Marie
Ferrarella
TheWoman
Who Wasn’t There

MILLS & BOON

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To Tiffany Khauo and Eddie S. Wu.

I wish you love, now and forever.

Contents

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

Coming Next Month

Chapter 1

The feeling of danger threaded itself through the atmosphere, permeating every inch around her.

Pulsating.

Feeding the kernel of fear within her until it threatened to take over. The fear stole the very air away from her. She began to choke. The panic was tangible.

This isn’t real. It’s not real.

The words throbbed within her head, a mantra she clung to even as she felt herself cascading down the rapids of mounting terror.

And then she heard his voice. She heard it inside her head before it even reached her ears.

“Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about running away. Don’t you know you can’t?” The voice mocked her without an iota of mirth. “There isn’t a corner of this earth where you can run to hide from me. Not for long. Because I’ll find you. And when I do, you’ll learn what it means to cross me.”

“I could shred the very skin off your bones and no one’ll lift a finger to help you. No one’ll lift a finger against me.”

“Do you understand?”

The words, disembodied, branded her soul.

She couldn’t see him. Only feel his hot breath, tinged with alcohol and malice, along her skin. Along her face, her neck, down to her very toes. It burned.

He was right. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She was vulnerable. Naked before him as she always was now. In spirit if not in fact.

But it was her spirit that kept her going. The spirit, the courage she’d found deep within her. The spirit he’d tried to rip from her. Grasping it like a solid entity in her hands, she fled. Fled as she was bound to. Because she knew if she stayed, somehow, some way, she’d be dead. He’d see to that. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.

So she ran.

Ran until her lungs ached and her legs threatened to give out beneath her. And then she ran some more. And always, always, she felt his presence right there behind her. Felt it even though she couldn’t see it.

Then suddenly he was there, grabbing her. His two hands wound around her throat and he was choking her. Making the air disappear again.

Even though she still couldn’t see him, his eyes were gleaming above her as his thumbs applied pressure on her windpipe.

“You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. Mine.”

Delene D’Angelo bolted upright in her bed. It took her a moment to realize that the shrieking that had woken her up came from her. She pressed her trembling fingers over her mouth to still the noise.

She couldn’t still the trembling.

It was March. March in the Northern California city of Aurora was still fairly cold, but she was sweating. Her short platinum-blond hair was plastered against her forehead, and the jersey she slept in, the single habit that tied her to her past, adhered to her body as if she’d just been shoved into the center of a pool.

Her body was slick with the perspiration of fear. She threaded her arms around herself and rocked, the motion comforting her only a little.

The sound of her labored breathing filled the small, sparsely furnished loft apartment. Delene did her best to regulate it. To still it as she strained to listen.

Were there any other sounds in the room, hidden by the noise she made? She caught her breath, even though it hurt her lungs. She still felt as if she’d run a long distance. And she had. She’d run for five years.

There was no other sound in the room. The tiny rented apartment was silent.

Like a house of cards, Delene collapsed, her head falling forward for a moment to lean against her clenched knees. After a moment, she began to pull herself together. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she dragged her hand through her hair.

It was a dream. A nightmare.

Again.

She made a small, disparaging noise in the darkness, shaking her head. Was she ever going to be free of them? Or were they—was it—going to haunt her forever?

It had been five years, five long years, since she’d walked into this brand-new life she’d laid out for herself. Five years since she’d fled from the other world she’d inhabited. When would the nightmares finally leave her alone? When would she stop looking over her shoulder, wondering if that noise she heard was harmless, or if it was a warning to run?

The nightmares assaulted her three, sometimes four times a week. Granted, that was less frequent than before. But just marginally. When she had first escaped, she’d have the nightmares every night. Whenever she closed her eyes, there was her old life, waiting for her. Mocking her.

And there he stood. Russell. Looming larger than life. Grabbing at her. Capturing her again.

“A dream, Dee. Just a dream,” she told herself out loud, her voice harsh and stern as if she were trying to snap someone out of succumbing to hysteria.

She could feel the tears that wanted to come and she banished them. Tears were worse than useless. They were a sign of weakness, and she couldn’t afford to be weak. Not even for a moment.

Delene sat there in the dark, willing herself into a state of rational calm.

“Maybe I should go to a shrink. Have someone help me get these thoughts out of my head.”

Her words skimmed along the shadows. It was just talk. She wasn’t about to expose her fears to anyone. Didn’t really trust anyone enough to talk to them. She couldn’t risk it. Because Russell and the people he worked for had eyes and ears everywhere and somehow it would get back to him.

And then he’d have her. And kill her. Just as he’d threatened he would. He wasn’t given to making idle threats. That wasn’t his style. And style was everything to Russell. That and his reputation.

Delene shifted, swinging her legs out of the double bed. She sat for a moment, staring into the semidarkness, the chill in the air slowly creeping over her. After a beat, she blew out a breath.

Her breathing was almost steady. And her pulse was slowing down to something considerably less than the speed of sound.

She was going to be all right.

Until the next time.

Glancing at the clock on her nightstand, Delene rotated her shoulders, throwing off the last remnants of sleep that might have still been clinging to her body if not her mind. The bright blue numbers on the clock registered in her brain. Four o’clock. An ungodly hour for everyone but bakers and a handful of medical professionals. And her. It was time for her to be getting up today.

There was a raid she was scheduled to conduct.

Less than half an hour later, Delene finished buttoning the khaki-colored blouse and slipped the ends inside similar-colored slacks. Her mouth quirked at her reflection. She certainly didn’t look like someone who was plagued by nightmares. Or someone who diligently checked the locks on her windows and door first thing every morning as soon as her feet hit the floor. And the last thing every night before she went to bed.

She’d learned to install the locks herself rather than trusting someone else to do it for her. Locks to keep the source of her nightmare out.

Given her past, she hadn’t exactly picked a profession that was designed to give her peace of mind. But it was the last kind of career Russell would think she’d become involved in, so she’d taken to it like a duck to water.

She was glad to finally make use of her degree for something. Eye candy had no use for a degree in criminology. And the idea of her working at anything had displeased Russell.

Her present career served as an outlet for her on more than one level. She was a probation officer for the county, had been for five years, thanks to a little altering of her school records by a friend. The education hadn’t been a lie, only the name in the records.

Being a probation officer allowed her to do something positive. It gave her the opportunity to help the people who genuinely wanted to atone for their transgressions and get on with their lives. To make something of themselves by putting their lives on a different track. The way she ultimately had.

And it also allowed her to keep tabs on the people who had thought that somehow they’d beaten the system and received a “get out of jail” card for nothing. The ones who felt they were invincible. Those she took special pleasure in foiling.

And each time she did, she thought of Russell. Of how it would feel to send him to prison. This empowered her.

That was what this morning’s raid was all about—checking up on one of her charges. Clyde Petrie was a mean-mouthed, small-time drug dealer who’d gotten a walk the first time because of a technicality and a slap on the wrist plus probation for dealing the second time. Both times he’d gotten lucky and drawn judges who believed he could be rehabilitated. Both Judge Walker and Judge Le felt that space in the overcrowded jails should be saved for the truly hardened criminals, the ones who raped and maimed their victims before killing them. To them, Clyde was just an annoying gnat to be swatted away.

Thinking himself in possession of a charmed life, or maybe just too stupid to learn from his mistakes, Clyde had gone back to doing what he did best. Dealing. And this time, it might result in his undoing. But Clyde, when faced with the threat of serious jail time, had blurted out that he had something to trade. Something big. He’d singled Delene out, begged her to be his advocate and she in turn had brought the matter to the court-appointed lawyer. The latter had concurred.

Against the better judgment of the assistant district attorney who oversaw the case, Clyde had somehow managed to get out on bail. But he was still on the books as one of her cases, and until he was either under lock and key, or in protective custody, she intended to keep tabs on him. To keep him as straight as possible.

One of the best ways was to conduct a raid. Probation officers had the right to turn up in the dead of night on the person’s doorstep, demanding entry. They could legally toss his or her possessions to make sure that there were no illegal substances or weapons on the premises. Fear of jail was supposed to keep them honest.

However, this raid was just a cover. To establish an alibi for Clyde and throw suspicion off—until he testified against the man who ultimately gave him his supply, one Miguel Mendoza.

Delene put the cereal bowl she’d only half filled into the sink, running water into it. Then she checked her weapon, the way she did every morning. In the five years she’d owned the gun, she’d never fired it in the line of duty and didn’t intend to.

Unless Russell found her.

Satisfied as to its condition, she holstered her weapon. She was ready.

Once Clyde said what he had to say at Mendoza’s trial, the government would give him a new identity and send him off to some obscure location. Where he would undoubtedly run afoul of law, Delene thought grimly. Someone like Clyde seemed predisposed to stumble. But that wasn’t her concern. She had to make sure the case closed satisfactorily. In this instance, getting Clyde into court to testify and then into the hands of another branch of the government, who would take it from there.

Her hair still slightly damp from the quick shower she’d taken, Delene got in behind the wheel of her small, nondescript vehicle. She liked it better than the Jaguar she’d driven in her other life, because the Jaguar had been a symbol of her servitude. This secondhand car, bought with her own money, was a symbol of her independence.

After buckling up, she turned on the rebuilt engine the department mechanic had installed for her at cost, and switched on the lights. The mechanic, a twenty-year veteran with the department, had taken pity on her when the car had all but died at his feet. He told her she reminded him of his youngest daughter. She’d still kept her guard up. It grew tiring at times.

Pulling out of the carport, Delene drove toward the Traveler’s Motel, a seedy little place comprised of eighteen units, all in need of some kind of repair. Clyde called it home when he wasn’t cooling his heels in a holding tank. She was meeting Adrian Jones and Jorge O’Reilly there, the two men joining her in the raid.

Dawn was still more than an hour away.

“Oh, damn.”

Standing to her right, Adrian nodded. Tall, athletic and given to grinning, he sported a grim smile now as he said, “Yup, I’d say that about sums it up.”

They, along with Jorge, found themselves looking down at the body that lay facedown in the middle of a flattened rug. The floor covering had long since lost any hint of an actual color. Its present hue was a combination of over a decade’s worth of stains and dirt. At the moment, its most prominent color was provided by the pool of blood slowly darkening as it was drying. The blood, until recently, had been part of Clyde Petrie’s limited supply.

The county’s only witness against Miguel Mendoza was dead.

Moments earlier, on Delene’s order, Jorge had applied his considerable bulk to the front door, taking it down after several quick raps went unreplied. It had made Delene somewhat uneasy that there hadn’t been the sound of scurrying on the other side of the door to indicate the quick disposal of drugs or some other illegal contraband. That was when she’d given Jorge the signal for a quick entry.

They’d stumbled over Clyde’s body the second they’d gained admittance.

The heat was on, causing the ripening smell of death to take possession of the single-room unit. Taking a breath to steel herself off, Delene leaned over and checked Clyde’s neck for a pulse just in case he’d managed to continue his lucky streak. His luck had apparently run out when he needed it most. There was no pulse.

“Looks like Mendoza got to him first,” Jorge surmised. He loosened his collar. Despite the open door, it felt stuffy in the room.

She got to her feet, ignoring the hand the large man offered her. Not because of any disdain she felt, because she didn’t. She got along as well as could be expected with the two men. They were pleasant and decent. But she was stubbornly determined to do everything for herself and accept no help unless she absolutely had to. The less dependent she was on anyone, the safer she was. That meant building no bridges, forging no relationships beyond the office.

As far as coworkers went, both Adrian and Jorge were good men. They were both likable, both married and Jorge had two kids with one on the way. And more importantly, they didn’t look down on her for being a female in what could be easily thought of as a man’s world. They treated her like a person and she was grateful for that. But not grateful enough to think of either man as a friend.

She sighed, shaking her head. Thinking of the waste. Clyde had been safer in jail than in the place he called home.

“Looks like,” she agreed. The logical conclusion was that Miguel Mendoza, the former gang member who’d risen up to become a drug lord of some consequence, had eliminated their star witness.

But Delene knew nothing was ever so crystal clear.

If it was, she would still be in Colorado.

Taking her cell phone out of her hip pocket, she dialed the number that would connect her to their liaison in the police department. As it rang, she looked at the body on the floor. Clyde Petrie was no longer her concern. Technically.

“You’ve just got to get a bigger car.”

The words were grunted out as Troy Cavanaugh, the last of Brian Cavanaugh’s sons to make detective, folded his six-foot-three frame into the vehicle he swore was a subcompact. It wasn’t the first time he’d made the complaint to Kara Ward, the homicide detective the department had paired him with almost immediately after awarding him his gold shield.

As before, Kara sniffed at his words. The vehicle was a perfect fit for her, but then, she was only five-one in her bare feet. As far as he was concerned, that wasn’t even people-sized. She could have just as easily ridden around in a toy car. But he needed something with space, and Kara’s car was cutting off the circulation to the lower half of his body.

Kara gave him a look that said beggars had no right to be choosers—or complainers.

“Either that or a partner who can’t pass as a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade,” the woman quipped. She watched as he struggled to buckle up. “Not my fault you didn’t have the good sense to know when you should stop growing.”

Troy shook his head. Or attempted to. The car wasn’t much on head room, either. The one he normally rode in—the one he drove—was currently in the shop after a rather damaging encounter with a fire hydrant. Said encounter was the result of the tail end of a high-speed chase with a man suspected of killing his pregnant girlfriend to keep her from talking to his wife. The chase had ended in the man’s apprehension as well as the wrecked car and a substantial repair bill—both for the car and the fire hydrant.

All this had happened yesterday and Troy hadn’t gotten a chance to get a replacement. When the call had come in this morning, taking him away from a rather pleasant dream, he’d had no choice but to agree to have Kara come pick him up. Something he’d regretted the moment he’d hung up the phone.

Finally he managed to get the metal end of the seat belt into the slot. There was a stitch in his side.

“I’m going to the car rental agency after work,” he announced, trying to sit straight. It was a futile attempt. “Get a real vehicle instead of a clown car.”

Kara glanced toward him. “Keep this up and I won’t let you have the can opener you’ll need to get out of this one when we get to the motel.”

Taking a corner sharply, she laughed at the stifled curse coming from the passenger side. A minute later, they were pulling up into the parking lot of the motel. Kara smoothly parked her pride and joy next to a large white van with blue and green lettering across the side. The sign proclaimed it to be a crime scene investigation vehicle for the city of Aurora.

Bracing one hand on the dashboard and one on the roof of the compact, Troy managed to extract himself from the torturous vehicle, although it wasn’t easy. His partner hadn’t left all that much space for him on his side. Straightening, he fixed his jacket.

“Looks like the CSI people got here ahead of us,” he noted.

Kara laughed shortly as she closed her door. “Easy to see how you earned your shield.”

One of four siblings with seven cousins, most of whom were older, Troy had learned early on to roll with the punches and take things lightly. It was the key to survival. He grinned at Kara as they made their way to the motel room.

“What’s up, Kara? Your hot-and-heavy date decide to hog the covers?”

She frowned as she gave him a dirty look. “None of your business what my hot-and-heavy date did with the covers.” The next moment she offered a somewhat lukewarm apology. “Sorry, Cavanaugh. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Yeah, you did.” As he spoke, he looked around at the area. Light was uncharitable to the motel, exposing all its dingy, dirty little secrets. “But that’s okay. I’ve got a sister who’s pretty much as even-tempered as you are. Rolls right off my back.”

Kara snorted. “Remind me to send condolences to your sister.”

“Funny—” Troy opened the door to the motel room and moved back to let Kara enter first “—I was thinking the same thing about your hot-and-heavy date.”

The room was like every other run-down motel room that littered not only this state, but every other one, as well. In its own way, the space bore the mark of the countless people who had passed through over the years, leaving not only the stench of hopelessness in their wake, but a coat of grime that went down too many layers to clean.

Ordinarily, the first thing Troy took in when he entered a crime scene was the reason for his presence: the victim. But this time, his attention was momentarily drawn to the three people who were standing off to the side, conferring with one of the crime scene investigators. There were two men and a woman, identically dressed in the uniform provided by the county’s probation department. They couldn’t have been more different. One man was tall and thin, the other shorter and far more heavyset.

But it was the woman who captured his attention. Not because she was the only female in the trio, but because her delicate features seemed so out of place, so alien to the drab uniform she wore. The clothing belonged to someone who was hardened, someone accustomed to dealing with the dregs of society.

She, on the other hand, looked like someone who might have inspired a Renaissance artist to go run for his paints and his brush in an effort to somehow capture this vision of an angel walking the earth.

“Hey, Cavanaugh,” Kara whispered, “you’re staring. Get your tongue back in your head before you wind up embarrassing me.”

“Too late for that, Kara,” Troy heard himself whispering back, only half-aware that he was even answering her. “They’ve already seen you.”

Kara muttered something cryptic and sarcastic in response, but her words just formed a slight buzz in the background.

He and the woman in the probation officer’s uniform had just made eye contact and he had to remind himself to breathe.

The only problem was he’d forgotten how.

Chapter 2

He was staring at her.

Did the man who’d just walked into room know her? Recognize her from somewhere? Delene thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t be sure.

Long, thin, spidery fingers of panic skittered through her as she struggled to place the tall, dark man in the black slacks and equally black turtleneck sweater he wore beneath a blue windbreaker.

This was stupid.

Annoyed with herself, Delene banked down the growing fear. She was overreacting again. It was obvious by his manner, by the way he took over a room, that he was a police detective. And since she was an agent with the County Probation Department, more than likely their paths had crossed once, if not several times. So he was probably just trying to place her. There, a logical explanation. No big deal.

Delene did her best to stifle an impatient sigh. The impatience was directed at herself. How long was it going to take before she felt safe? Before a look was just a look and not the outward sign of pending exposure? Of a reason to run? She wished she could say soon, but she knew better.

Squaring her shoulders, she ran her fingers through her short hair, pushing it away from her face as she donned her “go-to-hell” attitude, the one that had kept her secure up to now. She looked straight at the tall, dark-haired man with the penetrating blue eyes, wicked smile and cleft chin.

“Something I can do for you, Detective?”

The woman who’d caught his attention had a voice like smooth, fine wine, aged to perfection. It slid over him, warming him as it wove its path.

Lots of things come to mind, lady.

Outgoing and gregarious, Troy still possessed a healthy dose of prudence. Rather than allow them to be heard, he kept the words that instantly rose to his lips safely locked away in his head. He and the woman were in mixed company and he had no idea how the blond vision in the bland uniform might react to an honest response her question had generated. He never forgot whose son he was. The weight of the family name was not something he bore lightly. So far, none of the Cavanaugh men had ever been accused of verbal sexual harassment, however unintentional. He didn’t intend to be the first.

So instead of saying what was on his mind and seeing where it might lead, he buried his curiosity and followed protocol. That meant asking questions and making noises like a homicide detective. “You the first one on the scene?”

Delene gestured to the two men on either side of her. “All three of us were.”

Troy looked at the men, particularly the older of the two. The one built like an armored tank. He glanced over his shoulder at the doorway before commenting. “Must have been a tight fit.”

She took immediate exception at his light tone, thinking it a dig against Jorge. She didn’t like an outsider making fun of the man.

Her answer was crisp, putting distance between them. “Jorge took down the door. For all intents and purposes, we came in together.” She nodded toward the body on the rug. “We found him like this.”

Troy nodded thoughtfully. “And why were you looking for him?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kara make her way over to the crime scene investigator. She was going to get the man’s take on the evidence he’d discovered and processed so far.

Despite coming from two very different places in life, and Kara’s obvious initial preconceived notions about how he had risen up so quickly through the ranks, they worked well together. Divide and conquer was the way they approached a case. So far, neither one of them had any real complaints about the other. Aside from a very short sizing-up period, there’d been no attempt to establish territory, no squabbling about which of them was to be the top dog. They operated as a team.

“Standard procedure,” Adrian told him, cutting in. It was obvious to Troy that the taller of the two men was feeling somewhat protective of the woman. “We were conducting an early morning raid.” When Troy looked at him for further elaboration, he added, “Just to make sure his i’s were dotted and his t’s were crossed.”

Troy frowned, eyeing the pathetic shell of a man on the floor. “I don’t know about his i’s and his t’s, but I’ve got a hunch he wasn’t looking to get a bullet in his head.”

After taking plastic gloves out of his pocket, Troy put them on, then squatted down beside the body. Very gently he lifted the victim’s head. He examined the point of entry, then looked to see if there was an exit wound. There wasn’t.

“A bullet he seems to be hanging on to.” More for the medical examiner to do, he thought as he placed Clyde’s head back down in the position he’d found it. Behind him he heard a sharp intake of breath.

“I’m not through in here, yet,” CSI Sam Connor said waspishly. By his expression, it was evident Sam thought of the body as his property.

On his feet again, Troy raised his gloved hands in the air, silently showing the man that he was no longer touching the body. Because he’d gotten what appeared to be a drop of blood on one of the gloves, Troy stripped them off and rolled the tainted one inside of the second glove before putting both in his pocket.

“How about you?” He directed the question and his eyes back to the woman from the county. “Are you through here yet, Officer…” Troy paused, reading the neat little letters affixed over the woman’s breast pocket. He lingered, longer than he should have, taking in the very enticing, very inviting swell of her full chest before raising his eyes to her face. “D’Angelo,” he concluded.

Delene glanced at the man whose lifeless body was now surrounded by a chalk outline. Pity tugged at her heart. In the final analysis, she felt sorry for the dead man she’d interacted with a handful of times. Clyde had been a lower-life form, but he’d still been a human being, and as such, didn’t deserve to be so casually eliminated. She doubted if his executioner had even given his death so much as a passing thought.

If he’d been killed by whom she thought he’d been killed, it was in part her fault. But mostly Clyde’s.

She nodded in reply to the detective’s question. “He’s way past caring about anything we might find in the motel room that might be in violation of his probation.”

Was that emotion he heard in her voice? Her expression remained steely. Troy decided he’d imagined the trace of sorrow. He shook his head as he looked at the victim. There appeared to be no signs of struggle. The messy room seemed to be just that, a messy room. Probably never even knew what hit him, Troy thought.

“Really must have ticked someone off,” he commented, then looked at the probation officers, his glance sweeping over all three. “Any ideas?”

The question surprised Delene. All the detectives she’d ever come across in this job acted as if they’d been first in line when brains had been handed out and everyone else had been a distant second, if not third or fourth. They rarely asked for opinions, preferring to come up with their own.

Slipping her hands into her back pockets, she thought of the daughter Clyde had once admitted to her that he’d fathered. The girl, Rachel, was about four or five now. She deserved to know that her father was gone. Trouble was, Delene had no idea how to find the girl and her mother.

“You might think about sending someone to question Miguel Mendoza,” she finally told the detective.

Troy raised his eyebrows at the familiar name. “The Miguel Mendoza?”

When the woman nodded, saying nothing further, Troy asked, “Why?” He’d assumed the dead man was just a junkie. There were track marks on his arms. To say that Mendoza might have a hand in it meant that the victim hadn’t just been on the receiving end of drugs, he’d been pushing them, as well. “This guy caught skimming?”

The moment he said it, the suggestion seemed ludicrous. Troy looked around at the dead man’s living conditions. Fast-food wrappers littered various corners of the room, clothes beyond dirty discarded beside them. If the dead man had been keeping some of the money he made pushing drugs, he had to have used it to buy more drugs for himself. It had certainly not been used to better his lifestyle.

Delene paused before answering. The police detective with the broad shoulders and his much shorter partner seemed perfectly capable of doing their own legwork, chasing down their own leads. But she saw no harm in sharing information. Clyde’s deal with the D.A. would come out soon enough, even if her part wouldn’t. She doubted if the D.A. had noted down that she had been the one to ultimately convince Clyde to turn a corner and try to make something of himself for his daughter’s sake. She felt it was part of her job, to help rehabilitate those who had a spark of potential for leading an honest life.

Delene glanced up at the detective with the engaging smile. He hadn’t just dismissed her and her team as being annoying and in the way. He’d spoken to her, to them, as if they were all on the same side. So for the moment she would be.

“Clyde was going to testify against Mendoza in court.”

“Clyde?” Troy looked at the inert body, trying to picture the man responding to the name. He didn’t look like a Clyde. He didn’t look very much like anything at all. Except dead.

“Clyde Petrie,” Delene provided. “He was involved with drugs since he was fourteen. At seventeen he dropped out of school, thought he’d make a better living for himself by pushing drugs instead of doing something that his high school diploma might land him. He was picked up twice for dealing. Managed to elude jail both times. Second time landed him on probation. It made him feel lucky.”

Which had been Clyde’s downfall, she thought. Thinking herself lucky had been hers, as well. She’d thought herself lucky to have caught Russell’s eye. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Third time was the charm for the county. This time the judge wasn’t going to let him slide,” she continued. “He was going to get sent away for the maximum.”

“But he got another stab at probation,” Troy guessed, from her presence. “Why?” And then, before the woman or her companions could answer, he remembered what she’d said at the beginning. “Because he made a deal to give evidence against Mendoza in open court.”

“You’re quick.”

There was no missing the sarcasm in the woman’s voice. But Troy played it straight. He glanced in Kara’s direction. His partner had just looked up and their eyes met. “Rubs off from the company I keep.”

He was rewarded with a wide grin and a chuckle, both from Kara. His brothers had taught him that it never hurt to have your partner in a good mood.

Delene drew her own conclusions from the quick exchange between the duo. The detectives were sleeping together, she guessed. She never knew a good-looking man who didn’t try to take advantage of his looks. The homely ones took a little longer to come up for their turn at bat. But they always came.

She frowned. “Whatever.”

Already she was trying to distance herself from the scene. From the man who lay dead on the floor. She wished she could view the individuals she dealt with as just case files, the way Jorge did. He’d told her she’d be a lot better off that way, and she didn’t doubt it. But detaching herself would also mean surrendering the last bit of humanity she still possessed.

“Might be off base entirely,” Delene continued. “But you might find that Mendoza’s worth a look.”

And so was she, Troy thought. A look, a gaze, an out-and-out, clock-stopping stare. The longer he looked at her face, the more flawless it seemed.

And the more out of place the woman appeared at the scene.

What was her story? he wondered. What was she doing, banging on motel doors before dawn, trying to raise the dead and defiant, not to mention the dregs of society? Without her uniform, she belonged in a pure, pristine setting.

Especially without her uniform on, he thought, doing his best to suppress the smile that fought to curve his mouth.

“Mendoza. Absolutely,” he agreed, realizing that he had been staring. He cleared his throat, as if that would erase the awkward moment. “Where can I get in touch with you?” When she didn’t answer, he added, “If I have more questions?”

“Probation office.” The answer came from the armored tank at her side as the man put his bulk in between his petite team leader and the tall detective. Almost grudgingly, Jorge offered up a cream-colored business card with the probation department’s main office’s phone number. The small card appeared that much smaller when contrasted against his wide, powerful, deeply tanned hand.

Troy took the card, raising his eyes to the woman’s beefy protector. One side of his mouth lifted in a lopsided, amused smile. He’d had no idea that guardian angels came in the extralarge size. “Thanks, Jorge.”

Jorge’s expression never changed, never softened. “Officer O’Reilly,” he corrected. “Or Agent O’Reilly, if you prefer.”

So much for law enforcement being one big, happy family, Troy thought.

“And for the record, I’m Adrian Jones,” the tall man told him.

Jorge and Adrian, Cinderella’s two ugly stepsisters, Troy couldn’t help labeling them as the two men flanked—and all but towered over—the delicate blonde. Except that in this case, Cinderella’s stepsisters were highly protective of her.

“We’d better get going,” Delene said to the two men with her.

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.

Wearing pale plastic gloves, Troy switched on the light. Rather than illuminate, it added to the overall sense of darkness and gloom within the room.

He was grateful he’d had the good fortune to be born into the life that he presently enjoyed.

Squatting down beside the pile closest to the door, Troy began poking through the crumbled papers, crushed paper cups and greasy bags. He was searching for that certain “something” they might have overlooked when they’d first gone through this room hours ago. The “something” that just possibly might be able to lead them to the penny-ante dealer’s killer when all the obvious trails led nowhere.

All it took was one thing. That serial killer in New York back in the seventies had been caught because of unpaid parking tickets, Troy mused, working his way to the floor. Anything was possible.

Besides, he did some of his best work when it was quiet. When he could think. He and Kara had conducted a canvas of the area and now she and her clown car were back at the squad room, following up on information given by the woman who lived across the parking lot. After an intense two hours, Sam, the crime scene investigator, had retreated to his lab with his odd collection of fibers, cigarette butts and whatever to examine, tag and match.

Troy glanced at the watch his father had given him when he’d graduated from the academy. Right about now the M.E. was taking the victim apart. Literally.

Troy rose, absently dusting off one gloved hand against another as he scanned the room. More than sifting through the dead dealer’s possessions, he was trying to fit into the man’s emaciated skin. To think the way Clyde might have thought in the last few hours of his life. And maybe, just maybe, he was also trying to prove to the world at large that he wasn’t just chief of detectives Brian Cavanaugh’s youngest, indulged son.

He was proud of who he was, who he belonged to. The Cavanaugh name stood for something in Aurora, but there was no denying that it also carried a significant weight with it. You couldn’t really slack off if you were a Cavanaugh. At least, not for very long. People expected you to behave as if you were a little larger than life. Of course, some were waiting to see if you fell on your face.

He had no intention of falling. He had brothers and cousins to compete against, he always had had.

Troy walked over to the closet and opened the door. It creaked. More fast-food wrappers were inside, as if Clyde had actually made a halfhearted attempt at cleaning his living quarters before giving up.

“Would have been easier to throw it all away, Clyde,” he said under his breath. He began to move around the wrappers, one by one.

Granted, the competition between him and the other members of his family was a friendly one, but he still had to prove himself. He was the youngest of the Cavanaugh men. Only his sister and Rayne, Uncle Andrew’s daughter, were younger, and not by all that much. There was a stigma attached to being the youngest. Family didn’t really expect you to measure up.

Though he never said it out loud, sometimes didn’t even admit it to himself, he wanted to make his father proud. Wanted the whole family to be proud of him. The only way that happened—to his satisfaction—was to be the best damn cop, the best damn detective he knew how.

He knew that his family would love him, would stick by him no matter what he did. But he had seen that look of pride rise up in his father’s eyes when he’d told him that he was going into “the family business” and becoming a cop, the way the rest of them had. The way his father, Uncle Andrew and Uncle Mike had, following in their father’s footsteps. It was a look he wanted to see over and over again.

The sudden, small noise behind him had Troy whirling around, his gun instantly drawn. Aimed.

The next moment, blowing out a breath, he raised the gun’s barrel up toward the ceiling, putting the safety back on.

Though her expression never gave her away, Delene could feel her racing heart slowly sliding down from her throat.

“How many hours of practice did it take you to get that fast?” She lowered the hands that she’d automatically raised the second he’d pointed the gun at her. Leaving the doorway, she crossed into the room.

Saying something unintelligible under his breath, Troy holstered his weapon, then readjusted his Windbreaker over it.

“Enough,” he replied, then asked a question of his own. “What are you doing here?” She’d left here hours ago and had no authority to be in the motel room. It was still a crime scene. “Forget something?”

For a second, Delene debated retracing her steps and leaving. She could always come back later tonight. She knew how to bypass locks. One of the fringe benefits of her earlier life. But to leave now would mean that she’d allowed someone to chase her off, and that just wasn’t going to happen. That, too, belonged to her past.

She slowly shook her head. “No, I’m looking for something.”

Troy’s dark eyebrows drew together over his nose in a puzzled, wavy line. Talking wasn’t this woman’s strong suit, he decided. Considering what he was accustomed to from the women in his family, reticence was a pleasant change. But not when he wanted information. “Mind telling me what?”

Yes, she minded, Delene thought. She minded having to explain herself to anyone. It brought back too many bad memories. She was trying to forget about endless months of explaining herself, of justifying every move she made, every second she was away from the house.

But Detective Cavanaugh wasn’t asking out of personal curiosity. This was all part of his job.

“You did see the yellow tape, didn’t you?” Troy prompted when she didn’t immediately respond.

Delene could feel that old familiar flash of temper coming on. “Vision’s twenty-twenty the last time I had my eyes checked.”

The flippant answer was as mechanical as breathing for her. Being flippant was the defense mechanism Delene employed to keep people from asking her too many probing questions. She banked down a lot of other words, as well. After all, the man was just doing his job.

And what you’re doing is going above and beyond the call of duty. But she knew she had to at least try, she thought.

There was more to the woman’s eyes than twenty-twenty vision, Troy caught himself observing. Her eyes were a deep, dark shade of green. So green, he felt as if he’d fallen into the center of an emerald mine. So green that they could very easily mesmerize him and dissolve his thoughts if he allowed it.

Troy cleared his throat. “Nice to know. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

Her mouth rose in an amused smile that took him prisoner. “I thought you gave me a choice.”

He didn’t follow. “A choice?”

“Yes.” She raised her head to look up at him. “You said, ‘Mind telling me what?’ That would indicate if I do mind, I don’t have to answer you.”

Troy moved in a little closer, although he wasn’t completely aware that he had taken a step. She liked to argue. Maybe she wasn’t all that different from the women in his family.

“Which automatically puts you on my list of people to look at more closely.”

The way he said it, Delene got the distinct feeling the detective wasn’t just talking about the murder. That he meant something more intimate than that.

For just the barest instant a wave of heat passed over her, spreading out all through her body. That same funny, silly, overwhelming sensation experienced by teenagers during the “did-he-notice-me-or-didn’t-he?” ritual from years gone by.

Get a grip, Dee. You’re not sixteen anymore.

She told herself she was just hallucinating, that what she felt was merely a by-product of countless nights with too little sleep because of the damned nightmares.

It had been years since she’d reacted to a man. Any man. And she intended to keep it that way.

“Then you’d be wasting your time,” she told him softly.

Her voice, low, sexy and intoxicating, got under his skin. He was having some very unprofessional thoughts right now. “My time to waste.”

She drew back, shifting gears. That had been a dangerous road she’d just touched on. Dangerous for her. “Not when the department is paying you. Daddy wouldn’t like it.”

She had the pleasure of watching the handsome detective stiffen. Obviously she’d stumbled across a button she could press if needed. She wondered if there was friction between the older and younger Cavanaughs.

The grin on Troy’s lips hardened ever so slightly. “Are we going to play this game all evening or are you going to tell me what made you come back to the motel room where Petrie was killed? As far as I understand the duties of a probation officer, your business here is over.”

He was putting her in her place. She didn’t like that. Delene took the upper hand. “Relax, Cavanaugh, this isn’t an old-fashioned melodrama. The killer isn’t coming back to the scene of the crime.” Shoving her hands into her back pockets, she shifted slightly on the balls of her feet. It was a habit she had when she was searching for a way to calm down. “Clyde has a daughter.”

“All right.” Troy drew the words out, waiting for the woman to follow up the statement with more concrete information. “So he has a daughter. What’s that got to do with you?”

Nothing. Everything. Because I was cursed with a conscience.

She ignored his question. “Her name was tattooed on his forearm.”

He’d noticed the tattoo when he was examining the body. “Rachel” in common ink. “Not exactly top grade,” he commented.

“He was probably stoned out of his mind when he got it. That doesn’t promote the best judgment as to where to get one,” she said. “He was lucky he didn’t get blood poisoning from a dirty needle.”

“Whatever luck he might have had ran out today,” Troy said.

“Yeah, it did.” She sighed, glancing around the room. Anywhere but at the chalked outline. “I figure his daughter has a right to know that he’s dead and didn’t just take off and leave her.”

There was something in the way she said the last part that had him looking at Delene. And wondering.

“Is that the way it happened?” he asked softly. He knew he was intruding, but she’d been the one who had inadvertently thrown it out there.

Delene pulled back her shoulders, as if unconsciously bracing for a blow. “What?”

“To you,” he said, taking the same tone with her that his cousin Patience took with the wounded animals she cared for in her capacity as veterinarian. “Did your father leave your mother. And you?”

Her expression hardened. All traces of friendliness vanished. “Don’t try to analyze me, Cavanaugh. You’re out of your league. I just felt sorry for the poor slob. And for the little girl he brought into the world. End of story.” All totaled, she’d worked with Clyde Petrie for almost three months, inheriting his file when another officer had retired. She’d made it a point to learn his background, to know what she was up against. “I know he tried to clean up twice, always saying that a daughter deserved to be proud of her father.”

She looked around once more. The motel room looked no better in the late-afternoon light than it had in the predawn hours. An oppressive feeling of hopelessness seemed woven in with the stains and the grime. That and an almost disabling loneliness.

“I thought maybe he had her address here or a phone number.” It was her intention to exhaust the regular avenues of search before resorting to the Internet.

Tying up those loose ends wasn’t exactly within the probation department’s jurisdiction, but he liked the way the woman thought. “Do you know what her mother’s name is?” he asked.

Delene shook her head. “Clyde never married her so it’s not on our records. I wouldn’t have known about the girl at all except during one of the department’s impromptu visits, I found Clyde sitting by the window, holding her picture. There were tears in his eyes. He told me she was four, maybe five. He wasn’t too good with dates.”

Troy had his own thoughts about the origin of those tears. Probably Clyde realized that he didn’t have enough money to score, he thought. “Well, I guess he wasn’t ready to take on the dad from The Brady Bunch for the title of Father of the Year.”

She moved her shoulders in a half-dismissive shrug. “I suppose Clyde did the best he could, given how weak he was.” This time she did look down at the chalk outline. “At least he tried.”

What was she really doing here? Troy wondered. He caught himself wondering other things about her, as well. Things if he asked, he was confident he’d only get a flippant response to. He decided that once he was off-duty, he was going to do a little homework. See just what he could find out about Agent Delene D’Angelo. If all else failed, he was pretty sure he could always ask Brenda, his brother Dax’s new wife. The woman could make a computer do anything but sit up and beg—and maybe even that, too.

“Want me to help you look around?” he offered.

The first response that occurred to Delene was she didn’t want to be indebted to anyone. Favors required favors in return.

“It’s not that big a place,” she told him, then reconsidered. This was his crime scene, not hers. Technically he could order her off. “Sure, why not? Two sets of eyes are usually better than one.” Approaching the largest pile of fast-food wrappers, discarded soda cups and stained carryout bags, she paused to take out her gloves. “What is it that you’re looking for? Just in case I stumble across it first.”

He gave her a grin that she found much too engaging. “I don’t know.”

Their eyes met. Hers were incredulous. “You don’t know?”

Admitting it didn’t seem to phase him, and she found that unusual. Most men liked to look as if they knew what they were doing.

“Nope. Just that I’ll know it when I see it,” he said.

Her mouth quirked and he felt something skip a beat inside his chest. Probably had to do with the burrito he’d had for breakfast. Ordinarily, three days out of five, breakfast time would find him at his uncle’s house, seated at a table that never seemed to run out of leaves or chairs in its ever-expanding mode.

His father’s older brother, Uncle Andrew, had put himself through the academy as a short-order cook in a diner. When he retired to raise what was, at the time, his motherless family, Uncle Andrew indulged himself in his only passion outside of law enforcement and his family. Cooking.

And when, one by one, the members of his family began to spread their wings and fly away from home, he’d insisted on having everyone return each morning for breakfast. To entice them, Andrew went all-out, preparing not just a meal but what could pass as a gourmet feast. Troy hadn’t been able to make it to Uncle Andrew’s house this morning, because of the homicide call. So breakfast had turned out to be the first semiedible thing he could get his hands on.

Troy knew exactly what expression would descend over his uncle’s face if the older man heard that he’d grabbed a breakfast burrito at a fast-food restaurant.

“You’ve obviously been watching too many cop shows,” Delene was saying to him.

Actually, he found himself addicted to the slew of crime dramas that were on the air, taping the ones he didn’t get a chance to watch. He flashed her another grin. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

He thought he heard her say something about the level of intelligence of the new wave of detective these days, but he couldn’t be sure. The next moment, she was riffling through the drawers in the battered and scarred bureau that dominated the wall beside the tiny bathroom.

He let the comment go.

Between them, they went over the entire length and breadth of the motel room, coming up empty when they finished.

It bothered Delene that she couldn’t even find Rachel’s photograph. She found it telling.

“Why is this significant?” Troy asked.

She closed the closet. The hangers had been empty. Whatever clothing Clyde had possessed was in the heaps on the floor.

“Because someone must have taken the photo,” she told him. “I know I saw it.”

“Why would someone want to take a picture of a drug dealer’s daughter? It’s not as if they could kidnap her and hold her for ransom. It certainly doesn’t look as if Clyde had any money.”

“Not just any someone,” she corrected him. “Her mother.” Maybe the woman, whoever she was, didn’t want him having anything to do with the little girl.

“Or,” Troy theorized, “Petrie could have easily lost it.”

Delene didn’t believe that. She shook her head. “It meant too much to him.”

“When he was sober,” Troy pointed out. “All bets are off when he was high.”

But Delene remained unmoved. “Some things remain constant, even for addicts.”

He wondered if the woman even realized that she had become passionate about her subject. “Is that firsthand knowledge?” he asked.

Her chin rose defensively. “That’s firsthand information. The people the county has on probation are not exactly all the crème de la crème.”

Which led him to the question that had been echoing in his head since he first laid eyes on her this morning. He couldn’t see her going down into the trenches, getting dirty in their filth. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a business like this?”

Now there was a line, Delene thought. “Earning a living.”

“Got to be other ways to do it.”

She looked at the piles of wrappers. It was hard not to just scoop them up and throw them away. She hated chaos, always had. “I like the hours,” she quipped.

“You mean round-the-clock?” Troy scoffed. “What are you, a bat?”

“Get your facts straight, Detective. Bats don’t operate during the day.”

“Guess their union’s stronger than yours.” He finished going through the last pile and found that it was exactly what it appeared. Garbage. “Nothing,” he announced, rising to his feet.

An exercise in futility. Delene bit back an oath. “Did you check out Mendoza yet?”

He’d placed a call to his sister to check out D’Angelo’s story. When it rang true, he and Kara had gone to see the self-appointed drug lord at his opulent house, only to be told by one of Mendoza’s underlings that the man was on vacation in Florida, visiting his sister. Troy didn’t believe the excuse for a moment, but the location had a true ring to it.

“Mendoza’s out of town.”

She gave him a pointed look. “He wouldn’t have to pull the trigger himself.”

It was Troy’s turn again to grin. “Trying to tell me how to do my job, D’Angelo?”

“Just making a helpful observation.”

Before he could comment on the helpful nature of her observations, a commotion outside the motel room had them both becoming alert. Troy had his weapon out in under a heartbeat.

“Stay here,” he told her.

She had her own weapon and the department had spent its fair share of money training her on its use. She unholstered it.

“The hell I will,” she declared, following him out.

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