Cavanaugh on Duty

chapter 4



Every time he walked into the state prison on visitor’s day, Esteban could feel a slight tightening in his chest. All his senses would go on high alert and he became even more aware of the details of everything that was going on around him, including each person within his line of vision.

It was more than just his survival instinct going into high gear, the way it did when he was working undercover.

Because every time he walked through those prison gates, the thought There but for the grace of God went he would echo through his brain and continue to do so until he was back in his car, driving away from the prison.

Esteban was well aware of the fact that it wouldn’t have taken much for his life to have gone off on a different path. At the very least, if he’d been home instead of away at school, he might have been murdered, as his mother was. But most likely, he would have been in prison now the way his stepfather was, because he would have been the one who had killed the dealer who’d sold drugs to his stepbrother.

The drugs that had cut short his young life.

Except that, unlike his stepfather, Esteban wouldn’t have stopped there and turned himself in. He would have wiped out everyone he came in contact with, everyone who’d had even the slightest connection to the drug ring and the distribution of that poison. He didn’t flatter himself and think he was invincible. Either the drug dealers or the police would have eventually taken him down, but he would have wiped out a lot of worthless scum before he went.

He went on automatic pilot as he was being processed for entrance to the visitors’ common room, enduring the metal detector, the pat-down, and emptying his pockets for the guard to rifle through. He didn’t like having his things pawed over, especially by a guard whose condescending look made him itch to take a swing and wipe that superior expression off his face.

Esteban realized that his hands were still clenched into fists at his sides, even though he’d entered the communal room and was now waiting for the guards to bring in the prisoners who had visitors. Exhaling slowly, he unclenched his fists.

The door to the communal room opened. After a beat, the prisoners, marching in single file, were allowed in. His stepfather was the fourth in line. Raising his hand, he waved to the man.

The moment Miguel saw him, his somber, lined face broke into a wreath of smiles, making him appear years younger. Sitting at a table, Esteban waited for him to cross to him.

Was it his imagination, or was the man getting frailer looking?

Esteban willed himself to relax, to drain the tension from his body. Seeing him upset or tense would only concern the man who had stepped up all those years ago to become, for all intents and purposes, his father. The only father he would ever know.

“Hello, Father.” Esteban greeted the slighter man with a warm smile.

“Hello, my son. You came.” Pleasure erased the weariness and etched lines from his face. “I didn’t think you could.”

His stepfather vaguely knew about his line of work, knew that he had to be careful about coming here because it could blow his cover. But even so, he found a way to come as often as he could.

And each time he did, each time he saw the pleasure in the older man’s yes, Esteban knew it was worth everything he risked just to connect with Miguel one more time.

“How could you have any doubt?” Esteban asked. “You know if there’s any way to be here, I would find it.”

Miguel looked around, noting who was near them. Life here had taught him to be very cautious. It was always better to take too many precautions than not enough.

“Yes,” he said in a low voice that carried only to his stepson, “but I also know that there isn’t always a way. And if you cannot come, I understand. I worry,” he admitted, because he knew without being told that Esteban lived his life in the line of fire daily, “but I understand.”

“Stop worrying about me—start looking after yourself,” Esteban advised. “You look a little pale, Dad.” Esteban slid to the edge of the seat, getting in as close as he could, since there was a table between them and he knew better than to do anything that might attract even an iota of extra attention. “Something I should know about?” he asked.

One of the guards had ridden him these last few days, but he didn’t want Esteban getting involved. This was his problem to deal with, his time to serve. The lawyer Esteban had managed to get for him had gotten his sentence reduced, wielding the term “temporary insanity due to grief” like a sword, but it could cut away only so many brambles. He was serving a twenty-year sentence and would be out in ten if he could continue maintaining his good behavior. That meant, among other things, not rising to the countless provocations that were seeded in his path.

Or sharing too much with the man he’d raised as his own. Miguel shook his head. “Just getting over a cold. Nothing to worry about. Really,” he underscored when the furrow along Esteban’s brow deepened. “How are you doing?” he asked, deliberately changing the topic. The tactic was not wasted on the younger man. “Watching your back at all times?” It wasn’t a question but a reminder.

He’d forgotten. He hadn’t been able to see Miguel since his narrow escape.

“They pulled me out, Dad,” Esteban told him matter-of-factly, placing no more significance on this newest action than he would have had he been a shoe salesman and gone from selling men’s shoes to women’s. It was understood that there could be no details forthcoming, but he wanted the man to know he could stop worrying about his exposure. At least that aspect of the danger was over. “I’m working with a partner now.”

“A partner?” Miguel echoed, well pleased. “Tell me, what’s he like?”

The corners of Esteban’s mouth curved ever so slightly as he refrained from giving his stepfather the first answer that came to him. A real pain. “Well, first off, he’s a she.”

“A she?” A twinkle entered the tired brown eyes. “That has to be a nice change for you, no?” Miguel speculated.

No was the immediate response, but again, he let it slide. He probably wasn’t being all that fair to the woman. In any case, he’d give this forced alliance a little time to take before he made his final judgment.

“We’ll see,” Esteban told his stepfather. He glanced at his watch. “I don’t think we’ve got that much time left.” He smiled at Miguel. “I just wanted to stop by to see how you were getting along in this hellhole. See if you needed anything.”

“Just for you to be safe. That is all I want. Now that you are doing something ‘different,’ I will be able to sleep again at night,” Miguel told him. “And as far as hellholes go, some of the others here tell me it’s not so bad.”

“Still, all it takes is one guard, one inmate who has your number...” He didn’t want to dredge up any details to frighten Miguel, just make him aware that there could be problems even down the line. “And if anyone gives you a hard time, I don’t care who it is, you’ll tell me, right?”

Miguel looked at him with an innocent smile. “Who else would I tell?”

The answer made Esteban even more skeptical than he already was. Miguel would keep the fact that someone was on his case a secret, just to protect him. That was the kind of father he was. But he didn’t want him having to endure anything. Just being locked up was difficult enough on the man.

“Dad—” There was a warning note in his voice.

The buzzer sounded, calling an end to the visit. “I have to get back to my cell,” Miguel said, using the sound as an excuse not to answer his son. “Come again when you can. Looking forward to your visits is what keeps me going,” the older man said, rising from the table. “Vaya con Dios, mi hijo,” he said just before he fell into formation again. Within moments, the orange line was marched out of the common room.

Y tu tambien, Padre, Esteban thought, watching Miguel leave. “And you, too, Dad,” he murmured out loud.

* * *

For what felt like the umpteenth time, Kari glanced up from her desk to the one butted against hers and sighed.

The chair facing hers was still empty.

The desktop was glaringly clear, save for the run-of-the-mill computer monitor and the single white coffee container perched in the middle of the scarred tabletop.

The coffee was her combination welcome-to-the-job/peace offering.

The dark-roasted blend that she’d picked up at a local coffee shop and placed on what was to be Esteban’s desk was probably cold by now. Standing unattended for over an hour, even though there was a lid on it, did that to any drink, even one that had started out scalding hot.

She had gotten it on the way to work because she thought Esteban might appreciate something a little better than the sickly brown liquid that came out of the precinct’s vending machines and was laughingly passed off as coffee.

She made the choice going on instinct rather than any information she had gleaned. When she’d gone to Brenda for Esteban’s address, she’d also asked for any background information on him that might be available. There was none.

Technically speaking, that actually hadn’t been exactly the case. There was some information, but whatever had been originally written down on the page had subsequently been redacted. Every line of type had been run through with a black permanent marker that promised not to disappear or fade over time.

So she had gone with her gut. Men like the one she’d met with last night—the man she still thought could be the Steve Fernandez she’d gone to high school with—didn’t care for any frills. That included fancy rhetoric and coffee that bore a longer, fancier name than some people she knew.

The coffee was black...just like the mood that was slowly coming over her.

When she’d departed his house last night, she’d been fairly confident that she’d gotten Fernandez to come around, to connect with her on the most basic level. Having her body tingle for more than an hour after she’d left him had been a small price to pay.

But now she was beginning to think that maybe she’d been wrong about his coming around, and it bothered her more than she cared to admit. To her way of thinking, she’d dropped the ball.

She didn’t like letting the Chief of D’s down, not because he was her uncle—or because she felt she had something to prove so she’d move up the food chain within the department. She didn’t like letting the Chief down, because he’d asked her to do something and she wanted him to know that she always delivered on her commitments.

This was the first thing he’d actually asked her to do, and she’d failed.

Granted, it was still early. The workday had barely started, but all that translated to was more time in which to feel like a colossal failure.

She’d arrived at the precinct almost an hour earlier than she was supposed to, anticipating Fernandez’s arrival. For her, the minutes had already stretched themselves out as thin as thread, each inching by as she waited for Fernandez to walk into the office.

It promised to be a very long day from where she was sitting.

“New guy not here yet?”

Startled, it took Kari a second to collect herself before she turned around to look at the man who had somehow managed to come up behind her without making a single sound.

The question had come from Lieutenant Tim Morrow, a rumpled, unimpressive-looking former vice detective with yellowish-white hair and a waist that was slowly becoming wider than the breadth of his shoulders. Morrow had worked his way diligently through the ranks.

At the moment, the lieutenant was looking at the empty chair opposite her own, but his expectant manner, as well as his question, was directed toward her.

She wondered if Morrow knew about her visit to the Chief of Detectives yesterday.

Of course he did, she upbraided herself the next moment. If Fernandez was supposedly going to be working for the department, Morrow would have been notified of everything pertaining to the former undercover detective.

Had she and Fernandez already had some sort of working relationship, she would have been quick to attempt to cover for him, giving Morrow some sort of plausible excuse as to why the other man wasn’t anywhere within eyeshot. Loyalty was something that was inbred in her, thanks to her father.

But since she didn’t know if Fernandez was even going to bother showing up at all, she felt no allegiance...no urgent need to cover for him.

“’Fraid not,” she replied to the Lieutenant’s question.

Although it was obvious that Fernandez wasn’t there, it was clearly not the answer that Morrow wanted to hear. He frowned, turning toward her. “You two are up,” he told her.

For the first time, she saw the paper the lieutenant was holding in his hand.

Since this was the department that dealt with homicides and questionable deaths, she assumed that a call had come in and that the lieutenant had written down the address and a few scattered details on the notepaper he was holding.

“I can go alone,” Kari volunteered, already on her feet. “Won’t be the first time,” she added needlessly to the man who had been in charge of training her when she’d first walked in through the precinct doors.

The story went that when Morrow had first arrived from the academy, Andrew Cavanaugh, who had gone on to become the chief of police before eventually retiring early to focus on raising his kids and searching for his missing wife, had trained the then-rookie cop.

What goes around comes around, she thought.

Pulling on her jacket, Kari put out her hand for the address.

“I’d rather there were two of you,” Morrow said even as he surrendered the sheet of paper. “But since you’re initially just checking out a bad smell—”

“A bad smell?” Kari repeated, puzzled. Since when had the police department started concerning itself with garbage detail?

“Yeah. Manager at a storage facility said one of the renters came to him complaining that there was a, quote, ‘really bad smell’ coming from the unit located right next to his.” His far from narrow shoulders rose and fell in a resigned shrug. “Could just be some food someone was stupid enough to stash away. Or an animal that had the bad luck to crawl into the unit when the door was open and became trapped inside, eventually expiring. Or—”

She noted that the lieutenant only awarded the dignity of death to people. Everything else “expired,” like a container of milk going sour, or a warranty on a product.

“Or a body someone had stashed in the unit while they tried to figure out how to make it disappear without calling attention to themselves,” she concluded for her boss.

Morrow nodded, his unruly, longer-than-regulation hair falling into his squinty, deep-set brown eyes. “Exactly.”

“Mind if I hope it’s fruit until I find out otherwise?” she asked.

The weather was turning unseasonably warmer. That meant that a body hidden in a storage unit was bound to decompose more quickly than usual. This was not an assignment she was looking forward to.

“It’s a free country,” the lieutenant replied magnanimously.

Kari glanced at the address before tucking it into her pocket. The storage facility wasn’t located far from the precinct, she noted.

Securing her weapon, she was just about to leave the office when she saw the look of surprise that fleetingly passed over the lieutenant’s craggy face. Since the man was facing the outer door that led to the hallway, she turned around to see what had caught his attention.

No wonder he looked surprised, she caught herself thinking. Esteban Fernandez created quite an imposing impression at first sight.

And even second and third, she mused.

To be honest, at first glance he didn’t even look like the man she’d spoken with last night. That man had been scruffy and raw. This one fell under the category of “tall, dark and handsome.” But there was still a dangerous edge to him despite his clean-shaven face. An enticing, dangerous edge.

But then, last night he was still embracing his other persona, the undercover cop he’d been—a role he’d played for the past three years, if the rumors were correct. And, at this point, that was all she really had to go on. Rumors. Law enforcement detectives involved in the undercover world did not exactly have readily accessible data that the regular force could easily refer to. Whatever they did was not supposed to ever see the light of day or be acknowledged—good or bad.

She made a mental note to take another crack at the Cavanaugh pipeline. So many of the Cavanaughs were involved with the various departments at the precinct, it only stood to reason that someone had to know something viable, something she could use when dealing with the man she assumed was going to be her new partner.

However long that association lasted, she did not want to be in the dark or at a disadvantage when it came to dealing with this man. At the very least, she wanted to know exactly who she was trusting to have her back.

“Fernandez?” Morrow inquired, obviously as stunned by his transformation as she briefly had been.

Esteban glanced over toward the lieutenant just as he reached his desk—since the desk was so blatantly empty, except for the computer and the coffee container, he’d made a logical deduction that it was going to be his.

For as long as he decided to remain here, he silently added as a footnote to placate himself.

“Yeah?” he asked the lieutenant.

Morrow looked far from pleased with this latest addition to his department. “It’s customary to report to your commanding officer when you first join a department,” he said, his gravelly voice rife with displeasure.

“Sorry, sir, I just now walked in,” Esteban pointed out needlessly. Right before he’d visited Miguel in prison, he’d made his decision to continue his association with the police department until he could figure out how to get back into undercover work. He’d gotten caught in morning rush-hour traffic on the drive back from the penitentiary, which accounted for his less than timely appearance.

His eyes met Kari’s and he gave her what amounted to the smallest, most imperceptible of nods, acknowledging her presence.

It was a start, she thought.

Kari heard Morrow grumble almost inaudibly under his breath. All she caught was something that made a vague reference to his retirement still being too far off. Then the man said more distinctly, “No time to make small talk right now. You and the hyphen here are up. She’s got the address. I’ll talk to you later,” he emphasized, looking accusingly at the newest member of his team before he went back into his glass-enclosed office.

“The hyphen?” Esteban repeated, looking at Kari. He’d told himself that for the most part, after last night, he was just going to ignore her, but for once his curiosity got the better of him.

“Cavelli-Cavanaugh,” she reminded him. “It’s hyphenated.”

He shook his head in disbelief. The last three years his very survival had depended on traveling under the radar, not attracting any attention to himself. He saw her name as being the exact opposite.

“You’re really using both?” he asked her.

To Kari, it was the only logical way to go and it made perfect sense.

“Since I thought I was born the one, but was really born the other and there’s family attached to both names, I figured...why not?” she asked.

Esteban shrugged indifferently in response to her rhetorical question. “Makes no difference to me,” he told her. “I don’t care what you call yourself as long as you answer if I call you.”

This, she thought, was going to be one hell of an interesting partnership—for as long as it lasted, and she still had her doubts it would live out the week, given his attitude.

“By the way, coffee’s yours,” she told him just as he was about to walk back toward the doorway.

Esteban stopped and regarded the container with less than enthusiastic interest. “I didn’t—”

“No,” she cut in, anticipating what he was about to say, “but I did.” Then, just in case he wasn’t following her—or possibly wasn’t even listening to her—she clarified, “I bought coffee for you. Sort of a welcome-to-the-department offering,” she explained before Fernandez could ask her why she had bothered to buy him coffee at all.

Esteban picked the container up and fell in place beside her.

“You were that sure I was going to come in?” he wanted to know. If that was the case, that put her one up on him, he thought, since he hadn’t known he was coming in until a couple of hours ago.

“You said you would,” she reminded him, leading the way down the hall to the elevator.

His laugh was dry and completely devoid of humor. “And you believed me?”

She would be the first to admit that she was entirely too trusting in her dealings with people. As a detective, that worked against her. As a human being, though, she felt it didn’t.

“You haven’t given me a reason not to yet,” she replied.

“The day’s still young,” he countered. He took the lid off the container and took a sip of the black brew. “It’s cold,” he told her. It wasn’t a complaint so much as an observation about the state of the liquid. Hot or cold, as long as the coffee was black, he wasn’t fussy. It all went down the same way.

“It wasn’t when I got it,” she told him pointedly.

It was a little after eight now. She must have come in before then. “Which was—?” He deliberately left it open for her to jump in.

She saw no reason not to oblige him. “At seven this morning.”

“You not only expected me to show up, you actually expected me to be early?” he asked incredulously.

Reaching the elevator door, they stopped and she pressed the down arrow on the tiled wall.

“Seemed like something you might possibly do, at least on your first day,” she answered.

Her eyes swept over him and she was again struck by the fact that this clean-cut man hardly looked like the man who she’d barged in on last night.

The man who had also briefly set fire to her world, she caught herself thinking with no small longing right now.

She’d promised herself not to dwell on that, Kari reminded herself sternly. However, the memory refused to fade. Exerting something akin to a superhuman effort, she managed to push all thoughts concerning Fernandez into a nether region, hoping that would free up the working part of her brain for more important things.

“You’re staring at me,” Esteban said abruptly just as the elevator arrived. The stainless-steel doors yawned open, temporarily awaiting their pleasure. “My shirt inside out or something?”

As he asked the question, he looked down to check himself out. Nothing appeared to be out of order to him, but he couldn’t see the total picture.

“Your clothes are just fine,” she told him, confident that he was already aware of that small fact.

His attitude might have sounded careless to the undiscerning ear, but her gut told her that Esteban Fernandez was far from a careless man. For one thing, he wouldn’t have been able to survive in the world he’d previously chosen to descend into if he’d been cavalier by nature.

“I was just thinking that you clean up nicely,” she finally told him.

Compliments, when they were intended for him rather than the persona he’d assumed these past three years, made Esteban uncomfortable. He had absolutely no idea how to accept them or what was expected from him by way of a response.

So he shrugged, trying to appear unfazed—something he had gotten exceedingly good at—and mumbled, “Thanks, you too.”

To Kari’s knowledge, yesterday she hadn’t exactly looked like something the cat had dragged in—the way he most definitely had—but rather than begin a debate and possibly set him off, she decided to ignore the comment. “Okay. Moving on now.”

They got out on the first floor, and she led the way to the rear of the building rather than to the front of it. The back was where the department vehicles were all kept parked.

“You okay with my driving?” she asked, turning toward him suddenly. At least one of her brothers and two of her old partners had never felt comfortable when she was behind the wheel. She came to the conclusion that they all had issues that had nothing to do with her. She, on the other hand, was secure enough to have someone else drive if that was what kept them happy.

“Why?’ he asked suspiciously. “Something wrong with your driving?”

It amused her that that was the first thing that occurred to him. “No, it’s just that most males prefer to be the ones behind the wheel.”

He shrugged again. “Well, not this male. You’re the one with the address, right?”

“Right.” She was still just a tad wary of his motives. That it might just be a simple matter seemed too simple. For now, she reserved her judgment.

“So, you drive.”

To him, it seemed like the logical, not to mention simple, approach. He only cared about being the one behind the wheel when he didn’t trust the other people in the car.

But he wasn’t part of that world anymore, he reminded himself for possibly the dozenth time since yesterday. Having someone else behind the wheel was the least of the things he was going to need to get accustomed to with this new job that had been thrust on him.

Provided he stuck around.

“Okay, then,” Kari declared, pushing open one of the glass double doors and walking out. “The car’s parked right over there.”

Pointing for form’s sake, she led the way down the steps and through the lot. Her route formed a rather zigzag pattern.

Esteban remained at her side, matching her step for step without offering a single word, like a tall, unobtrusive shadow.

That, Kari silently promised herself, was going to have to change.

And soon.