Cavanaugh Judgment (12 page)

Court had been in session for the past three hours and the defense attorney had only begun to cross-examine the witness who was currently seated in the witness box. There was no reason for anyone to enter the courtroom at this point, no sequestered witness being summoned to give his or her testimony.

Yet someone had entered.

That someone was leaning over, saying something to O’Brien. Blake focused and noticed that the man in the gray sports jacket seemed, at least at this distance, to have the same coloring and features as his bodyguard. Except that he had dark hair and O’Brien was a blonde.

Whatever the man had said to her had O’Brien vacating her seat in the last row, where she’d been ever since court had begun today. The next moment, the man slid into the row, taking her place.

Before he could even form the question in his mind, O’Brien left the courtroom.

Had something happened?

Had Munro been caught? Or had whoever decided these things called off the bodyguard detail?

And who the hell was this new player in the back of his courtroom?

Curiosity he didn’t think he possessed anymore rose to bedevil Blake. He wasn’t going to get any answers now, not unless he called a halt to the proceedings and inconvenienced everyone but himself.

His curiosity would keep.

Blake forced himself to focus on what was going on in front of his bench. That was, after all, what they were paying him for.

The moment Blake brought his gavel down, declaring recess for lunch, he was on his feet. But rather than retreat to his chambers as was his habit, he stepped down from behind his desk and crossed to the back of the room. He had questions.

The man he wanted to question was coming right toward him. The closer the man came, the more Blake thought that he bore a striking resemblance to O’Brien. One of the Cavanaughs?

And then it hit him a split second before the man reached him.

“You’re one of her brothers, aren’t you?”

Humor quirked Ethan’s mouth as he pretended to look down at himself. “Does it show? I thought I hid the battle scars pretty well.”

The other man was cracking jokes. Blake had his answer. “That would make you Ethan.”

The amused smile widened. “That it would, Your Honor. What gave me away?” he asked, curious. A lot of people who knew them managed to confuse him with his brother and the judge was a complete stranger.

“You’re smiling,” Blake answered. “Detective O’Brien said that your brother Kyle was the more somber one.”

“Not anymore,” Ethan confided with genuine pleasure. “Kyle’s been smiling a lot lately. Mostly due to Jaren,” he added. “Jaren Rosetti is another detective on the force. Homicide.”

This was far more information than he needed or wanted, Blake thought. What was it about the O’Briens—or the Cavanaughs for that matter—that seemed to compel them to feel that they were somehow responsible for maintaining the mental well-being of the world at large?

“Why are you here, Detective? And where’s your sister?” For half a second, hope flashed through him. But then, oddly enough, it was followed by a strange hollowness. He instantly dismissed it, attributing the feeling to the fact that he was hungry. “Am I to assume by her absence that she’s not required to hover around me any longer?”

“Sorry to be the one to tell you, but Greer’ll be hovering for a while longer. I’m just here to spell her so that she can go home, pack a few changes of clothing and tie up a few loose ends. Specifically one important one.”

He knew he shouldn’t ask, knew he shouldn’t care. Whatever the woman was up to didn’t concern him. Except that he was curious.

Blake didn’t have a clue where all this curiosity was suddenly coming from, but it prompted him to ask, “What sort of loose ends?”

All around them, people were emptying out the courtroom. Ethan stepped to one side to get out of the assistant district attorney’s way. He offered the woman a quick smile. It was a purely ingrained reflexive action, brought on whenever he was in the proximity of an attractive woman.

“Greer needs to find someone to take care of Hussy for her.” He chuckled softly. “Doesn’t trust either me or Kyle to do it.”

The name meant nothing to him. Did it refer to a car—he knew people who named their cars. A child? A cat? “What’s a hussy?”

Ethan struggled not to laugh. “You’re lucky you asked me and not Greer because that’s a straight line she wouldn’t be able to resist,” he told the judge.

“Lucky,” Blake repeated with absolutely no feeling. “So enlighten me.”

The bailiff who had been sent in to fill the vacancy left by Tim Kelly’s murder looked toward him, a silent question in his eyes. Blake nodded, giving the man permission to leave.

“Hussy is the dog my sister rescued,” Ethan was saying.

“From a shelter?” Blake asked even as he told himself he really didn’t care to be inundated with details about her life away from the job. What difference did it make to him where the animal had come from? Yet he was curious.

“From two coyotes that had decided Hussy would make an adequate breakfast. Skinniest thing you ever saw when Greer brought her home. She had to work really hard to get that dog to trust her.”

Their eyes met and Blake couldn’t shake the feeling that O’Brien’s brother was telling him more than his words suggested.

“You should see Hussy now. Doesn’t even
look
like the same animal. Don’t tell her I said so, but Kyle and I think Greer’s got a gift,” Ethan said, lowering his voice. “She ‘loves’ things back to health.”

What was that supposed to mean?

For that matter, Blake suspected he was having his leg pulled. The story didn’t ring true. “Just what does a slip of a woman do to scare off two coyotes?” he wanted to know. The stories he’d heard made a point of the fact that of late, driven by hunger, coyotes were getting pretty brazen in the early morning light.

“Something’ll get lost in the translation if I explain. You should ask her to show you sometime.”

Not likely.
Blake made a disparaging noise under his breath. He was in no need for an installment of show-and-tell. “I’ll be going to my chambers to have lunch,” he informed this newest Detective O’Brien he had to deal with.

Ethan nodded amiably, gesturing for him to go first. “Lead the way, Your Honor.”

Blake remained where he was. Security had been doubled. A rat with a hip replacement couldn’t sneak by the metal detector, much less a gun-wielding drug dealer. Just what did this O’Brien think was going to happen if he went to his chambers for some much-needed solitude?

“I’d prefer to have it alone,” he informed the detective.

“I’m sure you would,” Ethan responded cheerfully. “And I feel for you, Judge, I really do. But the chief’ll have my head if I don’t hang around you—and so would Greer.” He inclined his head toward the other man just a little. “And to tell you the truth, she scares me a lot more than the chief does. Greer doesn’t pull her punches,” he confided.

There was just no winning, Blake thought with exasperation. Turning on his heel, he motioned for the other man to follow him to his chambers.

Greer didn’t stop to catch her breath until she was in her car again, on her way back to the courtroom. She’d spent the past hour practically running from place to place, trying to get everything done in as short amount of time as possible.

There was a duffel bag in the trunk, stuffed with everything she’d need for a week’s stay just in case this little detail she was shackled to dragged on and she didn’t get a chance to get back to her place. She’d arranged for her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rosenbloom, to pick up her mail. She knew the retired junior high school English teacher would like nothing better than to have an actual excuse to go through her mail.

The sprinklers were programmed on a timer set to go off every other day so that she wouldn’t return to a dead lawn. Most important, she’d made arrangements for Hussy to stay with Patience. Her half sister was only one of two within the Cavanaugh clan who wasn’t directly in law enforcement. Janelle was the other. The latter had thrown her lot in with the court system while Patience, bless her, was a veterinarian. More than that, she was a vet with just the right kind of touch.

Hussy, poor baby, tended to be a huge chicken when it came to being handled by anyone but her. Some in-depth investigative work on her part had uncovered that Hussy’s former owner had abused her, using the small mongrel dog as a training tool for the pit bulls he was breeding. That was why the poor thing was missing part of her ear.

Skittish around people she didn’t know, Hussy had nonetheless taken to Patience right from the start. Which was why she’d decided to leave Hussy with the woman instead of asking one of her brothers to swing by her house once a night to feed the dog and let her out in the yard.

Patience had been more than happy to look after the dog. And she wasn’t housing Hussy in one of the runs at the animal hospital where other dogs whose masters were away were boarded. Instead, Patience told her that she was going to take the dog home with her.

Greer could have sworn that Hussy had smiled when she’d handed the leash over to Patience.

With her mind at ease, Greer felt she could give the proper amount of undivided attention to her assignment: making sure that Judge Blake Kincannon remained unharmed.

Her mouth curved slightly. She was sure that was going to just thrill the man. Not that she could really blame him. Being independent herself, she could certainly understand Kincannon’s resistance to the situation. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. Refusing left him unprotected. No one liked feeling vulnerable, as if they had a target painted on their forehead. But men like Kincannon didn’t like being forced to obey rules that were not of their own making, didn’t like feeling hemmed in and trapped. Didn’t like their every move being watched and shadowed.

The judge gave her the impression that he’d always shouldered his way through life. He was a protector, if she didn’t miss her guess, not a protectee.

She felt for him. That didn’t mean that she was going to let him have his way. She was here for however long the chief felt she should be.

Sorry, Judge. Sometimes we just have to play the hand we’re dealt,
she thought as she pulled into the courthouse parking lot. It was only half full, which meant that people were still out to lunch.

Her own lunch was sitting in a bag next to her on the passenger seat. Three different kinds of meat mated with two different cheeses and then drizzled with oil and vinegar before being stuffed into twelve inches of crusty French bread.

At the rate she ate, she figured it would be her lunch and possibly her dinner, as well. Dinner for Kincannon and his father was going to be something she’d put together once she brought the judge home. During her nonstop marathon hour she’d made a point of picking up some groceries. She’d deposited them at the judge’s house just after she’d brought Hussy to stay with Patience.

For a few seconds, she debated eating her lunch in the car, then decided that she’d been gone long enough. Ethan was doing her a favor; she didn’t want to abuse it. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t hear the end of it for a very long time. Ethan had the kind of memory that elephants envied.

Besides, all things being equal, she’d rather be up in Kincannon’s chambers than sitting in a hot car.

At the thought of the judge, Greer became aware of a strange feeling rifling through the pit of her stomach, unsettling it. Under different circumstances, she would have called what she felt butterflies, but there was no reason to
have
butterflies. This was just an assignment, no different from any other.

Okay, maybe a little different, but that didn’t change the basics. She was a detective acting as a bodyguard. She was definitely not invested in this situation as a woman, only as an agent of the law. There was absolutely no reason for her to feel anything at all except responsible for keeping the man alive.

But there was a part of her that did wish Kincannon wasn’t so damn sexy. It made things harder on her.

Doesn’t matter if the man looks like Johnny Depp in one of his better roles,
she upbraided herself.
Blake Kincannon is just an assignment, not a man.

Right. And she was a turnip, Greer thought as she entered the courthouse lobby.

In order for her to get to any of the courtrooms—or even the bathroom for that matter—security required that she had to pass through a metal detector and then walk by the scrutinizing eye of a dour-faced policeman. The man made her think of a troll sitting beneath a bridge.

“What’s in the bag?” the policeman fairly growled the question as he watched her place both of her weapons and her cell phone on the conveyer belt. He looked completely unimpressed when she flashed her shield at him. He was programmed to do a job and
nothing
was going to get in his way.

“A sandwich,” she responded cheerfully. To prove it, she crossed to him and opened the bag so that he could verify the contents for himself.

The policeman, Officer DeVry, muttered something under his breath and waved her on. As she picked her weapons and cell phone up on the other side of the screening apparatus, Greer heard what sounded like his stomach rumbling audibly.

Greer raised her eyebrows as she looked in the officer’s direction. “Hungry?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he grumbled.

She’d always been good at small talk. It was a tool to get people to relax around her. “When’s your lunch break?”

“Not for a while,” he complained. “They’re short-handed because of the shooting and I can’t go get anything for another ninety minutes.”

Greer thought for a moment. Most likely, she was going to be dealing with this man for at least the next week if not longer. Having him view her in a friendly frame of mind might come in handy.

Taking the sandwich out of the bag, she separated the two halves. They’d already been cut by the boy behind the counter who’d built the sandwich for her.

Dropping one half back into the bag, Greer held the other half out to the officer like a peace offering. “Here.”