Читать книгу Cavanaugh Watch - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 10

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.

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?”

“I did,” he answered simply. Sawyer led the way to her office on the other end of the building. He obviously already knew the layout of their floor, she thought. “I got overridden.”

“That makes two of us,” she told him. Sawyer looked at her and she could have sworn she detected a hint of surprise in his eyes. “I guess then,” she continued, “this is something we both will just have to suffer through.”

Sawyer said nothing. He barely nodded in response to her last statement, hiding his surprise that someone he’d just naturally assumed had been spoiled within an inch of her life would balk at being offered protection from the “bad guys.”

Unless something wasn’t kosher here. Maybe this was a publicity stunt on her part to attract attention to the case. Maybe she was after a change of venue and this sort of thing could just do it. Not unheard of.

“For the record,” she said as they reached her office door, “I don’t want you here as much as you don’t want to be here.”

For the first time since he’d rescued her, the corners of his mouth curved up just a fraction. “I really doubt that, Cavanaugh.”

Without making a comment, Janelle opened the door and walked into the office she affectionately called her cubbyhole. It was no more crammed and cluttered now than it had been before she’d left for the courthouse this morning. But somehow having an extra body with her cut down on her space. She hadn’t minded when Woods had given the tiny office to her. She didn’t require much.

But there was hardly any room within the enclosure to stuff in another book, much less a warm body that was larger than hers by a long shot.

She glanced around, trying to see the area through his eyes. “I really don’t know where you’re going to hang around,” she finally said.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of me. And you,” he added after a slight pause.

She felt as if she were being put on notice. And she didn’t like it. Didn’t like not feeling in charge. Control was a very, very important thing to her, something she had had to fight for ever since she could remember. That, and respect. It had been awarded within her household, but not automatically. You received respect when you earned it. This new speed bump in her life was going to be one hell of a challenge to surmount.

She indicated a chair that was against the wall. “I guess you can sit there.”

Sawyer grabbed the top of the chair, swinging it over to the side of the desk without saying a word. He planted the chair, not himself.

Just then, the phone rang and she almost sighed with relief. Something to draw her attention away from how very crammed and how very close the lack of space within the room made everything feel.

Hand on the receiver, she cleared her throat before raising it to her ear. Her voice was crisp when she spoke. “Cavanaugh.”

There was silence on the other end. For a minute, she thought whoever was calling had dialed a wrong number. But there was no hurried hang-up, no muttered apology, no uncertain voice asking to speak to someone she’d never heard of.

She tried again. “Hello?”

This time, someone did speak. “Is this Janelle Cavanaugh?”

The deep resonant voice vibrated against her ear. She listened closely, wondering if this was one of her brothers or male cousins, playing a trick on her. “Yes, this is Janelle Cavanaugh.”

There was another pause, as if whoever it was on the other end of the line was absorbing her voice. “He’s innocent.”

She frowned, definitely not in the mood to play along. “Who is this?” she demanded. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sawyer become alert.

“This is Marco Wayne,” the man on the other end informed her. His voice was strong, but laced with emotion. That surprised her. “My son is innocent.”

“Mr. Wayne—” The moment she said her caller’s name, Sawyer drew closer to her. The look on his face was hard, as if he expected a bomb to be transmitted across the telephone wires. Annoyed by the lack of privacy, she turned her body away from him, only to have him circle in front of her.

Great, she thought, there was no getting away from him. This was not going to work.

“Mr. Wayne,” she repeated, “this is highly inappropriate. You can’t be calling me about this. About anything,” she added quickly before he could protest.

If she meant to cut him off, she failed. “I’m calling because you’re involved in this trial and I want you to understand that my son had nothing to do with what he is accused of.”

“If he didn’t do it,” she said for form’s sake, because everything they had pointed to Tony’s guilt, “he’ll be proven innocent.”

“Not with the evidence that was planted against him,” Wayne countered. “He was framed.”

She wasn’t about to stand here, arguing with the man. “I’m hanging up now, Mr. Wayne.”

There was an urgency resonating in the voice against her ear. “I just want what every father wants for his son—a fair chance.”

Janelle pressed her lips together. She knew damn well that she should be disconnecting the call. Every rule demanded it. This was highly unprofessional and unethical. But although she willed it, her hand did not replace the receiver in the cradle, did not disconnect the call. She couldn’t seem to help herself.

The man sounded sincere.

She supposed that was why he’d gotten as far as he had, being able to get to people, to bend them to his will. One way or another.

She tried once more. “And you’ll get it. The D.A.’s office has no intentions of railroading anyone, Mr. Wayne. You son is going to be given a fair trial. You have my word on it.”

The man on the other end was not finished. “Talk to that scum of a witness again. He’s lying. If you offer him a deal, he’ll say anything you want him to.” There was a pause. “Tell him that Marco Wayne will make sure he burns in hell if his son is harmed.”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “I’m not a conduit for your threats, Mr. Wayne.”

It was the last thing she said to the man before Sawyer disconnected her.