Cavanaugh Reunion

“No,” she answered tersely. “Choosing the most efficient path to get things done. Conway was part of the first team that made it inside. If there was anyone left to save, he would have found them.” She crossed her arms. “He’s also got a photographic memory and was there, helping to put the injured kids into the ambulances. If anyone can help find this woman’s daughter, he can.”

Ethan nodded, taking the information in. “You seem to know a lot about this Conway guy. You worked with him before?”

“For five years.”

He was tempted to ask if she’d done more than just work with the man. The fact that the question even occurred to him caught him off guard. The woman was a barracuda. A gorgeous barracuda, but still a barracuda, and he knew better than to swim in the water near one. So it shouldn’t matter whether their relationship went any deeper than just work.

But it did.

“How does someone get into that line of work?” he wanted to know.

He was prejudiced. It figured. “You mean how does a woman get into that line of work?”

Ethan knew what the sexy force of nature was doing, and he refused to get embroiled in a discussion that revolved around stereotypes. He had a more basic question than that. “How do you make yourself rush into burning buildings when everyone else is running in the opposite direction?”

It was something she’d never thought twice about. She’d just done it. It was the right thing to do. “Because you want to help, to save people. You did the very same thing,” she pointed out, “and no one’s even paying you to do it. It’s not your job.” She looked back toward Conway and the woman she’d entrusted to him. He was on the phone, most likely calling the hospital to find out if her daughter was there. Mentally, Kansas crossed her fingers for the woman.

“It’s all part of ‘protect and serve,’” she heard O’Brien telling her.

Kansas turned her attention back to the irritating detective with the sexy mouth. “If you understand that, then you have your answer.”

Greer blustered through life, but Ethan’s mother had been meek. He’d always thought that more women were like his mother than his sister. “Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt? Of getting permanently scarred?”

Those thoughts had crossed her mind, but only fleetingly. She shook her head. “I’m more afraid of spending night after night with a nagging conscience that won’t let me forget that I didn’t do all I could to save someone. That because I hesitated or wasn’t there to save them, someone died. There are enough things to feel guilty about in this world without adding to the sum total.”

She didn’t want to continue focusing on herself or her reaction to things. There was a more important topic to pursue. “So, did you find out anything useful?” she pressed.

What did she think she missed? “You were only gone a few minutes,” he reminded her. The rest of the time, she’d been with him every step of the way—not that he really minded it. Even with soot on her face, the woman was extremely easy on the eyes.

“Crucial things can be said in less than a minute,” she observed. Was he deliberately being evasive? Had he learned something?

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Ethan said. “But nothing noteworthy was ascertained.” He looked back at the building. The firemen had contained the blaze and only a section of the building had been destroyed. But it was still going to have to be evacuated for a good chunk of time while reconstruction was undertaken. “We’ll know more when the ashes cool off and we can conduct a thorough search.”

“That’s my department,” Kansas reminded him, taking pleasure in the fact that—as a fire investigator—her work took priority over his.

“Not tonight.” He saw her eyes narrow, like someone getting ready for a fight. “Look, I don’t want to have to go over your head,” he warned her. He and the task force had dibs and that was that.

“And I don’t want to have to take yours off,” she fired back with feeling. “So back off. This is my investigation, O’Brien. Someone is burning down buildings in Aurora.”

“And running the risk of killing people while he’s doing it,” Ethan concluded. “Dead people fall under my jurisdiction.” And that, he felt, terminated the argument.

“And investigating man-made fires comes under mine,” she insisted.

She didn’t give an inch. Why didn’t that surprise him?

“So you work together.”

They turned in unison to see who had made the simple declaration. It had come from Brian Cavanaugh, the chief of police. When Dax had called him, Brian had lost no time getting to the site of the latest unexplained fire.

Brian looked from his new nephew to the woman Ethan was having a difference of opinion with. He saw not just a clash of temperaments as they fought over jurisdiction, but something more.

Something that, of late, he’d found himself privy to more than a few times. There had to be something in the air lately.

These two mixed like oil and water, he thought. And they’d be together for quite a while, he was willing to bet a month’s salary on it.

His intense blue eyes, eyes that were identical in hue to those of the young man his late brother had sired, swept over Ethan and the investigator whose name he’d been told was Kansas. He perceived resistance to his instruction in both of them.

“Have I made myself clear?” Brian asked evenly.

“Perfectly,” Ethan responded, coming to attention and standing soldier-straight.

Rather than mumble an agreement the way he’d expected her to, the young woman looked at him skeptically. “Did you clear this with the chief and my captain?”

“It was cleared the minute I suggested it,” Brian said with no conceit attached to his words. “The bottom line is that we all want to find whoever’s responsible for all this.”

The expression was kind, the tone firm. This was a man, she sensed, people didn’t argue with. And neither would she.

Unless it was for a good cause.

Kansas stayed long after the police task force had recorded and photographed their data, folded their tents and disappeared into what was left of the night. She liked conducting her investigation without having to trip over people, well intentioned or not. Gregarious and outgoing, Kansas still felt there was a time for silence and she processed things much better when there as a minimum of noise to distract her.

She’d found that obnoxious Detective O’Brien and his annoying smile most distracting of all.

Contrary to the fledgling opinion that had been formed—most likely to soothe the nerves of the shelter’s residents—the fire hadn’t been an accident. It had been started intentionally. She’d discovered an incendiary device hidden right off the kitchen, set for a time when the area was presumably empty. So whoever had done this hadn’t wanted to isolate anyone or cut them off from making an escape. A fire in the kitchen when there was no one in the kitchen meant that the goal was destruction of property, not lives.

Too bad things didn’t always go according to plan, she silently mourned. One of the shelter volunteers had gotten cut off from the others and hadn’t made it out of the building. She’d been found on the floor, unconscious. The paramedics worked over the young woman for close to half an hour before she finally came around. She was one of the lucky.

Frowning, Kansas rocked back on her heels and shook her head.

This psychopath needed to be found and brought to justice quickly, before he did any more damage.

And she needed to get some sleep before she fell on her face.

She wondered where the displaced residents of the shelter would be sleeping tonight. She took comfort in the knowledge that they’d be returning in a few weeks even if the construction wasn’t yet completed.

With a weary sigh, Kansas stood up and headed for the front entrance.

Just before she crossed the charred threshold, she kicked something. Curious, thinking it might just possibly have something to do with the identity of whoever started the fire, she stooped down to pick it up.

It turned out to be a cell phone—in pretty awful condition, from what she could tell. Flipping it open, she found that the battery was still active. She could just barely make out the wallpaper. It was a picture of three people. Squinting, she realized that the obnoxious detective who thought she needed to be carried out of the building fireman-style was in the photo.

There were two more people with him, both of whom looked identical to him. Now there was a curse, she mused, closing the phone again. Three Detective O’Briens. Kansas shivered at the thought.

“Tough night, huh?” the captain said, coming up to her. It wasn’t really a question.

“That it was. On the heels of a tough day,” she added. She hated not being able to come up with an answer, to have unsolved cases pile up on top of one another like some kind of uneven pyramid.

Captain John Lawrence looked at her with compassion. “Why don’t you go home, Kansas?”

“I’m almost done,” she told him.

His eyes swept over her and he shook his head. “Looks to me like you’re almost done in.” Lawrence nodded toward the building they’d just walked out of. “This’ll all still be here tomorrow morning, Kansas. And you’ll be a lot fresher. Maybe it’ll make more sense to you then.”

Kansas paused to look back at the building and sighed. “Burning buildings will never make any sense to me,” she contradicted. “But maybe you’re right about needing to look at this with fresh eyes.”

“I’m always right,” Lawrence told her with a chuckle. “That’s why they made me the captain.”

Kansas grinned. “That, and don’t forget your overwhelming modesty.”

“You’ve been paying attention.” His eyes crinkled, all but disappearing when he smiled.

“Right from the beginning, Captain Lawrence,” she assured him.

Captain Lawrence had been more than fair to her, and she appreciated that. She’d heard horror stories about other houses and how life became so intolerable that female firefighters wound up quitting. Not that she ever would. It wasn’t in her nature to quit. But she appreciated not having to make that choice.

Looking down, she realized that she was even more covered with dust and soot than before. She attempted to dust herself off, but it seemed like an almost impossible task.

“I’ll have a preliminary report on your desk in the morning,” she promised.

Lawrence tapped her on the shoulder, and when she looked at him quizzically, he pointed up toward the sky. “It already is morning.”

“Then I’d better go home and start typing,” she quipped.

“Type later,” Lawrence ordered. “Sleep now.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a nag, Captain Lawrence?”

“My wife,” he answered without skipping a beat. “But then, what does she know? Besides, compared to Martha, I’m a novice. You ever want to hear a pro, just stop by the house. I’ll drop some socks on the floor and have her go at it for you.” He looked at her. “I don’t want to see you until at least midday.”

“‘O, Captain! my Captain!’” Throwing her wrist against her forehead in a melodramatic fashion, Kansas quoted a line out of a classic poem by Walt Whitman that seemed to fit here. “You’ve hurt my feelings.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Can’t hurt what you don’t have.”

“Right,” she murmured.

She’d deliberately gone out of her way to come across like a militant fire investigator, more macho than the men she worked with. There was a reason for that. She didn’t want to allow anything to tap into her feelings. By her reckoning, there had to be an entire reservoir of tears and emotions she had never allowed herself to access because she was sincerely afraid that if she ever did, she wouldn’t be able to shut off the valve. It was far better never to access it in the first place.

Heading to her car, she put her hand into her pocket for the key…and touched the cell phone she’d discovered instead. She took it out and glanced down at it. She supposed that she could just drop it off at O’Brien’s precinct. But he had looked concerned about losing the phone, and if she hadn’t plowed into him like that, he wouldn’t have lost the device.

Kansas frowned. She supposed she owed O’Brien for that.

She looked around and saw that there was still one person with the police department on the premises. Not pausing to debate the wisdom of her actions, she hurried over to the man. She was fairly certain that the chief of detectives would know where she could find the incorrigible Detective O’Brien.

“I could drop it off for you,” Brian Cavanaugh volunteered after the pretty fire investigator had approached him to say that she’d found Ethan’s cell phone.

She looked down at the smoke-streaked device and gave the chief’s suggestion some thought. She was bone-tired, and she knew that the chief would get the phone to O’Brien.

Still, she had to admit that personally handing the cell phone to O’Brien would bring about some small sense of closure for her. And closure was a very rare thing in her life.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll do it,” she told him. “If you could just tell me where to find him, I’d appreciate it.” “Of course, no problem. I have the address right here,” he told her.

Brian suppressed a smile as he reached into his inside pocket for a pen and a piece of paper. Finding both, he took them out and began writing the address in large, block letters.

Not for a second had he doubted that that was going to be her answer.

“Here you go,” he said, handing her the paper.

This, he thought, was going to be the start of something lasting.

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