Cavanaugh Judgment (11 page)

Stifling a sigh, Blake echoed, “A hero,” and let it go at that. He looked at Greer. “When you get Donna McClosky’s address, let me know.”

“So you can send her your condolences?” Greer asked, thinking that Kincannon was a nicer man than he wanted people to believe.

Blake didn’t answer at first, debating how much information to part with. But, given what he was learning about this woman’s nature, he knew that she’d make it a point to find out. He might as well spare himself the interrogation.

“Costs a lot to raise a child these days. From what Tim told me, his aunt was just barely getting by. He was looking for a second job so he could send her a little money every month.”

“You’re gonna set up some kind of a trust fund for the kid?” It was a rhetorical question on his father’s part. “Count me in.”

Blake looked at his father. The only income the older man had was his pension. “You don’t exactly have money to burn, Gunny.”

His father’s grin was a bit lopsided. “Yeah, I know, but I got this kid who lets me live at his place free. Been saving up for something special. This trust fund just might be it,” he added with a nod of his head.

Generosity with a minimum of words. And a maximum of heart. For a moment, a surge of emotion threatened to close her throat. Yesterday, in court, when she sat in the witness chair, Kincannon had struck her as a somber, humorless man, a man who had evolved without a heart because of the loss he’d suffered. She would have never guessed that there was this caring side to him.

Just goes to show, you never really know about a person. “I’ll get you that address,” she promised.

“Good.” Blake began to rise.

Greer was instantly alert. “Where are you going, Judge?”

“I have this flowing black robe.” There was more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “It only seems to go with a courtroom as an accessory.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “It’s early, Judge,” she pointed out, then indicated his plate. He’d barely touched it. “And you haven’t eaten your breakfast yet.”

“Won’t go to waste,” Alexander was quick to tell her, eyeing the plate. “I’ll eat it if he’s fool enough not to.”

“No, he’ll eat it,” she told the other man, looking pointedly at Blake. “You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you, Judge?”

Blake laughed shortly. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“You’d be surprised.” That had slipped out unintentionally. She hurried to cover it up. There was no way she was going to let the judge think that she had a sensitive side. “At least try it,” she urged. “I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to finish it.”

With a sigh, Blake sat down again, resigned. “If I don’t go along with this, you’re probably going to try to force-feed me, saying something inane about a plane and an air hanger.”

“Actually, I was considering a train and a tunnel, but a plane and an air hanger work just as well.” Her straight face lasted only halfway through the sentence. The grin that took over threatened to split her face in half. “It won’t hurt you to have something in your stomach, Judge,” she added seriously. “Think of it as a way to help you put up with the morning.”

His eyes met hers as he raised the fork to his lips. “It’s not the morning I have to put up with.” There was no mistaking his meaning.

Rather than comment, Greer looked at Blake’s father. He appeared amused by the exchange. “Is your son always this surly in the morning?” she wanted to know.

The shaggy gray head nodded sadly. “Afraid so, O’Brien. He’s like this most mornings. Sometimes worse.”

She took a breath and let it out, as if that somehow helped her fortify herself. “Something to look forward to.”

“You realize that you don’t have to,” Blake pointed out. “No one’s holding
you
prisoner.”

She caught his meaning. “You’re not a prisoner, Judge,” she told him with all sincerity. “It just so happens that you and your father are two very special people that the Aurora police department would like to see continue living.” She nodded at his plate. “So, how was it?”

He didn’t follow her. “How was what?”

“Breakfast.” When he didn’t reply immediately, she realized that he’d consumed it all without even being aware of what he was doing. The man was definitely a challenge. “You finished it.”

Blake looked down at his plate, a mild look of surprise momentarily slipping across his features. He didn’t even remember chewing or swallowing, but he obviously must have. His plate was empty.

The woman was apparently still waiting for an evaluation of her culinary skills. “All right I guess. I’m still standing.”

“High praise indeed,” Greer said dryly. “But just for the record, Judge, you’re sitting.”

Pushing back his chair, Blake rose to his feet. “And now I’m standing.”

Greer laughed, shaking her head. If she looked up
contrary
in the dictionary, she had a sneaking suspicion that she’d find Kincannon’s handsome face staring back at her.

“Just no end to your talents, is there, Judge?”

He made no reply; instead, he asked a question. With nothing to lose, he thought he’d take a shot. “Any chance of my going to the courthouse alone?”

She flashed him a serene smile. “About as much chance as my growing two feet and playing on the Lakers by next season.”

“What about my father?” He nodded at the elder Kincannon, fairly certain that he finally had her. “He doesn’t go to court with me. How are you going to guard him
and
me? Even you can’t be two places at the same time.”

If he thought he was baiting her, he was going to be disappointed. “I am aware of that, Judge. I passed high-school physics with flying colors,” she replied. “I have someone coming to stay with your father while we’re at the courthouse.”

She heard her former ally groan behind her. As she turned around, he said, “No offense, O’Brien, but I don’t take kindly to being handed off.”

Glancing at her watch, she noted the time. Taylor should be getting here at any moment. “I know, which is why I requested Taylor McIntyre for the job.” She’d called the chief last night, right after the Kincannons had gone to bed. She had a feeling that Taylor would have more luck handling Gunny. The ex-marine might grumble about having women in charge, but he definitely responded to the female touch.

The doorbell suddenly rang. The cavalry had arrived. “And there she is.”

“She?” Alexander echoed, instantly perking up.

She’d made the right decision, Greer thought. She glanced at the man over her shoulder, doing her best to suppress an amused grin. “Oh, didn’t I mention that Taylor was a woman?” she asked innocently. “She’s also the chief of detectives’ stepdaughter.”

“Anyone on the police force
not
related to Chief Cavanaugh?” Blake wanted to know. It seemed like the entire force was peppered with his relatives.

“There’s got to be a couple of people,” she deadpanned as she went to the door.

Greer opened it cautiously, acutely aware that even though she was expecting her step-cousin at this time, it still might be one of Munro’s lackeys standing on the doorstep.

Fortunately, it was just Taylor.

The other woman did her best to summon a smile, or at least one that generally resembled one in passing. It took obvious effort.

“I’m not a morning person,” Taylor warned by way of a greeting as she walked in.

Greer glanced at the judge. Taylor wasn’t the only one, she thought. “There’s a lot of that going around,” she commented under her breath, then said with more feeling, “You should feel right at home.”

Turning to the two men she’d spent the night with, Greer made introductions. “Taylor, this is Judge Blake Kincannon and his father, former gunnery sergeant Alexander Kincannon, retired marine,” she added, knowing that the reference would put the older man in a good, hopefully cooperative mood. “Gentlemen, this is Detective Taylor McIntyre—” she looked deliberately at Alexander “—soon to be Detective Taylor Laredo.”

“That’s Cavanaugh-Laredo,” Taylor corrected with a yawn. “I’ve decided to get my name legally changed.” She saw the other woman looking at her in mild surprise. “Seems only right since Brian was more of a father to me, my brothers and sister than the guy who lent us his gene pool,” she explained. Not waiting on ceremony, she purloined Greer’s mug. There was still approximately four ounces of coffee in it.

Taylor drained it in less than five seconds. Putting the cup down, she asked Greer belatedly, “You didn’t want that, did you?”

“Not half as much as you did,” she assured the senior detective.

“You’re getting married?” Alexander asked the new woman, interested.

Taylor beamed, her thoughts clearly straying to the man she was engaged to. Her devotion to her future husband was no secret. In fact, she’d once even confided that her fiancé could instantly raise her body temperature by five degrees with just a promising look. “As soon as we can set a date,” she told the judge’s father.

As if foiled, Alexander turned his attention back to Greer. “Looks like I’m just going to have to wear you down, O’Brien.” He chuckled.

He wasn’t going to stand here while his father all but made a fool of himself. “Time to go,” Blake announced. “Nice meeting you, Detective.” He nodded at the woman he was leaving with his father. She had his full sympathy, he thought.

“The pleasure was all mine,” Taylor assured him. She stepped back beside her assignment for the day. “See you tonight,” she told Greer. The glint in her blue eyes told Greer that she considered her new step-cousin’s assignment the better one by at least a country mile.

Greer pretended she didn’t notice.

With the Munro trial bumped indefinitely, Judge Kincannon’s administrative assistant was forced to reschedule all the other cases and move them up on the calendar. Consequently, this morning, the judge found himself facing a child molester whose lawyer actually provided the defense that when his client indulged in recreational drugs, they turned the man into a completely different person. And it was
that
person who was the child molester. A stint in rehab, the lawyer declared, should clear everything all up.

It was all Blake could do to keep his ever increasing disdain for the defendant and his alleged crime from showing on his face. But at his core, Kincannon was a firm believer that everyone deserved their day in court and that they also deserved to be represented by competent counsel.

He was well aware of cases where the wrong man or woman was sent away for a crime they didn’t commit. To his knowledge, his cases didn’t number among them. He’d like to think that it was because he tried to keep proceedings as fair as possible, but he knew that there was also a good amount of luck involved.

He hoped to God that his luck never ran out.

It had been an extremely long day, broken up only by a quick recess for lunch, part of which was spent mediating a point of conflict for yet another set of counselors. When Blake finally got around to eating, he sent out for sandwiches from a local sandwich shop and had them brought to his chambers.

Ordinarily, he ate alone, usually at his desk. Most of the time, he would also be reviewing something that required his attention.

Today, though, he’d had to share his precious so-called free time with his bodyguard. It didn’t sit that well with him. He valued the moments he was alone with his thoughts. With Greer, there was no such thing as being alone.

There was also no such thing as silence.

The woman seemed to actively have something against the latter because any time silence threatened to break out, she began talking again, filling the air with words to the point that Blake felt as if he was literally under attack. Occasionally, she came up for air, but that hardly seemed to last more than a couple of minutes at a time, and then she launched yet another verbal discourse.

Court was over for the day and they were now on their way home—and still she continued prattling on.

There was a headache behind his eyes that threatened to take over at any moment. He turned toward the woman in the driver’s seat and asked, “Have you ever tried yoga, Detective?”

She wasn’t into sitting quietly in a twisted position. Weight-lifting and cross-training were far more her style. “Once,” she admitted, unaware that a slight frown slipped over her lips. “I didn’t like it.”

Blake sighed. It figured. “I had a feeling,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“I’m not the type to sit around and mediate.” She suspected he’d already guessed that, but she said it anyway. “I’m more of a doer.” She extended it to her job. That was, after all, what she was doing here. Her job. “I like being out in the field, rounding up dealers—”

He had a feeling that this current assignment was going to drive her crazy if it extended beyond a couple of days. That made two of them.

“Then what are you doing here?” Blake asked her, slowly becoming aware that the scent of lavender and jasmine were subtly registering within the interior of the vehicle.

Greer chose her words slowly. The terrain before her could become uncomfortable territory at any moment. “The chief felt I was the best for the job because I was the one who’d studied Munro’s habits and because…” Her voice drifted off as she searched for the right way to say this. The least hurtful way to say this.

This time, the momentary silence made him uneasy. “Yes?”

Greer slanted a quick glance in his direction. Could it really be that Kincannon didn’t remember her? He seemed far too sharp for that, but maybe he’d blocked it all out. Not all survival mechanisms kicked in on conscious levels.

She took a breath and then continued. “Because you and I have a history.”

She’d said the last part softly as she drove away from the courthouse. Slowing down, she slanted another glance toward the judge to see if there was any sign that he knew what she was referring to. His expression remained identical to the one he’d worn a few moments ago.

“A history,” Kincannon repeated. There was neither feeling nor a quizzical note evident in his voice. She had no clue if he did actually recognize her.

Okay, she supposed she had to ask, although, in asking, she was aware that she was bringing it all up for him again. Part of her really didn’t want to do that. She hated seeing anyone in pain. But as long as she felt in the dark as to whether or not the judge remembered that she was the one who’d been first on the scene of his wife’s fatal accident, she was going to constantly feel as if she was walking on eggshells, afraid of the information coming out at the wrong time.

It was a Band-Aid she had to pull off. Now.

“Is that what they call it these days?” Kincannon finally commented.

She took a breath. This time his voice said everything she needed to know. “Then you remember.”

He looked at her for a long moment, the events of that dark day coming at him like a lethal assault on all fronts.

He could never think of that day without bitterly tasting the loss. He and Margaret were just coming back from dinner. It was their second anniversary and he couldn’t wait to get her home. Couldn’t wait to make love with her and count his blessings that he had found his soul mate so early in his life.

He never got to do either.

“That you were the one who cut my seat belt and dragged me out of the car wreck? That you worked over my wife for fifteen minutes, until the paramedics came? Yes, I remember.”

Greer frowned to herself. How had Kincannon known how long she’d labored over his wife? When she’d finally sat back and silently admitted to herself that death had won, she’d seen that the man she later learned was a sitting judge in her area had slipped into merciful unconsciousness.

Looking at him now, she realized that she was sitting beside a man who made it a point to know as much as he could about everything. “You tracked down the responding paramedics and talked to them, didn’t you?”

He nodded. It had cost him to do it. Had cost him even more to listen to the two men recount their own futile efforts to resuscitate his wife, but he’d hoped that if he did, if he knew everything that had been done, the very knowledge would somehow begin to usher in closure for him and he could start to heal.

He was still waiting.

Chapter 9

A
movement at the back of the courtroom caught Blake’s attention despite the fact that the defense attorney pacing before the bench was actively questioning a witness.

For just a split second, his focus shifted away from the proceedings and onto the man in the back of the room. Blake felt his heart rate increase enough to be noticeable. It was then that he admitted, if only to himself in the privacy of his own mind, that the shooting incident had actually spooked him.

He’d already been well aware of how tentative life could be. One moment you were here, the next you were gone. Just like that.

His brother had been larger than life with an aura of tremendous energy about him. Scott had embraced life and wanted to do great things. Margaret was the very definition of sunshine, lighting up his life every moment she was in it. Everyone who knew her loved her. And in what amounted to a blink of an eye, they were both gone. Forever.

Even so, there was a part of him that still felt bulletproof. He felt as if he would go on forever, no matter what.

Probably because it no longer meant anything to him. Those who wanted nothing more than to go on living didn’t. Those who didn’t care one way or another, leaning toward not, went on interminably.

But being fired at the other day had made him jumpy, if only because he didn’t like having the unexpected sprung on him. He liked things mapped out, liked knowing what was coming.