Cavanaugh's Bodyguard (13 page)

“I’ll do you one better than that,” Roberts countered. He walked over to the large, tilted desk he had set up in the living room where he did all his work. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll sketch this guy for you myself.”

“That would be great,” Bridget told him. She saw the look on Josh’s face and immediately knew what he was thinking. This was beginning to feel a little too easy. Maybe Josh had a point. “Oh, by the way, since he was stalking your fiancée, when did you get a chance to see this guy? I would have thought that someone like him would avoid any kind of confrontations with other men.”

Roberts explained without a second’s hesitation. “I looked out my window and saw him hanging around the corner. When I mentioned it to Phyllis she looked out the window and said that was her not-so-secret admirer. I wanted to call 911 or at least go down and tell him to get lost, but she said not to. That he was harmless. I should have realized people like that were never harmless.”

“Like I said, not your fault,” Bridget assured him with conviction. “Now if you don’t mind doing that sketch for us, we’ll be out of your hair,” she promised.

“Right away,” Roberts said. He sat down and started to sketch.

* * *

“You do realize that this looks like every second guy in the neighborhood,” Josh said to her, referring to the sketch he was holding in his hand as they went back to their vehicle.

“Still, it’s something to go on. Cases have been solved on less.” Reaching the car, she took a second look at the drawing. It
was
rather unremarkable, she thought. Taking the drawing from Josh, she placed it in the folder on her seat. “Maybe if we show it at that pet shop, one of the employees might recall having seen him. Maybe the guy bought something there and used his credit card.”

“Ever the optimist,” Josh said.

“Hey,” she protested as she got in, “optimists are right sometimes.”

Josh buckled up before putting his key in the ignition. “Do you find it a little odd that there was no drawing in the first victim’s file?”

“Luke McGee was a really impatient man. Half the time he didn’t hear what you were saying because he was busy working out a theory in his head.” Bridget felt it only fair to give the man his due. “He was a good detective, but not exactly detail-oriented and he was definitely not the easiest man to work with. He had his own drummer that he marched to.”

He looked at her, intrigued. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a time she liked to dwell on. “I was partnered with him for a little while.” And then she decided that he deserved to know a few more details. “He was hard-nosed and could be very difficult if he wanted to be. I gave serious thought to quitting the department once or twice.”

Josh grinned broadly as they drove to the next light. “But then you hit the jackpot.”

She laughed at the description. “Not exactly the way I’d put it.”

“That’s why I said it for you,” Josh told her. “I know how shy you are.”

He almost laughed out loud as he said the word. If there was
ever
someone who didn’t come across as shy, it was Bridget. But even as he thought it, the very word made him think of something else.

“By the way, you are going to that gathering on Saturday, aren’t you?” he asked.

For a minute, she’d almost forgotten about that. As much as she was into family, she was still working all of this out in her head, trying to reconcile herself with the fact that her family had suddenly quadrupled.

“Why?” she asked. “Are you volunteering to take my place?”

He grinned, turning left at the light. “I think they’d notice the difference.”

“With all those Cavanaughs milling around? They wouldn’t even know that I wasn’t there,” she assured him.

Josh was quiet for a moment, as if he was mulling over what she’d just said. Or perhaps how she had said it.

“You need backup?” he asked her out of the blue.

Bridget laughed. The idea of needing backup attending a so-called family gathering sounded comical, but then, as she turned the thought over in her head, it began to sound more than a little appealing. “Are you trolling for a family?”

“Just kind of curious to watch you in action with yours,” he admitted. He thought of what she’d said was the reason for having this party. “Besides, it might be interesting to meet the man who’s responsible for this whole ‘Cavanaugh dynasty’ that’s sprung up in the police department. All those policemen who kept visiting my mom and me after my father died were all great guys—and they were almost like family. But the operative word here is ‘almost.’ It might be interesting to see the real thing.”

He’d always struck her as being footloose and fancy-free, not someone who would welcome family ties. Maybe she should reevaluate her view of Youngblood.

“Are you looking to ‘borrow’ my grandfather?” she asked him, amused.

“I’ll let you know once I meet the man and get to know him a little,” he answered vaguely. “Besides, you seem less than thrilled about attending. I figure you might feel better about going if someone was in your corner.”

She looked at his profile as he continued to drive. That was really thoughtful on his part. He kept surprising her lately. Especially the other day.

She reined in her thoughts, refusing to dwell on what had happened. It would only make her want an encore and that, she instinctively knew, would be a very bad idea.

“I guess you really can be a decent guy every so often,” she commented.

His eyes on the road, Josh grinned at her flippant assessment. “It does happen occasionally, but not enough to ruin my reputation,” he assured her. “So, what time do you want me to pick you up?”

“You really want to go to this thing, don’t you?”

“Andrew Cavanaugh sets a fine table,” he reminded her. “I’ve been to a few of the Christmas parties he throws for everyone. Going with you to this little get-together, I get to eat a great meal and make sure you don’t get overwhelmed with all that family. It’s a win-win situation as far as I can see.”

Although she had to admit, if only to herself, that she did like his company, she didn’t like the fact that he thought she might need moral support. It didn’t matter that she might, she still didn’t like him thinking it. It made her seem vulnerable.

“I don’t need a keeper, Youngblood,” she informed him.

He took her defensiveness in stride. “How about a friend? Or do you not need one of those, either?” he asked.

He’d found just the right way to get to her. There was no point in protesting any longer. “Two o’clock,” she answered, shifting so that she was looking straight ahead rather than at him.

“Two o’clock it is.”

She could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “Now can we get back to work?”

“We never stopped,” he told her cheerfully.

Without her realizing it, they had arrived at the precinct. Josh pulled up into their spot in the parking lot. Shutting off the engine, he glanced at the folder where she’d tucked in the sketch. She’d mentioned showing it around the place where the first victim had worked, but now he thought of other places as well.

“You know, it might not be a bad idea to show that around to the other victims’ relatives or friends, see if any of them remember seeing this guy lurking around somewhere.”

She had been thinking the same thing. It amazed her how in tune they could be sometimes. Bridget nodded. “Worth a shot. Meanwhile, maybe we can have this run through a facial recognition program.”

“Better yet, how about the database with the DMV photos?” Josh suggested. “Just the ones from Northern California.” Getting out of the vehicle, Bridget took out the sketch. Josh tapped it for emphasis. “I mean, this guy’s got to have a driver’s license, right? He doesn’t ride the bus to the scene of the crime and he doesn’t use the bus to transport the bodies.”

What Josh said triggered a thought in her head. “Not unless he’s a bus driver and uses the bus after hours for his own purposes every so often.”

Josh stared at her, amazed at how she kept coming up with these theories. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “I think we need to look at this thing from all different angles,” she told him. “Something’s bound to click eventually.”

“In the meantime, it can also make you crazy,” he pointed out.

“I can’t argue with that,” she said as they walked up the stairs to the back entrance.

“Sure you can,” he assured her with conviction. “You could argue with God about whether or not the sun comes up in the east.”

Oddly enough, the comment didn’t bother her. Being viewed in that light was a lot better than being thought of as vulnerable.

* * *

Once in the building, rather than reporting to Howard the way the lieutenant had insisted they do each time they returned, Bridget and Josh brought Roberts’s sketch to Brenda.

They found the woman still busy working with the last victim’s laptop.

“What are you looking for?” Bridget asked, puzzled. “You already found the guy from the internet dating site’s IP address.”

“Yes, but I also found something else,” Brenda answered rather proudly. “Totally by accident,” she admitted. She waited for a moment, as if to build up the suspense, before telling them that “Somebody hacked into her laptop.”

“You mean like someone was trying to steal her identity?” Josh asked Brenda.

“No.” Which made it all the more interesting. “From what I can see, this person hacked into her computer so he or she could read her email.”

Bridget’s mouth dropped open. That was it. That was how the killer knew where to find her. “If he read her email, he’d know that she was meeting the internet dating guy at The Hideaway—and that’s why Diana never showed up for her date.”

Josh nodded in agreement, picking up the thread. “He could have been waiting just outside the club, identified himself to Diana as her date—remember, she didn’t know what the guy was supposed to look like—and say that he knew a better place for them to go.”

Brenda was listening to both of them as they talked faster and faster. Raising her hand, she cut into their rhythm. When they both looked at her, waiting, she asked, “Wouldn’t that make her suspicious?”

Josh had already thought of that. “Not if he gave her a good reason why he decided that some other club—or restaurant—might be better. Work with me here,” Josh urged the women. “This was how he got her to come with him. He knew all about her—”

“Not to mention that she looked just like his first victim,” Bridget interjected. The photographs on the bulletin board she’d set up in the squad room had an eerie sameness to them, as if the women could have all belonged to the same family.

“Which he would have known from that social network page,” Josh said, looking at Brenda. “Any way to find out if this guy looked at anyone else who looked like our victims?”

“Maybe in a parallel universe, but it’s not anything that I can do,” Brenda said.

“Can you find the IP address of the hacker?” Bridget asked.

“It’s definitely not going to be easy,” Brenda warned her. She looked back at the laptop screen uncertainly. “Whoever this guy is, he’s really good.”

“Yeah, but so are you,” Josh told the woman. The smile on his lips was warm and encouraging.

“Flattery will get you somewhere every time,” Brenda told him with a laugh. She knew exactly what he was doing, but she also knew what she was capable of if she pushed hard enough. “But when Dax complains that he hasn’t seen me in a week, I’m sending him over to you so
you
can explain why I haven’t been home.”

Josh grinned. “Leave it to me. You track down the hacker for me and I’ll personally send the two of you on an all-expenses-paid second honeymoon.”

Brenda glanced up, humor glinting in her eyes. “What makes you think we’re done with our first one?”

That
, Bridget thought as they left the lab a couple of minutes later, was the kind of marriage she wanted. One where the love didn’t wear out once the newness of the situation faded away.

But even as she thought it, despite everything she knew about the way Josh operated, she couldn’t help glancing at him.

And wondering.

What if…?

Chapter 10

“Y
ou clean up good,” Josh said when Bridget finally opened the front door.

It was Saturday and two o’clock, the time she’d told him to come by. He’d been all but leaning on her doorbell since she didn’t answer the first two times he’d pressed it. When at last the door
did
open, he’d meant to say a few sarcastic things about her taking her sweet time.

But those words completely evaporated in the heat generated of his partner in a gray-blue dress.

The long-sleeved dress only came midway down her thighs, but it lovingly adhered to every curve of her body during that journey even when she wasn’t moving.

Josh made the comment to her in self-defense, hoping that the semi-flippant assessment would annoy her enough to draw attention away from the fact that he’d been momentarily stunned into silence by her appearance and had all but swallowed his tongue.

Granted, since he’d already given in once and kissed her, he’d suspected that Bridget was a great deal hotter than their day-to-day relationship would have normally made him believe. But in his wildest dreams, Josh wouldn’t have expected that she could look
this
hot.

“You make it sound as if I come in to work looking like something that the cat wouldn’t drag in on a bet,” Bridget said.

The comical description made him laugh. With a careless shrug he conceded, “Well, maybe not quite that bad.”

“But bad?” she pressed incredulously. “You actually think I look bad when I come into work?” She always tried to appear professional and at her best when she came into the squad room in the morning.

“You fishing for a compliment, Cavanaugh?” he asked, raising one probing eyebrow. He made no attempt to hide his amusement. “Okay, I guess I can give you a compliment. You’re an attractive woman, partner, we both know that. But to be honest, I really had no idea that you were this hot.”