Cavanaugh Judgment (6 page)

“You’re not asking me to give you special consideration, are you, Greer?” he finally asked.

God, she didn’t want him to think that. She shook her head with feeling. His tone had been low. Hers wasn’t. “No, sir.”

Brian’s smile was easy, pleasant. “Good, I didn’t think so.” About to turn away, he realized that he hadn’t finished yet. “How long will it take you to go home and pack some things?”

Somewhere distant in her head, she heard a door slamming. The door had bars on it. She was stuck. She was just going to have to make the best of it. “I’ve got a change of clothes in the car.”

The information had Brian’s smile widening. “You’re a Cavanaugh, all right. Always prepared.”

His compliment reminded her of something. Greer shifted slightly. “About that, sir?” she began, letting her voice trail off a little. Brian waited.

There were seven of them, seven “new” members of the family. There were the four who belonged to his bride of a little more than a year, and then there were the three who none of them had been prepared for. Triplets who comprised his late brother Mike’s secret other family. Lila’s children, all adults and all on the force, went by her first husband’s surname while Greer and her brothers had her late mother’s. All seven were told that they were welcomed to change their names to Cavanaugh if they wanted to.

Name change or not, that was what they were. Cavanaughs. But the decision strictly belonged to the seven individuals involved. He’d heard that it was going to be an “all-or-nothing” deal. The “jury” was still out on which way they would ultimately lean.

Or maybe the jury was ready to come in, he thought, looking down at the young woman who reminded him so much of Mike’s daughter, Patience.

“Yes?” he prodded.

She pressed her lips together. “For my part, I’ve decided yes.”

“Yes?” he echoed, unclear if it was “yes” she’d change her surname to Cavanaugh or “yes,” she’d keep the one she already had.

“Yes,” she repeated. “If it were only up to me, I’d like to change my last name to Cavanaugh. It’d be an honor.”

“We’d all like that,” he assured her. “Especially Andrew. And the honor goes both ways,” he added. “Anything else?”

“No, sir, that’s all.” Finished, Greer began to back up, trying not to dread what lay ahead. She was fairly certain that the judge wouldn’t bring up their first encounter, he seemed too self-contained for that, but she was fairly sure that the memory was probably never far from his mind. Which would make things very awkward and difficult between them.

Nobody said being a cop was going to be easy, she reminded herself.

“Good,” Brian was saying. “Then go tell the judge that you’re going to be his new houseguest for the foreseeable future.”

Nodding, Greer drew in a deep, fortifying breath. There was no way around this.

Who knew, maybe they’d get lucky and one of the chief’s men had already located Munro at the bailiff’s house.

Greer had her doubts but she mentally crossed her fingers anyway as she turned around and pushed open the padded black leather doors. For what felt like the umpteenth time that day, she walked into the courtroom.

The judge wasn’t there.

Adrenaline shot through her veins like a spring-propelled pinball. Greer quickly scanned the room. There was no sign of the man she was supposed to be guarding. The only one left in the room was the court stenographer, carefully packing up her steno machine.

Greer hurried over to the thin blonde. “Where’s the judge?” she demanded.

Closing the case and snapping its locks into place, the woman picked up her equipment. She made no secret of the fact that she was eager to leave. The unexpected question made her frown thoughtfully.

“In his chambers, I guess,” she replied.

“I hope you guessed right,” Greer muttered under her breath as she hurried to the rear of the room. There was an exit to the right of the judge’s desk. This had to be what he’d used to pull his disappearing act.

Damn it, she thought, finding herself in a narrow hallway, why couldn’t the man stay put? Didn’t he understand the gravity of the situation? Or did Kincannon understand it and just believed himself to be bulletproof?

Turning a corner, she found herself facing a closed door. She had her weapon out and ready to fire in one swift movement. There was no telling what she’d find on the other side of the door. For all she knew, Munro had been lying in wait for the judge in his own chambers. The drug dealer was just crazy enough to do it.

Biting off a few choice words, she kicked open the door, weapon aimed and poised to shoot at anything that made a wrong move.

Startled, the man inside the room swung around.

Kincannon.

Alone.

A hiss of air escaped through her clenched teeth and Greer lowered her weapon. Relief and anger converged within her.

Before she’d made her entrance, the judge had taken off his robe and hung it carefully on a hanger, apparently respectful of all the black cloth represented. He frowned now as she lowered her weapon.

“Most people knock before kicking down a door and bursting into someone’s chambers.” His voice was deceptively calm.

Greer’s mouth dropped open. He was going to be high-handed and lecture her? Seriously? “First of all, I didn’t kick down the door. It’s still attached.”

“The maintenance man will be grateful,” he commented drolly.

“And second,” she continued, pretending he hadn’t said anything, “most people don’t have an escaped felon threatening to kill them. Drastic times require drastic measures.” Her look pinned him where he stood. “You shouldn’t have wandered off like that.”

“I’m a grown man and in possession of all my faculties,” he told her tersely. “I didn’t ‘wander off,’ I went to my chambers. For a reason,” he added.

“To hang up your robe?” Greer guessed in credulously.

“Yes.” He said the single word as if it was a challenge.

She was not about to back off. If this was going to work between them, he had to be aware of the rules. “You could have waited.”

“I could have,” he agreed. “But I didn’t. Detective, I’ve been crossing the street by myself since I was six years old. Nothing’s happened yet.” He blew out a breath, as if he was trying to calm himself. “And in case you’re interested, this isn’t the first threat I’ve gotten,” he assured her.

“It’s the first on my watch,” she informed him. And then she asked the question that was nagging at her. “Since you were six? Seriously?” Who let their six-year-old cross the street by themselves?

“My father insisted. He wouldn’t let my mother coddle me. Said it was important for me to become a man.”

“At six?” she cried. “How many six-year-old men did he know?”

He’d never questioned his father’s reasons or methods. That was just the way things were. “He was a marine, a gunnery sergeant in the corps.”

The light began to seep in, shining on the situation. “That explains a lot.”

He disregarded her comment. “What are you doing here, Detective? I assumed you weren’t going to be ‘watching over’ me anymore. Isn’t that what you wanted to tell the chief? That you’d rather pass on the assignment?”

They were back to awkward again, she thought. She didn’t like him just “assuming” things about her—even if they were true. “The chief would rather that I didn’t ‘pass.’”

He looked at her, vindicated. Up until this moment, he’d just been guessing, but her admission had just proven him right. “Then you did protest.”

She raised her chin. If she was going to have to do this, it was best if there were no hard feelings between them. “
Protest
is rather a strong word, Judge.”

He laughed shortly. “Don’t split hairs, Detective O’Brien. It’s not your style.”

Now he was assuming things about her? She didn’t care for being pigeonholed. “And how would you know what my ‘style’ was?”

The answer to that was far less complex than she might assume, Blake thought. “I’m the man you jumped on, remember?” He saw what he took to be a slight blush accent her cheeks and found himself momentarily intrigued. He hadn’t thought that they made women who blushed anymore. “You’re given to broad strokes,” he continued with his analysis, “not tiny lines.”

She had always been a big picture kind of person. It made taking care of details particularly difficult for her. There was always something that she missed, that she forgot. Right now, the fact that Kincannon had nailed her so accurately made her very uncomfortable. Made her feel as if he was poking around in her head, invading her space.

She resented it. This wasn’t going to work. And while she wasn’t about to go back to the chief with that—Kincannon could.

“If you’d rather have someone else assigned to you, Your Honor, please feel free to ask the chief,” she told him. “I’m sure he’d listen to you.”

“I’d rather that no one was assigned to me,” he told her curtly, “but you saw where that went.”

Tired of dancing around in circles, she shrugged off the whole situation. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the chief’s men’ll find Munro quickly.”

Blake sincerely doubted that luck was on his side. Munro had probably gone underground. “Lots of places a man can disappear in this county.” He looked at her pointedly. “Or out of it. If Munro had any brains at all, he’s take this opportunity to flee the country—at least until things cool off for him.”

“Oh, he has brains all right,” Greer assured him. She’d dealt with people like Munro before, too often for her liking. In her opinion, they were the vermin of the earth. But Munro seemed to be a cut above the rest. Smarter. Sharper. And that worried her as far as the judge’s safety went. “But he’s also the type who relishes taking revenge.”

Taking his jacket out of the small closet, Blake slipped it on over his light blue tapered shirt. “In that case, shouldn’t you be the one with a bodyguard?” he asked. “After all, you were the one who pulled off that sting and brought Munro in.”

“But you were the judge who sent away his buddies,” she reminded him. And there was one more salient point. “And you were the one who got the e-mail.”

To her surprise, just the barest hint of a smile curved the corners of a mouth that could have been called sensual under different circumstances. He shrugged at her words. “It was worth a shot.”

Swiftly, she pieced things together. “You were trying to talk me out of guarding you?”

It was obvious that the man she was going to be protecting saw no reason to offer a denial. “I was.”

Well, he’d wasted his time, she thought. “It’s not up to me.”

“And if it was up to you?” he wanted to know. “Would you guard me?”

She could smell the lather he’d used shaving. Or maybe that was the scent of his soap. In any case, he was standing too close, she thought. His space was commingling with hers and that was definitely interfering with her thought process.

Greer subtly moved over to where his robe was hanging and pretended to be interested in the texture of the weave. It was called survival.

The automatic response to his question would have been no. But this didn’t require an automatic answer, it required one that had some thought behind it. The chief never said things just to hear himself talk. If he felt the judge needed a bodyguard, then he damn well needed a bodyguard. She’d already silently agreed with that judgment.

She worded her response carefully. “If there was no one else to do it, yes, I would.”

His eyes held hers for a moment. She felt as if he was looking into her soul. “A truthful answer.”

There was a reason for that. The judge wasn’t the kind of man you lied to. Not without a great many consequences. “I’ve got a feeling you could see right through it if it wasn’t.”

Her answer amused him. Was she applying the catch-more-flies-with-honey-than-with-vinegar theory? “Flattery, Detective?”

Her answer was immediate. “Observation, Judge.” She glanced at what he was doing. Briefcase packed, he was apparently ready to go. Striding, he got ahead of her by the time they reached the door.

“My car’s parked downstairs,” he told her, leading the way out. Devoid of people, the courtroom was as quiet as a tomb. Alert, she scanned the area as she took the lead, not letting him walk until she walked there first.

“We’ll take mine,” she informed him. There was no room for argument.

He did anyway. “I’m partial to my car.” Reaching the elevators, he pressed the down button.

“And I’m partial to you breathing,” she replied mildly.

The wording surprised him. “Really?”

“Okay,” she admitted, “the chief is. And what the chief wants, the chief gets.”

She was overreacting, he thought. He refused to be intimated by a cheap hood.

“And you really think that if I use my car, I won’t be ‘breathing’ for much longer?” He didn’t bother removing the note of mockery in his voice. “Just how much credit are you giving this two-bit criminal?”

The elevator arrived. She held her hand up, stopping the judge until she checked out the interior. There were two other people in the car, both wearing ID badges that connected them to Human Resources.

She motioned him forward with the barrel of her weapon. “The kind of credit that goes along with having a bogus paramedic team arrive on the scene well ahead of the real one. The kind of credit someone who could pull this all off should be awarded. Anything else?” she wanted to know.

“Yes. Are you always this annoying?”

The question caught her off guard, although she didn’t show it.

“No,” Greer finally replied. “If you believe my brothers, sometimes I’m worse.” The doors opened on the first floor. She waited for the two people to disembark, then motioned for the judge to follow her. “Let’s go, Your Honor.”

Rather than follow, he fell into step beside her even as he resigned himself to the inevitable. “I have no choice, I guess.”

“Nope.”

They made their way to the front doors. There were several police officers, all of whom she was familiar with, processing people out one by one. Recognizing them, one of the officers waved her and the judge by.

Greer stopped just before the doors and her eyes met Kincannon’s. “Neither one of us do.”