Cavanaugh on Duty

She noted that the lieutenant only awarded the dignity of death to people. Everything else “expired,” like a container of milk going sour, or a warranty on a product.

“Or a body someone had stashed in the unit while they tried to figure out how to make it disappear without calling attention to themselves,” she concluded for her boss.

Morrow nodded, his unruly, longer-than-regulation hair falling into his squinty, deep-set brown eyes. “Exactly.”

“Mind if I hope it’s fruit until I find out otherwise?” she asked.

The weather was turning unseasonably warmer. That meant that a body hidden in a storage unit was bound to decompose more quickly than usual. This was not an assignment she was looking forward to.

“It’s a free country,” the lieutenant replied magnanimously.

Kari glanced at the address before tucking it into her pocket. The storage facility wasn’t located far from the precinct, she noted.

Securing her weapon, she was just about to leave the office when she saw the look of surprise that fleetingly passed over the lieutenant’s craggy face. Since the man was facing the outer door that led to the hallway, she turned around to see what had caught his attention.

No wonder he looked surprised, she caught herself thinking. Esteban Fernandez created quite an imposing impression at first sight.

And even second and third, she mused.

To be honest, at first glance he didn’t even look like the man she’d spoken with last night. That man had been scruffy and raw. This one fell under the category of “tall, dark and handsome.” But there was still a dangerous edge to him despite his clean-shaven face. An enticing, dangerous edge.

But then, last night he was still embracing his other persona, the undercover cop he’d been’a role he’d played for the past three years, if the rumors were correct. And, at this point, that was all she really had to go on. Rumors. Law enforcement detectives involved in the undercover world did not exactly have readily accessible data that the regular force could easily refer to. Whatever they did was not supposed to ever see the light of day or be acknowledged’good or bad.

She made a mental note to take another crack at the Cavanaugh pipeline. So many of the Cavanaughs were involved with the various departments at the precinct, it only stood to reason that someone had to know something viable, something she could use when dealing with the man she assumed was going to be her new partner.

However long that association lasted, she did not want to be in the dark or at a disadvantage when it came to dealing with this man. At the very least, she wanted to know exactly who she was trusting to have her back.

“Fernandez?” Morrow inquired, obviously as stunned by his transformation as she briefly had been.

Esteban glanced over toward the lieutenant just as he reached his desk’since the desk was so blatantly empty, except for the computer and the coffee container, he’d made a logical deduction that it was going to be his.

For as long as he decided to remain here, he silently added as a footnote to placate himself.

“Yeah?” he asked the lieutenant.

Morrow looked far from pleased with this latest addition to his department. “It’s customary to report to your commanding officer when you first join a department,” he said, his gravelly voice rife with displeasure.

“Sorry, sir, I just now walked in,” Esteban pointed out needlessly. Right before he’d visited Miguel in prison, he’d made his decision to continue his association with the police department until he could figure out how to get back into undercover work. He’d gotten caught in morning rush-hour traffic on the drive back from the penitentiary, which accounted for his less than timely appearance.

His eyes met Kari’s and he gave her what amounted to the smallest, most imperceptible of nods, acknowledging her presence.

It was a start, she thought.

Kari heard Morrow grumble almost inaudibly under his breath. All she caught was something that made a vague reference to his retirement still being too far off. Then the man said more distinctly, “No time to make small talk right now. You and the hyphen here are up. She’s got the address. I’ll talk to you later,” he emphasized, looking accusingly at the newest member of his team before he went back into his glass-enclosed office.

“The hyphen?” Esteban repeated, looking at Kari. He’d told himself that for the most part, after last night, he was just going to ignore her, but for once his curiosity got the better of him.

“Cavelli-Cavanaugh,” she reminded him. “It’s hyphenated.”

He shook his head in disbelief. The last three years his very survival had depended on traveling under the radar, not attracting any attention to himself. He saw her name as being the exact opposite.

“You’re really using both?” he asked her.

To Kari, it was the only logical way to go and it made perfect sense.

“Since I thought I was born the one, but was really born the other and there’s family attached to both names, I figured...why not?” she asked.

Esteban shrugged indifferently in response to her rhetorical question. “Makes no difference to me,” he told her. “I don’t care what you call yourself as long as you answer if I call you.”

This, she thought, was going to be one hell of an interesting partnership’for as long as it lasted, and she still had her doubts it would live out the week, given his attitude.

“By the way, coffee’s yours,” she told him just as he was about to walk back toward the doorway.

Esteban stopped and regarded the container with less than enthusiastic interest. “I didn’t’”

“No,” she cut in, anticipating what he was about to say, “but I did.” Then, just in case he wasn’t following her’or possibly wasn’t even listening to her’she clarified, “I bought coffee for you. Sort of a welcome-to-the-department offering,” she explained before Fernandez could ask her why she had bothered to buy him coffee at all.

Esteban picked the container up and fell in place beside her.

“You were that sure I was going to come in?” he wanted to know. If that was the case, that put her one up on him, he thought, since he hadn’t known he was coming in until a couple of hours ago.

“You said you would,” she reminded him, leading the way down the hall to the elevator.

His laugh was dry and completely devoid of humor. “And you believed me?”

She would be the first to admit that she was entirely too trusting in her dealings with people. As a detective, that worked against her. As a human being, though, she felt it didn’t.

“You haven’t given me a reason not to yet,” she replied.

“The day’s still young,” he countered. He took the lid off the container and took a sip of the black brew. “It’s cold,” he told her. It wasn’t a complaint so much as an observation about the state of the liquid. Hot or cold, as long as the coffee was black, he wasn’t fussy. It all went down the same way.

“It wasn’t when I got it,” she told him pointedly.

It was a little after eight now. She must have come in before then. “Which was’?” He deliberately left it open for her to jump in.

She saw no reason not to oblige him. “At seven this morning.”

“You not only expected me to show up, you actually expected me to be early?” he asked incredulously.

Reaching the elevator door, they stopped and she pressed the down arrow on the tiled wall.

“Seemed like something you might possibly do, at least on your first day,” she answered.

Her eyes swept over him and she was again struck by the fact that this clean-cut man hardly looked like the man who she’d barged in on last night.

The man who had also briefly set fire to her world, she caught herself thinking with no small longing right now.

She’d promised herself not to dwell on that, Kari reminded herself sternly. However, the memory refused to fade. Exerting something akin to a superhuman effort, she managed to push all thoughts concerning Fernandez into a nether region, hoping that would free up the working part of her brain for more important things.

“You’re staring at me,” Esteban said abruptly just as the elevator arrived. The stainless-steel doors yawned open, temporarily awaiting their pleasure. “My shirt inside out or something?”

As he asked the question, he looked down to check himself out. Nothing appeared to be out of order to him, but he couldn’t see the total picture.

“Your clothes are just fine,” she told him, confident that he was already aware of that small fact.

His attitude might have sounded careless to the undiscerning ear, but her gut told her that Esteban Fernandez was far from a careless man. For one thing, he wouldn’t have been able to survive in the world he’d previously chosen to descend into if he’d been cavalier by nature.

“I was just thinking that you clean up nicely,” she finally told him.

Compliments, when they were intended for him rather than the persona he’d assumed these past three years, made Esteban uncomfortable. He had absolutely no idea how to accept them or what was expected from him by way of a response.

So he shrugged, trying to appear unfazed’something he had gotten exceedingly good at’and mumbled, “Thanks, you too.”

To Kari’s knowledge, yesterday she hadn’t exactly looked like something the cat had dragged in’the way he most definitely had’but rather than begin a debate and possibly set him off, she decided to ignore the comment. “Okay. Moving on now.”

They got out on the first floor, and she led the way to the rear of the building rather than to the front of it. The back was where the department vehicles were all kept parked.

“You okay with my driving?” she asked, turning toward him suddenly. At least one of her brothers and two of her old partners had never felt comfortable when she was behind the wheel. She came to the conclusion that they all had issues that had nothing to do with her. She, on the other hand, was secure enough to have someone else drive if that was what kept them happy.

“Why?’ he asked suspiciously. “Something wrong with your driving?”

It amused her that that was the first thing that occurred to him. “No, it’s just that most males prefer to be the ones behind the wheel.”

He shrugged again. “Well, not this male. You’re the one with the address, right?”

“Right.” She was still just a tad wary of his motives. That it might just be a simple matter seemed too simple. For now, she reserved her judgment.

“So, you drive.”

To him, it seemed like the logical, not to mention simple, approach. He only cared about being the one behind the wheel when he didn’t trust the other people in the car.

But he wasn’t part of that world anymore, he reminded himself for possibly the dozenth time since yesterday. Having someone else behind the wheel was the least of the things he was going to need to get accustomed to with this new job that had been thrust on him.

Provided he stuck around.

“Okay, then,” Kari declared, pushing open one of the glass double doors and walking out. “The car’s parked right over there.”

Pointing for form’s sake, she led the way down the steps and through the lot. Her route formed a rather zigzag pattern.

Esteban remained at her side, matching her step for step without offering a single word, like a tall, unobtrusive shadow.

That, Kari silently promised herself, was going to have to change.

And soon.

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