Cavanaugh Watch (6 page)

Janelle did her best to accomplish both.

Ten miles turned out not to be enough. She failed miserably on the second count and succeeded only marginally on the first. Which ultimately didn’t matter. As it turned out, she didn’t need to be calm for her father’s sake.

There were no lights on in her father’s house when she pulled up in the driveway. At least, none coming from the inside of the house. There was a light on by the front door. Being the only handy one in the family, she and her father had spent one Saturday putting in an old-fashioned street lamp at the beginning of the walk. Her father had it set on an automatic timer. Five o’clock in the winter, seven o’clock in the summer.

It was after seven, and there was no indication that anyone was home.

Janelle tried anyway.

Getting out of the car, she went up the front walk. Behind her, she heard Sawyer pull up in his sports car. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he’d parked along the curb. The tail end of his car was over in the driveway just enough to block hers.

He’d done that on purpose, she thought. To make sure that she couldn’t peel out once she was done. She didn’t like the fact that he was one step ahead of her.

Janelle frowned as she approached the front door. Annoying as he was, right now, her mind wasn’t on Sawyer, it was on the Wayne case. And on the fact that her father wasn’t where she needed him to be. He couldn’t still be at work. She’d called his office just before winding down and the assistant had told her that he’d left for the day.

She’d assumed that he’d left for home, as usual.

Like her siblings and her uncle, she had a key to the house. After ringing the doorbell once to give her father fair warning in case he was entertaining a lady friend—which would have been a first since none of them had been able to get her father to agree to even a single date with a woman—Janelle let herself in.

“Dad?” Despite the furnishings, her voice echoed as it penetrated the darkness. “Dad, are you home?” Turning on the light, she walked into the living room.

The second she did, Janelle was immediately aware of someone right behind her. She swung around, her fist raised defensively, ready to punch, gouge, whatever was necessary.

She muttered an unflattering oath as her fist was completely swallowed up by Sawyer’s hand.

Sawyer pushed her hand down to her side. “Down, champ.”

She was edgy. And with good reason. Having a bodyguard around spooked her. “I thought you said you were staying in your car and cracking the windows.”

“That was when you were going in to talk to your father.” He gestured around the empty house. “There’s no one home.”

He made her want to prove him wrong. Desperately. “Dad?” Janelle raised her voice so that it could be heard on the second floor.

No response.

“Should have called ahead,” Sawyer told her mildly. And then he paused for a moment, as if to gauge her thoughts. “Do you want to go check out the rooms upstairs?”

She absolutely
hated
that he kept second-guessing her this way. He didn’t know her; how did he know what she wanted to do?

Without answering, she turned on her heel and headed toward the stairs.

“Dad?” Janelle called again, even louder this time. She still got the same response. Silence.

Stubbornly, she checked out the rooms on the second floor. They’d all moved out a while ago, but Brian Cavanaugh had left his children’s rooms intact, in case they ever needed to stay over for some reason. She supposed in a way, it helped him cope with being alone after all these years.

Her father wasn’t home. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. He
never
went out after work. Unless…

“Ready to go home?” Sawyer asked.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she took out her cell phone and she pressed a familiar number. Someone on the other end picked up after two rings.

“Hello? Aunt Rose? This is Janelle. Is my father there?”

“Hi, Janelle,” a warm voice responded. “He’s right here. Do you want to speak with him?”

She shifted beneath Sawyer’s gaze. This wasn’t the time to go into anything, not while he was listening. “No, not right now, Aunt Rose. Just tell him I’ll call him later tonight. Or tomorrow,” she added, to take the urgency off. She didn’t want anyone worrying.

“Does he know what it’s about?”

“Probably.” Janelle smiled to herself. “He knows everything.” Or so he always told her and her brothers. For a long time, she’d believed him. “Bye.” She shut her phone and slipped it back into her purse.

Sawyer was leaning against the wall opposite her, his hands in his pockets. His indolent pose didn’t fool her for a moment. He was as alert as a rattler, ready to strike.

“Do you want to wait for him here?” Sawyer asked. “Or are you ready to go home?”

“Home,” Janelle answered.

The minute the word was out of her mouth, she suddenly realized that
home,
her apartment, wasn’t going to be the haven she’d come to regard it. Not if Sawyer was coming with her.

She raised her eyes to his. And knew. There was no talking him out of it. Under any circumstances.

Chapter 6

“Y
ou’re coming home with me.”

It wasn’t a question so much as a shell-shocked statement. One that, Janelle hoped, if uttered out loud, would be summarily negated by the man leaning against the wall in front of her. She didn’t
want
this man coming home with her. What would it take to make him go to his own place for the night and resume this little charade in the morning?

Sawyer straightened, moving away from the wall. Ready to leave. “If that’s where your body’s going.”

How could such a flat, emotionless statement evoke anger, panic and a sense of invasion all in one fell swoop? She had no answer and that only made her feel more unsettled. Janelle juggled all three reactions, doing her best not to come across like a hysterical female, even though, if she were being honest with herself, she was very close to being just that.

She didn’t want this man in her apartment. Wasn’t putting up with him all day enough? She tried to reason with him despite the sinking feeling in her stomach that she was just wasting words. “Look, this is really above and beyond the call of duty—”

“This
is
duty. Don’t worry, counselor, you won’t even know I’m there.”

“That’s like saying a Tibetan monk doesn’t know that the Himalayas are there.”

Sawyer couldn’t exactly say why, but he was enjoying this. Maybe it was a case of misery wanting company. He didn’t know, then again, he was never much into analyzing things.

A hint of amusement was reflected in his eyes as he looked at her. “You saying I’m covered in snow?”

“No.”
Not that I wouldn’t want to bury you in it up to your neck.
“I’m saying that you’re a little hard to miss.”

He nodded, as if he were taking her comment under consideration. “I’ll try harder to blend in.”

The only way this man could “blend in” would be if she threw a slipcover over him and left him in the spare bedroom with the rest of the things to be dealt with at a later date. Periodically, she would go through the room and clean it out. Currently, however, it looked like the nesting ground for abandoned creatures who found shelter beneath bridges and inside collapsing cardboard boxes.

Fighting a sense of mounting desperation, Janelle walked out of her father’s house. She locked the front door and pocketed the key before finally looking at the man she now regarded as her own personal albatross.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she insisted. “I won’t tell if you don’t tell.”

It didn’t work that way for him. You weren’t guilty only if you were caught. You were guilty if you did something wrong. Witnesses didn’t count.

He looked at her for a long silent moment, wondering if she was just talking or if her moral foundation was built on lies. “But I’ll know.”

“And honor is that important to you.”

“Shouldn’t it be?”

Normally, yes, she thought. But not in this instance. “Terrific, I draw Dirty Harry with a conscience.” Well, she might as well make the best of it, she supposed as she opened the driver’s side door. “You can have the sofa.”

Woman certainly jumped around from topic to topic, he thought. “To do what on?”

“Sleep.”

Sawyer laughed shortly, shaking his head. “I don’t intend to sleep.”

Janelle stopped just short of getting into her car and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?” When he made no effort to confirm her supposition, she felt compelled to point out a glaring fact of life. “Everyone sleeps, Detective.”

He’d been in the marines and seen fighting. He’d been an LAPD officer and seen more. Somewhere along the line, he’d developed the ability to sleep sitting up with one eye open. That way, he rested, but the slightest noise would instantly wake him up.

“If you say so.”

His “agreeableness” was anything but. She didn’t like his patronizing attitude. But she was too tired, too edgy, too stressed to debate this situation any further.

Taking one last look around the area to see if her father’s cream-colored sedan was approaching, Janelle did her best to suppress her frustration and got behind the wheel of her car. She didn’t even remember turning on the ignition. As far as she was concerned, it was all automatic pilot from door to door.

The roads were empty. She did sixty all the way. Sawyer kept up with her. He wasn’t that far behind her when they pulled up into her apartment complex. Janelle drove straight into her carport without so much as a backward glance in her rearview mirror, leaving her shadow to find a space in guest parking if he could. What with many of the apartments having at least two occupants if not more, this time of the evening there were usually very few empty spaces to be found.

His problem, not mine, she thought.

Maybe if he couldn’t find a place to park, he’d go away. At least it was something to hope for.

For a very short time.

Sawyer was only two steps behind her when she reached her front door. She pressed her lips together to keep from ordering him home. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, except make her unstable. She was determined not to appear weak around him.

Inserting the key into the lock, she opened the door and entered.

“You know, you could have gotten a ticket back there.”

Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Lucky for me there were no dedicated police officers around.”

She switched on the light in her apartment. For the first time she found herself wishing that she’d listened to her father when he’d suggested she get an attack dog after she’d first moved out. Her reasoning against it had been that she didn’t have enough time to properly take care of a pet. But right now, she would have loved to see Sawyer’s reaction if a snarling dog came lunging at him.

He’d probably shoot it, she realized suddenly. The man struck her as the type to shoot first, ask questions later.

Brooding about this wasn’t going to help. If life threw lemons at you, you made lemonade, right? She’d get through this, she promised herself.

Taking in a deep breath, she tossed her purse down on a nearby chair.

“You hungry?” she asked as she crossed to the refrigerator. Opening it, Janelle found herself looking at empty rack space. She hadn’t had time to go shopping for food and nothing had magically appeared on her shelves.

Her mouth twisted in a fond smile. Every so often, Uncle Andrew, dabbling in what amounted to his third passion, right after his family and law enforcement, would experiment with a new recipe and leave a sample of whatever he’d created in her refrigerator. He, along with her father and siblings, had a key to her place. She was the only unattached Cavanaugh and as such, had no one to help her out. No one to fill an empty refrigerator.

Obviously, if Uncle Andrew was experimenting, he and Aunt Rose were consuming whatever it was he was creating.

“I could eat,” Sawyer allowed. Coming up behind her, Sawyer looked into the interior of the refrigerator. “Invisible food?” he guessed.

He was mocking her, she thought, struggling with a flash of temper. She was also struggling with another unsettling feeling. An unwelcome warmth spread through her. The man was standing too close for her comfort.

Janelle swung the refrigerator door shut a little too hard. “I was thinking of ordering takeout. Chinese? Pizza?”

To her relief—and suspicion—he’d left her side and the kitchen. “Didn’t know the Chinese made pizza.”

Very slowly, Sawyer looked around, absorbing the lay of the apartment. Moving like a panther that was ready to pounce on a stalking enemy in less than a heartbeat, the detective went from room to room, making sure they were all empty and free of any surveillance equipment. The pretty woman in the other room struck him as a tad naive, especially considering her family background.

“Whatever,” he tossed in as an afterthought.

Janelle frowned at the careless answer. She’d asked him for a reason. To make a choice.
Whatever
was not a choice. It would, however, probably give him a chance to complain about whatever it was she did select.

“How about cattle feed?” she asked sarcastically.

Sawyer raised what was almost a perfectly shaped eyebrow as he looked at her over his shoulder. “Didn’t take you for someone whose tastes ran in those directions.”

Enough was enough, she thought. She was hungry and she wanted to eat. Before morning came. “Pizza,” Janelle declared.

His shrug was vague and noncommittal. Sawyer didn’t care what she wound up ordering. It wouldn’t have been what he wanted anyway. Because tonight, in hopes of at least slightly appeasing his hunger, he found himself craving a whiskey, neat.

Several shots, actually. Something to drown out, or at least tone down, the presence of this woman he was supposed to be guarding. But the very fact that he was guarding her dictated that he consume nothing stronger than a double shot of espresso.

He needed a clear head.

God knew that being around Janelle Cavanaugh and her smart mouth wasn’t conducive to having a clear head. Between her antagonistic nature, which both amused and galled him, and that perfume she was wearing that softly announced her presence moments before she was actually there, he felt as if his head were submerged in seawater.

There was irony for you, he mused. Her perfume subtly announced what her tongue loudly proclaimed. In his book, she didn’t need the perfume—or the chip on her shoulder for that matter.

Even if she just stood still, a person couldn’t help noticing her. There was just something about the woman that caught a man’s attention, that fired his imagination. He wished that weren’t the case. He wished that Janelle Cavanaugh was colorless enough and mousy enough to fade into any gathering of two or more. His job would be a hell of a lot easier. In a lot of ways.

But then, he did like a challenge and she was that. Right from the word
go.
Just being around the woman without telling her exactly what he thought of her and her damn superior attitude came under the heading of one hell of a challenge.

“Your apartment’s clear,” he told her, walking back into the kitchen.

Janelle saw him holstering his weapon. All of her brothers wore holsters and guns beneath their jackets, as did her cousins. She was accustomed to this and hardly noticed.

Except for now.

There was something incredibly masculine about the way Sawyer moved, the way he took charge.

Her sense of wonder warred with her sense of independence and her resistance to having him take over. This was
not
going to be an easy association, she thought as she hung up the receiver. Pizza was on its way. She’d selected the toppings of her choice since he hadn’t voiced a preference. If Sawyer didn’t like them, he was just going to have to deal with it.

Janelle looked at him meaningfully. They had a difference of opinion there, she thought. He might regard the apartment as clear, but she certainly didn’t.

“No, it’s not.”

With that, she turned on her heel to go find Batman some bedding in case he was lying about his having no need to sleep.

The pizza box, its bottom shiny with the oils that had leeched out of their dinner, was empty.

Janelle reached for a napkin, wiping her lips and then her fingers before balling the paper up and tossing it into the box. She eyed Sawyer sitting across from her at the small, dinette-sized kitchen table. For once, his eyes weren’t on her.

For a man who had expressed no desire to eat, he’d certainly done justice to the supersize pepperoni, sausage and cheese pizza she’d ordered. She’d hoped to have at least one slice leftover for breakfast, but that was no longer a possibility. He was consuming the last piece.

She supposed she couldn’t really say anything about it, seeing as how he’d been the one to go to the door when the doorbell had rung—had insisted on it, actually and then had paid the delivery boy for the pizza.

When she’d tried to reimburse him, he’d abruptly cut her dead with that cold, distant voice of his. She supposed he was good at that, cutting people dead. With or without a look.

“Kill many people?” she heard herself asking out of the blue.

She was more surprised by her question than he was. Actually, he looked rather unfazed by it. In the background, one of the many forensic shows that littered the airwaves played on her thirty-inch TV. She had a weakness for the shows, for problems that were neatly solved in an hour, counting commercials. She wished life could imitate art.

Sawyer took his time answering. “Depends on what you mean by many.”

Yup, the man was definitely dangerous. The minute she got into her bedroom for the night, she was going to pull out her laptop and see if she could access any information on her surly guardian angel. If that didn’t yield anything, she was going to start pulling in some minor favors. Or lean on Brenda. Her brother Dax’s wife was a wizard when it came to finding information.

“More than one?” she guessed, watching his profile.

The rigid contours gave nothing away. “Yes.”

“Less than a hundred.”

This time, he did raise his eyes. And just the slightest trace of a vein twitched for a second along his cheek. It almost succeeded in drawing her attention away from the hint of a smile on his lips. “Yes.”

Well, that certainly left them a broad range. She’d only been kidding about the upper number. Now she wasn’t all that sure. She could feel a shiver shimmying up her spine.

“Do you
know
how many?”

His eyes were flat. “Yes.”

Janelle blew out a breath slowly. The man really
was
Dirty Harry. At least as far as the communication part went, she amended. Dirty Harry with a slice of Batman thrown in. Both fictional characters were portrayed as intense and humorless. And damn near monosyllabic. She was accustomed to far more talkative people. Even strangers she’d encountered talked more to her than Sawyer did.

“What does it take to get a conversation out of you?” she wanted to know. She half expected Sawyer not to answer.

Taking the last napkin, he wiped his hands, then tossed it on top of hers. “Something worth talking about.”