Cavanaugh Encounter

In USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella’s sensational new Cavanaugh Justice novel, two detectives must track a lethal serial killer

Playboy detective Luke Cavanaugh O’Bannon isn’t excited to be paired with his polar opposite, introverted Francesca “Frankie” DeMarco, on a case. But when Frankie’s cousin is found dead of a suspicious drug overdose, she and Luke must work together to pursue a serial killer who’s struck again. And though they try to fight it, the two opposites attract...passionately!

After several false leads, their investigation points them to an online dating site where Frankie, despite Luke’s objections, offers herself up as virtual bait. Will the killer reply with dinner and a deadly proposition? Will Luke realize he’s met his match—offline?

“I want you, O’Bannon.”

“Words I’ve been waiting a lifetime to hear,” he quipped, smiling at the petite blue-eyed brunette standing before his desk. He had no idea who she was, but he certainly intended to find out. The fact that she had just said she wanted him sounded promising.

“Well, you can continue waiting,” she informed him coldly, “because I didn’t mean them that way.”

Luke leaned back in his chair. His eyes slowly passed over her, taking careful measure of every attractive inch. No doubt about it. She was the best looking woman he had seen in a long time. The annoyed expression on her face just made her that much more of a challenge as far as he was concerned.

“And just what way did you mean them?” he asked her. His smile only grew wider.

* * *

Be sure to check out the next books in this exciting miniseries: Cavanaugh Justice—Where Aurora’s finest are always in action

Cavanaugh Encounter

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To

The memory of

My Mother,

Who got me hooked on Agatha Christie,

And always said that there was nothing

She liked better

Than a good, clean murder.

This one’s for you, Mama.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here. I didn’t know who else to call.”

Twenty-five-year-old Amanda Culpepper was shaking as she threw open the front door of the apartment she shared with her roommate. The same roommate who was facedown and sprawled out on the living room floor. The young woman appeared to be unconscious and was totally unresponsive.

Detective Francesca DeMarco hardly spared the tall blonde by the door more than a quick glance. Her attention was entirely focused on Kristin Andrews, the young woman on the floor with the syringe in her arm.

Her cousin.

Years ago, she would have anticipated this call. But not now. Not when Kristin had been clean for so long. This didn’t make any sense to her.

“How long has she been like this?” Frankie asked her cousin’s roommate. Amanda was hovering nervously behind her.

“I don’t know,” Amanda cried breathlessly, wringing her hands. “I was away for three days with my boyfriend. I just walked in the door and found her like this.” Amanda was struggling not to break down in tears. “I tried to rouse her, but when Kris wouldn’t wake up, I called you immediately.” Amanda was shifting from foot to foot, as if unable to put any weight down. “Kris is going to be all right, right?” she asked, growing more and more distraught and agitated.

Frankie hardly heard the other woman. She was looking for Kris’s pulse. She pressed her fingers against the side of her cousin’s neck, then on her wrist. Unable to find a pulse, she put her head against Kristin’s chest, praying she would detect at least a faint heartbeat.

There was none.

Adrenaline surging through her body, Frankie began applying CPR. “Call 911,” she ordered Amanda.

Amanda looked confused. “But you are 911,” the young woman protested.

“But I can’t pull a damn ambulance out of my pocket,” Frankie snapped. She was silently counting off numbers in her head as she applied compressions to Kristin’s chest. Despite her efforts, her cousin still wasn’t coming around. “Call 911 and tell them to send an ambulance to this address!” she ordered. “Now!”

Snapping to attention, Amanda hurried to make the call.

“C’mon, Kris, open your eyes!” Frankie begged as she continued pushing against her cousin’s chest. “Do it for me. Please!”

All sorts of thoughts charged in and out of her head. The last words she and Kris had exchanged. The time she had bullied her cousin into rehab. Teaching her cousin how to ride a bike. All that and more whisked through her brain with the speed of a bullet, all while she worked over her cousin’s prone body.

She was still pushing down on Kristin’s chest when the high-pitched whining sound of an approaching siren registered.

The ambulance was here!

Frankie realized that there were tears in her eyes. Maybe the paramedic would be able to save Kris.

Would be able to bring her around.

Drained and wired at the same time, Frankie moved out of the way as the paramedics took over for her. The taller of the two attendants did compressions.

After several moments, he turned to look at her.

Frankie knew why he had stopped the compressions and why her cousin wasn’t being placed on the gurney in order to be taken to the ambulance.

Frankie could feel her heart constricting. There wasn’t going to be an ambulance ride to the hospital. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” Frankie asked in a low, hoarse voice.

“Yes.” The attendant was kind. “You’re going to need to get the coroner out here,” he told her. Taking out his cellphone, the attendant offered, “I can call him for you.”

Frankie put up her hand to stop the man from placing the call. “That’s all right. I’m a detective with the Aurora Police Department. I’ll call the coroner and tell him it’s a homicide,” she told him.

“Homicide?” the second attendant echoed. “This looks like a drug overdose to me,” the man said. He pointed over to the side. The syringe had come out and was lying near the body.

This just wasn’t right, Frankie thought. Yes, Kristin had had a drug problem, but that was years ago. She’d sustained an injury, dislocating her shoulder while playing soccer in high school. Prescription drugs had helped her put up with the shooting pain. Gradually that had led to her becoming dependent on other ways to numb the misery, but all that had been years ago. Kristin had dealt with her demons and finally vanquished them.

It hadn’t been easy for her, but she did it.

Frankie refused to believe that after fighting her way back to the point where she could finally enjoy a normal lifestyle, Kristin would have just thrown it all away for a weekend binge.

“No,” Frankie said fiercely, addressing the attendant. “This was not a drug overdose, accidental or otherwise. It was staged to look that way. This is a homicide,” she declared in no uncertain terms, her sweeping gaze taking in the attendants and her cousin’s sobbing roommate. The way the syringe was positioned would have indicated that Kristin had used her right hand. Kristin was left-handed. “And I intend to prove it.”

Even to her own ears, it sounded more like a vow than a statement.

And maybe it was, but she still intended to do it.

Chapter 1

“I want you, O’Bannon.”

Lukkas Cavanaugh O’Bannon looked up from the report on his desk. It was an autopsy, and it made for grim reading. It was the information on the latest victim who had been discovered only a day ago. A young kindergarten teacher was found dead by her mother in the house they shared.

The autopsy was one of six and only confirmed Luke’s suspicions. Someone was out there, preying on young, intelligent professional women, capitalizing on their apparent loneliness and cutting their lives short before they ever had a chance to really experience life to the fullest.

It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but Luke already felt as if he could use a break. He just hadn’t thought that his break would materialize in such a shapely form.

“Words I’ve been waiting a lifetime to hear,” he quipped, smiling at the petite blue-eyed brunette standing before his desk. He had no idea who she was, but he certainly intended to find out. The fact that she had just said she wanted him certainly sounded promising.

“Well, you can continue waiting,” she informed him coldly, “because I didn’t mean them that way.” She was going to have to learn to pick her words better, Frankie admonished herself. It was just that right now, she was extremely agitated and she felt as if she was walking across a tightrope.

One misstep on her part and she wasn’t going to be allowed to work this case.

O’Bannon was flashing a wide, brilliant grin aimed right at her, and she did her best to ignore it.

Detective Lukkas Cavanaugh O’Bannon had a reputation for being a ladies’ man. The reputation reached all corners of the police department, even Major Crimes, which was where she worked. The problem was that O’Bannon had the looks and the charm to back up his bravado.

But none of that mattered to her. What did matter was that O’Bannon was also a damn good detective. And, most important of all, he was lead detective on a case that involved homicides that were eerily similar to her cousin’s.

“And just what way did you mean them?” he asked her. His smile only grew wider.

Luke leaned back in his chair and his eyes slowly passed over her, taking careful measure of every attractive inch. No doubt about it. She was the best-looking woman he had seen in a long time. The annoyed expression on her face just made her that much more of a challenge as far as he was concerned.

“Word has it that you’re working on a case that might involve a serial killer killing young, dark-haired women.” Frankie kept her voice neutral, professional. She couldn’t afford to have O’Bannon suspect just how important this case was to her.

Luke shrugged. “You know how rumors fly around the precinct...”

Although his voice trailed off, his eyes never left her face. It wasn’t difficult to see that this case was important to her. Why? She didn’t remind him of a reporter, searching for an in. And she definitely wasn’t part of Sean Cavanaugh’s CSI unit. He knew every face in his uncle’s department, both the day and the night shift.

“Don’t toy with me, O’Bannon.”

The corners of his mouth curved deeper as he leaned slightly forward. “Is that a dare?”

This was getting her absolutely nowhere and it was just wasting time. Given the man’s reputation, she should have known better than to approach O’Bannon directly with anything.

“Maybe I’d be better off going to Lt. Handel with this,” Frankie said, already turning on her heel. Handel’s office was in the back.

“Wait,” Luke called after her.

Frankie spared the detective a cold glance over her shoulder. “Why?”

“Well, for one thing, you’ll wind up talking to yourself,” he pointed out. “The lieutenant’s not in his office.”

Was he playing her? She was tempted to look in the general direction of the lieutenant’s glass-paneled office, but she refrained. For now, she gave O’Bannon the benefit of the doubt. She actually did need the man on her side, which meant that she had to build up some sort of rapport.

“Where is he?” she asked him, trying to control her impatience.

“At a meeting with the new chief of police,” Luke replied, referring to his cousin, Shaw Cavanaugh, who had recently assumed the position after the previous chief had suffered a heart attack in his sleep and died. “No telling when he’ll be back.” He watched the woman when she reluctantly turned around again to face him. “So you might as well finish filling me in on why you’re asking questions about my case.”

“Because I think I might have...stumbled across another victim,” Frankie said.

She could see that she had gotten O’Bannon’s attention. His whole countenance grew more alert.

“And by ‘stumbled across,’ you mean...?” He waited for her to fill in the blank.

Frankie knew she needed to keep this as close to the truth as possible. It was a trick she had learned a long time ago. The closer to the truth something was, the easier it was to keep track of the things she said about it.

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have felt the need to play games like this. However, if it became known that she was Kristin’s cousin, then it went without saying that she wouldn’t be allowed to work on the case.

And she intended to work the case, no matter what. Even if it wound up costing her her job. With luck, it wouldn’t come to that.

Frankie framed her answer carefully. O’Bannon’s reputation as a ladies’ man wasn’t the only reputation he had. The man was sharp. “The victim’s roommate called me when she found the body.”

“And why would she do that?” he asked, his voice low, probing.

Frankie took a small, unobtrusive breath. “Because I was the first one she thought of when she came home to find the victim on the floor, unresponsive. I met her in an adult education course,” she threw in, hoping that would answer any stray questions O’Bannon might have about her association with the roommate.

It didn’t.

“What kind of a course?” he asked, appearing to be mildly interested.

“A boring one,” Frankie answered crisply. “Can we please get on with this?” she pressed.

“All right,” he obliged. “What makes you think this dead woman you ‘stumbled across,’” he said, using her own words, “is one of my serial killer’s victims? Was she stabbed? Or shot at close range?” Luke fired the questions at her in staccato fashion.

Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Your serial killer’s victims are all women in their twenties, not men. And your serial killer doesn’t stab or shoot his victims,” she concluded.

Luke leaned back in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m impressed. You’ve done your homework on me.”

“Correction,” she retorted. “I’ve done my homework on your case. And since I think the woman I found is another one of your killer’s victims, I thought we could work together to find this piece of filth before he kills anyone else.”

“So you are with the police department.” Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure about that.

“Major Crimes,” she informed him.

“And why would Major Crimes be interested in having one of their own work with me on this case?” he asked.

“Turns out that Debra Evans, one of the victims, is the niece of one of the state’s senators,” she replied.

“You really have done your homework on this case,” he said, duly impressed. “Well, I have no objections to you throwing your lot in with mine, but just to play by the rules, we’re going to have to clear it with Lt. Handel when he gets back.”

From what she’d learned, O’Bannon wasn’t one who really cared about playing by the rules unless it suited him. But she wasn’t about to say that and risk getting on the man’s bad side. She really needed to work this case. She owed it to Kristin.

“I assumed as much,” Frankie replied.

He flashed another broad grin at her. “That’s what I like. Someone who’s on their toes. I take it that you have the victim’s name.”

“Kristin Andrews,” she replied. “She is—was—” Frankie corrected herself, doing her best not to let O’Bannon see that having to refer to her cousin in the past tense really bothered her “—twenty-five and she was a nurse working at Aurora General.”

“You are thorough,” Luke said. He was beginning to see past her good looks and was taking stock of her as a detective. “Any theory about her cause of death?” he asked, curious to see if there were similarities to his killer’s victims and the one that this knockout on two shapely legs was bringing him.

“There was a syringe in her arm,” Frankie replied, every word burning on her tongue.

“So you think it was a drug overdose,” Luke concluded.

“No, I think it was made to look like a drug overdose,” Frankie replied tersely, correcting him.

“And you know this how?” he asked.

He was leaning back in his chair again, studying the brunette with the piled-up, impossibly sexy hair that seemed to be falling every which way and yet somehow remained in place. Whenever possible, Luke was always open to accommodating pretty women, but not at the expense of his job. That always came first, as did the victims he had sworn an oath to do right by.

“Her roommate told me that Kristin, the victim, had had a painkiller problem dating years back to a knee injury she’d sustained in high school, playing soccer.” Frankie answered him slowly, careful not to allow her emotions to get the better of her. She needed to lay this out for him carefully so that she didn’t trip herself up and allow her actual involvement in the case to slip out. “Her roommate also assured me that Kristin had kicked that habit years ago and hadn’t taken any drugs since then. Kris had been clean for years,” Frankie emphasized.

The detective she was talking to nodded slowly and appeared to be listening. Frankie couldn’t escape the feeling that he was examining every single word that was coming out of her mouth—as well as studying her as if she were a slide mounted under a microscope.

“When did all this happen?” he finally asked, after a prolonged pause that admittedly made her uneasy.

He didn’t believe her, Frankie thought. Determined, she pushed on. “The roommate came back from a three-day weekend and found the victim, unresponsive, on the living room floor this morning. After trying to revive her for several minutes, the roommate began to panic, at which time she called me.”

Frankie noted the skeptical expression on O’Bannon’s face. “If you’re friends with this woman,” he asked, “why do you keep calling her the roommate?”

Frankie never missed a beat. “I’m just trying to keep the details simple for you. And, for the record, we’re not friends.” She corrected the detective. “We’re acquaintances. I already told you that.”

Luke pretended to glance down at his notes. “So you did.” He raised his eyes to meet her magnetic blue ones. “Where’s the body now?”

The body.

It was hard for her to think of Kristin that way. She had always been so full of life, so ready to always laugh. Kris had a very infectious laugh that left no one untouched.

“Detective?” Luke prodded when he thought the woman had drifted off.

Frankie roused herself and flushed for the momentary lapse on her part. “Sorry. I called the ME. He told me he’d be doing her autopsy right away, which, with any luck, means today.”

“You know the ME?” Luke asked her, curious.

“Some of them,” she answered, wondering if he was trying to trip her up. The department had three medical examiners, one of whom they tended to share with several of the other, smaller cities in the county.

“Well, you’ve covered all the bases,” Luke told her. “Tell you what, pending the lieutenant’s approval of all this, we’ll call your find victim number seven.”

Frankie frowned. “She has a name,” she told O’Bannon stiffly.

“They all have names,” he replied mildly. “What they no longer have are lives. Those were stolen from them and it’s up to us to make that up to them by catching the bastard who’s responsible for cutting those lives short.”

She couldn’t make up her mind whether he was being a crusader or a wiseguy. Either way, she nodded and quietly told him, “Sounds good to me.”

“Oh, there’s just one more thing,” Luke said as she began to walk out of the squad room. She had yet to clear this temporary move with her own lieutenant, wanting to make sure that she could convince O’Bannon to take on this case first.

Frankie braced herself and slowly turned back to face him. Deep in her soul, she felt she was going to regret coming to this man. She knew all about him. Lukkas Cavanaugh O’Bannon was oil and she was water and there was no way that they were ever going to find a way to mix.

But for Kristin’s sake, she would do her damnedest to try to work with this man until such time as the scum who was robbing all these young women of their lives could be found and put down.

Taking a deep breath, Frankie kept her expression unreadable as she said, “Yes?”

Luke’s lethal smile unfurled slowly. He knew the kind of effect it had on women. This one, though, seemed to be immune to it. She would definitely be a challenge, he thought. The idea spurred him on. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

Ignoring the smile that had been the undoing of more than a score of women—or so the legend went—Frankie kept her eyes on his. “I thought you knew everything,” she said crisply.

“Close,” Luke agreed, not rising to the bait she’d cast. “But in this case, close isn’t good enough. So, what is it?” he asked. “Your name,” Luke prodded when the brunette with the attitude didn’t volunteer the information immediately. “Unless you want me to refer to you as ‘Hey You’ while we’re working together,” he said, giving her a less than desirable option.

If she had her way, Frankie wouldn’t have wanted O’Bannon to refer to her as anything at all, but that wasn’t being reasonable. The man was smug and annoying from the get-go, but at bottom, she knew that her prickly attitude was because she was still devastated over her cousin’s death. Not only had she been close to Kristin, but Kristin was also the last family that she had. With her cousin murdered, she had no one left. Both her parents were gone, as were Kristin’s.