? Why don’t you say it out loud, Detective Boone, so that the rest of us can share in your wisdom?”

He’d never liked being singled out, not when he’d worked in L.A. and not here. He was one of those people who wanted no attention, craved no spotlight. He just wanted to do his job and go home.

“Nothing,” he bit off.

She had to be satisfied with that. Until after the D.A. had dismissed them from his office. Once outside Kleinmann’s door and clear of his secretary, a woman who had the hearing range of a bat, Janelle abruptly stopped walking and turned to the man at her side.

“Why did you roll your eyes back there?”

She’d thrown him off by stopping and by the antagonistic tone in her voice. He had no desire to engage her in conversation or to have any exchange of ideas. This woman was his assignment, just like infiltrating a local drug dealer’s gang, following the trail to the top, had been his assignment, the one that had brought him to court this morning.

Except that with the latter, he’d assumed a persona, had come up with a speech pattern, a background for himself, a made-up life he’d stepped into. Here, he was supposed to be Sawyer Boone, a detective on the APD, and he didn’t do all that well as himself. Because being himself meant sharing, something he’d only done successfully once in his life, and she was gone.

“You don’t want to know,” he told her.

Now there was a chauvinistic answer if ever she’d come across one. Raised with and around as many males as she had been, Janelle still had never experienced chauvinism in its truest sense. She was tested as a person, as a Cavanaugh, not as a female in a male world.

“If I hadn’t wanted to hear the answer, Detective Boone,” she told him evenly, “I wouldn’t have asked the question.”

He watched her for a long moment, as if he was weighing something. And then he said, “Because if you think any of this is about justice, you’re more naive than you look.”

Her eyes narrowed as she asked, “And just how naive do I look?”

Sawyer snorted. “Like you could be their poster girl.”

Normally, being referred to as a girl didn’t rankle her. She had no problem with the word because she had no problem with her self-esteem. And anyone who knew her knew what kind of mettle she was made of. But for some unknown reason, everything out of this man’s mouth, including probably hello, promised to rankle her. Clear down to her bones.

She didn’t waste her breath denying his statement or reading him the riot act because of it. She had a bigger question on her mind. “If you find this assignment beneath you, why didn’t you protest when you were given it?”