Crime and Passion

Chapter 2

All during the ride to the D.A.’s office Clay had been silently steeling himself for the ordeal ahead.

Beside him, in the driver’s seat, Santini sat expounding on whatever topic floated through his dark head. Occasionally coming up for air, his partner’s nonstop flow of words only managed to bounce off Clay’s ears, hardly penetrating as he thought about the woman he was going to be seeing after all this time.

Ilene O’Hara.

It had been six years. Six years and three months, but who was counting, he thought with a self-deprecating smile. He and Ilene had broken up in August and now they were looking down the calendar at November. Technically, she had broken up with him, but he’d driven her to it. On purpose.

Ilene O’Hara.

He’d thought she’d left Aurora. When had she gotten back? Clay glanced out the window, barely seeing the scenery go by as Santini took the streets a little quicker than they were meant to be taken.

Clay didn’t know how he felt about seeing her again. He was trying not to feel anything at all, but that wasn’t working out too well. Emotions insisted on rumbling through him. He was like a channel surfer who’d accidentally come across an episode of a program he’d once enjoyed. There was a sense of familiarity washing over him, perhaps even a vague sense of nostalgia, but nothing more.

He couldn’t let there be anything more.

“Where the hell are you today?” Santini’s voice finally elbowed its way into his thoughts, demanding his attention. Demanding a response.

Turning, Clay looked at him. “What?”

“You,” Santini repeated impatiently, turning a corner and going down the street that would eventually lead them to the D.A.’s office. “Where are you?”

Clay stopped himself from bracing his hand against the dashboard. “Here, next to you, risking my life as you take turns too fast and give all detectives a bad name.”

Santini snorted. “Don’t give me that. First you come in looking as if you’d been peeled off the top of the morning, now you look like the used gum that you peel off the bottom of someone’s heel.” Santini spared him a penetrating glance before looking back on the road. “After riding around with you for two years, I know that you’re not one of those sensitive guys, so this isn’t a mood swing. What gives?”

Santini was his partner, and he shared as much with him as he shared with any man or any member of his family. At times even more. But right now he didn’t feel like talking about it. He didn’t even want to let his thoughts stray in that direction. He just wanted the assignment to be magically over instead of just beginning.

“Just drive.”

Santini mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, but Clay managed to pick up enough of it to know that the man was casting aspersions on closed-mouth black Irishmen. For the first time since he’d heard Ilene’s name this morning, Clay smiled.

She looked better than he’d expected.

Six years had taken the promise of beauty and had lovingly polished it until it shone. She’d changed, he realized. She didn’t look innocent anymore. Just knowledgeable, as if she now knew that the world wasn’t some huge playground with all the safety features built into it.

He supposed that was partially his fault. If he hadn’t pushed her toward it, maybe they wouldn’t have broken up.

Maybe…

The land of maybe was mist-filled territory with long, winding, intersecting roads that led nowhere, and Clay wasn’t about to go there. Today was what it was and so was he, there was no point in speculating otherwise. Ultimately he knew he wouldn’t have been any good for her. A woman like Ilene needed stability, and stability scared the hell out of him.

Stability and stagnation both began with the same letter.

As he walked into the room, Clay glanced down at her left hand. She was wearing a ring on the appropriate finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It was sporting a blue stone in its center.

Her birthstone was blue. Sapphire, he thought, not aquamarine. Funny the things you remembered even after all this time.

Her profile had been toward him. When she turned around to look at him, he saw her mouth drop open a second before she shut it again. She was absolutely stunned. He’d always loved the way surprise had blossomed on her face. But this wasn’t that kind of surprise. This was more like shock. She hadn’t known he was the one being called in.

Clay’s eyes shifted toward his cousin Janelle, the only other person in the small, book-lined room besides his partner who had just entered.

So that was it. Janelle.

He might have known.

This was her idea, he was sure of it, even though the order had come down to him from Captain Reynolds. Janelle fancied herself a puppeteer, orchestrating the lives of those around her. He’d figured himself immune. Obviously, he’d figured wrong.

They were going to have to have a talk, he and Janelle. She meddled in things that didn’t concern her, more even, than his sisters did.

As blameless as Mother Teresa, Janelle was on her feet in a moment, rounding her desk and coming to greet her cousin and his partner. She nodded at the latter while flashing a broad, encouraging and amazingly guileless smile at Clay.

“Thanks for coming so quickly. Ms. O’Hara, this is Detective Kyle Santini.” The pause was almost imperceptible as she added, “And you already know my cousin.”

“Yes.” Normally a warm, outgoing person, Ilene could feel herself withdrawing. Freezing up. “I know your cousin.”

Her eyes, Ilene hoped, were cool as she regarded Clay. Her voice and expression were about all she felt she could control. As for her heart, well, that had launched into double time, beating as if she were free-falling off the edge of a cliff. God knows she hadn’t expected this.

She took a small breath to steady herself before asking, with what she prayed was slight disinterest, “How have you been?”

Clay felt as if he needed an ice pick just to chip out the words she’d directed his way. They were two strangers, unceremoniously pushed together on the dance floor. And neither one of them wanted to dance.

“I’m doing all right,” he replied. His eyes shifted toward Janelle. “Captain Reynolds got a call saying something about a witness needing protection?” The words hung in the air like a challenge.

He was mad, Ilene thought, and she didn’t know why. Men were so damn hard to figure out at times.

“That was my idea,” Janelle acknowledged.

Clay’s blue eyes were steely as they regarded his cousin. “I’m sure it was.”

“But it’s not mine,” Ilene declared. This was an omen. She shouldn’t have come.

Rising to her feet, struggling not to hurry from the room or say anything that would give away the shaky state of her emotions, Ilene tightened her hand around the purse strap hanging from her shoulder. The air supply in the small room decreased at an alarming rate. She needed to get out of here. Now.

She’d left Aurora for a while. When she’d returned, she’d always known she’d run into him someday. Aurora wasn’t small, but even in cities like San Francisco and L.A., paths sometimes crossed unwillingly and Aurora was smaller than either of those places.

Even so, she’d hoped that when the day did come, she’d be prepared, that some hidden sixth sense would have forewarned her before she was suddenly thrust into his presence. Then at least she would have felt confident enough to put on a decent performance. One that would convince him that he hadn’t broken her heart in a million pieces.

But right now she had her son and her work and that was more than enough.

Except that now she didn’t have her work, Ilene reminded herself. Or possibly a future, either. She struggled against sinking into a pool of emotional quicksand.

Her hands tightened around her strap again as she deliberately addressed her words to the dark-haired man behind Clay. “Look, I’m sorry you were called out for nothing, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Janelle protested.

Ilene looked at the other woman. She’d never been able to tolerate restrictions well. “Watch me.” But as she began to leave the room, it was Clay, not Janelle, who got in her way.

He was a cop first, he reminded himself. And the situation needed one. “Captain Reynolds doesn’t throw around the term ‘protection’ lightly. Now what’s this about?”

“Ms. O’Hara says that her boss is misrepresenting her company’s profits to the public,” Janelle said.

Her company.

It occurred to Clay that he didn’t even know where Ilene worked or what she even did for a living. They’d been involved while in college, when everything was promising and fresh, and paths hadn’t been laid down yet. He’d always felt she could be anything she wanted to be. After they’d split and she’d left town, he’d purposely tried not to keep tabs on her, knowing if he did, he might be tempted to do something stupid, like tell her what a fool he’d been to walk away from her.

He would have hurt her if he’d remained. He knew that just as surely as he knew his own name. But men like him didn’t marry, Clay reminded himself. They dallied and went on. His one true love was the force and always would be.

“You work for Simplicity Computers, right?” he heard Santini inquiring.

“Yes, I do,” Ilene replied tersely.

At least until they find out what I’ve done. And then she wouldn’t be working for anyone. There was money in the bank, but that would only last a little while. How was she going to provide for Alex then? Oh God, this was a huge mistake.

Santini gave a low whistle. “You’re kidding. I just bought one of those starter computers for my kid.”

“It’s not going to self-destruct,” Ilene told him, her eyes covertly shifting to Clay. Trying not to see how time had only made him better looking. “The problem isn’t with the product quality. It’s still the finest that money can buy,” she assured Santini. “That’s the problem.”

“How do you mean?” Clay asked.

“A great deal of money has gone into producing the best on the market and—” Ilene stopped abruptly. She couldn’t think about that. She’d made a mistake. A bad one. It had taken seeing Clay again to make her come to her senses. She needed to retreat. “Never mind. I just want to go home.” Wanting to flee, she reached for the folder she’d brought.

But Janelle picked it up, holding it to herself protectively. “You came here because you wanted to do the right thing. Don’t let anything change your mind.”

A civil war raged inside her. “All right,” Ilene surrendered, but only partially. “Keep the folder. I’ll be in touch.”

“Ms. O’Hara, I meant what I said about your needing protection. Fortunes are at stake here. Careers, not to mention jail sentences,” Janelle emphasized. “If your bosses suspect that you came here—”

“Then keep my name out of it,” Ilene said.

“Just because they’re busy trying to hoodwink the public doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to everything else,” Janelle cautioned her. She glanced toward Clay as if to garner his support, but he was silent. “If you’ve already brought this to your boss’s attention, he knows that you know and it won’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection.”

Ilene deliberately pushed the thought to the conclusion she thought the woman was trying to reach. “And when he does, he’ll do what? Kill me?”

“Maybe,” Clay interjected.

Ilene swung around. “He wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “He coaches his son’s Little League.”

Clay laughed shortly. For all her worldly appearance, Ilene was apparently still naive. “Ever see how the parents can mix it up over an incorrect call?”

Ilene raised her chin in a way he was all too familiar with. It was part of her go-to-hell stance. He’d once found that adorable. Now he found it irritating.

“I’ll be fine,” she said tersely. “If I have police protection, then they might suspect something.”

“How will they know unless they’re staking out your place?” Clay posed.

The question stopped Ilene in her tracks for a second. She had no answer for that. No, they were trying to frighten her, she thought, trying to make sure she testified. Well, the files spoke for themselves, they didn’t need her.

Squaring her shoulders, she moved to open the door. Clay wrapped his hand around her wrist, gently holding her in place. She looked up, startled. But instead of detaining her, he turned her hand over and placed a small white card into her palm. She looked at him quizzically.

“We can’t force you to accept protection, but if anything goes wrong, call one of those numbers. The top one belongs to the precinct, the bottom one is my cell phone.”

She tried to give the card back to him. “I won’t be needing this.”

But Clay raised his hands before him, unwilling to take the business card back. “You never know.”

Her eyes met his for a long moment. “No,” she said significantly, “you never do.” And then she left the office.

Annoyed, frustrated and feeling a little as if a part of him had just been unceremoniously raked over hot coals, Clay shook his head.

“That has got to be the most stubborn woman I ever met. And considering present company,” he looked pointedly at Janelle, “that’s saying a hell of a lot. Do me a favor, Janelle, next time you have the urge to take out your bow and arrow and play Cupid—find another target.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is a woman who needs protecting. You’re the best man for the job, that’s all. You, too, Santini,” she added, looking at the other man.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m an afterthought here?” Santini looked at his partner. “You and the lady have a history I should know about?”

“No,” Clay said flatly. “If we’re done here, A.D.A, my partner here and I’d like to get back to work.”

Janelle spread her hands helplessly. “I’m afraid it looks like you’re done. For now.” She sat down behind her desk and began to go through the contents of the envelope again.

“Good. C’mon, Santini, let’s go.”

“You do have a history,” Santini insisted as he followed his partner through the door. “C’mon, Cavanaugh, you’re talking to a deprived man here. I’m withering on the vine. Give.”

Clay had absolutely no intentions of satisfying the man’s insatiable curiosity. “Shut up, Santini,” he grumbled as he lengthened his stride toward the elevator.

It took Ilene the entire drive home to calm down, to get her hands to remain steady on the steering wheel. After all this time, Clay still had an effect on her. Could still make her pulse dance just by being in the same room as her.

Except that this time she had no illusions about him. He wasn’t the Prince Charming she’d thought—that she’d hoped he’d be. Like the old song said, no man burning with a pure, radiant light in the night.

Besides, she argued with herself, she’d gotten swept away in the excitement of what she was proposing to do. It had clouded her thinking. Walken would never hurt her. The most he would do is fire her, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that. Not the way she blamed him for sweeping all those numbers under a proverbial rug, she thought grimly. She knew he was only thinking of saving the company, but she’d never believed that the end justified the means, not when the means involved fraud.

She was overthinking again.

God, but she needed some solace, a reprieve, if only for a little while, from the whole situation. She needed to do something fun, something carefree with Alex. There was a soul-renewing purity in her son’s innocence, in the echo of his laugh, that always helped her get back on course. Even when loneliness threatened to drag her down to unmeasurable depths.

Making an impulsive decision, she called her baby sitter and asked her not to pick up Alex today. Then she went and sprang her son from his nursery school.

“Hi, Mama.” He beamed at her. “Where are we going?”

“What makes you think we’re going somewhere, sport?”

His eyes danced as he looked at her. “Because we always go someplace when you come.”

“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I, Alex?” He cocked his head, looking at her. She could almost see him pulling in the words, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes she just wanted to eat him all up, he was that dear to her. “We’re going to the park, Alex. That okay with you?”

Alex loved the park. If she let him, he’d be happy to live there. “Okay,” he echoed, dragging her by the hand to the car.

And they were off.

She was so busy enjoying Alex, enjoying the day, that she didn’t become aware of the feeling until sometime into the second hour. The feeling that someone was watching her.

At first she convinced herself that the A.D.A., aided and abetted by Clay, had spooked her and that she only imagined things. After all, the park was full of parents, mainly mothers, with their children. With all that movement around her, it was easy enough to mistake that for someone watching her. The main park in Aurora had rides galore and diversions for children of all ages. At any given time, a great many people populated the area.

Despite her arguments to the contrary, the gnawing feeling that there was someone shadowing her persisted. Drawing her courage together, Ilene pretended to go the ladies’ room with Alex. Once inside, the boy looked puzzled as they began to leave by the rear exit. “We playing a game, Mama?”

“Yes, a game, Alex. Kind of like hide-and-seek.” Holding his hand, she circled around until she was behind the front entrance again.

She was doing it to prove to herself that she was imagining things.

She wasn’t.

No wonder she felt as if she was being shadowed. She was. Clay was leaning against a tree, watching the entrance. Waiting for her to emerge again.

Angry, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face her. It was hard to keep from shouting at him, but she didn’t want to frighten Alex. “Why are you following me?”

Clay looked at her, not surprised that she had caught on, only that she had done it so quickly. But one of the things he’d always liked about her was that she was sharper than any woman he’d ever been with.

“Because Janelle and Captain Reynolds seem to think you’re in danger.”

“The only thing I seem to be in danger of is running into people from my past who I don’t want to see.”

Though tempted to make a flippant reply, Clay was more interested in the small boy whose hand she held. The one looking up at him with big blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile so like his mother’s.

He nodded at the boy. “Is this your son?”

Ilene placed her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. “Yes, this is Alex.”

Not standing on ceremony, Alex tugged on Clay’s shirt and said, “Hi.”

He spared the boy a smile in kind. “Hi.” Clay raised his eyes to Ilene. The boy’s existence raised a host of questions in his mind, questions he should have been able to bank down. “When did you get married?”

She felt her back stiffening. “That is none of your business and neither am I. Go away, Detective Cavanaugh. Before I call a cop.”

He couldn’t resist. “Half the force is related to me.”

“Then I’ll find someone who isn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away with her son.

This time Clay remained where he was.

Chapter 3

“Leaving already?”

On his way through the crowded bar where he and other members of the police department gathered at the end of a long, hard day, Clay stopped several feet short of his goal, the front door. Even with the din cranked up an extra decibel or two, he still recognized the familiar voice. He’d been hearing it for all of his twenty-seven years.

The bar was extra crowded tonight with retired as well as active police personnel taking up much of the available space. They’d come together to throw a party for one of their own. After several false starts at retirement, Detective Alvin “Willie-Boy” Jenkins was finally leaving the force. The older, florid-faced man had been a fixture with the department for as long as Clay could remember, having even gone six years partnered with his father until Andrew had been promoted to chief of police.

It was Andrew Cavanaugh who had cleared up the mystery behind Willie-Boy’s nickname. It derived not from a familiar form of a name given him at birth, but from the fact that the police detective had become enamored with the old Robert Redford movie, Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He had seen it more times than even he could remember and could spout off lines of dialogue at the drop of a hat. No one knew why he was so fascinated with that particular piece of celluloid and no one wanted to ask. Willie-Boy tended to be very long-winded once he got started.

Clay had toyed with the idea of saying good-night to the members of his family who were still in attendance, then decided that slipping out unnoticed was the better way to go. He’d underestimated his father’s eagle eye. At an age when most men were squinting to make out the written page or see beyond the reach of their hand, his father’s vision was still twenty-twenty.

“Keeping tabs on me, Dad?” Clay turned to face the older man.

Andrew raised a mug of dark brew and took a small sip before answering. “No, just wondering what’s up. You’re usually one of the last to go.”

Clay shrugged, looking away. “I’m starting a new trend.”

The hell he was, Andrew thought.

Andrew wasn’t one to pry into his children’s affairs. Or so he liked to claim. In reality, the complete opposite was true. He took his role as father to heart and it had only intensified ever since his wife had disappeared fifteen years ago.

That was the way he saw it. Rose had disappeared. Which meant that someday she would reappear. He refused to accept the fact that she had walked out of his life with heated, hurtful words hanging in the air between them, and then died. Everyone else outside of the family had long since taken the scenario as a given. Rose Cavanaugh had died in the river where her car was discovered. But since neither her body nor her purse had ever been recovered, to Andrew the case was still open.

Rose was still his wife and she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

And Clay was still his son, one of two, and always would be no matter what his age. Being a father meant being concerned. Rose would have wanted it that way.

He studied his younger son closely now. His instincts, rather than mellow, had only grown sharper with age. “Something eating at you, Clay?”

Yes, something was eating at him, Clay thought. And had been ever since he’d seen Ilene this morning. It had only increased while he’d watched her at the park with her son. Seeing her playing with the boy, laughing, had created an incredible ache in his chest, one he didn’t know how to handle.

But he wasn’t about to talk about it, at least not until he worked it through in his system. “You mean other than those spicy meatballs?”

Clay nodded toward the large tray of browned meatballs that were still waiting to be plucked up from their perch. The bartender’s wife, Greta, had made them. They smelled a great deal better than they tasted, at least to those who were accustomed to better fare.

“The woman tried her best,” Andrew said, then grinned. “Can’t hold a candle to mine, can they?”

“Nope.” Clay watched his father do further justice to the beer he was holding. “And might I add that your modesty is blinding.”

“No reason for modesty.” Finished, Andrew set down the mug on a nearby table already littered with empty mugs. “Just the facts.”

About to comment, Clay held his finger up, stopping his father from continuing. His cell phone was vibrating in his back pocket.

“Hold it, Dad, I’m getting a call, Dad.”

Andrew sighed, waving him away to take the call. “No getting away from technology these days, is there?”