Cavanaugh Fortune

Praise for Marie Ferrarella

“Expert storytelling coupled with an engaging plot makes this an excellent read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Cavanaugh Undercover

“Strong writing, good pacing, sizzling chemistry and cool tension is plentiful in this lively read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

“A thrilling intrigue with just the right amount of sizzle to keep the pages turning faster and faster.”

—RT Book Reviews on Racing Against Time

“Marie Ferrarella brings readers back for a visit with her Cavanaugh Justice family and, once again, raw emotion, hot sex and real characters rule!”

—RT Book Reviews on The Strong Silent Type

“Sizzles with sexual tension, and the plot is edgy, dark and suspenseful. Ferrarella has penned a guaranteed page-turner!”

—RT Book Reviews on Internal Affair

“In Broad Daylight combines danger and conspiracy with breathtaking desire to produce an electrifying read!” —The Romance Readers Connection

“Ms Ferrarella creates fiery, strong-willed characters, an intense conflict and an absorbing premise no reader could possibly resist.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Match for Morgan

* * *

Be sure to check out the next books in this exciting new series: Cavanaugh Justice Where the law and passion collide …

Cavanaugh Fortune

Marie Ferrarella

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To Tahra Seplowin

Welcome to Happy Chaos

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Detective Alexander Brody opened the front door of his ground-floor garden apartment, bent down and picked up the morning paper from his doorstep.

As was his habit every morning, he took the paper inside and dropped it on the counter beside his struggling coffee machine. The less than peak-performing machine was what commanded all of his attention at the moment. Gurgling, it gave every indication that it was just about in its last throes of life.

None of his coffeemakers were long-lived and he’d been through this before. Alex judged that he’d probably have to buy a new coffeemaker sometime in the latter half of next week—if not sooner. As a rule, he hated to shop, but this was more important than his dislike for standing in a checkout line. He could function fairly well with little to no sleep and a lot of other things, but he couldn’t function at all without that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Usually followed by a second cup—and a third if he was skipping breakfast.

The newspaper was part of his morning ritual, as well. Not that he usually had time to read it. Most days he took off a couple of minutes after he brought the paper into the apartment. Like so many of his under-thirty-five generation, most—if not all—of his news came from the internet. And, on occasion, from the radio he listened to while driving in to work.

Still, he wouldn’t dream of terminating his newspaper subscription. He considered it a tragedy that the written word was dying out. A great many newspapers around the country had already permanently closed their doors, ending, in his opinion, a fine old tradition. He was not about to add to that and help bury that longtime industry by withdrawing his support from the local Aurora paper. Though basically not an optimist, he did still hang on to the very clichéd belief that every little bit helped.

Alex had a soft spot in his heart for newspapers. He always had. For a while, when he was about ten or so, he had delivered newspapers to people’s doorsteps in an attempt to earn some money of his own.

Honest money.

Even then, honest money had been a rarity in his family.

But he’d tried.

Alex poured himself a travel mug’s worth of thick black liquid, guaranteed to wake up every fiber of his body whether he wanted it to or not. The people he worked with in the department claimed it could probably also be used to fix the cracks in the street asphalt.

Preoccupied, he wound up filling the mug too high. Some of the coffee escaped as he screwed on the top of the mug. Slipping down the sides of the steel-gray thermos, the black liquid began leaking onto the front page of the newspaper.

Swallowing a few choice words that normally didn’t get voiced until he was already a couple of hours into his shift, Alex reached for the dish towel hanging off the handle on his stove.

With quick movements he tried to wipe away the coffee before it blurred the front headline.

Which was when he read the words.

And how he wound up reading the article instead of leaving for work right at that point.

The headline that fairly screamed across the front page this morning was about a robbery. Specifically, a break-in in one of Aurora’s high-end developments. Apparently, according to the journalist covering the local story, it was the third such robbery of its kind in a short period. The owners of the house had been away in Europe and returned to find that their priceless art collection had been stolen.

Nothing else had been taken.

Alex read the article from start to finish, carefully taking in every word. A wave of nausea came over him as he read.

“Oh God,” he muttered under his breath as he came to the end of the article, no more reassured now than he had been when he’d started reading. “This isn’t you, is it?”

The question was addressed to a man who was not there.

Alex’s voice, and the question he’d asked, echoed about his small kitchen, haunting him with the possible implications.

Alex tossed the newspaper back on the counter. This was supposed to be behind him, he angrily thought.

Who are you kidding? It’s never going to be behind you.

The words, coming from deep inside him, taunted Alex.

The pinched, sick feeling he had been experiencing in the pit of his stomach accompanied him all the way to the precinct.

With luck, he’d catch a case and be distracted.

Alex crossed his fingers.

Chapter 1

Brian Cavanaugh, chief of detectives of the Aurora Police Department, was well aware of the very fine line that existed between nepotism and utilizing the right person for the right job. He’d walked that line countless times since assuming his present position.

To his own satisfaction, he had never been guilty of nepotism, although there were those who would swear differently. They were the ones whose potential did not measure up to the job and they found it easier to point fingers and complain than to undertake the hard work of evaluating and improving themselves.

Brian didn’t much care when the insults, born of bruised egos, were directed at him. After all his years on the force and in this chair, he’d become used to fielding the ones that needed to be dealt with and ignoring the ones that would die of their own accord. But he was always extra judicious because he did mind if the person he was singling out for a special assignment came under fire through no actual fault of his or her own, other than having the same surname as he did.

Granted there were a great many Cavanaughs spread through the different divisions within the police force, but as a rule, Cavanaughs worked twice as hard as the person beside them to do the job and prove that they had earned the right to be where they were. Not a single Cavanaugh had ever been promoted without first demonstrating that he or she not only had the necessary potential to do the job—whatever it might be—but also knew how to use it.

As was the case with the blonde, blue-eyed patrol officer who was currently standing, looking somewhat uneasy, before him in his office.

“You can sit, you know, Officer Cavanaugh,” he told the young woman.

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to stand.”

Standing made Valri Cavanaugh feel just a little more in control and slightly less vulnerable than if she were sitting, although in this particular situation, the petite blonde had a feeling that the nervousness wouldn’t abate even if she were hanging from the ceiling like a circus trapeze artist.

“I don’t mind,” Brian assured her in his easy, deep baritone voice. “But if you’re worried, I can guarantee that there won’t be any need for a quick getaway on your part.”

In response, Valri offered him a quick, somewhat embarrassed smile and then slowly lowered herself into one of the two chairs situated before his desk.

He couldn’t help noticing that his cousin Murdoch’s youngest daughter made contact with the seat as if she were anticipating being forcefully propelled out of it at any second. In what he could only assume was an attempt for stability, he observed her fingers wrapping around each of the armrests in what looked to be a death grip.

Her attention, however, appeared to be focused entirely on him.

“Do you know why I asked to see you, Officer Cavanaugh?” he asked gently, although ever mindful of the positions that separated them. Privately, he was family, but professionally, he was the chief of detectives and her ultimate superior. It was as the chief of Ds that he was presently speaking to this unusually gifted officer.

“No, sir,” Valri answered honestly, then added, the corners of her mouth curving ever so slightly, “but I think it might have something to do with computers.”

“It not only ‘might’ have something to do with computers, it most definitely does. The head of the computer lab recently brought your considerable skills to my attention.”

It was a known fact that the head of the computer lab was an absolute wizard with computers. She was also Brenda Cavanaugh, married to Detective Dax Cavanaugh and one of the chief’s daughters-in-law.

“She said that you were invaluable, taking on some of the overflow from her desk last month. She also mentioned that you recently helped get the goods on those two women who were killing senior citizens.”

The case had been an involved one that seemingly had no connection at first. These were older people with no families who were dying from what at first appeared to be heart attacks. After some considerable cyberdigging, it turned out that each of these people had crossed paths with two seemingly kindly volunteers who ingratiated themselves to the senior citizens and offered to take out and pay for insurance policies that would cover all their funeral expenses when the time came. The time, for all of them once they signed on the dotted line, came a lot quicker than anticipated.

One of the investigating detectives, Duncan Cavanaugh, had prevailed on his younger sister to do a little virtual research and she had been the one who had uncovered the insurance fraud.

“I’m glad I could help, sir,” Valri murmured, wondering where all this was going.

She had already met the man sitting behind the oak desk a number of times at her granduncle Andrew’s house. Tall, distinguished with a touch of gray at his temples, the man inspired loyalty and respect. She knew that he was always ready to listen, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of being informal with him in his office. This was the job. It required that she be a consummate professional in every way. The last thing she would have wanted was for the chief of Ds to think she was trying to cash in on the fact that she was a Cavanaugh and related to him.

Suddenly finding out that there was a large branch of the family in Aurora had motivated her to apply for the police department here instead of remaining where she was, on the force in Shady Canyon, the city she had grown up in. But she hadn’t done that with the idea of advancement foremost in her mind.

She’d also come here because she wanted to get to know her relatives better. After all, it wasn’t every day that a person discovered there was a whole cache of relatives less than fifty miles away whose paths had never crossed their own.

“CSI Cavanaugh tells me that you’re quick and extremely good at what you do,” Brian went on, referring to his daughter-in-law. Brian watched the young officer closely as he spoke.

She didn’t preen in response to the praise, which was in her favor, he thought.

“She was being kind,” Valri told him.

While she loved being appreciated and complimented, those were the very things that also caused Valri to fidget somewhat. She never knew quite what to say when she was on the receiving end of merited praise.

“Yes, CSI Cavanaugh is kind,” Brian agreed. “But at the same time, she makes a point of being very accurate. Being in a league of her own, she is not impressed easily. And you, Officer Cavanaugh, impressed her, which is enough for me.”

“Enough, sir?” Valri clearly didn’t understand what the chief meant by that.

“Hunter Rogers was found dead in his apartment this morning,” Brian told her, then asked, “Is that name familiar to you?”

She knew the name and the man. There’d been a time when her sphere of interest had been completely different from what it was now. Now her life was all about law enforcement and family. Then it had been the captivating and addictive world of gaming. In leaving that world behind, Valri felt she had definitely traded upward.

“He’s a gamer, sir. Rogers makes—made,” she corrected, taking what the chief had just said into account, “his living taking on challengers in competitions around the country. He was always the one to beat,” she added. “In the last year, he more or less disappeared off the grid. He’s dead?” she questioned, surprised. She would have expected the man to have turned up playing in some tournament, not this.

Brian nodded. “He was murdered.” The case, only a few hours old, had come to his attention rather quickly. Moreover, his gut told him that there was more to this than just possibly an argument that had gone wrong. “Turns out that he might have been a little bit more than just a gamer.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Valri asked.

Brian noticed that the young officer was no longer clutching the armrests, nor was she perched on the edge of her seat, ready to take off. Her whole body appeared to be focused on what he was telling her.

“Rogers was shot from behind and whoever did it also smashed his laptop.”

Now her interest was really aroused. Uncooperative computers had a way of igniting tempers like nothing else could. She’d known people who’d lost their tempers with computers to such an extent that they’d punched the keyboard or thrown their laptop on the floor, but this sounded as if there had been more involved than a flash of temper.

“Smashed, sir?” she asked, hoping he would dole out a few more details describing what had been involved in this murder/machine-icide he was informing her about.

Brian sat back in his chair, telling the young woman he’d summoned the details he’d been given so far.

“The detective on the scene said it looked as if a sledgehammer had been taken to it. Someone apparently wanted to get rid of whatever was on that computer. The quickest way would have probably been to take the laptop with them and then wipe out the hard drive, but I’m guessing whoever did it didn’t want to take a chance on being caught with Rogers’s computer.” Brian watched her expression as he gave Valri his theory. “And I’d assume that taking a sledgehammer to a laptop pretty much renders it a total loss.”

“Not every time,” she told the chief, choosing her words carefully. It wasn’t something she was accustomed to doing. For the most part, she talked to coworkers and friends, not superiors, and while she didn’t babble, there was always an unbridled enthusiasm to her tone. One that she was consciously restraining.

Brian looked at her with interest. “Oh? So the information on the hard drive wasn’t completely destroyed?”

“There might still be data that can be lifted,” she told him. She didn’t want to raise the chief’s hopes too high, but at the same time, there was a very small chance that all was not lost. “It depends on how hard the hammer came down on the laptop, the angle it hit, things like that.”

It was a whole new world out there than when he had been this officer’s age, Brian thought, silently marveling at what he was hearing. “You mean that the data might be retrievable?”

“Not all of it,” she was quick to qualify, again not to raise his hopes too high. “But it’s conceivable that a little here and there might have been spared and could still be gathered—but it won’t be easy,” she warned.

“Nothing worthwhile ever is,” Brian said, more of an aside than as a direct comment. “If I gave you the laptop to look over, do you think that you might be able to extract the data—provided that it can be extracted?” he added.

Brian wanted the young officer to know that there was no pressure attached to the directive. He didn’t expect miracles. But if there was one to be had, from what he had been told, he felt that she was the one to pull it off.

Valri took in a deep breath before answering. “I’d do my best, sir,” she told him.

“Can’t ask for anything more than that,” he told her. “Officer Cavanaugh, I’m going to pull you off your present assignment and set you up with a desk and a computer in Homicide.”

“Homicide?” she repeated, surprised. She had just assumed that if the chief wanted her to do tech work, that her desk would be down in the computer lab, where the rest of the CSI unit was located along with all of its specialized equipment.

“That’s where the case initially landed. The man is dead,” Brian reminded her.

“Right.” For a second, focusing on what the chief was saying about the laptop, the homicide had slipped her mind. Valri cleared her throat, which drew the chief’s attention to her. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir,” she interjected.

“Ask any question you want, Officer Cavanaugh,” he told her. “This is the time to clear things up.”

She knew that he really didn’t have to answer this. Law enforcement agents had the luxury of deflecting questions by saying that the answer would compromise an ongoing investigation. It was an all-purpose excuse that cast shadows on any beams of light that might be attempting to squeeze their way out.

But she knew she at least had to make the attempt to find out the basics here.

“What is it about this gamer, about Hunter Rogers, that makes his laptop important enough for you to try to get it resurrected?” It had to involve something other than his gaming strategies, but what?

“Turns out that Rogers wasn’t just a gamer, he was a hacker,” Brian told her. “And as for his laptop, we’re trying to find out if something on there got him killed—or possibly, might get someone else killed.” At present, he had no idea what they were up against, and it frustrated him no end. He didn’t like operating blindly.

Valri watched the chief. “You’re thinking that whoever killed Hunter knew what was on his laptop and what? Decided to save the world from it?”

“Not exactly,” he corrected her misconception. “We’re thinking that whoever killed Rogers wants to use whatever is on the computer and doesn’t want to share that information with the rest of the class.” He spread his wide palms on top of his desk blotter and leaned slightly forward for a better look into her eyes. He found a good many of his answers there when he spoke to people. “So, Officer Cavanaugh, are you up for this?”

Valri could barely sit still and contain the energy that she felt surging through her. “I love a challenge, sir.”

Brian smiled, nodding his head. He’d made the right call. “So I’ve heard.”

“Where is the laptop now, sir?” Valri wanted to know.

“Temporarily, it’s still locked up down in Homicide,” Brian told her. “Detective Brody has custody of it at the moment. Are you acquainted with Detective Alex Brody?” he asked.

The name was vaguely familiar, but she had no idea why. Most likely she’d overheard it being mentioned by one of the other uniforms. In any case, she had no personal recollection of the man.

Valri shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Well, you will be. I’m having the two of you partner up for this case. Temporarily,” he added on.

“He’s good with computers, too?” she asked, assuming that was why the chief was putting the two of them together.

Brian laughed rather heartily in response to her question. Valri had her answer before the chief opened his mouth and said a word.

“Not to hear him tell it. But Detective Brody is good with people and he’s a damn fine detective to boot.” He could see by the look on his younger cousin’s face that she was trying to follow his reasoning and she wasn’t succeeding. “I’m putting the two of you out in the field together,” he explained. “You’ll each supply strengths that the other is lacking.”

“Won’t Detective Brody feel resentful, being paired up with a beat cop?” she asked. She wasn’t a rookie, but she had a feeling that Brody would think of her in that light.

“Possibly,” Brian acknowledged. “Which is why I’m issuing you a temporary promotion to detective for the duration of this investigation.”

“Promotion? To detective?” she repeated in an awed whisper, never taking her eyes off the chief. “Seriously, sir?”

Valri was certain that at any second now, he’d come back to his senses, say he’d made a mistake and apologize just before he told her that she was going to remain a patrol officer.

“You have a problem with that, Officer Cavanaugh?” he asked her in all seriousness.

“What? Oh no, sir. No, I don’t. It’s just that—” Her words all but evaporated as her voice trailed off into something that sounded like a squeak.

“It’s just that...?” he repeated, waiting for her to finish her sentence.

She had to be honest with him. Yes, she had joined the police force with dreams of eventually making detective. But even in her wildest dreams, it took some time to get there. She’d been on the force only a little over two years.

“I didn’t expect to have it happen so fast,” she finally said.

A comfortable as well as comforting smile slipped over his lips. “Life happens fast, Officer Cavanaugh. We have to try to keep up. And besides, the promotion is temporary, not permanent,” he reminded her. “At least, not yet,” he added with an encouraging note in his voice. “But it’s been my experience that as a whole, Cavanaughs are a very tough bunch to keep down.” His eyes held hers. “I’d like to believe that the same can be said for you.”