Does she have the key to solving a murder?

A Cavanaugh is on the (cold) case!

Kenzie Cavanaugh strives to prove herself to her legendary law enforcement family. But when her missing persons case grabs the attention of infuriating—gorgeous—Detective Hunter Brannigan, she grudgingly collaborates with her work rival to catch a killer. As the partners uncover a lethal conspiracy, they must learn to trust their instincts, and one another, to stay alive.

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

Also By Marie Ferrarella

Cavanaugh Justice

Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

Cavanaugh on Duty

A Widow’s Guilty Secret

Cavanaugh’s Surrender

Cavanaugh Rules

Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

Cavanaugh Fortune

How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh or Death

Cavanaugh Cold Case

Cavanaugh in the Rough

Cavanaugh on Call

Cavanaugh Encounter

Cavanaugh Vanguard

Cavanaugh Cowboy

Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09425-2

CAVANAUGH’S MISSING PERSON

© 2019 Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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“What interest do you have in John Kurtz?” Kenzie wanted to know.

Hunter’s shimmering green eyes skimmed over her from top to bottom before he answered. “I don’t.”

He could make her lose her patience faster than any human being she had ever encountered, and that included Billy. Kenzie struggled now to hold on to her temper as she asked, “Then why would you be going to the scene where he was found?”

He slowly smiled at Kenzie, knowing that it annoyed her. He couldn’t explain why, but he really liked getting under her skin. “Let’s just say I have a real interest in the person who did this to him.”

“Why?” Kenzie demanded.

Hunter saw no reason to keep this a secret. Teasing Kenzie took a back seat to possibly solving a case—or at least getting one step closer to solving it.

“Because I think that my cold case might have been this guy’s first murder.”

* * *

Be sure to check out the next books in this

exciting miniseries:

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

* * *

Dear Reader,

I’m not sure if anyone is keeping count out there, but this marks my fortieth Cavanaugh Justice series book. What had started out as a limited, five-book series refused to fade away. To be honest, the idea of a law enforcement family, whose first allegiance was to each other and then to the law they had all taken an oath to uphold, fascinated me. Possibly because I had grown up with a family that could have easily fit inside a cereal box, I always wondered what it would be like to have cousins and uncles and aunts to add dimensions to my life. Creating them on paper was the next best thing. And, like Mickey Mouse creating helpers for himself in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, once I got started, I couldn’t stop myself. And I was further encouraged by wonderful letters from you, telling me how much you enjoyed the last Cavanaugh book and asking me if there would be more coming. Ask and ye shall receive (or careful what you wish for, take your choice).

I hope you enjoy this latest entry in the Cavanaugh Justice series. As ever, I thank you for taking the time to pick up one of my stories to read, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

To

Nancy Parodi Neubert,

Who patiently let me

Try out my stories on her

More years ago

Than either of us

Care to remember.

Thank you, Nance.

Love,

Twinkles

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Prologue

She knew this location like the back of her hand. She brought them all here—while they were still alive—certain that they would view this as an intimate, secluded hideaway.

She was just as confident as they were about it, but to her it also meant that she and the person she brought here would be isolated and that there would be no unwanted interruptions.

Or any unforeseen last-minute rescues.

There never were this far out from civilization. After all, no one had ever heard her cries when she had screamed for help all those years ago.

She had chosen this place carefully, deliberately.

It had to be this place for the purge to be effective.

Despite that and all the precautions she took, she never failed to remain vigilant and alert. While she had always been confident, it had never been to the point that she became careless. Because carelessness would usher in error and error—any error—could wind up, in the long run, being fatal.

For her.

She had worked too hard to lose everything she had amassed because of an error.

The door to this little “hideaway” was closed and there were no windows, at least none that allowed anyone to look inside. But even so, an unseasonable evening breeze had somehow managed to squeeze in through the cracks, causing the plastic that hung everywhere to move just the slightest bit.

She didn’t see it. She heard it.

Her pulse sped up.

Instantly, her eyes went to the man who was at the center of it all. There was no way he could move and disturb the plastic that had been draped all around him, the plastic that was literally covering every square inch of the space. She’d seen to that.

Even so, she had to reassure herself that he wouldn’t suddenly rise up and overpower her.

There was enough ketamine in her would-be lover to put down an oversize water buffalo, but still she watched him, watched his chest to see if it would rise and fall, signaling a man who was coming to.

It didn’t.

The injection had done its trick.

She had done her trick, she thought with a small, tight smile.

“And now it’s time for you to do your part,” she whispered to the inert form.

With the precision of a surgeon, imitating the movements that Joel had shown her when the poor fool had tried to impress her all those years ago, she drove the thin boning knife in at just the right angle, just the right spot to end the life of this latest contributor to her thriving and ever expanding lifestyle.

Taking their money was only part of it. Avenging herself was far more important to her.

Blood spurted from the incision she had made onto the plastic that surrounded the man. She waited until it pooled around him, heralding the fact that his life had officially, and without fanfare, slipped away.

When she was satisfied that he was dead, she turned toward her knapsack where she kept the rest of her tools. It was time to separate John Kurtz from the parts of him that would facilitate his identification.

She had always liked tools, even as a child. They fascinated her. They could be used for so many things. People liked to build things with tools.

She liked to dismantle them.

Taking out the battery-powered saw, she switched it on. For a moment, she just listened to the high-pitched sound the saw made. The quiet, reassuring sound that promised to do its job and not fail her.

So many things had failed her. But the saw wouldn’t.

She could feel the vibrations going through her arms.

She watched, almost mesmerized, as the gleaming, freshly polished blade sliced through the air like the sharp teeth of a tiger, straining to devour its prey. She always took care of her tools.

A person’s work was only as good as the tools she used, she thought with a cynical smile.

Feeling almost giddy, she hummed a little song under her breath, a song from her childhood before horror had swallowed her up. It was a tune that kept haunting her.

She slowly lowered the saw blade and began to work.

One more down.

And tomorrow, tomorrow the hunt for a new, unwitting victim would begin all over again. Because this feeling, this satisfaction, lasted for only so long before it vanished.

Like her innocence.

But for now, she savored this part of her quest, savored it because she was victorious.

And that was all that counted.

Chapter 1

“Hey, Cavanaugh,” a deep male voice called out. “There’s somebody here asking to see you.”

Detective MacKenzie Cavanaugh, currently assigned to the Missing Persons Division of the Aurora Police Department, looked up from her computer. She raised her intense blue eyes in time to see Detective Kyle Choi pointing toward her for the benefit of a distraught-looking older woman.

It took Kenzie a full minute to realize that the woman she was looking at wasn’t really old, just incredibly beaten down and worn-out looking, like someone who had spent a great deal of time crying.

She actually recognized the dark-haired woman heading her way.

Kenzie rose from her chair, still trying to reconcile the woman coming toward her with the person she had once known.

Connie Kurtz.

She’d gone to college with Connie not all that many years ago. Ten to be precise. Something had obviously happened to the once upbeat young woman. Something that had stolen the light from her eyes. Connie looked as if she had aged drastically since the last time Kenzie had seen her. Connie had never been heavyset, but her face now had a sunken in appearance, like someone who hadn’t slept or eaten in a while.

The Connie Kenzie remembered had the kind of figure that turned heads while the woman approaching her had lost a significant amount of weight. The clothes she wore hung on her body like they couldn’t find a place for themselves.

“Connie?” Kenzie asked uncertainly, wanting to make sure that this wasn’t ultimately a case of mistaken identity.

Connie offered a spasmodic smile of acknowledgment when she heard her name spoken, but the smile faded away before it had a chance to register.

The woman blew out a long, shaky breath. “When I asked the policeman downstairs for Detective Cavanaugh, he started to laugh and then he asked me, ‘Which one?’” Connie appeared somewhat dazed and bewildered as she repeated the incident. “How many of your family members are there on the police force?”

“A lot,” Kenzie answered, thinking it might be simpler just to leave it that. “Sit down, Connie. Please,” she added when the other woman seemed disoriented.

Rather than taking her seat slowly, Connie dropped into the chair facing Kenzie as if the air had suddenly been let out of her.

Thinking to break the ice, Kenzie asked the haunted-looking young woman, “How long has it been?”

“A long time,” Connie replied. She ran her tongue along her dry lips, as if they were stuck together, preventing her from saying anything further. It was as if she was afraid that if she did, something terrible would become a reality.

Silence hung between them.

Kenzie tried again. “Is there something I can do for you, Connie?” she asked.

She was unable to think of a single reason why someone she’d known from three classes when she was a college senior would deliberately seek her out now—unless it was for professional reasons.

“I hope so.” The words came out slowly, like bullets fired cautiously and one at a time.

Since she’d begun working in the Missing Persons Division, Kenzie had become accustomed to talking to distraught family members, spouses and/or girlfriends and boyfriends. Getting any sort of viable information at times required a great deal of patience. Kenzie prided herself on being up to the job.

There were other times when interrogation was called for, and she was just as good at that as she was at displays of patience and employing kid-glove treatment with fragile people. It seemed to her that this situation called for use of the latter.

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, Connie,” Kenzie coaxed, then told her, “Take your time.”

Connie swallowed nervously. “You know, I’m probably just being paranoid,” she said.

It was obvious that she was trying to talk herself into believing that. Kenzie could see that the woman was twisting her fingers together so hard, they looked as if they could just snap off at any moment.

Kenzie put her hand protectively over the other woman’s hands with just enough pressure to make Connie stop twisting her fingers like that.

“Paranoid about what?” Kenzie asked gently.

Rather than answer, Connie said in a voice that almost broke, “He’s probably sitting on some beach, or vacationing in the mountains—like I told him to.” Connie looked at her, desperation once again entering her eyes. “You know, he used to talk about going to the mountains.” Tears were sliding down her thin cheeks now.

Kenzie reached over on her desk and extracted tissues from a box she’d brought to the office to help her cope with her last cold. She offered the tissues to Connie, who took them after a beat, wiping away the telltale trail of tears from her face and dabbing at her eyes. She crumpled the tissues in her hand, as if holding them would somehow give her strength.

“Who’s sitting on some beach or vacationing in the mountains, Connie? Who are you talking about?” Kenzie asked, thinking that Connie had to be talking about a boyfriend who had suddenly stopped returning her calls and pulled a disappearing act.

When they were in college together, Connie had had a social life that would have kept three other women on their toes and busy. Heaven knew that Connie had never wanted for company. More than once Connie had offered to “fix her up,” but their taste in boyfriends were worlds apart. Back in those days, Connie was attracted to guys who easily came under the bad-boy heading.

On the other hand, if she had brought someone like that home, said “bad boy” would have been summarily threatened with bodily harm if he didn’t vacate the premises voluntarily and immediately. She’d grown up with four brothers, a father and countless cousins, all of whom were incredibly protective.

Of course, that didn’t keep her from making her own bad choice in the end, Kenzie thought ruefully. She forced herself to focus on the woman crying next to her desk.

More tears slid down Connie’s face as she choked out, “John Kurtz. My father.”

“Your father?” Kenzie repeated, confused. “You’re talking about your father?” she asked again.

Connie wiped away the tears from her cheeks and then blew her nose, as well. She took in a deep breath and released it.

Kenzie pushed the box of tissues closer to her. “Why don’t you begin at the beginning.”

Connie swallowed, struggling to get hold of herself. “I guess that would be when my mother died.”

Kenzie could remember a vivacious, lively redhead who had attended their graduation. They had that loss in common, she thought.

“I didn’t know,” she apologized. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Connie. When did your mother die?”

Connie closed her eyes, as if summoning the memory was painful. “A little over three years ago.” Opening her eyes, she looked at Kenzie. “My father became almost a hermit after she died. It was understandable at first—” A sad smile punctuated her statement. “They’d been the classic high school sweethearts who got married right after graduation. My mother worshipped the ground my father walked on—and the feeling was mutual,” she added with feeling.

Her voice cracked as she tried not to cry.

“Take your time,” Kenzie told her again even though she really wanted to hurry the woman along and pull the words out of her throat. She tamped down her impatience. Kenzie was the type who always read the end of a book before she then turned to page one. She had always had an insatiable need to know how things turned out before she ever got to that part.

But in this case, she kept quiet, letting Connie tell her story at her own pace, in fits and starts.

Connie sighed again, as if that would somehow shield her from what she was talking about.

“Anyway, when she died, Dad just withdrew into himself. I thought he’d come around eventually, but when he didn’t, I tried to get him to go out, to see people again. He thought I meant that he should start seeing other women—and maybe I did—but I told him he was wrong. And that it was also wrong just to sit home and brood day after day the way he was doing.”

Connie sniffed and looked off, no doubt reliving the incident she was describing.

“And we got into a terrible argument, said some things we both regretted—at least I regretted them,” the other woman said with a deep sigh. “Anyway, my father broke off all communication with me. I was angry, so I decided the hell with him.” A sad smile curved the corners of her lips. “But, well, he’s my father so I decided I should try to mend this breach between us. I called him—and called him—and I just couldn’t reach him,” she said with a note of desperation. “After a couple of days, I started to get this uneasy feeling that something was wrong so I went to his house. And he wasn’t there,” she cried, trying her best to keep her voice in check.

“Maybe your father did go on that vacation,” Kenzie suggested.

But Connie shook her head from side to side. “My father’s a very detail-oriented person. If he ever did decide to go on a vacation, he’d notify the post office to have them hold back mail delivery. Or, at the very least, he’d have his neighbor pick up his mail for him.”

She looked at Kenzie with fresh tears in her eyes. “His mailbox is one of those large models—he used to get packages with kits in them,” she explained. “Anyway, there was so much mail in the mailbox, it was overflowing. There’s mail on his lawn, Kenzie,” Connie cried, as if the sight of that mail had literally caused her pain. “So much mail that it’s noticeable from the street.” She let out another shaky breath before she could continue. “Anyway, that’s when my father’s neighbor called me.”

“Your father’s neighbor had your number?” Kenzie asked.

Connie nodded. “I gave Mr. Moore my cell number right after my mother died so he could call me in case my dad did...something stupid or got too sick to call or... You have to understand, my father wasn’t himself after my mother died...” Her voice trailed off. And then she sat up a little straighter, her eyes holding Kenzie’s prisoner. “Something’s happened to him, Kenzie. I just know it.”

“Not necessarily,” Kenzie told her in a very calm voice. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Connie. You have to think positive,” she advised the other woman. She kept her voice even, almost cheerful. “This could all be a just a misunderstanding or he just needed some time to himself, or—”

“Or he could be lying in some alley, bleeding or dead,” Connie cried, interrupting Kenzie. “Tossed aside like so much garbage.”

“You don’t know that for a fact, Connie, and until you have reason to believe that’s the case, I want you to focus on positive thoughts,” Kenzie instructed, keeping her voice just stern enough to get the other woman’s attention.

Connie covered her face with her hands, crying again. “I should have never yelled at him,” she said, her voice hitching, “never told him that he was acting like an old man when he had so much of life to live still in front of him.”

“Sometimes fathers need to be yelled at,” Kenzie told the other woman with sympathy.

Connie raised her head, her eyes pleading for some sort of reassurance. “Have you ever yelled at yours?” she asked.

Kenzie laughed. “More times than I could even begin to count,” she told Connie.

It wasn’t true. At least she hadn’t yelled at her father in years, but that wasn’t what this woman needed to hear right now. She needed to be able to assuage her conscience in order to think clearly, so Kenzie told her what she wanted to hear.

Connie nodded, sniffling and once again struggling to get control of herself. “Then you’ll look for my father?” she asked hopefully.

Kenzie nodded. “You just need to fill out this paperwork and we can get started on our end.”

Kenzie opened up the large drawer to her right and took out a folder that was filled with official-looking forms. Beneath the folder she had another file folder filled with forms that were already filled out.

Those she had already input into the system over the last couple of years. Some of the people on those forms had been found, but there were still a great many who hadn’t. Those people bothered Kenzie more than she could possibly say. Not because they represented opened cases that counted against her, but because they represented people who hadn’t been reunited with their loved ones. People who might never be reunited with their distraught loved ones.

She didn’t know what she would do if she ever found herself in that set of circumstances. Which was why, her Uncle Brian had told her when he’d assigned her to this department, she was the right person for the job.

* * *

Connie broke down and cried twice during what should have been a relatively short process of filling out the form.

The second time, Kenzie kindly suggested, “Do you want to go outside and clear your head?”

But Connie bit her lower lip and shook her head, refusing the offer. “No, I want to finish filling out the form. And then I want to help you find my father.”

She could relate to that, Kenzie thought. But even so, she had to turn Connie down. She smiled patiently at the woman. “I’m afraid that it doesn’t quite work that way.”

Connie looked at her, confused. “How does it work? I don’t mean to sound belligerent,” Connie apologized. “I thought I could help, because I know all his habits. But I just want to know how you find someone.”

“A lot of ways,” Kenzie answered matter-of-factly. “We talk to people at your dad’s place of work, to his neighbors, find out if he had a club he liked to frequent more than others—”

Connie cut her off quickly, shaking her head. “He didn’t.”

“All right,” Kenzie said, continuing. “A favorite restaurant, then—”

Again Connie shook her head. “My father didn’t like fancy food and he didn’t believe in throwing his money away by having someone else cook for him when he could do a better job of it himself.”

“How about his friends?” Kenzie asked. “Did he have anyone he was close to?” she asked, already doing a mental sketch of a man who had become a loner in his later years.

Connie shook her head just as Kenzie had expected her to. “My father stopped seeing his friends once Mom had died and after a while, his friends stopped trying to get him to come out.” She sighed again. “I guess they all just gave up on him—like I did.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kenzie underscored. “And I’d still like to have a list of his friends,” she told Connie. “One or two of those friends might not have given up trying to get him to come out of his shell,” she said to the other woman.

Connie looked almost wounded. “You mean the way I gave up?”

Part of her job, the way Kenzie saw it, was to comfort the grieving. Guilt was a heavy burden to bear. Kenzie did her best to help Connie cope.

“You had your own life to live, your own grief to deal with over the death of your mother,” Kenzie insisted. “And you didn’t give up on your dad. You just gave him a time-out so he could try to deal with the situation on his own.”

Connie sighed. “When you say it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad,” she told Kenzie, a trace of gratitude in her voice.

“And it’s not,” Kenzie told her firmly. “Sometimes you can’t drag a horse to water, you have to let him see the water and then clear a path for him so that he can go to it at his own leisurely pace.”

Connie’s mouth curved. “I never thought of my father as a horse,” she commented.

“Maybe more like a mule?” Kenzie suggested with a smile.

Connie sighed. “He could be so stubborn, there was just no talking to him.”

Kenzie nodded. “I know what you mean. I have a few relatives like that of my own,” she told the woman. She saw a little of the color returning to Connie’s thin cheeks. “Feel better?” she asked.

“A little,” Connie admitted. “I’ll feel a whole lot better once you find him,” she said.

“So will I,” Kenzie assured the other woman. When people came in to file a missing person report, she took great care in making those people feel as if this was a joint undertaking and that she was in this together with them. It seemed to help them hang on. “Now, if you could give me as many names and addresses of your dad’s friends, that would be a great help.”

“I’ve got my mother’s old address book at home. I kept it as a souvenir,” Connie explained. “Will that help?” she asked.

“That will be perfect,” Kenzie assured her.

“And you’ll find my father?” Connie asked again, desperately needing to hear Kenzie make a promise to that effect.

“We’ll do our very best to find your father,” Kenzie told her.

Connie nodded, rising to her feet. “Okay. I’ll get that address book to you today,” she promised.

“That’ll be great,” Kenzie told her.

In her opinion, Connie looked a tiny bit better as she left the office.

Now all she had to do, Kenzie thought, was to deliver on her promise and everything would be fine.

Chapter 2

“Here, you look like you could use this.”

Detective Jason Valdez placed a slightly misshapen container of coffee on the desk directly in front of his sometimes partner, Detective Hunter Brannigan.

Hunter raised his half-closed green eyes slowly from the container and fixed what passed for a penetrating look at the man who worked with him in the police department’s Cold Case Division.

“You got this from the vending machine?” Hunter went through the motions of asking even though the answer was a foregone conclusion on his part.

“No, I had a carriage drawn by four matched unicorns deliver it. Yes, it’s from the vending machine,” Jason answered. “What do you think, I’m going to drive over to the closest coffee house to get you some overpriced coffee just because there’s a fancy name embossed on the side of the container?”

Removing the lid, Hunter sniffed the inky-black coffee in the container and made a face. “This is swill,” he pronounced.

Jason took no offense. Everyone knew that the coffee from the vending machine was strictly a last resort, to be consumed when nothing else was available.

“But it’s swill that’ll open up those bright green eyes of yours,” Jason told him, sitting down at the desk that butted up against Hunter’s, “and I’m betting after the night you’ve had, you could use any help that you can get.”

Hunter moved the container aside. “How do you know what kind of a night I had?”

“Because I’m a detective,” Jason answered. “And because you always have that kind of a night, especially when it’s on a weekend. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, women seem to gravitate to you, willingly buying whatever you’re selling.”

Hunter laughed. “You’re just jealous because you’re married and Melinda would skin you alive if she even saw you looking at another woman.”

“Yeah, there’s that, too,” Jason agreed. He shook his dark head that recently sprouted a few gray hairs. He blamed that on his wife, as well. “I swear, ever since my wife got pregnant, she’s turned into this fire-breathing, suspicious monster.”

Hunter shook his head, suppressing a laugh. “There’s no accounting for some people’s taste, I guess.” And then he grew more serious. “Just don’t give her any reason to be suspicious.”

“Any reason?” Jason questioned. “She’s got me too busy running all these errands for her and going around in circles. Any free time I used to have now gets totally eaten up. I couldn’t hook up with anyone else if I wanted to—which I don’t,” he emphasized in case that point had gotten lost in the conversation.

“Just hang in there, Valdez. Once the baby comes, Melinda will turn back into that sweet little woman you married.”

Jason looked skeptically at the man sitting across from him. “You really believe that?”

Hunter lifted and then dropped his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Hey, it’s good to have something to hang on to,” he told Jason with a grin.

“I guess,” Jason murmured. “It’s for damn sure that these cold cases certainly don’t fill that void,” Valdez said. “Sometimes I wonder why we keep beating our heads against that brick wall.”

Instead of a flippant remark the way he’d expected, his partner addressed his question seriously. “Because, every once in a while, there’s a crack in that wall and we get to give someone some closure about a loved one. That, my friend, in case you’ve forgotten, is a good feeling,” Hunter said.

Without thinking, he picked up the container Jason brought him and took a sip. Hunter made a face almost immediately, setting the container down again. This time he banished it to the far corner of his desk.

“I think the vending machine people have outdone themselves. This tastes like someone’s boiled socks,” Hunter declared in disgust.

“How would you know what boiled socks taste like?” Jason asked, apparently intrigued.

Hunter never hesitated. “I have a very vivid imagination,” he answered.

James Wilson, a prematurely balding, heavyset man, peered into the squad room. Spotting whom he was looking for, he crossed the floor over to Hunter.

By the time he reached Hunter’s desk, Wilson was breathing heavily, sucking in air noisily.

“You really should see a doctor, Wilson,” Hunter said. It seemed to him that each time he saw the detective, the man just got heavier and heavier. There had to be a cutoff point.

“Yeah, yeah, you and my wife,” Detective Wilson said dismissively. He made an annoyed face. “You want to hear this or not?”

“Sure,” Jason answered, speaking for both of them. “What brings you huffing and puffing into our corner of the world, Wilson?”

Wilson looked from one detective to the other, then answered with a single word. “Rain.”

“You’re a bit late, Wilson,” Jason told the other man. “It rained yesterday. Unseasonably so,” the detective added. “Ever notice how Californians drive in the rain? Like they’ve never seen the stuff before and just want to get home before they drown.”

“Don’t mind him, he’s a transplant from New Mexico,” Hunter told the detective. “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way over here to talk about the unusual shift in the weather.”

Wilson smiled, making Hunter think of a cat that had secretly swallowed a canary. “Indirectly, I am.”

While Hunter claimed that his evenings out had no effect on him, last night had been particularly taxing. He’d gotten all of three hours’ sleep, and it was beginning to catch up with him. Opening a drawer, he checked to see if he was out of aspirin. He was.

“Wilson,” he said, closing the drawer again, “I’ve got a headache building behind my eyes and I’m not in the mood for twenty questions. Now, is this belated weather report going somewhere or not?” he asked.

Instead of answering the question, Wilson asked one of his own. “Mind if I sit?”

Hunter played along and gestured toward the chair next to his desk. “Now, what did you come all this way to tell me?”

James Wilson worked on another floor for another division, but what would have seemed close to another man was like a trek through the Himalayas to the man now sitting beside his desk. It had to have taken a lot to bring Wilson here, Hunter reasoned.

“You know that cold case you keep coming back to?” Wilson asked. When Hunter didn’t respond, Wilson added, “That first one that you picked up?”

Hunter knew exactly which case the other detective was referring to. It was the one that really haunted him because he could never identify the victim for a very basic reason.

“You’re talking about the man who was missing his hands and head,” Hunter said.

Like a game show host, Wilson pointed toward Hunter, then touched the tip of his nose as if the other detective’s answer was dead-on. “That’s the one. You know that rain we had yesterday?” Wilson asked.

“The rain you led with?” Hunter asked. It was a rhetorical question. “What about it?”

Wilson enjoyed having other people listen to him and it was obvious that he was stretching this out. “Well, apparently it washed away some dirt.”

“It was a torrential downpour,” Jason recalled. “A lot of dirt was washed away.”

“Yeah, but this dirt was covering up what turned out to be a shallow grave.” Wilson paused, whether for dramatic effect or because he’d temporarily run out of breath wasn’t clear.

In either case, both Hunter and Jason cried out, almost in unison: “What was in the grave?”

“Hands and a head,” Wilson informed them almost smugly.

Hunter was on his feet immediately. “Where are those hands and that head now?” he asked.

“Where do you think? The ME’s got them,” Wilson answered.

Hunter started to hurry out of the squad room, then abruptly stopped. They were two men down today, bringing their total down to two. Jason and he couldn’t both leave the squad room at the same time. He looked back at his partner, a quizzical look on his face.

The latter waved him on. “You go, Brannigan. This was your baby to begin with. I’ll man the desk and answer the phones—not that they’ll ring,” Jason added.

“You sure?” It evolved into a joint case, although it was more his than Jason’s since he had taken the case over from the retiring homicide detective who hadn’t been able to close it.

“I’m sure.” Jason grinned, looking at his friend. “Looks like the color came back to your cheeks, Brannigan. Both of our names might be on the report, but this is your case. I wouldn’t deprive you of going down to see this latest piece of the puzzle,” he told Hunter.

That was all Hunter needed.

“How did you happen to find out about this, anyway?” Hunter asked the other detective. He slowed down in order to allow Wilson to catch up.

“Heard two detectives talking in the snack room. Thought of that cold case you had,” Wilson said with a touch of bravado. They got to the elevator and he pressed the down button. “What do you think are the odds that these hands and head are your cold case’s head and hands?” Wilson asked.

“Well, given that this isn’t a run-of-the-mill kind of kill,” Hunter speculated as the elevator car arrived, “I’d say the odds are better than fifty-fifty.”

Getting in and holding the door open for Wilson, he waited until the other detective got on, then pressed for the basement. Ordinarily, the medical examiner’s offices were housed in a different building. However, in the interest of efficiency, in the last few months the office had been moved to the building that housed the police department. It now occupied the same floor as the CSI lab and the computer tech department.

The elevator arrived in the basement, but as the doors opened, Wilson remained where he was. When Hunter glanced at him, Wilson said, “I’ll let you go the rest of the way yourself.”

“You don’t want to come with me?” Hunter asked.

He’d been surprised that the detective had accompanied him this far and had just assumed that Wilson would tag along to see if this was indeed connected to the cold case he’d taken over when he first came to the division.

However, Wilson looked more than a little pale as he hung back.

“I’ve seen enough things on this job to give me nightmares as it is. I don’t need this to prey on my mind, too. Just wanted to bring you the ‘good news,’” Wilson said, raising his voice just as the elevator doors closed again.

Hunter shook his head. “Takes all kinds,” he murmured under his breath.

He wasn’t particularly anxious to see a dismembered head either, but if it brought closure to the case he’d worked on over the last few years, it would be well worth it. Maybe now he could go through the database and put a name to the headless, handless person who had been his first case. Put a name to him and possibly bring closure to a family if the murder victim actually had one.

In any event, as long as the fingerprints weren’t burnt off—and he really doubted that they would be, because why get rid of the hands if you could burn off the prints more easily—he stood a good chance of at least giving the victim a name.

The moment Hunter stepped into the medical examiner’s room, he knew that the head and hands didn’t belong to the man whose file was in his desk. The head and hands on the ME’s table looked much too fresh, as if whoever had been dismembered and buried had suffered the indignities less than a week ago. Decomposition hadn’t gone too far yet. The victim in his cold case file had been killed several years ago and his hands and feet—unless extraordinary measures had been taken to preserve those body parts—would have been badly decomposed.

Still, he was here so he might as well ask a few questions, Hunter thought.

“What do you have for me, Doc?” Hunter asked, walking in.

“Not all that much yet I’m afraid,” Dr. Alexander Rayburn said, gesturing toward the three body parts on his table. “The crime lab techs just brought this lovely package to me about two hours ago.”

The head he was looking at had gray hair and a very pale complexion. If nothing else, the victim hadn’t been a sun worshipper, Hunter thought. “Can you tell me how long he’s been dead?” he asked the ME.

“Well, all this is still preliminary, but my guess is that he’s been dead for about a week, possibly less, maybe a little more. Judging from his face, I’d say that he’s a man in his later fifties. A professional man,” the doctor added.

Hunter looked at the ME, puzzled. “How can you tell that?”

“The hands,” the doctor answered. He picked up one carefully in his gloved hand. “There are no calluses on his hands, no rough skin. He didn’t work with his hands, he worked with his brain.”

“Which it seems was generously delivered to you, as well,” Hunter commented, looking at the victim’s head. He circled the table slowly, looking at the three dismembered parts that were laid out on the table. “What kind of a person does this, Doc?”

“That’s an easy one to answer,” the ME said. “A sick person. A methodical person. And an extremely organized person.” He looked at Hunter. “These cuts weren’t made hastily, or haphazardly. The killer knew exactly where to cut for minimum damage and bone resistance. My guess is that the victim was anesthetized—or more likely, already dead—when he was cut up.”

Hunter separated himself from the deed that the ME was describing. It was a coping mechanism he’d learned to use on his first case. Otherwise, he’d be spending every available moment in the men’s room, throwing up his last meal.

“Anything else?” he asked the ME.

“Yes.” The doctor looked up at Hunter and said with atypical passion, “I hope that the bastard who did this rots in hell.”

“You and me both, Doc,” Hunter agreed.

Well, he’d gotten what he came for. This didn’t involve his cold case. Even so, Hunter remained in the room and continued to thoughtfully look at the body parts that were laid out on the ME’s table.

“Something on your mind I can help you with, Detective?” the ME asked, glancing at Hunter over his shoulder. “You said these aren’t the missing parts from your cold case.”

“They’re clearly not,” Hunter agreed.

“Well, I know that it isn’t my scintillating company that’s keeping you here,” the ME said, “so what’s the problem?”

Hunter went on studying the dismembered parts on the table. He had an eerie feeling about them. About this whole thing.

“The problem is that I think my cold case might very well have been the first victim for whoever killed this man.”

The doctor looked up from the notes he was taking and looked pointedly at the detective. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Hunter nodded. “I think we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” the doctor said, pausing, “but doesn’t it usually take three victims before someone can be declared to be a serial killer?”

Hunter nodded, but even as he did, he said, “I’m sure there’s a third body out there somewhere. And possibly a fourth and a fifth. I’m going to take a cadaver dog out there with me and check that whole area where these hands and head were found,” he informed the ME.

The ME sighed. The doctor had a very clear picture of what lay ahead if Hunter was successful in his “mission.”

“I’d say ‘good luck’ but I’m not sure which way that would be,” the ME told Hunter.

Just as Hunter was leaving the room, he almost walked right into MacKenzie Cavanaugh. Backing up, he inclined his head as he smiled at her. “Kenzie.”

She nodded, as well, uttering a crisp, “Hunter.”

“Suddenly there’s a really cold chill in the room,” the ME commented.

“Well, Brannigan’s on his way out, so the chill’ll be gone soon,” Kenzie told the medical examiner.

The doctor looked in her direction. “What brings you down here?”

Kenzie wanted to make sure that she wasn’t trying to locate a man who was already dead, so starting out in the ME’s office made sense. “I came to find out if you have any unclaimed bodies down here.”

“Only mine,” Hunter volunteered, speaking up from the doorway.

Kenzie chose to ignore him. Hunter Brannigan might be really close friends with two of her brothers, but she had no intention of encouraging the ladies’ man to talk to her any more than absolutely necessary.

“Who are you looking for?” the ME asked Kenzie.

But at that moment, Kenzie had glanced down at the dismembered head on the table and her mouth dropped open.

“I’m looking for this man,” she said, the words almost dribbling out of her mouth as she held up the photo that Connie had given her.

Chapter 3

The medical examiner looked briefly at the photograph that Kenzie had in her hand. There was no doubt about the match.

“Then I’d say you found him. Or what there is of him at the moment,” the doctor amended.

Kenzie felt shell-shocked. This was so much worse than what she’d expected. Connie was going to be devastated when she broke the news to her.

“When—when did this happen?” Kenzie asked, trying not to let the scene get to her. It wasn’t the gruesomeness of the crime so much as the crime itself that she found unnerving.

The medical examiner looked at her. “You’re the second person to ask me that in the last few minutes. I’ll tell you what I said to Detective Brannigan—” Dr. Rayburn got no further.

Kenzie looked at the ME sharply. “Detective Brannigan?” she echoed in surprise.

“That would be me,” Hunter said, raising his hand as he walked back into the room.

She whirled around to look at the man who had managed to rub her the wrong way more times than she could possibly begin to remember.

“Why were you asking questions about John Kurtz?” she asked.

“I wasn’t,” he told her. “I was asking questions about the person whose body parts were spread out on the doc’s table.”

“John Kurtz,” she repeated, as if to drill the name into his head.

“So it would seem, but I didn’t know that at the time,” Hunter pointed out.

Brannigan was just trying to confuse her, something he had always taken far too much enjoyment in doing, Kenzie thought. She deliberately turned her back on him as she addressed the medical examiner.

“You were about to tell me about John Kurtz’s time of death, Doctor,” she prodded.

“As I told Detective Brannigan here, I still have to run more tests,” the doctor said, focusing on what he had on his table, “but my best guess is that your Mr. Kurtz has been dead for a week.”

“Where was he found?” she asked. “Who brought him in?”

The interest in her voice was obvious. It in turn piqued Hunter’s. He circled around Kenzie until he was facing her.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

“I know his daughter. She came in this morning to file a missing person report on him,” Kenzie answered stiffly, addressing her words to the doctor, not Hunter. She deliberately avoided making eye contact with the detective. “Who found him?” she asked again.

The medical examiner told them what he knew. “From what I gather, he—or at least the parts that you see here—was in a shallow grave that yesterday’s downpour washed up. A couple of kids playing in the mud made the discovery. Their rather hysterical mother called the police. The rest you know,” the doctor concluded.

“Where was this?” Kenzie asked.

“Along the border of Aurora Park,” the medical examiner answered.

“I’m taking a cadaver dog with me to the scene where the body parts were found,” Hunter told her, speaking up. “Care to come with me?”

This time she did look at him.

The first time she had ever heard of Hunter Brannigan, two of her brothers, Murdoch and Finn, were talking about how Brannigan had a different woman on his arm every time he went out. To hear them say it, Hunter ran on batteries and Southern Comfort, although, amazingly enough, he was also considered a damn good detective who had risen rather quickly through the ranks on his own merit. He was assigned to the Cold Case Division because the thinking was, if anyone could clear the old cases, Brannigan could.

Maybe, in another lifetime, they could have even been friends, despite his confident swagger. But she had terminated a rather painful engagement a little over two years ago, the details of which she had kept to herself. Her fiancé, Billy Gibson, had been a tomcat who’d had a weakness for prowling around despite all his promises to reform and be faithful. After his third transgression, she’d given him his walking papers. She hadn’t said anything to anyone because if her brothers had caught wind of why she’d broken the engagement off, they would have skinned Billy and proceeded to hang him from the highest flagpole.

Since then, Kenzie had been very leery of silver-tongued handsome men. That description fit Hunter Brannigan to a T.

“What interest do you have in John Kurtz?” Kenzie asked.

Hunter’s shimmering green eyes skimmed over her from top to bottom before he answered. “I don’t.”

He could make her lose her patience faster than any human being she had ever encountered, and that included Billy. Kenzie struggled now to hold on to her temper as she asked, “Then why would you be going to the scene where he was found?”

He slowly smiled at Kenzie, knowing that it annoyed her. He couldn’t explain why, but he really liked getting under her skin. “Let’s just say I have a real interest in the person who did this to him.”

“Why?” Kenzie demanded.

Hunter saw no reason to keep this a secret. Teasing Kenzie took a back seat to possibly solving a case—or at least getting one step closer to solving it.

“Because I think that my cold case might have been this guy’s first murder,” he told her.

“Why?” she repeated.

It was obvious to him that because of their past history, she was going to take some convincing. He had no problem with that.

“Because my cold case is missing his head and hands, too,” he told her. “Now, you’re welcome to come along, or you can stay here and I’ll let you know what I find—if I remember.”

He saw her eyes flash—just as he had expected them to. “This is my case, Brannigan,” she insisted.

“That’s not how I see it,” Hunter replied mildly.

“Now, now, children, play nice,” the medical examiner said. “I’ve got a feeling that there’s plenty enough here for both of you to share.”

Kenzie didn’t want to admit it—since Hunter was involved—but in all likelihood, the ME was right. But even so, she had no desire to team up with Hunter.

“I can take the dog,” she told Hunter.

The same infuriating smile was back on Hunter’s face. He dug in. “That’s not happening.”

She wasn’t about to have this devolve into a shouting match—and she had no intentions of letting Brannigan go without her.

Kenzie frowned. “I have to let my partner know where I’m going.”

“Go ahead and do that,” Hunter told her. “I’ve got to go to the K-9 unit and secure a dog.”

“They’re not going to just give you a dog,” she informed Hunter. “If nothing else, his handler has to come with the dog.”

“Even better,” Hunter commented. While he liked dogs, his involvement with canines ended with throwing a stick and having the dog chase it. Having someone along who knew what they were doing with canines was all good as far as he was concerned. “We’ll meet you out back once I make arrangements with the K-9 unit.”

A red flag went up in her head. Kenzie didn’t trust Brannigan to wait for her.

“I’ve got a better idea,” she told Hunter. “Why don’t you come with me up to Missing Persons so I can tell Choi where I’ll be and then I’ll come with you to the K-9 unit.”

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking until his eyes washed over her again. “This isn’t first grade, Cavanaugh. We really don’t need to pair up to walk through the halls,” he told her. “Although, I have to say that it does sound like it has potential.”

“Listen to her, Brannigan,” the ME advised. “She’s a Cavanaugh. They tend to get things done.”

“So do I, Doc,” Hunter answered. “But in the spirit of détente, I’ll bow to your wisdom,” he said, inclining his head.

Kenzie left the morgue quickly. But although she moved fast, Hunter kept up with her pace as if it took no effort on his part at all.

They reached the elevator together. She had no intention of saying anything to Hunter, but the silence within the car once they got on became almost unnervingly deafening. She could all but feel his eyes on her, taking inventory. And when she turned to look at the man she’d heard some of her friends refer to as a dark blond Adonis, she saw that he was smiling at her.

A rather wide smile.

“Why are you grinning, Brannigan?” she demanded.

His shrug was careless and utterly infuriating. “I guess I’m just a happy person.”

“Well, stop it,” she ordered. “You might enjoy looking like a happy idiot, but I have to tell someone I know that her father’s not coming home tonight.” She set her mouth grimly. “Or ever.”

“You want help with that?” he offered.

If she didn’t know him, she would have said that his offer sounded genuine. But she did know Brannigan and she was convinced that he didn’t possess a genuine bone in his body. “I don’t need you to hit on her,” Kenzie informed him.

“I wasn’t planning to. Whatever else you might think of me, I am good at my job. Breaking bad news is never easy and I was just offering to help since you said you knew the victim’s daughter. It might be easier on everyone all around if I handle this.”

She resented his intrusion. Resented everything that Brannigan represented. “I don’t need you to handle anything for me,” she informed him heatedly.

He raised his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Point taken, Kenzie.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped as they got off the elevator.

“What would you like me to call you?” he asked. “Your Majesty’s a little formal, but I’m game if that’s what you want.”

Her eyes narrowed into blue slits of lightning. “Cavanaugh,” she said. “Just call me by my last name, the way you would anyone else you work with.”

“But you’re not anyone else, are you?” He all but purred the question. Before she could work up a full head of steam by telling him what he could do with that obvious line of his, Hunter interjected, “You’re Finn and Murdoch’s sister and they’re my friends.”

Kenzie rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t remind me.” How her normally intelligent brothers could be friends with this egotist was beyond her. “C’mon,” she urged. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Good detective work should never be rushed,” he chided, knowing that saying that would just irritate her further. He couldn’t really explain why, but he liked irritating Kenzie. Liked getting a reaction—any sort of reaction—out of her. Liked seeing the way her eyes blazed as she all but breathed fire.

When she walked ahead of him this time, he let her. She needed to work off her anger, he thought.

* * *

“I found our missing person,” Kenzie told her partner when she walked back into the division’s squad room.

Kyle Choi looked at her, a trace of bewilderment in his face.

“So soon? Where was the guy, hiding in a cabin, somewhere away from his daughter?” he asked with a chuckle.

“No, not exactly,” Kenzie told him with a heavy voice. “John Kurtz is a homicide victim.”

“Oh, damn,” Kyle said with genuine regret. The detective glanced at Hunter, his bewilderment returning. “What’s he doing here?” Choi asked. He addressed his question to Brannigan. “Thinking of switching departments?”

“It’s a long story,” Kenzie answered before Hunter could say anything to the other detective in response. She saw Hunter opening his mouth and spoke quickly. “But the short version is—no, he’s not looking to switch departments. And even if he were, he certainly wouldn’t be switching into ours,” she concluded. There was no room for argument in her voice.

Rather than become annoyed, Hunter grinned—which in turn irritated Kenzie more.

“To hear you talk, someone would get the impression you don’t like me, Kenzie,” Hunter commented in an easygoing tone.

“And they’d be right,” she retorted. Her eyes narrowed as she shot a look in his direction. “I told you not to call me that.”

“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Hunter asked her innocently.

She decided that it would be better just to ignore him than to get into a verbal duel. So she spoke to Choi, telling her partner, “Parts of John Kurtz’s body were found thanks to yesterday’s monsoon and Brannigan—” she clenched her teeth “—is going to take me there.”

Choi looked at Hunter quizzically and the latter lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Not my idea of a romantic spot, but hey, different strokes for different folks, right?”

Kenzie saw her partner opening his mouth and quickly intervened. “Pay no attention to him, Kyle. It’ll only encourage him to babble. We’re going to see if we can find the rest of Mr. Kurtz in the general vicinity. I don’t want to tell Connie about her father until we at least try to find the rest of him. Telling her that his head and hands were the only things that were found is just too gruesome for words,” she told Choi. “I don’t want her left with that memory.”

Her partner nodded. As it was, he looked as if he was close to parting company with his breakfast burrito right about now.

“I’ve got plenty to keep me busy here,” Choi told her.

Hunter looked over his shoulder at Kenzie’s mild-mannered partner just before he followed her out of the squad room. “Wish me luck,” he said to the detective.

He heard Choi laugh in response.

* * *

Kenzie glanced at Hunter disdainfully. “You do know where we’re going once you get the dog and his handler, right?”

He knew she was trying to goad him into losing his temper, but he was having far too much fun for that. “I make it a point of always knowing where I’m going, Kenzie—sorry, Cavanaugh,” he amended before she could say anything. “But in this case, I have the ME’s report detailing where the body parts were uncovered. I am, however, open to suggestions if you have a different destination in mind,” he told her cheerfully.

She blew out an annoyed breath. “Are you always on?” she asked.

The corners of his mouth curved until the smile on his face was a full thousand watts. “I do my best, Detective Cavanaugh.”

Why did every word out of his mouth annoy her so much? “Trust me, your best isn’t nearly good enough so fold up your little tent and just disappear into the night if you’re going to continue with this juvenile act of yours.”

He put his hand over his heart. “Why, Kenzie, I’m deeply wounded.”

Once again, her eyes darkened until they looked positively stormy, glaring at him. “Brannigan, you don’t know the meaning of the word wounded—but I can change that.”

“Sorry, Cavanaugh, but someone already beat you to it,” he told her and for just a second, she believed him. But then, she thought, that was just what he wanted. “I can show you the scars if you’re interested.”

“No, thanks,” she told Hunter. “I’ll pass.”

They were outside now, heading for the kennels where the canines that were on duty were kept. “They’re really phenomenal scars,” he told her. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I know exactly what I’m missing—peace and quiet,” she retorted, then regrouped. There was no point in talking to this man. It just somehow fed his ego. “Let’s just do this and be done with it.”

He nodded. “Sounds good—your place or mine?” he asked with what was probably the most wickedly sexy look she had ever seen in her life. Kenzie could almost see what women saw in this man—if he wasn’t so transparent to her.

“You’re never going to get that lucky, Brannigan,” she informed him.

He grinned again. “Ah, a man’s grasp should extend his reach, or what’s a heaven for?”

She was not impressed. “Let me guess, you minored in English lit.”

“No,” Hunter told her. “But I once dated a girl who did.”

“I’m sure you did.” She wasn’t in the mood to hear him spout off the list of women who had paraded through his life. “Put a lid on it, Brannigan. The less you talk, the less I’ll be tempted to shoot you.”

He laughed at that, tickled. “I bet you say that to all the guys.”

“No,” she responded, “only you.”

If she meant to shut him down, she failed. That same wicked grin was back on his lips.

“I like being the first,” he told her.

Kenzie decided that her best bet was to refrain from answering him when he talked.

With a toss of her head, she marched the rest of the way to the K-9 department, which was adjacent to the Animal Control Division.

A cacophony of animal sounds was heard as they passed by. Kenzie disregarded the noise in the same way she disregarded Brannigan.

She looked around to see if her cousin-in-law was anywhere around, but it looked like Brady wasn’t there at the moment.

Officer Jake O’Reilly, a longtime veteran of the unit, came up behind them and asked, “Is there anything I can help you with, Detectives?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Kenzie said, taking the lead. “We need a cadaver dog. A head and a pair of hands were found in the field around Aurora Park after yesterday’s rain. We think there might be more buried in or around the area. We need help finding them.”

“Got the dog for the job right here,” O’Reilly said. “Come here, Jupiter. These nice detectives need your help.” He opened the kennel door and a large German shepherd came bounding out.

Jupiter barked in response as if he understood what was expected of him. He excitedly shifted from paw to paw.

Chapter 4

They took Kenzie’s vehicle to the area at the edge of Aurora Park where John Kurtz’s head and hands had been found.

On the rather short trip over, O’Reilly sat in the back of the vehicle with his K-9 partner, Jupiter. The animal remained still until just before they arrived at their destination. Then he began moving about in the back seat.

Kenzie could feel herself growing tense with every passing minute, not because Hunter was sitting in the front passenger seat next to her, but because she had the very uneasy feeling that the detective could very well be right. If he was, that meant that they had a serial killer on their hands, and that was the last thing that any of them really wanted.

Except maybe for Hunter, she silently amended, slanting a look in his direction as she parked her car in the designated spot for park visitors. Finding out that this was the work of a serial killer could wind up being quite a feather in his cap, given that cold cases were called that for a reason.

One really didn’t expect them to ever get warm.

“Is this the area where the body parts were first found?” O’Reilly asked Hunter as he got out of the vehicle.

Hunter glanced into the back seat that O’Reilly had just vacated. Jupiter, still in the car, was moving from side to side, growing progressively more eager to be set free.

“Judging by the way your dog is acting, I’d say that’s a firm yes,” Hunter answered.

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” Kenzie said to the two men with her. “Or a good feeling,” she added, glancing at Hunter, “depending on which point of view you take.”

“Stay, Jupiter,” O’Reilly ordered as he opened the rear door closest to him.

It was obvious that the shepherd wanted to leap out, but he remained where he was as his trainer reached in to get his leash and firmly wrapped it around his hand.

“Neat trick,” Hunter commented to the handler. “Think you could teach it to me sometime?”

“Why?” Kenzie asked, looking at Hunter. “Are you having trouble keeping your girlfriends from bolting out of the car on you?”

Hunter grinned at her, amused rather than annoyed. “That’s not the problem at all,” he replied.

A sharp comeback rose to Kenzie’s lips, but she bit it back. She’d started this round and if it played itself out, they’d wind up losing sight of why they were here to begin with. She couldn’t afford to squabble with Hunter, at least not until she knew what they were up against.

“Truce,” she declared grudgingly, looking in Hunter’s direction.

“Fine by me,” Hunter answered. He glanced toward the German shepherd straining at his leash. “O’Reilly, your dog looks really eager to show us his stuff. Why don’t you let him?”

Jupiter was out of the vehicle now, all but dancing from side to side. It was easy to see that he was champing at the bit to get going.

O’Reilly, by no means a small man, looked as if he was having trouble holding on to the German shepherd. “I don’t think I have much choice in the matter.”

The words were no sooner out of O’Reilly’s mouth than he slackened his hold on the leash. Jupiter suddenly began to tear through the area, all but dragging his handler in his wake.

“I guess that’s our cue to get going,” Hunter commented.

Because the rain had really come down heavily here, drenching the area, the ground was still very wet in a lot of spots. The resulting mud made the terrain extremely slippery.

Following Jupiter and O’Reilly wasn’t nearly as easy as Kenzie had initially thought, no matter how carefully she tried. Trying to keep up, Kenzie slid twice. Both times she managed to catch herself at the last moment. The only thing that comforted her was that she saw Hunter having trouble keeping upright, as well.

But just as she was silently reveling in his narrowly avoiding making contact with the oozing mud beneath him, she suddenly felt her feet sliding out from under her. In a heartbeat, she braced herself for an undignified pratfall.

At the last possible moment, Kenzie felt a strong hand grip her arm, righting her and preventing her from making a face-plant in the mud.

The air whooshed out of her as first shock, and then an instant later relief, vibrated through her.

Her heart hammering wildly in her chest, she looked to her right, hoping against hope that O’Reilly had made a quick U-turn and was the one responsible for her last-moment save.

But it wasn’t O’Reilly. It was Brannigan who was holding on to her arm.

Brannigan had been the one to save her face and her pride.

“Thanks.” Kenzie uttered the word as if each letter cost her dearly.

Hunter smiled and graciously inclined his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard gratitude so grudgingly dispensed,” he told her.

She glanced at her arm. His hand was still wrapped around it. “You can let go of my arm now,” she informed him icily.

“Are you sure?” he asked dubiously. “It’s still pretty slippery here.”

He was up to something, Kenzie thought. She just didn’t trust this Boy Scout routine of his.

“I’m sure,” she answered. She scowled when he went on holding her arm. “You’re cutting off my circulation,” she told him.

His smile widened. “From what I hear, according to your brothers I’m not the one cutting it off.”

Kenzie shook off his hold. Striding after O’Reilly and Jupiter, she struggled to hold on to her temper. She did owe Hunter, aware that he could have very easily just let her fall. She still didn’t understand why he didn’t, but even so, that put her, at least temporarily, in his debt.

And she didn’t like it.

“Can we please just stick to business?” Kenzie requested.

“Speaking of which,” Hunter said, glancing over toward Jupiter. The dog had abruptly stopped in his tracks and was now suddenly digging eagerly. “I think we just might be in business now.”

Hunter carefully made his way over toward the German shepherd as the dog furiously burrowed through the mud, oblivious to the fact that he was growing incredibly dirty as he dug.

“Looks like Jupiter found the rest of that body you were looking for,” O’Reilly commented.

“Not quite,” Kenzie said, squatting down to get a closer look at what the dog was digging up. She turned her head as more mud went flying at all of them. “O’Reilly, get him to stop for a minute,” she requested.

“Jupiter, stay!” O’Reilly ordered gruffly.

Getting in closer again, Kenzie frowned. And then she turned her head slightly as she looked back at Hunter. He was a few inches away from her. “You don’t need to breathe down my neck, Brannigan.”

“I know. I thought that was a bonus,” he told her innocently. Then, before she could speak up, Hunter said what they were both thinking. “That torso has been in the ground too long to belong to John Kurtz.”

She frowned, hating the fact that she agreed with Brannigan’s assessment. “And I’m thinking that it’s also not decomposed enough to belong to your cold case,” Kenzie added.

“This makes three,” Hunter said quietly, as if saying the words too loudly would somehow make everything fall apart. “It’s official,” he told Kenzie and the officer. “Looks like we have ourselves a serial killer.”

Kenzie felt her heart sink. Whether it was because she agreed with him, or because he was the one who put it into words first, she didn’t know. Either way, she had her cell phone out. She hit a number on her speed dial.

“Who are you calling?” Hunter asked.

She held up her hand, silently requesting him to stop talking.

“Destiny?” she said, recognizing the voice of the person who had picked up on the other end. “Is the chief around?” she asked formally. “Thanks.”

“CSI?” Hunter guessed.

Kenzie nodded. Just then, the wind shifted. The next moment, Jupiter was off and running again. O’Reilly could barely keep up. In all probability he might have lost the dog had Jupiter not stopped in front of another mound. It was all dirt, not mud this time. Either way, the dog began digging furiously again.

Watching what Jupiter was doing, Kenzie came to attention as the phone was being picked up on the other end.

“Uncle Sean? This is Kenzie. Looks like I’ve got some unfinished business for your investigators. Detective Brannigan had the K-9 unit bring out a cadaver dog to go over the scene at Aurora Park where that head and hands were found today. The thinking was to find the rest of the body, but the dog dug up more bones. Old bones,” she emphasized. “How soon can you have someone from your team get here? Great. We’ll be here.”

Ending the call, she slid her phone back into her pocket. She looked over toward O’Reilly, who was having more trouble restraining Jupiter. The shepherd looked eager to take off again.

“The crime scene investigators will be here shortly,” she told the handler. She eyed the German shepherd. “Is he just excited, or—”

“I think it’s ‘or,’” O’Reilly replied with a heavy sigh.

Kenzie gestured toward the dog. “By all means, give him his lead,” she told O’Reilly.

Once again Jupiter was off and running, with O’Reilly not too far behind.

“Looks like that flash flood unleashed someone’s hidden graveyard,” Hunter observed. He made his way over to the third set of bones the dog had just dug up.

“Yes, but whose?” she questioned, saying it more to herself than to the detective standing near her. She surveyed the area with dismay. “This can’t just be the work of one person—can it?” she asked him.

“There’s no telling what one person is capable of,” Hunter answered. “The Green River Killer racked up one hell of a large body count before they finally caught on to him.”

Kenzie shivered. She remembered reading about the case. The man who was ultimately responsible for the killings broke all the previous rules that had, everyone believed, once been set in stone. The serial killer wasn’t a withdrawn loner. Instead, he was a member of the community. A well-respected member who taught Sunday school on occasion, ran a youth group and was a man whom everyone liked. No one would have ever suspected him of doing anything wrong, let alone killing so many women.

With the playbook rendered completely null and void, that meant anything was possible and just about anyone could be a killer.

That unfortunately left the suspect pool wide-open, she thought.

“Looks like this means we’re going to be keeping company for a little while longer, Kenzie,” Hunter told her.

Kenzie jumped. For a minute, lost in thought, she had totally forgotten that he was there. Annoyed that Brannigan had managed to make her react like a skittish teenager, she asked him almost belligerently, “What makes you say that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? My killer is your killer,” Hunter pointed out simply. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to pursue the guy separately.”

From where she stood, pursuing the killer separately made a lot of sense, Kenzie thought. Mainly because she didn’t want to work alongside Brannigan any more than she had to. In her opinion, the man was as shallow as a raindrop and she was in no mood to be subjected to his feeble attempts to impress her or to dazzle her with his so-called detective skills.

“Why not?” she asked, challenging him. “This way, we can approach the crimes from two separate points of view.”

“We can still do that, but together,” Hunter countered stubbornly. “And it’ll go faster if we don’t have to stop and call each other every time a new idea hits one of us. All we’ll have to do is look across the table—or however you intend to have your bull pen arranged,” he told her.

Stunned, she realized just what he was getting at. “You’re talking about getting a task force together,” Kenzie cried, part of her still hoping that he would deny it.

But he didn’t. Exactly.

“That all depends,” Hunter answered loftily. “Do the two of us constitute a task force?”

Suddenly feeling cornered, she searched for a way to put Brannigan off. “I need permission to get a task force together,” she told him.

Hunter looked totally unfazed by her excuse. “You’re a Cavanaugh. Do you really need permission to do something?” he asked skeptically. It was obvious that the detective didn’t think so.

So, he was one of those, was he? He thought she was privileged. Well, she didn’t think she was privileged and she certainly didn’t act as if she was, Kenzie thought, annoyed.

“It’s because I’m a Cavanaugh that I need permission,” Kenzie informed him, incensed that Brannigan had the gall to put her on the spot like this. “Just because I have that last name doesn’t mean I’m privileged.”

The smile on Hunter’s face seemed to mock her and she would have given anything to physically wipe it off his lips—with her fist.

“The chief of Ds told you to say that, didn’t he?” Brannigan guessed. His expression made it abundantly clear that he got a tremendous kick out of what Kenzie was saying.

She was not about to confirm Brannigan’s guess, even though she grudgingly admitted that it was dead-on. As things stood between them, she would rather die than come out and say that.

Instead, she resorted to wordplay. “That doesn’t alter the circumstances,” she informed Brannigan with a toss of her head.

“All right,” he obliged. “So go ahead, ask the chief for permission to put a task force together. The sooner you do, the sooner it’ll be granted—” he glanced down at the body parts that Jupiter had just unearthed “—and the sooner we’ll be on our way to finding the SOB who gets his jollies doing this sort of sick thing.”

“SOBs,” Kenzie corrected pointedly.

Hunter looked at her, confused. “What?”

“You said there might be two of them, remember?” she reminded Brannigan. “I’m just trying to cover all our bases.”

“Right,” he agreed. He had said that, Hunter thought. But at the time he was just making guesses. “Hard to believe there’re two people out there who are this depraved.”

Kenzie looked at him, wondering if he was really on the level or if he was just pulling her leg, trying to get on the right side of her for his own reasons.

The look on his face didn’t really give her a clue.

She had to ask him. “You’re serious?”

Hunter nodded. Since they were apparently going to be working together, he shared a little of his basic philosophy with her.

“Gotta hang on to the light, or you wind up sinking into the darkness and before you know it, you wind up giving up.”

That sounded deep, she thought. Too deep for Brannigan, she maintained. Kenzie was afraid to leave her defenses down, even for a moment.

“That’s one way to look at it,” Kenzie told him flippantly.

“Okay, so what’s your way?” Brannigan asked her as they watched the shepherd begin to dig into the earth for yet one more time.

Kenzie looked at the detective. Sunlight was weaving through his hair. She did her best to ignore that, looking for his flaws.

“My way?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he answered. Jupiter was growing more agitated. “How do you look at what you do?”

She recited the mantra she liked to live by. “Catching the bad guys and making the world safer for everyone else.”

Brannigan grinned at her and she was certain he was going to say something flippant or make fun of her. But instead, he surprised her by saying, “See, we’re not that different after all, you and I.”

She did not want to be likened to this man by anyone, least of all him.

“Oh, we’re worlds apart, Brannigan. Worlds apart,” she emphasized.

Hunter pointed over toward Jupiter, who apparently had unearthed still another would-be grave.

“I’d say that it looks like our worlds just got a little closer, Kenzie,” he told her.

She clenched her teeth. “I told you not to call me that. Only my friends and family call me that.”

“So how do I get to be part of your friends’ club?” he asked.

“Simple,” she told him. “You die and come back as someone else. Anyone else,” she underscored.

He laughed, obviously getting a kick out of her—that was not what she had intended.

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Hunter promised just before he made his way over to Jupiter’s newest discovery.

Chapter 5

Chief Sean Cavanaugh, head of the crime scene investigation day crew, surveyed the very large area that had been cordoned off. Sporadic piles of dirt and mud pocked the entire terrain at this end of the park. Three investigators were moving around, documenting everything that could even remotely pass for evidence.

“The park officials are not going to be happy about this,” Sean commented.

Vacation season had just begun and there were tourists to think of, not to mention regular residents who normally enjoyed utilizing the park’s many attributes and were now prevented from doing so.

It looked as if there were miles of yellow tape designating the entire area off-limits. It was the police department’s attempt to keep the public from accidentally trampling over any possible clues that hadn’t surfaced yet.

Hunter nodded in agreement. This was his first professional interaction with the chief. “I’m not overly thrilled with this either, but I’m willing to bet it’s most likely for a completely different reason,” the cold case detective said.

Kenzie was standing close by and she looked at Brannigan in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be thrilled to death with this turn of events, Brannigan,” she retorted.

“Thrilled?” Hunter echoed, puzzled. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not a ghoul—or bloodthirsty.”

Hunter stopped himself before he could say anything further. He wasn’t about to get into a possible shouting match with Kenzie in front of the chief. Instead, he turned toward Rayburn.

The medical examiner had arrived shortly after the chief and his team had. Rayburn was looking at the various piles of bones—torsos and arms and legs for the most part—and he was shaking his head.

“How many different people do you think Jupiter dug up today, Doc?” Hunter asked the man.

Dr. Rayburn frowned. “Hard to say before I get all these—these pieces to the morgue and see if I can match the right limbs to the right torsos,” the medical examiner answered honestly. “Are you sure that the dog didn’t accidentally stumble across some old, forgotten burial ground?” he asked. It was hard to miss the hopeful note in his voice.

“Way ahead of you, Doc,” Kenzie told the medical examiner. “I already called Valri,” she said, mentioning the name of the Aurora police department’s most gifted computer tech, “and had her dig up the town’s records for this area dating back almost a hundred and fifty years. There is no record of there being any cemetery or burial grounds in the vicinity.”

Rayburn nodded. “I should have known.” He glanced toward the chief, who was now busy instructing one of his investigators. “You people are nothing if not thorough. As for how many former citizens we have here,” the medical examiner said, returning to Hunter’s question, “I’ll know more after I’ve had some time to examine all these different dismembered torsos and limbs.” He looked thoughtful at the various pallets filled with headless bodies and unattached arms and legs that were being prepared to be taken into the two waiting vans. “This is going to be one for the books.”

“Hopefully a solved one for the books,” Brannigan murmured. It was almost numbing to look at all these body parts and realize that they represented lost lives and victims.

Kenzie looked at Hunter, mildly surprised to hear him express his thoughts. “Why, Detective Brannigan, is that doubt I hear in your voice?”

“There’s always doubt,” Hunter told her, refusing to rise to her bait. But then he allowed himself a smile. “Detective work is only as good as your weakest detective,” he said, his gaze deliberately lingering over her for an extra beat.

Kenzie squared her shoulders. “Nobody asked you to be here, Brannigan,” she informed him. Her implication was that he was free to go at any time. In fact, she would have preferred it that way.

“I always finish anything I start, Detective,” Hunter told her.

Sean moved away from the investigator he was talking to and looked from Kenzie to Hunter. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

“No, no problem, Chief,” Hunter replied cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to working on this case. I cut my teeth on jigsaw puzzles when I was a kid,” he told Sean.

A tall man, like the rest of his clan, Sean nodded and smiled at the detective. “Then you should be in seventh heaven here.” Sean paused, his gaze sweeping over Kenzie, Hunter and O’Reilly. “There’s not much more for any of you to do out here. Why don’t you go back to the precinct and I’ll let you know what we find once we finish processing the area.”

Sean’s smile deepened as he looked over toward Jupiter. Now that the dog had made his discoveries, the German shepherd seemed satisfied to just lie at his handler’s feet, watching as Sean’s team did their work. “Looks like Jupiter doesn’t even have a clue as to the kind of far-reaching dust storm he just managed to kick up.”

Kenzie couldn’t resist glancing over in Hunter’s direction.

“There’s a lot of that going around,” she commented. And then she asked her uncle, “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay?”

“I’m sure,” Sean answered. Seeing the skeptical look on her face, he added, “You know what they say about there being too many cooks, Kenzie.” He could see that she was still undecided about leaving the scene. “My advice to the two of you is for you to save your strength for as long as you can. Something tells me that you’re both going to be knocking on a lot of doors, asking a lot of questions before long.”

Kenzie nodded, surrendering. In her experience, the chief was usually right. “Call me when you get back,” she requested.

“Count on it,” Sean told her. And then he looked at Hunter. “I’d stand back if I were you,” he said, lowering his voice. “She has a tendency of steamrolling over people.”

“Duly noted, Chief,” Hunter told the older man, giving every indication that he intended to take the advice to heart.

Instead of saying anything to Brannigan, Kenzie walked away from what had at this point turned into an excavation site. Heading toward her car, she stopped to look around for O’Reilly. Finding him, she crossed to the handler and his dog.

“I’m heading back to the station, O’Reilly,” she told him. “You two want a ride?” she asked, glancing at the dog as well as the handler.

“My mama taught me to always leave with the lady I came with,” O’Reilly told her with a big sunny grin.

“I think that actually refers to bringing a date to a dance,” Hunter told O’Reilly as he came up behind the handler and Kenzie.

Kenzie’s eyes narrowed as she looked over her shoulder and glared at Hunter. “It refers to manners, something I’m sure you know next to nothing about, Brannigan.”

“Ouch,” O’Reilly said, wincing. “On second thought, I think it might be safer for Jupiter and me if we hitched a ride back to the station with the chief,” the K-9 officer speculated. O’Reilly sounded as if he was only half kidding.

“Don’t do that, O’Reilly. I know for a fact that Kenzie’s had her necessary shots so you wouldn’t be running the risk of getting rabies on the ride back,” Hunter told the handler with a straight face.

Both men saw Kenzie’s eyes flash. But there was no outburst of temper the way they might have expected. Instead, her voice was rather cold as she told Hunter, “I have no idea why my brothers find you amusing, but I certainly don’t. I’m leaving now,” she informed the two men. “You can either come with me or find your own way back.”

As she began to walk, Jupiter fell into place next to her.

“Well, it looks like my partner’s made his choice,” O’Reilly noted with a laugh. He started to walk beside his dog. “I guess that’s good enough for me.”

Hunter joined them.

Officer O’Reilly raised a brow in his direction and the cold case detective told him, “I decided that there’s safety in numbers.”

Without missing a beat Kenzie asked him, “Who says that the dog’s on your side?”

O’Reilly’s laugh was deep and rich. “She’s got you there, Brannigan,” he said as they reached Kenzie’s vehicle.

Hunter merely smiled as he opened the door on the passenger side. And then he paused. “Okay if I sit up front?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of in the trunk or strapped to the roof,” Kenzie said, buckling up. “But I guess I can put up with you sitting there for a few minutes.”

* * *

“You weren’t kidding about a few minutes,” Hunter commented when they pulled up into the parking space several minutes later.

Kenzie had driven as if the car was on fire, squeezing through yellow lights just as they were about to turn red.

Hunter took a second to get the air back into his lungs. “I think I lost my stomach back there.”

“Too bad you didn’t lose your mouth,” Kenzie retorted shortly. She slammed the driver’s side door as she got out of the car. Her manner softened when she looked at O’Reilly and Jupiter as the duo climbed out of the back seat. “Thanks for all your help,” Kenzie said to the handler.

“It’s been an experience, Detective Cavanaugh,” O’Reilly told her with a bemused smile. “It surely has. Be sure to let me know how the case goes.”

O’Reilly’s last request was addressed to both detectives but Kenzie acted as if the handler had said the words to her only.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” she promised Officer O’Reilly.

Hunter waited until the handler had taken Jupiter back to the kennel and was out of earshot. Catching her arm to keep her from taking off, he asked, “What do you have against me, Kenzie?”

Kenzie shrugged his hand off. She seriously considered just walking away and ignoring the man and his question, but she knew that he wasn’t going to drop it and she had no desire to be confronted in the squad room in front of people she worked with on a daily basis. He was capable of that.

So she turned around and faced Brannigan squarely as she replied, “Do you want that alphabetically, chronologically or in the order of magnitude?”

He whistled softly, as if impressed. “Wow, you’ve been saving that for a while now, haven’t you?” Hunter asked. He saw Kenzie opening her mouth, but he acted quickly, beating her to the punch. “Tell me in any order you want to, Detective Cavanaugh,” Hunter said, deliberately using her surname the way she had requested.

“I know your type, Brannigan.”

He knew he was asking for trouble, but at the same time, he was rather curious what she had to say. “And just what type is that?”

“You’re a narcissist who mistakenly believes that he is God’s personal gift to women and despite your intelligence, you’re not bright enough to know that you’re not anything of the kind.”

His eyes met hers. She expected him to back off. Instead, she saw that smile of his slowly curve the corners of his mouth.

“So,” he said, his smile growing, “you think I’m intelligent.”

She threw up her hands and started to walk away. “You’re missing the whole point, Brannigan. Why am I not surprised?”

But he wouldn’t let her walk away. This time, rather than take hold of her arm, he put himself in front of her, bodily blocking her path to the back entrance.

“Oh no, I don’t think I am missing the point,” he contradicted. “You had one bad experience with a Class A jerk a little over a year ago who didn’t know how lucky he was and screwed up a really good thing. You let that color the way you view every other man who even comes near you and you judge them and shut them down before they ever have a chance to open their mouths.”

Where the hell did he get off spouting all that at her? Did her brothers say anything to him? But how could they? She’d never said a single word to her brothers or anyone in the family about the way Billy had behaved or why she had dumped him. There was no way Brannigan could have known.

“Trust me, not opening your mouth is not your failing, Brannigan,” she informed him. “Now, you might not have anything better to do than stand out here in the hot sun, flapping your gums, but I do.”

And with that, Kenzie neatly turned on her heel and marched away from him and toward the rear steps of the police station.

She hurried up the steps quickly, intent on getting away from Brannigan as fast as she could. She needed to cool off before she slipped up and said something to confirm his assumption.

Hunter let Kenzie keep several feet ahead of him. It was really more prudent that way.

When he walked into the building a couple of minutes after Kenzie had, he wound up running into Murdoch, one of Kenzie’s older brothers. He nodded a greeting at the detective and the other man crossed over to him.

Murdoch obviously had something on his mind. “I hear your cold case just heated up and you’re working with my sister,” the homicide detective said.

The whole incident was less than a few hours old. There was a time not that long ago when Hunter would have been surprised that news about a potential “new” case could travel so fast.

But he had learned that there was an inside private line of communication within the departments, especially when it came to all matters concerning any of the Cavanaughs. It was almost as if at least some of them—if not all—were blessed with telepathy.

Hunter laughed at Murdoch’s suggestion. “Not if she has anything to say about it,” he told his friend.

“That cold case is yours, right? The guy without the head and hands,” Murdoch specified just for the record as they walked over to the elevator bank.

“Right. That was my first case when I came into the Cold Case Division. I’ve managed to clear some of the other ones since then, but that one,” Hunter told his friend, “it just kept going nowhere.”

“Well, I heard that the case Kenzie just caught today looks as if it might be connected to your cold case,” Murdoch repeated. “Both victims lost their heads.”

Hunter shook his head, softly laughing to himself. “You Cavanaughs are just amazing, you know that? Somebody not knowing any better would say that you all seem to operate on the same mental wavelength.”

Murdoch grinned. “Hey, who says that we don’t?” he laughed. “Seriously, though, if Kenzie’s case is somehow connected to yours, this could be the first big break you’ve had with it in a long while. I know how territorial she can be at times. Whatever you do, don’t let her chase you away.”

“Oh, I have no intentions of letting her do that,” Hunter assured the other detective. Belatedly, he pressed for the elevator. “I just plan on backing off for a minute or so to allow her to cool off and regroup. After that, I plan to go at this case again, this time full speed ahead. If there is a connection, I’m going to use it to my advantage. It’s time this cold case was finally put to bed.”

Murdoch nodded his approval. “Good for you. Kenzie’s a good detective, one of the best, but she needs to know that she can’t just boss people around whenever she wants to. You have every right to the information about this case as she does.”

Hunter had to laugh at the simple statement. He bet that Kenzie didn’t see it that way.

The elevator car arrived and he got on. Murdoch remained where he was, so Hunter put his hand up to keep the doors from closing just yet.

“You want to tell her that?” he asked Murdoch.

“Me? You kidding? Not on your life. Becoming a lion tamer might be easier. As a matter of fact,” Murdoch said, “I’m damn sure of it. Good luck, though,” he said to Hunter as the elevator door closed.

Hunter took the elevator up to his floor. He wanted to stop by his squad room long enough to let Valdez know what he was going to be doing for the next few days—or possibly longer.

As he got off the elevator, Hunter felt a rush of adrenaline, the way he always did whenever he felt he was closing in on a case. In his estimation, there was nothing else like it.

“We caught a break, Valdez,” he told his partner as the latter was enjoying his third cup of inky-black, lukewarm coffee.

Valdez looked up. “You mean that lead that Wilson was going on about actually panned out? That head that those kids found in Aurora Park belongs to your cold case?”

“No, but it looks like the killer might be the same guy who beheaded my guy. I think we’re finally going to be getting some answers,” Hunter told Valdez, trying his best not to sound too excited. “Looks like I’m going to be working with Kenzie Cavanaugh in Missing Persons for a week.”

Valdez looked at him a bit doubtfully. “Does she know that?”

“Well, if she doesn’t, she’s about to find out now,” Hunter said to his partner with an air of finality that left no room for doubt.

It was a known fact that Kenzie didn’t welcome merging with other departments unless it was her idea. This didn’t sound like it was that.

Valdez studied his partner for a long moment before finally asking, “Where would you like me to send your remains?”

Hunter suddenly found himself in the unique position of having to defend the very woman he knew would have been more than happy to see his head served on a platter.

“She’s not all that bad,” he told Valdez, doing his best to sound as if he believed what he was saying.

“Oh really? Well, I hear she’s a spitfire,” Valdez said, calling after his partner as Hunter walked out again. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s your funeral, Brannigan.”

“Good thing my life insurance is paid up,” Hunter shot back at his partner.

He left the squad room grinning with anticipation.

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