Cavanaugh Reunion (3 page)

“Yes,” she deadpanned, “I saw the flames—and I instantly knew it was a fire.”

He had nothing against an occasional joke, but he resented like hell having his chain yanked. “Hey, ‘Kansas,’ in case it’s escaped you, we’re both on the same team. It seems to me that means we should be sharing information.”

She was sure that he was more than eager for her to “share” and doubted very much that it would be a two-way street as far as he was concerned. Until he brought something to the table other than words, she was not about to share anything with him.

“Sorry.” With that, she pushed past him.

“I bet the box that said ‘works and plays well with others’ always had ‘needs improvement’ checked on it,” he said, raising his voice as she walked away.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “But the box labeled ‘pummels annoying cop senseless’ was also checked every time.”

Ethan shook his head. Working together was just going to have to wait a couple of days. He had a definite hunch that she’d be coming around by then.

“Your loss,” he called after her and turned just as he saw Dax Cavanaugh coming toward him.

Right behind him were Richard Ortiz and Alan Youngman, two other veteran detectives on the force who now found themselves part of the arson task force. Remarkably, none of the men seemed to resent his presence despite the fact that they were all veterans with several years to their credit, while this was his very first assignment as a detective.

There were times he could have sworn that his shield was still warm in his wallet.

“What have you got?” Ortiz asked him, looking more than a little disgruntled. “And it better be worth it because I was just about to get lucky with this hot little number.”

“He doesn’t want to hear about your rubber doll collection,” Youngman deadpanned to his partner.

Ortiz looked insulted. “Hey, just because you’re in a rut doesn’t mean that I am,” the younger man protested.

“Guys,” Dax admonished in a low voice. “Playtime is over.”

Youngman frowned as he shook his head. “You’re no fun since they put you in charge.”

“We’ll have fun after we catch this arsonist and confiscate his matches,” Dax replied.

Overhearing, Kansas couldn’t help crossing back to the men and correcting this new detective. “He’s not an arsonist.”

Dax turned to her. His eyes, Ethan noticed, swept over the woman as if he were taking inventory. What was conspicuously missing was any indication of attraction. Brenda must be one hell of a woman, Ethan couldn’t help thinking about the man’s wife.

“And you would know this how?” Dax asked the self-proclaimed fire investigator.

“An angel whispered in her ear,” Ethan quipped. “Dax, this is Kansas Beckett. She says she’s the fire department’s investigator. Kansas, this is Dax Cavanaugh, Alan Youngman and Richard Ortiz.” Three heads bobbed in order of the introductions.

It was more information than she wanted, but she nodded at each man, then looked at the man conducting the introductions. “I didn’t
say
I was the fire investigator. I
am
the fire investigator. And how did you know my last name?” she wanted to know. “I didn’t give it to you.”

“But remarkably, I can read,” Ethan answered with an enigmatic smile. “And it was in on the ID you showed me”

“How do you know it’s not an arsonist?” Dax persisted, more emphatically this time.

She patiently recited the standard differentiation. “Arsonists do it for profit,” she told him, moving out of the way of several firefighters as they raced by, heading straight for the building’s perimeter. “Their own or someone else’s. The buildings that were torched, as far as we can ascertain, have no common thread drawing them together. For instance, there’s no one who stands to profit from getting rid of a battered-women’s shelter.”

Ethan turned the thought over in his head. “Maybe there’s a developer in the wings, looking to buy up land cheap in order to build a residential community or a king-sized mall or some vast hotel, something along those lines.”

But she shook her head. “Too spread apart, too farfetched,” she pointed out. “It would have to be the biggest such undertaking in the country,” she emphasized. “And I don’t really think that’s what’s going on here.”

Dax was open to any kind of a guess at this point. “So who or what do you think is behind these fires?” he asked her.

She was silent for a moment. Almost against her will, she glanced in Ethan’s direction before answering. “My
guess is that it’s either a pyromaniac who’s doing it for the sheer thrill of it, or we’re up against someone with a vendetta who’s trying to hide his crime in plain sight with a lot of camouflage activity.”

“In which case, we have to find which is the intentional fire and which were set for show,” Ethan theorized.

Kansas looked at him. “I’m impressed. Chalk one up for the pretty boy.”

He couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or actually giving him his due. With Kansas, he had a hunch that it was a little bit of both.

I
n all, twelve children and nineteen adults were saved. Because the firefighters had responded so quickly to Kansas’s call—and despite the fact that several women and children wound up being taken to the hospital for treatment—not a single life was lost.

Tired, seriously bordering on being punchy, Ethan nonetheless remained at the scene with the other detectives, interviewing anyone who’d been in the building just before the fire broke out. It was a long shot, but he kept hoping that someone might have witnessed even the slightest thing that seemed out of the ordinary at the time.

Because she wanted to spare the victims any more unnecessary trauma, and since the nature of the questions that the police were asking were along the lines of what she wanted to ask, Kansas decided it was best to
temporarily join forces with the Neanderthal who had slung her over his shoulder.

The women and children who’d been in the fire had her complete sympathy. She knew the horror they’d gone through. Knew, firsthand, how vulnerable and helpless they’d all felt. And how they’d all thought, at one point or another, that they were going to die.

Because she’d been trapped in just such a fire herself once.

When she was twelve years old, she’d been caught in a burning building. It occurred in the group home where she’d always managed to return. She came to regard it as a holding zone, a place to stay in between being placed in various foster homes. But in that case, there’d been no mystery as to how the fire had gotten started. Eric Johnson had disobeyed the woman who was in charge and not only played with matches but deliberately had set the draperies in the common room on fire.

Seeing what he’d done, Kansas had run toward the draperies and tried to put the fire out using a blanket that someone had left behind. All that had done was spread the flames. Eric had been sent to juvenile hall right after that.

Kansas couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Eric after all these years. Was he out there somewhere, perpetuating his love affair with fire?

She made a mental note to see if she could find out where he was these days.

Kansas glanced at O’Brien. He looked tired, she noted, but he continued pushing on. For the most part, he was asking all the right questions. And for a good-looking man, he seemed to display a vein of sensitivity,
as well. In her experience, most good-looking men didn’t. They were usually one-dimensional and shallow, too enamored with the image in their mirror to even think about anyone else.

More than an hour of questioning yielded the consensus that the fire had “just come out nowhere.” Most of the women questioned seemed to think it had started in the recreation room, although no one had actually seen it being started or even knew
how
it had started. When questioned further, they all more or less said the same thing. That they were just suddenly
aware
of the fire being there.

Panic had ensued as mothers frantically began searching for their children. The ones who hadn’t been separated from their children to begin with herded them out into the moonless night amid screaming and accelerated pandemonium.

The chaos slowly abated as mother after mother was reunited with her children. But there was still one woman left searching. Looking bedraggled and utterly shell-shocked, the woman went from one person to another, asking if anyone had seen her daughter. No one had.

Unable to stand it any longer, Kansas caught O’Brien by the arm and pulled him around. She pointed to the hysterical woman. “She shouldn’t have to look for her daughter on her own.”

Busy comparing his findings with Dax and all but running on empty, Ethan nodded. “Fine, why don’t you go help her.” More than any of them, this impetuous, pushy woman seemed to have a relationship with the women at the shelter. At the very least, she seemed
to be able to relate to them. Maybe she could pick up on something that he and the others on the task force couldn’t—and more important, she could bring to the table what he felt was a woman’s natural tendency to empathize. That would probably go a long way in giving the other woman some measure of comfort until they were able to hopefully locate her missing daughter.

Kansas pressed her lips together, biting back a stinging retort. She couldn’t help thinking she’d just been brushed off.

Not damn likely, Detective.

Detective Ethan O’Brien, she silently promised herself, was about to discover that she didn’t brush aside easily.

The moment she approached the distraught woman, the latter grabbed her by the arm. “Have you seen her? Can you help me find my Jennifer?”

“We’re going to do everything we can to find her,” Kansas told the woman as she gently escorted her over to one of the firemen. “Conway, I need your help.”

“Anytime, Kansas. I’m all yours,” the blond-haired fireman told her as he flashed a quick, toothy grin.

“This woman can’t find her daughter. She might have been one of the kids taken to the hospital. See what you can do to reunite them,” Kansas requested.

The fireman looked disappointed for a moment, then with a resigned shrug did as he was asked and took charge of the woman. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” he said in a soothing, baritone voice.

Kansas flashed a smile at Conway before returning to O’Brien to listen in on his latest interview.

“Buck passing?” Ethan asked when she made her way
back to his circle. Curious to see what she did with the woman, he’d been watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“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.