Cavanaugh's Surrender (15 page)

It came under the heading of When Pigs Fly.

“And I know you’re going home because Logan’s going to follow you,” Andrew concluded with a satisfied, albeit irritating, smile on his face.

“You don’t have to follow me,” she insisted five minutes later as she walked out of the warm house with Logan right beside her. There might be a chill in the air, but every single light seemed to be on in the Cavanaugh house, thereby generating a great deal of warmth.

Destiny’s vehicle was parked close to the house. Andrew had made sure a spot directly by the front door was left for her. At the height of the reception, vehicles had littered the neighborhood for several blocks in all directions.

Now, of course, there were only a few scattered here and there, for the most part belonging to other people in the neighborhood. Everyone who had attended the reception was gone except for two of the former chief’s daughters and one of his sons and their respective families.

The chief led a perfect life, she couldn’t help thinking. The kind of life she would have longed to claim as her own—if her father hadn’t taken that walk to buy a pack of cigarettes one fateful afternoon. Twenty years later, he still wasn’t back.

“Oh, yes, I most certainly do have to follow you home,” Logan told her. “I hear that when Andrew Cavanaugh makes a ‘suggestion,’ the person he’s making it to had damn well better follow it to the letter if he or she knows what’s good for them. I’m new to the family,” he told her, humor curving his mouth. “I don’t want to mess up. Especially not after he came through the way that he did.”

Guilt. The man was wielding guilt. Great. It wasn’t bad enough that she was already struggling with a megadose of it because Paula was dead and she felt that she should have been able to somehow protect her sister if only she’d taken more of an interest in her private life instead of waiting for her to share on her own. Now Logan would make her feel guilty for not doing what the former chief suggested.

“Fine, I’ll go home,” she said.

Logan never slowed his pace. “And I’ll follow you there,” he told her cheerfully.

She was going to have an escort whether she wanted one or not. For now, Destiny decided to stop fighting it.

Chapter 11

L
ogan remained directly behind her all the way home. There was no need to look up into her rearview mirror. She could almost
sense
that he was there.

Traffic was light. It took her less than twenty minutes to get home. After pulling up into her apartment complex, Destiny got out of her car, turned and waved at Logan. She fully expected him to wave back, make a U-turn and drive away.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he found a parking space in guest parking, as it turned out not too far away from hers. Getting out, he crossed over to her.

As he approached her, with the darkness settled in all around her like an oppressive long cape, she suddenly felt vulnerable. But she had no intentions of letting him know that.

“This is a little over and above the call of duty, don’t you think?” she asked when he came up to her.

“Not really. I’m sure this is what Andrew meant,” he answered. Destiny noticed that once away from the gathering, Logan no longer used the “Uncle” salutation. “Besides, it’s generally customary to walk a woman to her door.” He nodded toward the ground-floor apartment only a few steps away.

“That’s when she’s your date,” Destiny pointed out, adding, “I’m not your date.”

“No,” he agreed. “But for now, you’re my responsibility.”

His words stepped all over her independence. Destiny drew her shoulders back, as if preparing for a confrontation. “And just how do you figure that?”

Logan knew he had to tread lightly. She was in a bad place right now. He chose his words carefully. “Well, for better or for worse, we seemed to have been partnered up for this case, and partners are supposed to have each other’s backs, especially when one partner isn’t feeling one hundred percent.”

Her eyes narrowed, her very stance challenging him. “Meaning me.”

He inclined his head, silently agreeing with her. But when he spoke, he tempered Destiny’s assumption. “For now.”

Sarcasm was thick and heavy as she asked, “Would you like to tuck me into bed, too?”

“Well, then, that would have made you my date, wouldn’t it?” he said, going back to her initial disclaimer. “And you’re not, remember?” The smile on his lips took on a sensual quality. “Maybe some other time.” And then Logan grew serious as he smoothed down one side of her collar that had managed to curl under.

It was a simple, gentle gesture, and yet for some reason it threatened to bring tears to her eyes. That just told her that she was exceedingly vulnerable beneath the prickly words and all her efforts to appear to the contrary.

“Are you going to be all right by yourself?” he asked.

What did he care? He had a huge family to return to if he wanted. He had the best of all possible worlds, and she couldn’t help but envy him that.

“Or what?” she asked in a mocking tone. “You’ll sit next to my bed and read me bedtime stories until I fall asleep?”

He laughed softly, amused by the image that conjured up in his mind. “If that’s what it takes, sure, why not?” he asked gamely.

He said it so straight-faced that for just a second, she thought he was serious. Who knew, maybe he was. What he said melted her defensiveness. Moreover, it made her smile. He seemed to take everything in stride, no matter what she said.

“You Cavanaughs are something else again,” she marveled quietly. “Even you newly minted ones.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her gently. When Destiny raised an eyebrow in silent query, he obliged her by restating the question. “Are you going to be all right?”

For a moment, she said nothing, wondering if he actually cared one way or another, or if he was asking just because he felt it was expected of him. She refused to entertain the thought that it might be door number three: that he
did
care if she was going to be all right.

And then she nodded. “I’ll be fine.” She could see that he was waiting for her to convince him. “I don’t have any other choice. Paula’s killer is out there somewhere, and I intend to catch him. I can’t do that if I fall apart.”

“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “But if you need someone to talk to—or not talk to,” he added with a smile that was beginning to weave its way under her skin even though she was doing her best to ignore it, “I’m available.”

She nodded. That he was. To any girl with a pulse, she reminded herself. And she had never been one for team sports. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. But I’ll be all right.”

“Yeah,” he said as if he had absolutely no doubt about the outcome. “You will.”

She picked up the note of sincerity in his voice. He didn’t have to say that. Didn’t even have to be here. But he was.

“You’re a good guy, Logan Cavanaugh,” she told him quietly just before she impulsively brushed her lips against his cheek.

Logan felt something within his gut tighten so quickly and so hard, for a second it was difficult for him to draw in a breath.

Every fiber of his being suddenly wanted to pull her into his arms and to kiss her back. The right way. And he had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t have gotten any resistance from her.

But that would be taking unfair advantage of her vulnerable state, and he didn’t want things to go down that way between them. Their time would come. He was fairly certain of that now, but not tonight.

Because tonight was about healing, and she needed to do that on her terms, not his.

“Good night, Richardson,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“In the morning,” she echoed softly.

The next moment, she walked into her apartment and then closed the door behind her.

Logan turned on his heel and walked away.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

And possibly the most selfless.

* * *

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone to take me seriously,” Allison West said to them the next day as she sat in her living room. A huge sigh of relief accompanied the older woman’s words.

Determined not to allow any more time to pass, Destiny had suggested to her partner that they interview the families of the other so-called suicide victims she’d found entered into the database.

“Debra was bright, outgoing. There was no way she would have killed herself the way the police insisted. I
know
my daughter,” she said with feeling, looking from Destiny to Logan and then back again.

That was just the way she felt about Paula, Destiny thought. “The investigating detective said they found a prescription for sleeping pills near your daughter’s body—” she began.

But Mrs. West was shaking her head. “That prescription wasn’t hers.”

“It was her name on the bottle,” Logan pointed out gently.

She swung around to look at him, anger in her eyes. “I don’t care what it said, I’m telling you that it wasn’t hers. Debra was a personal trainer with an extensive list of clients. She really believed in what she was doing. She exercised religiously, was almost fanatical about what she put into her body. She wouldn’t even take so much as an aspirin,” Mrs. West insisted. “I don’t know how they did it, but those pills were planted. They were not my daughter’s.”

Destiny tried another approach. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to get rid of your daughter this much?”

Again the woman could only shake her head. “No, I can’t. If I knew, I would have confronted them myself,
made
them confess, even if I had to shake it out of them with my bare hands.”

Given that the woman was barely five feet tall and most likely weighed as much as a pile of wet towels, her words didn’t amount to much of a threat. But it was a testimony to where her heart was and how much she believed her daughter’s death had been staged.

“The police said that your daughter left a suicide note, saying she was upset because she and her boyfriend had just broken up. Do you have any idea what his name was?” Destiny asked.

“No.” Mrs. West’s small voice hitched. “Debra wanted to keep it a secret. She said she didn’t want to jinx the relationship by talking about it too soon.”

Destiny stared at her, startled that Mrs. West had used the exact same words that Paula had used.

She didn’t want to jinx the relationship.

“She did tell me that she thought he was perfect,” Mrs. West was saying. “And that when I found out who it was, I was going to be surprised.” Her eyes darkened as she took hold of Logan’s wrist, squeezing it as she made her appeal. “Debra didn’t kill herself. She didn’t write any suicide note. It was
typed,
for God’s sake,” the woman cried in frustration. “Who types a note, then climbs into a bathtub and slashes their wrists? For all her outgoing nature, Debra was a very modest person when it came to her body. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find her like that. She didn’t
do
this,” Mrs. West insisted again, growing progressively more agitated. “I’d stake my life on it.”

Feeling compassion as well as a bond with this woman because of what she was going through, Destiny patted Mrs. West’s arm. “You don’t have to stake your life on it, Mrs. West. We’ll find whoever did this to your daughter.”

Grasping Destiny’s hand between both of her own, the woman looked directly into her eyes. “Promise?” she pressed.

Destiny didn’t even hesitate. “You have my word on it.”

* * *

“She believed you, you know,” Logan said to her when they finally left the woman’s apartment some twenty minutes later.

Destiny knew exactly how committed she’d made herself. “I know.”

Logan studied her profile as he asked, “And what are you going to tell her if you can’t make good on that promise?”

That scenario was never going to happen, she thought fiercely. “I have every intention of ‘making good’ on it,” she told him simply.

There was no way she could make a promise like that in good faith, and she knew it. “Destiny—”

She stopped for a moment to look at him. She knew what he was thinking. Hell, she could all but read his mind.

“Don’t give me odds, Cavanaugh. We’re going to get the bastard. Nothing less is remotely acceptable.”

There was a fine line between being a dedicated detective and an obsessed one. “You ever read
Moby Dick?
” Logan asked as he got into the vehicle on the driver’s side.

She pretended to take his question seriously. “We’re not after a whale, we’re after a human being. And human beings make mistakes. He will, too, if he hasn’t already,” she said confidently. “Somewhere, somehow, all those women I turned up have something in common. We have to find what it is.”

Right. Simple, he thought sarcastically. “So, to sum up, we’re looking for one needle that was in six different haystacks at one point or another.”

He noted that she never even cracked a smile. “Precisely.”

They returned to the precinct to review some things before planning their next course of action.

Once there, Destiny got busy compiling a file on all six of the women who had initially been thought to have committed suicide while in the throes of despair after each had supposedly broken up with the love of her life.

While she was printing up screen after screen, Logan borrowed a bulletin board and brought it into the squad room. One of the wheels had an unfortunate squeak that was heard with each complete rotation. Moving it faster only made the squeaking sound continuous, like an amorous rodent calling to its mate.

The noise drew the lieutenant out of his office and into the main area. He eyed the offensive bulletin board. “What’s this?” Bailey asked.

“Visual aids,” Logan told him, keeping it simple. “Richardson thought it might help if we put the victims’ pictures up in chronological order with a summary of what we know about them under each.”

“You mean the nonserial-killer case,” the lieutenant corrected pointedly.

Logan was not about to argue with the lieutenant at this stage of the investigation. He would have needed more evidence at his disposition for that. “That’s the one.”