Davis wasn’t sure just what had possessed him at that moment. Most likely it was frustration.

Or maybe he just wanted her to back off once and for all, and the only way he felt he could do that was to frighten her off. He reasoned he could do that by kissing her.

Which was why he’d turned toward Moira and, operating on what amounted to automatic pilot, he suddenly and without a word pulled her to him despite her seat belt. He didn’t even remember leaning against the rather awkward transmission shift that was between them, dividing them from one another like an old-fashioned bundling board. All that he did remember was that he kissed her.

Kissed her hard.

Kissed her until neither one of them could breathe anymore and the only sound within the sedan was the one created by two pounding hearts.

* * *

Be sure to check out the next books in this exciting series:

Cavanaugh Justice—Where Aurora’s finest are always in action.

Cavanaugh or

Death

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two-hundred-and-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 Kristin Costello, With deep appreciation For being more Than a nurse.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

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

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Dawn was beginning to touch the edges of the darkness, hinting that first light was not far away.

Davis Gilroy was only vaguely aware of the time, having glanced at his wristwatch just before entering St. Joseph’s Cemetery, the larger of the two cemeteries in the city of Aurora, California, where he had lived all of his life.

Davis assumed that there was a groundskeeper in the area somewhere, possibly grabbing a catnap in one of the three mausoleums on the far end of the property. Or maybe the man was sleeping on the creased brown leather sofa back at the office right off the cemetery’s chapel. But other than the groundskeeper, Davis was fairly certain he was the only one in the area.

That was the way he liked it. He liked being alone.

Although he was a detective in the police department’s major crime division, Davis wasn’t much of a people person. Especially since losing his last two partners, Detective Mike Chan and Detective Ed Ramirez, both of whom now permanently resided at this same cemetery.

But he wasn’t here to pay his respects to the two men he had worked beside for a total of less than three years. They were each decent men and good detectives in their own right, though he hadn’t socialized with either of them in life and saw no reason to visit them now that the conversation would only be one-sided.

The only people he had one-sided conversations with these days were his parents: James and Martha Gilroy. It was their mutual grave he’d come to visit, as he did at least once a month, more often if he got the chance. For the most part his life consisted of work and sleep—and work kept him pretty busy. Coming here was his only deviation from that narrow path.

Davis stood in front of the double headstone. It was a wide, expensive marble piece that had taken him months to save up for—putting aside every cent he could out of his paychecks—until the tombstone was finally paid off and in place over his parents’ grave instead of the meager one his uncle had put there.

They were together in death just as they had been in life. His father had taken pride in the fact that it had been love at first sight for both of them. As he’d gotten older, Davis had pretended not to listen, though he’d never tired of hearing the details.

He’d been almost thirteen the day they died. They had been together in the car that Sunday, but only he had survived.

That still haunted him.

Davis was kneeling over their grave, the bouquet of fresh white roses—his mother’s favorite—placed just beneath the headstone. Spring had been part of the terrain for a good month. His mother had always loved spring.

He felt the sting of tears smart at the corners of his eyes and was glad no one was around to see him.

Here, alone with his parents, away from other inquisitive eyes, he was free to be himself the way he wasn’t in his daily life. Six-foot-two, thirty-four-year-old men didn’t get emotional or shed tears about events that had happened more than two decades ago.

But there was no one here to judge him.

“Sorry I haven’t been around lately—had a case that wasn’t easy to solve. But I’m here now and that’s what counts, right, Dad?”

His father had never bothered berating him for time that had been lost; he’d only pointed out that there was time ahead to be used—until there wasn’t any time ahead left.

“Can you believe it?” Davis asked, addressing the two people beneath the tombstone. “It’s been almost twenty-one years now. Twenty-one years since you and Mom relocated here.”

That was as specific as he allowed himself to get, even when “talking” with the two people who had been ripped out of his life by that fatal car accident. An accident that had taken them from him and subsequently thrust him in with his father’s older brother, John. Being the only family member he had left, John had begrudgingly taken him in.

The reluctance had faded when John—Davis could never bring himself to call him Uncle John because that was far too warm a title for a man who never smiled, never asked him how he was doing—had discovered that there was a substantial insurance policy to be held in trust for his nephew until his eighteenth birthday. His father had named John the executor of the trust.

John had turned out to be a rather resourceful man when it came to finding ways to siphon off some of that trust fund money to pay for the “expenses” involved in raising an orphan from the age of thirteen to eighteen. It eventually came to light that John had taken advantage of every loophole he could find or fabricate.

There was a coldness in John’s house that never abated; a coldness that seemed to set the tone for the rest of his own young life. Davis never felt any resentment toward his father’s older brother. He never felt anything at all. All he had wanted from the moment he had entered the man’s house was the freedom to leave it. That freedom came on his eighteenth birthday.

He’d taken whatever money was left in the insurance policy—precious little—and put it toward his education, becoming what his father had been before him: a cop. But first his father had wanted him to get his college degree. It was the only stipulation his father had ever placed on him.

“I miss you guys, but then, you already know that, don’t you?” Davis murmured. He sighed. “Well, I just wanted to come by, make sure that they’re keeping the weeds off your plot and—”

Davis stopped abruptly, certain that he’d heard a noise out of place in the eerie quiet that enshrouded the cemetery at this hour.

Cocking his head in the direction of the sound, he listened closely.

Intently.

Davis could have sworn it was the sound of a shovel accidentally hitting stone.

At this hour? Nobody buried anyone before the sun came up.

Either his imagination had gotten the better of him, or—

“Later,” he promised the pair who remained eternally young, eternally smiling, in his mind. “Something sounds off. You know what I mean, Dad.”

And with that Detective First Class Davis Gilroy silently hurried in the direction he could have sworn he’d heard something out of keeping with the sleepy rhythm of the cemetery.

When it came to hunches, Davis was hardly ever wrong.

The next moment, as he turned a corner, he thought he saw something moving in the shadows.

Two somethings moving in the shadows.

As he gained ground, zigzagging and sprinting around headstones, Davis realized that the shadows were actually people. Two people, dressed entirely in black. Black pullovers, black slacks, black boots and black ski masks pulled down over their faces.

They looked like second-story cat burglars—except that they were here in a cemetery, hovering around one of the tombstones.

“Hey, you!” Davis called out. “Stop!”

The two dark figures did the exact opposite.

They bolted.

Chapter 1

Every morning, halfway through her run, Moira Cavanaugh asked herself the same question: Why am I doing this?

The answer she’d arrived at some time ago, and that still held as of this morning, was that if she didn’t put her running shoes on, throw on a sweatshirt and shorts, then pound on the pavement for a good hour, she would be moving around at half speed for the rest of the day. Not to mention that she’d spend the rest of the day feeling guilty for slacking off. Because of what she did for a living, she needed to be at the top of her game all day, every day.

So here she was, a police detective like most of the rest of her vast, sprawling clan, sweating and breathing progressively harder in the predawn light, counting off the seconds until she was nearing the end of this self-inflicted torture. And fervently wishing that she was more like her older brother, Malloy, who rolled out of bed, hit the ground running, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by the time he drove into the Aurora Police Department parking lot.

But she wasn’t like Malloy. To be in peak condition, she needed to jump-start her day, and running seemed to be the only thing that accomplished that for her. Varying her route caused her to remain wide-awake instead of merely going through the motions.

By choosing a different route each morning—one of ten or so she’d marked down for herself—she had to stay alert to take the right path home. She only had twenty minutes once her run was over to get ready and be in the car, on her way to work.

The only thing Moira hated more than being sluggish was being late.

Jogging first thing in the morning before she was even fully awake kept both from happening—even though it felt like hell while she was doing it.

This morning’s route was the creepy route—especially since the street lamp in front of the cemetery had picked today to go out and there was only a half-moon up in the sky to guide her past the tall, imposing, black wrought-iron gates.

Cemeteries didn’t bother her in the light of day, but there was almost a sinister vibe about them before the sun came up.

However, this was the route she’d drawn out of the candy dish where she kept all the routes she’d picked to run. Being guided by the luck of the draw was another way she had of combating monotony.

“Just a little farther, Moy, just a little farther,” she mumbled, egging herself on. “You can do this. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again. Pay no attention to the eerie place on your left. It’s just your imagination, you know that.”

Her imagination and the ghost stories Malloy had loved telling her every night when their ages were both still in the single digits.

“Just keep on running. There’re no such things as ghosts or creatures that go bump in the night, just Malloy, doing his best to scare you. Think about something else.”

His best, back then, had always been more than good enough and it had laid the foundation for the uneasy wariness she experienced whenever she passed a cemetery after twilight.

Logically, the fear had no foundation. Emotionally, though, was another story entirely.

Emotionally, it was—

Moira’s breath caught in her throat.

There were two shadowy figures racing out of the cemetery—and they looked as if they were running right toward her.

Moira jumped out of the way, just in case they actually were running toward her, but the evasive maneuver only managed to complicate matters.

One of the shadowy figures slammed right into her, knocking the air out of her.

Her imagination going full blast, Moira had half expected the shadowy figure to go right through her, but it hadn’t.

And now that she thought about it, the figure had felt very solid for a ghost.

She watched, stunned, as the “ghost” scrambled to its feet and then proceeded to run off despite the limp it seemed to have acquired from the collision.

The shadowy figures just kept on going as if she hadn’t been there.

Maybe to them she wasn’t.

“Hey!” she cried, rattled and stunned as well as beginning to lose her temper. The notion that the duo were ghosts had quickly disappeared. Nothing that hit so hard upon collision was made of vapor and air. She had definitely been hit by a flesh-and-blood human being. It frustrated her that she was unable to specify anything beyond that vague description.

Because of the fact that both running figures had been covered in black from head to foot, she couldn’t have even identified the gender of either.

The next second she saw the reason that the duo had come flying out of the cemetery. They were being chased by someone.

Him she could make out.

He was a tall, dark-blond haired man who ran with both the grace and speed of a professional athlete. He’d appeared to be gaining on the slower of the two shadowy figures until he’d seen her sprawled out on the pavement.

The thought that she’d had more graceful moments flashed through Moira’s mind.

Stopping for a second, the dour-looking stranger put his hand out to her. Her ego bruised, Moira accepted his help. There was a time for pride and a time for practicality. This was one of those latter times.

“You okay?” he asked in a resonant voice as he pulled her to her feet.

“Yes.”

She was about to add a coda that it actually depended on his definition of “okay” since her unexpected sudden meeting with the pavement had jarred her to the roots of her teeth, but Moira never got the opportunity.

The blond stranger was off and running after the duo in less time than it took for her words to form in her head.

Dusting herself off, Moira stared after the stranger’s departing figure, no longer able to see the two he was chasing and trying to overtake. They’d had too much of a head start on him.

It seemed as if everyone was in top physical form, she thought grudgingly. The next moment the chivalrous, silent stranger disappeared from her view.

Moira sighed. Maybe all this was just a figment of her bored imagination, but somehow she strongly doubted it.

At this point dawn was laying the finishing touches for its dramatic entrance, turning up the light around the edges of the visible world and then multiplying that light and spreading it around the surrounding area.

Moira turned and looked at the entrance to the cemetery. It no longer appeared like the scene of countless ghost stories waiting to be told—or lived—just a place where people brought their loved ones so the latter could have a final resting place.

Moira regarded the cemetery thoughtfully.

Just what was the big deal in the cemetery at this hour of the morning, anyway? The duo that had run right over her certainly seemed as if they could belong to a cult, but that wasn’t true of the man who had helped her to her feet then taken off before she could thank him.

Could he have been the night watchman or maybe the groundskeeper?

Curious, Moira glanced at her watch. If she ran at her best top speed to her condo, she could make it in twelve minutes. That left her about five to investigate whatever had been going on in the cemetery—if there actually had been something going on.

She regarded the grounds beyond the arched entrance.

That was an awful lot of territory to cover in five minutes. Still, mysteries of any kind had always intrigued her. She couldn’t resist.

Running in and moving fast, Moira managed to take in close to a quarter of the area. Scanning it, nothing caught her attention.

Maybe the duo had been just kids dressed in black to blend into the night as they explored the cemetery. Maybe they were doing it on a dare.

A lot of stupid things were done in the name of a dare.

If the blond stranger was a security guard—or a groundskeeper—then he’d been chasing them off.

She turned to leave the cemetery when something caught her eye. Aware of the seconds ticking by, Moira still felt compelled to investigate. It was in her DNA, not just because she was a Cavanaugh, but because she was part of the police department’s understaffed robbery division.

Moving closer, she realized what it was that had set off her alarm.

One of the headstones in the vicinity looked as if it had been knocked over and then righted again—but not all that well. The stone was tilted.

Stepping even closer, Moira read the writing on the headstone. “‘Emily Jenkins, beloved wife of Hal Jenkins.’” It also gave the year of her birth and her death. Whoever Emily Jenkins was, she had been buried a couple of months more than twenty years.

Moira regarded the list of the headstone. Maybe it was just due to regular shifting of the earth. After all, this was California. Some areas moved more than others. If there had been regular minor tremors or just simple shifting, that could have made the headstone move and lean as if it had had one too many.

Reaching out, Moira touched the headstone. She immediately saw that it was not only listing, it was downright loose. That took effort.

Human effort.

Could the people who had knocked her down been grave robbers?

Grave robbers? Moira, this is Aurora. Nobody even touches a headstone if they can help it.

Yet what other explanation could there be? This needed further examination—but not at this moment, Moira sternly reminded herself. She had someplace to be.

Taking off from the cemetery to avoid being late to work, Moira made herself a promise to come back as soon as she could today to investigate the scene thoroughly.

Emily Jenkins had been violated—or at least her grave had.

What she needed to find out was why.

* * *

Moira made it back to her home in what amounted to a new record, at least for her. Her lungs were near bursting as she shed her clothes all the way to the shower, littering the floor with them.

Jumping into the glass enclosure, she turned on the water before she had even securely locked the shower door. Five very swift minutes later she was toweling herself dry, leaving tiny pools of water to mark her path to her closet.

She had no time for breakfast or the life-affirming coffee she usually swore by. Instead, dressed, Moira was back out on the pavement less than twelve minutes after she had first inserted her key into her condo’s front door.

She hoped she could find something edible and at least vaguely nutritious in the vending machines at the station. She had her doubts.

Pulling into the station’s rear parking lot, Moira could have sworn she saw someone who vaguely reminded her of the dark-blond stranger who had helped her to her feet.

At least, he resembled the man from the rear, which was the only view she had at the moment. Tall, dark blond and broad shoulders, he could have been the stranger from the cemetery.

Or, more likely, just another private citizen coming to the station to lodge a complaint or to respond to a call from one of the many police detectives inhabiting the building.

Her curiosity still on high alert, Moira quickened her pace in an attempt to catch up with the blond stranger.

He entered the building before she did. Moira stepped up her pace again.

As she got into the building, she discovered that not only should she have quickened her pace, she should have increased it to a sprint. The stranger she was trying so hard to get a better look at was nowhere to be seen.

“Must have caught an elevator,” she told herself under her breath.

It was either that or accept the explanation that the stranger had vanished into thin air. She preferred the elevator.

“You know, they say the mind’s the first to go for some police detectives. Of course, that’s assuming that they have a mind to lose, which, in your case, the jury is still out about.”

Moira didn’t have to turn around to know who was talking to her. But she’d learned a long time ago that ignoring her brother and pretending he wasn’t there didn’t make him go away. If anything, it just made Malloy up his ante.

With a sigh, she turned around to face him. “I see that someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning.” The smile she forced to her lips looked deliberately phony by all accounts.

The grin on the tall, handsome detective’s face was, according to more than half the female population, incredibly enticing.

“Actually, little sister,” he told her with a wicked wink, “it was on the right side of the lovely Patricia Morgan, but why quibble over words?”

“Why indeed?” Moira asked crisply, striding toward the elevator quickly.

She knew there was no losing her brother, but for the sake of the game, she had to look as if she at least tried.

“Hey, you okay?” Malloy asked, catching her by the shoulder to take a closer look at her face. “You look like someone rode you hard and put you away wet,” he observed seriously.

Moira pulled away from him, although her expression never changed. “Ah, you’re as golden-tongued as always, big brother. I can see why all the ladies find you so terribly charming. You obviously have to beat them off with a stick.”

“Seriously, Moira, you all right?” Malloy asked. “The back of your head is partially damp. Are you trying for some sort of a new style, or did they turn off your electricity while you were in the middle of blow-drying your hair?”

This time Moira frowned. She hated when he started being too observant when it came to her. “You’re the detective, you tell me.”

Malloy arched a bemused eyebrow. “Since when has anyone ever been able to tell you anything?” he called after her as Moira walked into the elevator.

“I always listen to someone who makes sense,” she replied innocently, then added, “I guess that leaves you out, doesn’t it?” just as the elevator doors closed, taking her away from his view.

Only when the doors were securely closed did Moira reach behind her head and touch the back of her hair—and frowned.

Damn, she thought, annoyance nibbling away at her. Malloy was right. For some reason, in her hurry to get to the precinct on time, she had somehow neglected to dry the length of hair right in the middle.

She briefly thought about going into the bathroom and making unorthodox use of the hand-dryer, but shrugged away the idea.

With luck, no one would look in her direction until that section of her hair air-dried itself.

Right now she had something more important on her mind, Moira reminded herself as she reached her floor. She wanted to tell her lieutenant about the suspicious scene she’d stumbled across at the cemetery.

Much as she hated being restrained, she knew that she needed his blessings before she could begin to investigate.

Chapter 2

Before getting down to the business at hand, Moira paused in the break room long enough to get a cup of what passed for coffee in the precinct. It was universally agreed that the quality was poor, but at least the coffee was hot. In addition, it was also extremely bitter. The combination definitely revved up her engine and put her in a fast-forward mode.

Fortified and sufficiently jolted into a keenly alert state, Moira placed what was left of the black swill on her desk and marched herself into her superior’s small, glass-enclosed office.

Legend had it that Lieutenant Jacob Carver had once been a passably decent-looking man. Years on the force had etched themselves into his jowl-lined face, giving him what appeared to be a permanent hangdog frown, accented by scowling, bushy eyebrows that came close to meeting over the bridge of his patrician nose; all of which looked more than mildly intimidating to most newly minted detectives assigned to his squad.

Although Moira didn’t welcome interaction with the less-than-jovial man, she wasn’t intimidated by him, either. Growing up in a family of seven, most of which had excelled in rowdiness before they had reached the age of three, had given her a spine of steel and a sense of self that served Moira quite well in her chosen field. She was polite, and deferred to higher authority when she had to, but she was never intimidated.

The door to Carver’s office was closed. He wasn’t—and never had been—an open-door kind of superior. If a subordinate wanted an audience with the man, they had to follow a number of rules—the first of which was knocking before entering. The second of which was to be invited in before entering.

Moira paused to knock and then, not waiting for an invitation, she opened the lieutenant’s door. “Got a minute, Lieutenant?”

“Got sixty of them in every hour,” he responded without looking up from the report he was currently writing.

Since Carver hadn’t said no, Moira took that as an invitation by default and proceeded to enter the man’s inner sanctum.

“I’d like to run something past you,” she told the man, closing the door behind her.

Ordinarily she would have just left it open, but she knew that Carver was incredibly secretive about every conversation he had with anyone, especially any of his people. It didn’t matter about what. He liked maintaining an air of secrecy.

Carver ignored her for a moment, undoubtedly with the hope that she would simply go away. But everyone in the precinct had come to realize that the name Cavanaugh was synonymous with stubbornness and, though it irritated him, he’d learned that the one assigned to his division was no exception.

So when Moira remained inside the room, he sighed, put down his pen—a holdout of a bygone era, Carver still liked to use pen and paper rather than keyboard and mouse—and looked up.

“And what is it that you want to run past me, Cavanaugh?” he asked wearily.

Moira had long since decided not to take offense at the way Carver uttered her surname. There were Cavanaughs in every department of the precinct and, while most of the police personnel were on friendly terms with them, there were others who were not. The resentful ones believed that the Cavanaugh name instantly bought those who wore it a certain amount of leeway and gave them access to shortcuts that other officers and detectives were not privy to.

Carver was on the fence when it came to buying into that philosophy.

She could, however, detect the resentment in her lieutenant’s voice whenever he said her last name in a tone that sounded as if he was partially taunting her. Such as now.

“When I was out for my run this morning—” Moira started.

As she began to answer his question, Carver reached for a powdered-sugar-dusted cruller, one of two that he always picked up every morning on his way to the precinct. He paused for a moment, giving her a dark look as if she’d thrown the line in to mock him and the pear-like shape his body had taken on over the years.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re big on health, aren’t you?”

The look in Carver’s brown eyes challenged her as he bit into his cruller with a vengeance. Powdered sugar rained down on the page he’d been writing on, but he seemed not to notice.

“It wakes me up,” Moira replied matter-of-factly. She wasn’t about to get sucked into a debate about the pros and cons of what she did in her private life. “Anyway, as I passed by St. Joseph’s Cemetery entrance—”

Carver stopped eating. “You run past the cemetery?” he asked incredulously. “Maybe you should transfer to Homicide if you like dead people so much.”

Moira had no idea how the man managed to make the leap from what she was telling him by way of background information to what he’d just said, but again, she detected the antagonistic note in his voice and didn’t rise to the bait.

“I like being on this squad just fine, sir,” she replied. “Anyway, these two figures—”

“Figures?” he questioned skeptically. “You mean, like, zombies?” It was clear that he was mocking her and not about to take anything she said seriously unless she forced him to acknowledge it in that light.

“No. Like, robbers, sir,” Moira corrected matter-of-factly, doing her best to get to her point and not be sidetracked by his interjections. “They were dressed in black and wearing ski masks. One of them ran right into me and just kept going—”

Carver dusted off his hands and reached for the crumpled napkin in the bag that contained the crullers. “I’m guessing there’s a point to this ghost story, Detective.”

“There is, sir. I went into the cemetery to find out why the two figures were fleeing—”

He eyed her impatiently. “Let me guess, Dracula was after them.”

She hadn’t wanted to mention this until she’d gotten Carver to agree to let her investigate the tampered-with gravesite. “No, as a matter of fact, there was some blond guy running after them—”

“Ah, the plot thickens,” Carver mocked. “Does this ‘blond guy’ have a name?”

“I’m sure he does, sir, but he ran by too fast for me to ask him,” she said, now impatiently trying to get to her point.

“Too bad, this sounded like it might have gotten interesting.” Carver looked wistfully at the second cruller but apparently decided to wait until he was alone again before having it. “Is there a point to this haunting little tale, Cavanaugh?”

“I went into the cemetery and saw that one of the headstones had been disturbed. I think—as strange as it might sound—that they were trying to rob a grave.”

Carver stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Certainly she’d lost his interest, mild as it had been to begin with. “And you want to do what about that?”

Moira squared her shoulders defensively a little bit as she said, “I’d like permission to investigate the site so I can see if they were trying to dig something up.”

Carver’s frown deepened. To his way of thinking, he had likely indulged the detective way too long. It was obvious that he wanted her out of his office and out of his thinning hair. “In case it has escaped your attention, Cavanaugh, this is the robbery division.”

“I know that, sir,” Moira answered evenly, painfully aware that shouting at the man would get her nowhere except reprimanded—if not suspended. “Grave robbing would fall under that heading.”

“Grave robbing,” he repeated, clearly stunned.

This wasn’t going well but Carver, despite all his foibles, was, at bottom, a decent detective, or had been before he’d assumed command of Robbery. That was the part of him she was attempting to reach.

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes narrowed as he pinned her in place. “Who complained?”

Moira wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Who complained?” he repeated evenly before spelling it out for her. “In order to go out and investigate this so-called ‘headstone disturbance’ we need to have someone file a complaint.”

The lieutenant was crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. He only did that when it served his purpose—or he didn’t want to okay something. She knew for a fact the man bent rules when he wanted to.

Playing along, she said, “Okay, I’ll file.”

Carver sighed dramatically. “Didn’t anyone in that family of yours teach you anything, Cavanaugh? You can’t be the one to file a complaint. In this case, as you’ve laid it out, you’re a jogger, not an interested party.”

“But I’m very interested,” she persisted, picking up on the word he’d used. “What if there’s a cult of grave robbers out there?”

“In Aurora?” he mocked. Growing just the slightest bit serious, Carver added, “Then we would have heard about it.”

“Maybe they’re just getting started,” Moira countered.

Carver eyed her in moody silence for several seconds, weighing options. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

Her first reaction was to say no but she squelched it. Knowing better than to go up against the lieutenant outright, Moira tried to approach the subject in a calm, logical manner. “I really think there’s something to this, Lieutenant.”

“Of course you do.” Carver swallowed the curse that rose to his lips. He paused for a long moment, as if weighing the pros and cons of her request. “Okay. I’m a reasonable man,” he told her.

The jury’s still out on that, Moira couldn’t help thinking.

“Go and investigate your heart out—just you, not your partner,” he clarified, adding, “Warner’s got real police work to do.”

Moira had always maintained that she could get along with anyone, even the devil, but there was something about Detective Alfred Warner that made her wish she had another partner instead of the older, by-the-book detective.

Maybe it was because the man reminded her too much of Carver.

Whatever the reason, she was more than happy to investigate whatever was going on at the cemetery on her own. She wondered if the man realized that.

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Talk to the cemetery caretaker,” Carver suggested. “Find out if he knows anything or has noticed anything funny going on. See if this has happened before. But if you can’t find anything—and I’m talking something tangible here—in forty-eight hours, that’s it. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Forty-eight hours, that’s your window, Cavanaugh. Understood?”

“Understood, sir,” she quickly responded. “And thank you, sir.”

It was obvious from the expression on his face that he was far from happy about this, but he didn’t want to just arbitrarily ignore what she’d brought him just in case there was something to it.

“Yeah, yeah.” Carver waved her away. “Just get out of my office. And close the door behind you,” he added sharply.

“I always do, sir,” she responded with a smile as she gripped the doorknob.

She thought she heard Carver mutter something caustic under his breath as she left, but she knew better than to ask what. Pretending she hadn’t heard his voice, she closed the door behind her.

As she paused by her desk to make a notation on her computer, she glanced up to see that her partner had just walked in and was approaching his desk.

The next moment he was removing his jacket and draping the twenty-year-old article of clothing over the back of his chair.

Glancing over toward her, he asked suspiciously, “Who brightened your day?”

She was not about to waste any time going into specifics. Warner had a habit of taking everything apart and down to the tiniest component. Opting for brevity, Moira simply said, “The lieutenant just gave me a case to look into.”

Warner dropped into his chair. The fifteen pounds he had gained on the job in the past year caused the chair to creak loudly in protest.

“Hell, I’ve already got too much to do,” he complained.

“This is just a solo case, Warner,” she told him cheerfully. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

Which, once the words were out, she knew was exactly what Warner was about to do since she wasn’t giving him any details. The detective was not keen on exerting more effort than he possibly had to, but neither did he like being purposely excluded from anything.

Moira admitted to herself that it was small of her to bait him this way, but she had heard the man say several nasty things not just about her but about others in her family. It had been all she could do to hold her tongue when she did.

Making the man feel as if he was missing out on something was, in her estimation, merely a small payback.

“See you later,” she told him cheerfully as she walked away, heading toward the doorway.

“Wait, what’s this case about?” Warner called after her.

Moira pretended she didn’t hear the question and just kept walking.

Her smile widened. Maybe she was being petty, but as far as she was concerned, Warner deserved it. She couldn’t ask for another partner—there had to be a specific reason for the request and saying that the man annoyed her just wouldn’t fly with the lieutenant—so she had to satisfy herself with this.

Besides, according to her father, this was the kind of thing that built character. Had she actually said anything to her father, he would have advised her to stick it out with Warner.

“I’m going to have one hell of a character by the time that man retires,” she mumbled to herself as she pressed for the elevator. “If I survive,” she added in an even softer whisper.

Moira glanced around to see if anyone was nearby who might have overheard her monologue, but although there were a few people in the hallway, no one appeared to be in close hearing range.

She would have to watch herself, Moira silently chided. She talked to herself far too often. She didn’t want anyone thinking, or worse, saying, that she was crazy.

The elevator still hadn’t arrived. Impatient, Moira pressed on the down button a second time.

Where was that damn elevator, anyway?

It seemed to her that the thing ran slower and slower every day. She was anxious to get going before Carver suddenly changed his mind and had someone come after her so he could tell her to drop her yet-to-begin investigation.

Now that she had gotten the green light to investigate the scene at the cemetery, she intended to make the most of it, especially since she was flying solo.

She could tell by Carver’s expression that he hadn’t thought there was anything to her hunch. But she did. She was a Cavanaugh and she had yet to meet a single one of her extended clan who didn’t believe in hunches or rely on them heavily when push came to shove.

The elevator still hadn’t made an appearance.

Annoyed—and growing more so—Moira glanced up to see that according to what was registering above the elevator doors, the car was still on the sixth floor, where it had been for at least the past three minutes.

What if it was broken again? The elevator had been out of commission for half a day last Tuesday. And before that it had been down for the better part of two days about a month ago.

Giving up, Moira went to the stairwell. Good exercise anyway.

The heavy door shut behind her as she entered the stairwell. Her hand was on the banister when she heard the sharp staccato of a pair of men’s shoes hitting the metal steps.

Obviously someone else had lost patience with the elevator, too, she thought, glancing overhead to where the sound of quickening footsteps was coming from.

Her mouth dropped open as, for the second time that morning, she found herself looking at the blond stranger from the cemetery.

Chapter 3

As she stood there, with the fire door closed at her back, Moira watched the blond stranger quickly make his way to the next staircase. Dressed exactly the same way as when he’d helped her to her feet outside the cemetery, the stranger appeared to take no notice of her as he headed down the stairs.

“Hey, you!” Moira called out, stunned that he’d made no acknowledgment whatsoever that he wasn’t alone in the stairwell. “Wait!”

Apparently the man had hoped to just keep going. However, since she was the only other person in the stairwell, surely he realized she was trying to get his attention.

He paused for a moment midway down the stairs and was obviously waiting for her to either say something or to ask him a question.

“What are you doing here?” Moira asked, cutting the distance between them quickly. If the man from the cemetery was surprised to see her or even recognized her, Moira noted that he gave no such indication.

“Going down the stairs,” he noted with minimal inflection. “Same as you, would be my guess.”

Was he being funny or didn’t he understand the gist of her question? Upon closer scrutiny, he looked too intelligent to be dumb, so her guess leaned toward the former, even if his expression remained dour.

“I meant in the precinct.” Her mind gravitated back to the cemetery and to what Carver had said about needing someone to sign a complaint regarding the headstone being disturbed. Was that what he was doing here? “Are you registering a complaint?” she asked. It seemed a logical explanation for his being there, although not why he was in the stairwell.

There was no inflection in his voice as the stranger responded, “Not unless you intend to do something complaint-worthy.”

Was he deliberately drawing this out or had she just misjudged him, after all, and he was just being obtuse? She tried again.

“Then why are you in the building?”

The attractive, breathless woman asked an awful lot of questions considering that they didn’t know one another, Davis thought.

“Well, for one thing, they pay me to be here.”

He watched as her eyebrows pulled together in bewilderment beneath her blond bangs.

“Wait—you work here?”

“Yes.”

Moira regarded the stranger suspiciously, once again reevaluating him. He was having fun at her expense, she decided. The man probably was used to getting by on his good looks. Well, that wasn’t going to fly with her. “Doing what?” she asked.

A slight, whimsical expression passed over his almost immobile face. “As much or as little as they want me to.”

“You’re a cop.”

“You’d make a hell of a contestant on one of those quiz shows. Me, I don’t have any patience for that kind of thing. So,” he concluded, calling an end to the unofficial interrogation session, “if you’re finished asking questions—”

Moira took another two steps down, putting herself directly into his path and temporarily blocking his escape. “You were the guy chasing those two people at the cemetery, weren’t you?”

He stifled a sigh. “Obviously you’re not finished asking questions. Why are you asking questions?” he asked, pinning her with a glare meant to put her in her place.

“Because, to begin with, I’m not usually run over at six thirty in the morning—” she began.

He cut her off, pointing out the obvious. “I didn’t run you over.”

“No, but you were chasing the people who did,” she reminded him. “Why were you chasing them?” Had he caught them in the act of grave robbing or was there another reason he had been after them?

He hesitated.

She wouldn’t know that it was Davis’s habit to play it close to the vest and never reveal too much, even when the one doing the questioning was a bright-eyed, eager blonde his father might have described as being very “easy on the eyes.”

“Let’s just say that I had a couple of questions of my own for them,” he answered simply.

“Like why they were disturbing a gravesite?” she asked pointedly.

He watched her for a long, hard moment and Moira felt as if this cop—if he really was one—was looking right into her head.

She didn’t care for the way that made her feel.

“What would you know about that?” he finally asked her.

“Nothing,” Moira admitted, “which is why I’m asking questions.”

He didn’t look as if he believed her. The man had the ability to make her want to squirm even though she was telling the truth. Only her mother used to be able to do that, Moira thought in grudging admiration. It took effort to meet his stare and not give any indication of what she was feeling.

“But you knew the gravesite was disturbed.” He said it like an accusation.

Moira refused to let him get to her. Instead she pretended she was talking to an uncooperative witness.

“Because after you helped me to my feet,” she told him matter-of-factly, “I went into the cemetery to see what was going on that would make three people come tearing out of there.”

She watched his rugged, handsome face grow stern.

“You make it sound as if I was with them. I wasn’t. I was trying to find out the same thing,” he informed her somewhat grudgingly.

She could see that getting information out of this man would be just like pulling teeth—that only made her more determined to get it.

“So you don’t know what they were doing there?” she persisted.

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

Moira paused for a moment, debating whether or not to say anything further.

Until a couple of minutes ago she was more than happy to be investigating this possible grave robbery on her own, but it never hurt to have another set of eyes on the subject. And the blond stranger’s eyes were a really intriguing shade of blue; a perfect complement to his dark blond, somewhat shaggy hair.

Moira made up her mind.

“Want to find out?” she asked him. When he didn’t answer immediately, she decided he probably thought she was putting him on, so she went on to try to convince him to join forces.

“My lieutenant’s giving me forty-eight hours to figure out why someone would be messing with a grave at the cemetery. I could use some help. Two sets of eyes are always better than one,” she added quickly, hoping that would convince him to agree to join her.

“I don’t work in your division,” he pointed out evenly.

Moira waved away the observation. “That’s no problem. Detectives get loaned out and cross department lines all the time. I could put in a request with your lieutenant—”

“Captain,” he corrected.

Moira never lost a beat. “With your captain,” she said, “and ask him to allow you to help me with the investigation.”

“What would you say was your reason?” he asked, then challenged, “Why would you need my help over someone else’s, say, like, in your own department?”

She had an answer ready for that, as well. “I could tell him that you were there at the time, that you think you saw something—”

Davis cut her off. “I saw the same thing that you did.”

Why was he fighting her on this? Didn’t he want to investigate these potential grave robbers? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he? Was there something here she was missing?

“Still,” she continued, “you were in the cemetery at the same time they were—and you chased after them, causing them to flee the premises, possibly before they could finish doing whatever it was they were doing.” The more she talked, the more she sold herself on the idea, growing excited at the same time. “So, what do you say?” she asked brightly.

His was not the face of a man who had been won over, Moira couldn’t help noticing.

“I say that I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

“Well, that’s easy enough to fix.” She put her hand out. “I’m Detective Moira Cavanaugh, robbery division.”

He made no effort to take her hand. Instead he repeated her name. “Cavanaugh.”

Moira dropped her hand. She knew adversity when she saw it. “One of the many.”

She attempted to read his expression and found it utterly impossible. It was like trying to guess at the thoughts of a glass of water. Was he one of the ones on the force who outright resented her because of her name? She would like to believe that if he was, something in his eyes would give his feelings away. Disdain. Annoyance. Something.

But he didn’t flinch. Didn’t look down his nose at her. Didn’t reel off his list of imagined Cavanaugh offenses.

All he’d done was repeat her name.

So she tried again. “So, what do you say?”

He appeared unmoved. “I say that there’s probably nothing to investigate.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked. Then she qualified her question, aware that what she’d say would probably get to him. “Unless, of course, you’re the one who disturbed the grave and those two characters in black surprised you at it.”

She watched the man’s face as she delivered her last guess. But there was no telltale look to give him away.

Damn but he was a hard nut to crack.

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a wild imagination?” he asked her.

Well, at least she’d gotten a reaction out of him, Moira thought. “If cops didn’t have wild imaginations, half the crimes wouldn’t be solved. Thinking outside the box is what does it.”

“There’s thinking outside the box and then there’s thinking outside the whole house,” he countered.

It was easy to see which he thought she was guilty of.

“You still haven’t given me an answer,” she pointed out, crossing her fingers as she asked, “Want to partner up for this?”

“No,” he replied flatly.

What Moira couldn’t possibly know was that the last thing he wanted was a partner. He’d lost two, not to mention both his parents, and at this point, he felt that bad luck always followed in his wake, striking down anyone he interacted with. He and everyone else would be better off if he just remained a loner, the way he was.

The man on the staircase had aroused her curiosity to a higher level, but even so, Moira knew she couldn’t force him to be her partner. Nor could she get him to answer all the questions that were, even now, popping up and multiplying in her head.

“Why?” she asked. “Tell me. Please.” Getting answers would have to be done with finesse, but only if she could get this man to talk to her on a regular basis—which she could, but only if they partnered up.

The old saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink ran through her head.

“My answer is just no,” he replied.

Now what?

Moira took a conscious, figurative step back and shrugged. “Your loss, Detective...?” She let her voice trail off, waiting for him to fill in a name.

Instead he replied, “That is a matter of opinion.”

He hadn’t responded the way she’d hoped he would. The man just didn’t know how to play the game, she thought, frustrated.

Or maybe he did but just refused to.

Moira took one more stab at it. “Oh c’mon, you’ve got to have a name.”

“Yes, I do.”

For just the tiniest split second she entertained the idea of justifiable homicide. Then, taking a deep breath, she asked, “So what is it?”

If nothing else, the woman had succeeded in making him curious as to how far she was going to go with this. “There’s no reason for you to know.”

“Detective,” she said, a slight edge working its way into her voice, “there’re just the two of us in this stairwell and accidents can happen at any place, any time.”

Disciplined restraint kept him from laughing at her. “I’m no expert, but my guess is that I outweigh you by a good fifty pounds.”

She was one step below him and from this vantage point, he towered over her. Moira Cavanaugh didn’t give an inch as a fire came into her eyes. “The first rule of martial arts is using your opponent’s weight against them.”

To Moira’s surprise, she heard a dry laugh escape the detective’s lips.

“You really are determined to get your own way, aren’t you?” he asked her. “Let me guess, you’re an only child who was always indulged.”

Boy, did he have the wrong number. “I’m one of seven who had to fight her way to the top each and every time. Nobody indulged anybody in my family,” she informed him proudly.

There was no point in his telling her that she wasn’t the only one trained in martial arts—his parents had signed him up for classes to help build his confidence because he had been small for his age and had been picked on in school. What he’d learned at that very young age had helped him hold more than his own in life.

He regarded her in prolonged silence, then, just as she appeared ready to walk away, said, “I’ll talk to my captain myself.”

Stunned—she’d been ready to give up on the man for now—Moira wanted to make sure she understood what he was telling her. “Are you telling me that you’re willing to partner up with me?”

He didn’t answer her directly. “You said your lieutenant gave you forty-eight hours.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “I guess I can put up with anything for forty-eight hours—as long as that’s the real time limit,” he qualified, looking at her as if he could easily tell if she was lying.

She met his scrutiny head-on. “That’s the real time limit he gave me.”

He caught the last three words she’d added on and wondered if that was the loophole she was giving herself. Not that it really mattered. He’d been thinking about looking into the disturbed grave himself, just in his off-hours. What this woman proposed gave him official capacity to do it, which made the investigation that much easier to undertake.

Besides, she did have a point. Two sets of eyes—even devious ones as she appeared to have—were better than just one set.

And, whatever they found—or didn’t find as the case might well be—this partnership was only for forty-eight hours.

“Okay, I’m in,” he told her.

Since this man had turned out to be a human version of Mount Everest, her victory was almost heady. “That’s great! There’s only one more thing,” she added as if in afterthought.

Davis was already beginning to regret his words. “What?” he asked her warily.

“What do I call you?” Moira asked. He still hadn’t given her his name.

“As little as possible.”

Compared to this man, Malloy was starting to seem like a veritable pussycat. “I still need to call you something.”

He wasn’t hung up on rank, labels or names. He shrugged indifferently. “Pick whatever you like.”

Moira sighed. “Don’t make this difficult—I have a sister working here who can make computers sit up and beg at will. If I give her a basic description of you, she can get me a name to pin to it in under an hour. It would be a waste of her time and the department’s resources, but if that’s the way you want to play it, then that’s the way it’ll have to be played.”

Davis had a feeling she wasn’t bluffing—which he found both irritating and somewhat intriguing at the same time. He supposed, in the absolute sense, he rather liked the fact that she was feisty as hell and didn’t give up easily.

In a more practical sense, it would probably be the factor that would make him want to get his hands around her throat and squeeze—most likely in the not too distant future.

But, to forestall that eventuality for at least a little while, he decided to answer her question. “It’s Davis.”

“Ah, progress.” He didn’t miss the touch of sarcasm in her voice. “As in first name, or last?” she asked.

Rather than specify, he just said his whole name. “Davis Gilroy.”

Moira smiled at him and although he told himself that it didn’t matter either way, the woman did have a rather warm, attractive smile.

“Pleased to meet you, Detective Davis Gilroy.” She put out her hand again and this time, to avoid another potential clash, he shook it. “You’ll be working with me as part of the Robbery Division,” she informed him. “Until we find out otherwise, this case is going to be worked as a grave robbery.”

He looked at her, surprised. “You’re kidding.”

Just how had she managed to talk her superior into that? As far as he knew, there hadn’t been a single reported incident of a grave robbery in all of Aurora’s history.

He had his doubts that this was what it was, but right now he had no other explanation for it, either.

“Frequently and with aplomb,” she replied to his response. “But I’m afraid I’m not kidding this time, Gilroy.”

It was a shame that he didn’t have a seat belt to fasten, Davis caught himself thinking, because he had a very strong feeling he was in for a very bumpy ride.

Chapter 4

Davis assumed that since he’d agreed to this short-lived partnership, the woman who had waylaid him on the stairs would now step aside and allow him to pass.

But she remained right where she was, still blocking his way to the next floor.

“So who will I be talking to, Gilroy?” she asked.

She’d managed to catch him off guard—again—even though he did his best not to show it. “You mean right now?”

She noted the slight shift in his jaw muscles. Why had her question surprised him? “No time like the present. We don’t exactly have the luxury of time on our side.”

Moira realized that there were a lot of things about this detective she didn’t know. “What department are you with?”

“Major Crimes,” Davis answered. “But I thought we already settled that part. I told you I’d talk to the captain about this.”

At least, he had assumed that she’d agreed with him when he’d told her that he could talk to his captain about investigating the case. He was starting to think that assumption wasn’t a wise course when it came to Moira Cavanaugh.

Moira waved away the detective’s words. “I can sell this better than you can,” she told him. “I got my lieutenant’s okay to investigate and that wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Since he said yes, I figure he’d want me to use whatever resources I needed in order to bring this case to a swift close.”

Davis was starting to get an uneasy feeling about this. He wasn’t a rules-and-regulations kind of man, but neither did he appreciate an all-out rebel, either. He liked operating under the radar whenever possible. That wasn’t accomplished by pairing up with a rebel, no matter how short the duration of that coupling might be.

“And you see me as a resource?” he questioned.

“It’s a hunch,” she told the detective matter-of-factly. “The Cavanaughs are really big on hunches.”

This was just for forty-eight hours, he reminded himself. How bad could things get in forty-eight hours? And, who knew, maybe working together they’d stumble across something important.

“Then I guess we’d better turn around,” he told her. “Major Crimes is on the sixth floor.”

Moira looked up the length of the stairwell. “That’s three and a half flights up.”

Davis managed to keep the unexpected note of amusement he felt out of his voice. “That a problem, Cavanaugh?”

He was challenging her. She would have much rather ridden the elevator, but if he expected her to back off then he would be sorely disappointed.

“No, it’s not a problem. Lead the way,” Moira told him.

Turning sharply on the stairs, he began to lead the way to the sixth floor and Major Crimes.

Moira was determined to keep up with him. After all, she ran every morning just to keep in shape. But there was something very different about running in more or less a straight line compared to quickly climbing up the stairs at a speed Detective Gilroy had deliberately assumed.

She had stamina, but he had the advantage of longer legs. Plus she had the feeling that Gilroy did this sort of thing on a regular basis. Did that mean he was too impatient to wait for the sluggish elevator?

Impatience was often seen as a flaw by many and it gave her hope that the man she’d elected to partner up with wasn’t as much of a self-contained robot as he pretended to be.

Wanting to ask the detective a question, Moira saved her energy—and her breath—until they reached the sixth floor. Once out of the stairwell and into the corridor, she reinitiated the conversation, convinced that if she didn’t, Gilroy would be more than happy to remain silent until he was forced to speak.

She glanced down at his hand before beginning. There was no wedding ring on his third finger, no jewelry at all. Granted that not every married man wore a wedding ring, but she had a feeling that in Gilroy’s case it was because he had no reason to wear one. She highly doubted that any reasonable woman would have willingly resigned herself to a life dedicated to speaking as little as possible, like a Franciscan monk who’d taken a vow of silence.

Silence had never been her thing. Questions fairly burst out of her mouth on a regular basis. Now was no exception.

“What were you doing at the cemetery so early in the morning, anyway?” she asked, addressing her question to his back since he was still walking ahead of her.

Davis came to a dead stop.

She wasn’t prepared for the detective to stop walking so abruptly and she couldn’t prevent herself from slamming right up against his broad, hard back.

Davis swung around and glared at her. “I want to make something very clear, Cavanaugh.” He all but growled at her.

Moira put up her hand to stop his flow of words for a second. “You might have to wait until the stars stop swirling around my head,” she quipped.

If she meant the remark to loosen him up a little, it didn’t. Gilroy didn’t crack a smile or even seem to hear her.

“I’ll help you investigate whatever’s going on at the cemetery, but I’m not going to continue being on the receiving end of your idea of Twenty Questions,” he snapped.

“How about if we both play?” she suggested with a wide smile. “You answer my questions and I’ll answer yours.” It seemed only fair to her.

“I don’t have any questions,” he informed her tersely. The less he knew about her, the easier it would be to walk away when the forty-eight hours were finally up.

Moira stared at him. “You’re serious?” she asked incredulously. Had she stumbled across the one man in the state who had absolutely no curiosity?

The detective’s expression remained immobile. “Totally.”

She just couldn’t get herself to believe him. “You have no questions for me?”

“None,” he replied flatly.

Moira shook her head in complete disbelief. He really was a robot.

“Then you’d be the first,” she told him.

She glanced down the hall and saw the open door that had Major Crimes written across the opaque glass in black block letters. “This must be the place,” she declared cheerfully. Moira braced herself inwardly. Time to beard the lion in his den. “What did you say your captain’s name was?”

“I didn’t.”

Just when she assumed he was leaving it up to her to find out, Gilroy said, “Ryan. His name is Captain Ryan.”

She nodded, taking the information in. Walking inside the squad room, she immediately noted that the layout was the same as it was on the third floor. And, like her lieutenant, the superior officer here had a small, glass-enclosed space—whimsically called an office—to call his own.

From the look of it, Captain Ryan was currently in, and he was on the phone.

“Give me ten minutes,” she told Davis.

He gave her a skeptical look as she started to walk toward the other end of the room. “You don’t want me in there with you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your space, Gilroy. Wait here,” she told him, nodding at the squad room. “If I find myself needing you for backup, I’ll wave at you,” she told him just before she proceeded to quickly stride toward the captain’s office.

Unlike Lieutenant Carver, the man who oversaw Major Crimes had his door open despite the fact that he was still on the phone.

It was like watching an accident waiting to happen, Davis thought, perched on the corner of his desk as he looked across the room and observed her.

He fully expected to hear Ryan’s voice come booming across the office once the almost annoyingly perky blonde began to state her case to ask for him on loan for the surreal purpose of looking into a case of possible grave robbery.

But five, then ten minutes went by and the walls did not shake, nor did Ryan’s door rattle.

Davis continued to watch his temporary partner in mounting fascination.

Twelve minutes after she entered Ryan’s inner sanctum, she came out again, an even wider smile—if possible—on her lips.

“Well?” he asked her somewhat skeptically once she reached him.

“Well, you’ve got a very nice captain,” she told him, a glint of mischief in her diamond-blue eyes. “Oh, and you’re mine for the next forty-eight hours,” she added as if that bit of information amounted to just an afterthought instead of the crux of her visit.

Mike Manetti, one of the oldest detectives in the Major Crimes squad—and some felt way overdue to embrace retirement—grinned broadly at him as he and his very temporary partner passed by his less than tidy desk.

“Lucky so-and-so,” Manetti quipped, keeping his assessment clean because of the woman with the notoriously taciturn detective.

Moira smiled at the white-haired, older detective. “I doubt he thinks so,” she said as if confiding in Manetti.

“Then Gilroy’s a slower learner than I gave him credit for,” Manetti told her with a pronounced wink. “Make the most of this, boy. Make the most of this,” Manetti advised, raising his voice so that it followed both of them out into the hall.

Davis deliberately ignored what Manetti had just said. Instead, he thought of his captain and the cheerful expression on the other man’s face.

“What the hell did you say to Ryan?” Davis asked.

He’d been fairly convinced that the captain, in the final analysis, would turn down her request, which would have admittedly put him back to square one, investigating whatever was going on at the cemetery alone. All in all, that was not exactly an unwelcome scenario even though he had already admitted to her that two heads were usually better than one.

“That my lieutenant would appreciate his cooperation in lending out one of his best detectives for this rather unique and hush-hush investigation into some unorthodox dealings at St. Joseph’s Cemetery. I mentioned that some of Aurora’s most prominent citizens had loved ones who were buried there and that they wanted this looked into and taken care of quickly and quietly.” And then that damnable grin of hers returned to momentarily sidetrack his attention. “Oh, and I might have also mentioned that my great-uncle sent his best.”

Davis looked at her suspiciously. Here it was; the crux of it. “Great-uncle?”

Moira didn’t even try to suppress the smile that spread across her face. “Yes. Brian Cavanaugh. He’s the Chief of—”

“Ds, yes, I know,” he all but snapped, saving her the trouble of making what he assumed was an announcement. His suspicions heightened. “I thought that you Cavanaughs made this big deal about climbing up through the ranks strictly on your own merits without relying on the Cavanaugh name or connections.”

“We do,” she informed him openly and surprisingly artlessly.

She was totally blowing his mind. Didn’t she hear the contradiction?

“Then what was that all about?” he asked, nodding back in the general direction of his captain’s office.

“That was using leverage to get you on the case. I’m already on it, remember?” she replied innocently.

“Okay.” He didn’t really accept that, but for now, he let it drop. “And what makes you think I’m one of Ryan’s ‘best’ detectives?” he asked, using the same term she had used earlier. Did she think she was endearing herself with this baseless flattery?

“You’d have to be,” she pointed out without an iota of guile. “With that wounded-bear attitude of yours, if you weren’t one of his best, you would have gotten yourself tossed out on your ear a long time ago.” She flashed a quick, spasmodic smile at him, adding, “That’s called deductive reasoning.”

His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “That’s called hot air,” Davis pointed out.

“Potato, potato,” she countered. “By the way,” she told him, completely devoid of fanfare or ego, “I’m primary on this.” It was best to lay down the ground rules right from the start.

Moira fully expected the detective to balk at that and was surprised when he merely shrugged.

“Figured you would be,” he commented.

Moira congratulated herself on containing her surprise. “Oh, and why’s that?”

“You brought the case to me, not the other way around.”

“I’ve got a hunch you don’t bring anything to anybody,” she couldn’t help saying. The man definitely wasn’t one of those kids whose report card read, “Works and plays well with others.”

Still, she had to admit that he intrigued her. Maybe even more than just a little.

Gilroy studied her for a prolonged moment and she had absolutely no idea what was going on in the detective’s head. She really hoped that this wasn’t going to be a regular thing while they worked together. Moira hated being in the dark about anything, especially when it came to her partner. Warner wasn’t a bundle of joy, but he was very predictable and that, in turn, made her feel confident.

“Maybe we will work together well, after all,” he exhorted.

That could have knocked her over with a feather. It was official. Detective Davis Gilroy was entirely unpredictable.

Clearing her throat, Moira moved on.

“Okay, first order of business, we take the elevator down. I get enough exercise first thing every morning jogging around this city for an hour.”

“Every morning?” he questioned, making it sound as if he found her claim suspect.

“That’s what I said.”

“Why?”

She gave him the same answer she gave herself every morning. “It wakes me up.”

“Getting out of bed should be able to do that for you,” he said drily.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she quipped, her remark indicating that it clearly didn’t.

With that, she led the way to the far end of the hall where the elevator was located. She pressed for it, hoping that it would show up before Gilroy decided to take the stairs again. She wasn’t altogether certain the man would wait for her by the precinct’s rear doors if he got there first.

Though she had been the one to talk him into joining forces with her, she had no idea what to expect from this tall, handsome walking clam.

The next moment she made a mental note to ask Valri to look into his background and give her a thumbnail sketch. Maybe if she had that, she’d be a little more prepared when it came to what to expect from him.

She had a very strong feeling that even after they spent some time on the job together, Gilroy wasn’t the type to fill in the blanks unless he was absolutely forced to. And while she did like her share of surprises, she also liked to know what she was getting herself into.

Her instincts told her that Gilroy was a good cop and a damn fine detective—what she’d told him about her reasoning was true—but that still didn’t tell her enough about Gilroy the man, other than that he was an only child—and that was something she’d uncovered on her own. Most of all, she wanted to know how far she could trust him, and if he had her back.

“You want to drive?” she asked him as they got into the elevator.

He looked at her before answering.

She was beginning to think that carefully analyzing the person he was talking to was a thing with him and that he never spoke just off the cuff.

“You don’t?” he asked her after a beat.

Moira shrugged. “I don’t care one way or the other. Why?”

“I just figured that, as primary, you’d want to be in control.”

His reasoning was just a tad flawed. Odd as it might have seemed, that gave her a little bit of hope again. She wasn’t after perfect when it came to a partner, she was after sharp.

“Driving a car doesn’t make me in control. Staying in control of the situation makes me in control,” she told him matter-of-factly. “That doesn’t include insisting on playing a glorified taxi driver.”

Her response had him regarding her thoughtfully for another long moment before conceding, “Okay, I’ll drive.”

She had a hunch that he preferred it that way. Score, Cavanaugh side.

Contrary to the ending in Casablanca, Moira thought, this did not have the earmarks of the beginning of a long, beautiful friendship.

But she would give it her best shot—at least for now. She was a firm believer in working with the present. That way, if all went well, the future would take care of itself.

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