Cavanaugh's Surrender

But right now, she was in a place where things like that didn’t matter.

“Why are you asking?” she asked.

He answered her question with a question. “Is there any reason you can think of why she wouldn’t have told you who she was seeing?”

Logan was still having a lot of trouble swallowing the scenario the woman’s sister had given him. All three of his sisters not only knew everything there was to know about each other’s boyfriends, or, in Bridget’s case, her fiancé, they were also aware of their friends’ current dates. He couldn’t fathom a woman who was willingly oblivious to that sort of information—and actually content to remain that way.

Suppressing a sigh, she said, “Probably to avoid hearing me tell her to go slow and to be careful.” She saw the question in the detective’s eyes. Under another set of circumstances, they might have even been intriguing eyes. Right now, they were just annoyingly probing. “My sister doesn’t—didn’t,” she corrected herself, hating the fact that she had to, “have the greatest track record when it came to picking men. They were all very good-looking on the outside. On the inside, not so much.”

Holding her hand out, she waffled it to indicate just how much each of the previous men in her sister’s life had deviated from the straight-and-narrow path. There hadn’t been a decent one in the lot.

“So in other words, she didn’t give you any details about who she was seeing because she didn’t want you to be judgmental,” Logan concluded succinctly.

She nodded, wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t come down as hard on Paula over the last one as she had. Not that he didn’t deserve every insulting adjective she had hurled at his memory. Slick, charming, with a Southern drawl, Bo Wilkins had managed to deplete half of Paula’s bank account—granted, that didn’t exactly amount to a king’s ransom, but it was still Paula’s money—before just vanishing off the face of the earth.

She’d begged Paula to let her know the next time she gave away her heart, because she’d said she intended to run a check on whomever the next Romeo was. If no prior arrests came up, then at least her sister would have a fighting chance of keeping the fillings in her teeth.

Paula hadn’t found that funny, she recalled. And she deliberately hadn’t said anything about meeting someone new—until she’d been pinned down.

That was when Paula had told her that she didn’t want to say anything yet because she didn’t want to jinx the relationship. And, if it became serious, then she would say something.

Given that, Destiny had seen no reason to push.

But apparently, it had been serious. Which meant that Paula had lied to her, Destiny realized with a sharp pang. It obviously had to have been serious if Paula had been despondent enough to text that message to her.

If she texted that message, a little voice in Destiny’s head whispered.

Her eyes widened as the thought sank in.

What if Paula hadn’t even been the one to text that message? What if her killer had? The same killer who had botched the appearance of a suicide by slashing her wrists upside down.

Trying not to get ahead of herself, she turned toward Sean. “We have to process her cell phone for any fingerprints on the keypad that aren’t hers. The guy probably wore gloves, but maybe he got careless….”

Destiny’s voice trailed off as she made eye contact with her supervisor. He wasn’t saying anything, just letting her talk, but she could see by the expression on his face that he was already way ahead of her. He always seemed to be two steps ahead of everyone.

“You already thought of that,” she said, nodding her head.

“We’re on the same page,” Sean told her kindly. “Same page that Logan’s on,” he said, nodding toward his son.

Feeling anxious and yet dull-witted at the same time, an area she had never inhabited before, Destiny turned toward the detective, curious why he wasn’t saying anything.

The answer to that was simple. Because he wasn’t standing there anymore.

“Cavanaugh?” she called, raising her voice.

“In here,” Logan answered, his voice floating back to her from the back of the apartment.

Apparently a thought had occurred to him and he’d gone back into the bedroom to look at something, or for something.

Actually, the man had gone back to the bathroom, Destiny realized as she followed the sound of the detective’s deep voice.

As she entered the bedroom, she had to shift to one side. The medical examiner’s team had slipped Paula’s body into that one-size-fits-all black body bag and was now wheeling her sister back out. Once outside the building, they’d put her into the coroner’s van they’d driven over here.

Paula didn’t like the color black, Destiny recalled with a pang. It was the only color missing from her meticulously arranged wardrobe.

“Black is the color of death, Destiny. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”

It is now, pumpkin. It is now, Destiny thought, feeling her heart twist inside of her.

Walking into the bathroom, painfully aware that her sister was no longer here—no longer anywhere—she found Logan standing before the medicine cabinet. The door was open and the detective was peering at the shelves. He was obviously taking inventory of what was inside. She didn’t exactly care for the thoughtful frown she saw on his face.

Now what?

Bracing herself, thinking that she would have to defend her sister again, Destiny forced herself to ask, “What?”

Logan read the generic name imprinted on the container’s label again. This put a crimp in the woman’s theory. He held the container up so that she could see it, as well.

“This was just filled,” he told her.

She had no idea what “this” was but had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy once she heard the answer.

Even so, though she knew Logan had to do it, she resented this man’s prying into her sister’s life. And, by proxy, into her life. Resented the lack of understanding and compassion in his voice.

Granted, as a good detective, he was supposed to be impartial, but keeping this kind of a distance between himself and the victim didn’t help him understand the kind of person her sister had been. Didn’t make him fiercely want to solve this tragic crime because the world was that much the lesser for the loss of her.

Taking yet another breath, Destiny was satisfied that her voice wouldn’t crack. Only then did she finally answer him. “Yes, so?”

Still holding the bottle up, he shook it. Hard. There was no sound to correspond with the movement, no pills being disturbed and forced to rattle around the small container.

“So it’s empty,” he pointed out needlessly. “According to the date it was filled, there should be approximately twenty-five pills in here. There aren’t.” He looked at her. “What do you want to bet that toxicology is going to find that those pills are in your sister’s system? Her wrists didn’t need to be slashed,” he told her. “Your sister swallowed enough of these things to have killed a small horse.”

“Or was forced to swallow,” Destiny interjected. She wasn’t going to let him just forget about what his father had pointed out. Evidence that pointed to her sister being murdered.

“There’s no sign of a struggle, remember? Maybe, before the full effects of the pills kicked in, your sister actually did try to slash her wrists but she was so loopy from the pills that she did an awkward, botched job of it.”

Taking the vial from him, Destiny turned the container around so she could read the label. When she did, the name of the drug was vaguely familiar. Her sister was taking prescription sleeping pills, one of the newer ones on the market.

“Ever since we were little, my sister has had trouble sleeping. When these came on the market—” she nodded at the empty container “—and she tried them, she was overjoyed. She’d finally found something that worked. But she never took more than the prescribed dosage,” Destiny maintained firmly. “It wasn’t because she was a saint,” she added angrily, reading the skepticism in Logan’s eyes. “She just didn’t want to feel drugged in the morning. The idea of falling asleep behind the wheel while driving to work terrified her,” she emphasized.

Logan took back the container, intending on giving it to his father to send to toxicology.

“Still, over time, people develop a tolerance for medications. Maybe she found that one pill wasn’t enough for her anymore and she took two—and then more. Or maybe she just wanted to sleep forever because her boyfriend dumped her.”

He was back to that again. What was he, Johnny One-note? she thought angrily. How many ways did she have to say this before it finally sank into the thick skull of his?

“No,” Destiny insisted with feeling. “Paula wouldn’t have done that. Someone killed my sister,” she said, enunciating each word separately. “I don’t know who it was, but I do know that Paula didn’t do it herself—accidentally or otherwise,” Destiny added in case he was going to suggest that next.

“All right,” Logan relented.

His father’s lead assistant wasn’t about to come around to his side or even remotely entertain the idea that her sister had committed suicide. And since his father seemed to believe that someone else had delivered the slash marks to the young woman’s wrists, for the time being he’d go along with the popular theory.

Besides, he really didn’t enjoy upsetting her, considering that she was still dealing with the shock of finding her sister dead.

“We’ll approach it that way for now.” Leaving the bathroom, still holding the prescription container with his handkerchief wrapped around it, Logan handed it to his father.

“The pills are probably all in her stomach,” he told him not as his father, but as the head of the crime scene lab.

“You’re most likely right,” Sean agreed. “Whoever killed her probably slipped the pills into her drink. That way there’d be no resistance to what he was going to do next.” He lowered his voice so that only Logan could hear. “Poor thing never stood a chance.”

Logan nodded vaguely. He wasn’t doing anyone any good just standing here, he decided, and announced, “I’m going to canvass the floor, see if anyone heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.”

“But you don’t think so,” Destiny surmised.

“I didn’t say that,” Logan maintained. He didn’t like being second-guessed. For the most part, he liked to think that on the job he was unreadable. He prided himself on that.

Besides, he was always open to possibilities. This job consisted of equal parts skill and luck.

“Hey, you never know. Stranger things have happened. And not everyone works nine to five,” he added cavalierly. “So maybe someone did hear something.” Logan paused just next to his father as he began to head out the front door. “Maybe I’ll see you this Sunday.” It was as close as he allowed himself to get to making a commitment that involved his new family.

“Maybe,” Sean echoed with a faint nod.

“Sunday?” Destiny repeated, her smattering of curiosity getting the better of her when it came to this handsome, arrogant would-be crime fighter. “What’s this Sunday?”

Since he knew that this woman worked closely with his father—it had to be closely for his father to display this kind of regard for her, treating her as if she was another one of his daughters—he was surprised that she didn’t know.

“The former chief of police, my new uncle,” he added, amused by the whole concept of getting such a huge number of brand-new blood relatives at his age. “He likes to throw family get-togethers. Word has it that any of us can drop by his table to get a full breakfast any day of the week, but apparently he goes all out on Sundays.

“My father is settling into this new life and doing his best to show up every Sunday to prove how serious he is about being assimilated by the Cavanaughs—and making up for lost time.”

Destiny nodded. Though Sean Cavanaugh wasn’t an overly talkative man, he had shared some of this with her already. She had to admit that she rather liked the fact that he confided to her about this new venue of his private life.

It also made her realize how much she missed having a family of her own, people to talk to and use as sounding boards. People who cared how she felt and if she was getting enough sleep or running herself into the ground. After her mother had died, there’d been only Paula. And now even she was gone. That left only her, and it was true what they said. One is the loneliest number.

“Must be nice having more family than you know what to do with,” she commented, trying to sound offhanded.

He would have had to have been completely deaf to have missed the wistfulness in her voice. Although he wasn’t given to being touchy-feely and was rather careless at times about other people’s feelings, Logan upbraided himself now for not realizing that he was talking about family life to a woman who no longer had one.

He felt a genuine stab of guilt.

The next moment he heard himself trying to make amends. “Feel free to drop by on any morning or on Sunday,” he added. “The man goes all out then,” he repeated. When he saw her looking at him, obviously puzzled, he guessed at what was going through her mind. “Don’t worry, the chief won’t mind.”

“But you just said that he had family gatherings,” she pointed out. And right now, she was part of no one’s family.

“To the chief, anyone who’s part of the force is family.”

Okay, so maybe the handsome detective wasn’t just an empty vessel. He was being kind to her because she was alone. She got that. But she was no one’s charity case. Allowing a spasmodic smile to reach her lips, then go, she thanked him.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Logan knew a brush-off when he heard one, and ordinarily he’d just let it ride. But this woman was obviously someone special to his father, and initially he had been rather coarsely oblivious with her.

“No, really,” he emphasized. “I’m sure my father would like you to come, too. He seems to regard you as another daughter,” he said, trying to add weight to his invitation. He waited for that to sink in before saying anything more. Overkill was just as bad as neglecting to say anything at all.

At the mention of his father, Destiny allowed herself a small smile. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure the man was still in the other room, she said, “Your father’s a very nice man.”

“Well, we agree on that,” Logan told her.

And more than likely on very little else, Destiny added silently.

With a preoccupied nod, she began to leave the apartment. She’d let Sean do his work. If she felt there was anything to add, she still had the key to Paula’s apartment in her pocket. She could come back at a later date, when there was no one to get in her way.

Her hand on the doorknob, Logan’s question made her pause in midstep.

“You want someone to take you home?”

Was he treating her like a civilian? Or did he just assume that she’d locked down her hysteria and was just a tiny step away from having a complete meltdown?

Turning to face the younger Cavanaugh, she looked at him, not exactly certain just how to interpret what he’d just said.

“What?”

“Would you like an officer to take you home?” he asked her, tendering the offer with a smile. “I’d offer to take you home myself, but I seem to be a little tied up at the moment.”

He was serious. Either he was being too kind—or too cynical and doubting her actual feelings. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more.

“Why would you think that I’d need someone to take me home?” she asked.

Why did she take everything as a challenge to her authority? He was trying to be understanding. Obviously that was wasted on this woman. “Well, you did just have a big shock.”

“I’m not going home,” she told him. Not wanting to explain herself any more than she absolutely had to, Destiny walked out.

“Are you going to be all right?” Sean asked as she passed him.

Sean’s concern, at least, she didn’t have to wonder about. She knew it was genuine and smiled with gratitude.

“Yes,” she told him, not wanting the man to worry about her. He had enough to deal with these days. He didn’t need her to burden him. Besides, she wasn’t about to share her pain with him or with anyone. That was hers and hers alone to deal with.

And the way to deal with it was to keep busy.

She wasn’t going home right now, even though the hour grew late. Home was just a medium-size shell that she got to rattle around in, waiting for the beginning of her next workday.

And, since technically she wasn’t supposed to be working this case on the city’s dime, she had to do it on her own time. That meant going into the lab and the small cubbyhole that comprised her “office” during something other than her regular work hours.

As in now.

She took the elevator down to the ground floor. It went straight down without a stop. Getting off, she walked directly to the double outer doors and pushed them open. The night air was chilly and damp as it greeted her.

Destiny drew in a deep breath and then another, trying to make herself come around.

With renewed purpose and borrowed energy, she walked briskly from the entrance to the apartment building to the curb where she’d parked her car.

And then she stopped dead.

There was no way she was going anywhere. Some jerk had double-parked his car parallel to hers and was completely blocking her exit.

She was stuck.

Biting back a barrage of less than flattering words that leaped to her lips, Destiny peered into the offending vehicle, trying to see if she could ascertain what kind of village idiot belonged to the car.

That was when she saw the official markings. And the communications radio that was mounted beneath the dashboard.

A standard Crown Victoria, the white car was an unmarked police vehicle. And she had a really strong hunch she knew whom it belonged to.

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