Internal Affair (15 page)

Ramirez had been as invasive as she was. And yet, not quite the same way. He’d also never been remotely tempted to kiss Ramirez. The urge was still very much with him, getting in his way. “Anything else on that canvas I should know about?”

“Not that comes to mind,” she told him cheerfully. “See you in twenty minutes.”

She made it in fifteen.

Patrick lived in a modern, two-story condo in one of the newer residential areas in Aurora. That he owned property was in itself a surprise to her. From the bio she’d been given on him, she couldn’t picture Patrick owning anything—not a pet, not a plant, certainly not a place to live. A home represented ties to something and the image he projected was of someone who wanted no ties to anything.

But she was learning that the image she’d gleaned from his department file didn’t really do Patrick justice or cover nearly all the bases. Like the ties she’d discovered he had to his family. Or the fact that being with him in small, tight places did things to her respiratory system over and above the expected result that came of sharing oxygen.

After leaving her car in guest parking, she walked the short distance to his front door. The first thing she noticed was that, unlike a good many of his neighbors, Patrick’s door had no wreath or any other sign of holiday decor on it.

No wreath, no lights, no token holly. This lack of festivity was definitely more in keeping with her image of Patrick Cavanaugh.

It struck her as sad.

She rang his bell. The door swung open a moment later. He was still buttoning his shirt. The obligatory tie was hanging out of his front pocket.

“You’re early.” Turning away, he picked up his gun and holster.

“Just three minutes.” She peered into the house. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

She raised an eyebrow in response.

“You’re not going to be here long enough to come in.”

Patrick was already reaching for his jacket and slipping it on. Maggi maneuvered around him to get a better view of the inside of the condo, stepping inside.

“Like you said, I’m early.” The place looked neat. That surprised her. It was also relatively empty. That didn’t.

Because he disliked it most, he put his tie on last. “You just want to snoop around.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. A grin flashed. “Busted.”

He tried to ignore the effect it had on him and tried to concentrate on the fact that she was yet again staging an invasion. “No, but that’s what you’re currently doing to a certain part of my anatomy.”

Maggi barely paid attention to the protest. She swung around to face him. “You have no Christmas tree.”

He knew he should be annoyed. Why he was amused made no sense to him. “Sharp. I can see why they made you a detective. With observation powers like yours, you could rise all the way to the top.”

“But it’s Christmas.” Even her father put up a tree. He said it was to appease her, but she knew the tree made him think of her mother and the Christmases they had shared.

“Technically,” he pointed out, “not for another few days.” Patrick tried to remember the exact date on the calendar and couldn’t. He glanced over to the wall next to the sink in the kitchen.

“So when are you going to put it up?”

Taking her by the arm, Patrick began to usher her out of the living room and toward the door again. “Does the twelfth of never ring a bell?” She had that look on her face, the one that could undo a knot the size of Baltimore. “Look, Mary Margaret, what do I want with a tree? There’s one at my uncle’s house. A big one,” he emphasized. “That’s where I go for Christmas.”

“But you need a tree.”

She was really getting worked up about this, wasn’t she? He found it oddly amusing. And kind of sweet. Not that he’d tell her. “Why?”

“Because it’s a tradition.”

He shrugged carelessly. “Maybe I’m not a lemming.”

“This has nothing to do with going over a cliff—” Exasperation cut off her words. “What’s wrong with you, don’t you have a soul?”

For the first time since she’d met him, she heard Patrick laugh. The sound was warm and rich, embracing her like the feel of a sip of brandy going through her system on a particularly cold night. “You sound just like Patience.”

“Patience. Your sister.” She saw the affection in his eyes as he nodded. She knew it shouldn’t mean anything to her to be compared to his sister, but it did. “I think I’d like to meet a female version of you.”

He set her straight immediately. “Oh, no, Patience isn’t anything like me. Fortunately for her,” he said, surprising her. “She’s the one who got all the ‘soul’ in the family. She’s been after me for years to get a tree.”

And he seemed to care a great deal about what his sister thought. Another surprise. “So why don’t you?”

He shrugged again. “Too busy.” On his way out the door, he stopped. “Wait, I forgot something.”

“Your heart, Tin Man?” she suggested.

He gave her a reproving glance. “No, stay here.”

The next moment, he disappeared into another room in the back. She was tempted to follow him but refrained. Instead, she stayed where she was, scanning his place.

She didn’t like the thoughts finding their way into her head. The condo was new and she knew what decent houses went for in Aurora. This place was head and shoulders above decent. Not an easy thing to swing on even a detective’s salary, given property taxes.

How did he afford a place like this?

There was no getting away from the conclusion, even though she wanted to. She was too good a cop to turn her back on it. Raising her voice, she decided to meet the challenge head-on.

“You’ve got a nice place here.” She didn’t bother trying to sound innocent. “Renting?”

“It’s mine.”

What little bit of hope she had evaporated like standing water in the hot sun. “How much did this set you back?”

Patrick walked out of the other room, a large red and blue wrapped box in his hands. His expression was dark. “Enough.” He knew exactly what she was thinking and he resented it. “I also had enough after Patience and I sold our parents’ home when my mother died.” The house had too many bad memories for either one of them to want to live in it. Selling it was the only option they had.

She hadn’t thought of that. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Yes, you did.” Angry, Patrick shoved a large box at her.

She stared at the glitter for a moment without saying anything. “What’s this?”

“You asked me for a donation for the shelter’s toy drive. Here’s a donation.” He snapped out his words like machine-gun fire. “It’s one of those castles you build out of small building blocks. Good for girl or boy. The woman in the store wrapped it. Thought I’d save you the trouble.”

Guilt tap-danced through her. She followed him outside. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Good.” He slammed the door shut behind him. It locked automatically. “Keep it that way.”

Chapter 15

P
atrick wanted nothing more than to get on with the investigation into Ramirez’s dealings, to find some kind of plausible explanation for the large deposits into the account bearing his wife’s name.

Because the latter also bore the name of his old partner’s late mother-in-law, he knew that kind of redemption of Ramirez’s name was doomed. The excuse Ramirez had given his wife was flimsy, a lie for her to hold on to. Patrick knew Alicia loved her husband and didn’t want to believe he was mixed up in something dirty.

He needed to get to the bottom of this, but because he wanted to carry out his investigation without attracting any undue attention, it had to be put on hold during work hours.

Like a racehorse pawing the ground at the starting gate, Patrick felt as if he was chafing at the bit, but there was nothing else he could do. Work had to come first.

He and McKenna were involved in a new homicide, one that mercifully wound up being open and shut. A young woman was found dead in her apartment, killed, it turned out, by the man who’d been stalking her. They had the suspect in handcuffs by the end of the day.

The incident made him think of Patience and the unwanted attention she’d garnered from the owner of one of her patients. Patience claimed that the whole thing had gone away after the man had seen a framed family photograph, the one in which they’d all worn their dress uniforms, but it didn’t hurt to be too careful. She was the only sister he had.

He put in a call to her during the minimal lunch break he took, warning her to be careful. She gave him her word she would be. There were dogs barking in the background like a canine Greek chorus.

He knew that Patience took the situation a lot less seriously than he did. Patrick had a feeling she wasn’t telling him everything, because she didn’t want him to worry. However, he had no way of proving it. He hoped he was just being paranoid, but he strongly doubted it.

Some detective he made, he thought darkly now. Couldn’t even catch his own sister in a lie.

With a sigh, he shut off the computer he rarely used. Outside the window, day was slipping gracefully into nightfall. Time to go home.

Maggi heard the click and looked Patrick’s way. He’d been keeping her at arm’s length since she’d stopped by to pick him up this morning. Nothing she said changed the scenario.

“Good work on the Miller case,” Captain Reynolds tossed the compliment their way as he walked past their desks.

“Thanks,” Maggi murmured.

Cavanaugh, she noticed, said nothing, just barely nodding his head in acknowledgment. Of course, he didn’t seem to need any kind of reinforcement, not like other mortals. He was in a class by himself.

Except that he took insults hard and she had insulted him this morning.

She had fences to mend.

“Want to go grab a beer?” she suggested, clearing off her desk. The squad room was almost empty now. All but one of the other detectives had gone home. She was vaguely aware that Reynolds had stopped to talk to the man.

“No.”

“All right, I’ll just drop you off home, then—”

He cut her off as he rose to his feet. “I’ve already got a ride.”

Maggi sighed. He’d reverted to the way he was when she’d initially been coupled with him. Worse.

On her feet, she tried to block his way out. “Look, I’m sorry about this morning.” She lowered her voice, afraid it might carry, knowing how much he hated having the smallest thing about his life made public. “I didn’t mean I thought you were dirty. I guess I just got caught up in this whole conspiracy thing.”

His eyes were flat, cold. “Apology accepted.”

The hell it was. Maggi frowned as she watched him leave the squad room. “Doesn’t sound it.”

Barefoot, Patrick straddled the kitchen chair and set down the bottle he’d just gotten out of the refrigerator. It took its place on the table next to the two empty bottles he’d finished off.

Thinking about the fact that Ed might have been on the take ate away at him.

How could he have misjudged someone so much?

He hadn’t made that kind of a mistake since he’d thought of his father as being an honorable man. At least honorable in his own way. That image had been shattered when he’d accidentally overheard his father talking on the phone one day. As he stood in the shadows, listening, he heard his father try to convince Aunt Rose to run off with him. He’d been vaguely aware of some kind of trouble between Uncle Andrew and Aunt Rose. She had turned to his father just to vent. His father, always envious of what his two brothers had, had seen it as an opportunity for something more.

Whether that “something more” had ever happened, Patrick didn’t know. All he knew was that he’d felt overwhelming disappointment that his father lacked the kind of family values, family loyalty he’d just taken for granted within the framework of the Cavanaughs. He remembered being disappointed in his aunt Rose, too, but then she’d gone missing shortly after that and things like blame and disappointment took a back seat to family grief.

Patrick took an extra long drag of his beer, savoring the ice-cold bitter brew as it flowed through his system. Looking to anesthetize himself.

He’d been wrong about his father and now it looked as if he was wrong about Ed, too. Showed what he knew. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He dragged a hand through his hair, finishing off the third bottle. Blinking, he looked down at the piece of paper on the table. He was working on a list of all the men he knew Ed had interacted with. Half-finished, the list was still long. Ramirez had had a lot of friends. And apparently some deadly enemies.

He heard the doorbell ring and groaned. He didn’t feel like having company or talking to anyone. It was the middle of the week, not normally the time for visitors. But then, his cousins had a tendency to drop by without warning.

Maybe a little bit of company might be a good thing. He got up.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he called out as he heard the doorbell peal for the third time.

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he opened the door.

It was a tree—a tall, skinny tree, its branches straining against the hemp that had been wound tightly around it. If the tree had taken on human form, he would have classified it as a runway model, all angles and malnutrition.

“What the hell?”

“Well, don’t just stand there,” a voice from behind the tree retorted. “Let me in.”

Now it made sense. Sort of. “Mary Margaret, is that you?”

She peered around the tree she was holding. “Unless you believe in talking trees.”

He had no idea why he felt like laughing. He was still incensed over what she’d intimated. At least, it had made a good excuse to be incensed. And a good excuse to keep her at arm’s length, where she belonged.

“After being partnered with you, I’m starting to believe anything is possible.”

“Good. Now help,” she instructed, pushing the tree in his direction.

Patrick caught it in time and dragged the tree over the threshold. It was surprisingly light. Glancing back in her direction, he saw that Maggi had a six-pack of beer in one hand and some kind of aromatic large bag in the other. There was a red dragon embossed on the side. Was the woman moving in?

“What the hell is all this?” he demanded.

“Well, this—” she held up the six-pack “—and this—” she raised the bag “—are peace offerings.”

He was willing to accept that, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what she thought she was making peace over. But he was more interested in finding out why the woman was dragging around a scrawny tree in her wake. “And the tree?”

“Is something you need. Kitchen this way?” She walked toward the left before he could give her an answer. Patrick leaned the tree against the wall and hurried after her.

He managed to get in front of her. “Why would I need a tree?”

Scooting around him, she set the six-pack down on the table, noting the presence of the three empty bottles. Good thing she’d brought food, she thought. The man obviously had his sights set on a liquid dinner tonight.

“A Christmas tree,” she corrected.

“A scrawny one,” he pointed out.

“I tried to find a better one,” she told him. “But it’s almost Christmas. You wait too long, you have to settle.”

He didn’t want one in the first place. “Answer the question. Why the hell do I need a tree? A Christmas tree,” he corrected himself before she could.

Maggi stopped unpacking the take-out dinner she’d brought and faced him. “Because Christmas is about love and forgiveness and being nice to people around you, I thought if you had a tree, you might remember the rest.”

The absolute nerve of the woman amazed him. He frowned and gazed at the tree leaning against his living room wall. “I suppose you expect me to go out and buy decorations for it.”

“Nope, got those in the car. Extras,” she explained when he looked at her incredulously. “I have trouble resisting buying ornaments. They get cuter every year.” And she had no willpower when it came to that. Over the years she had collected more than enough to decorate two trees and still have ornaments left over. “So I thought I’d bring over some of them for you.”

The woman obviously took no prisoners. Except for maybe him. “Think of everything, don’t you?”

She grinned. “I try.” She folded the empty bag and left it on the counter. “So, are we friends again?”

“We weren’t friends before,” he said.

Maggi could only shake her head. “You are a hard man, Patrick Cavanaugh.” She motioned him to the door. “C’mon, help me bring in the decorations.”

He debated putting his foot down about that, but there didn’t seem to be any solid ground beneath it. She’d come this far. He supposed letting her decorate the damn thing wouldn’t hurt. With a shrug, he growled an “Okay,” and walked out the front door.

The moment he did, a shot rang out, whizzing by his head. Missing him by less than an inch. He instantly grabbed Maggi’s arm and pulled her down, blocking her with his body, the extra service revolver he kept strapped to his calf out in his hand.

There was no second shot.

Patrick looked around. He thought he saw someone running in the distance. On his feet, he started to give chase.

“Stay here,” he tossed over his shoulder.

But Maggi was beside him, matching him footfall for footfall, her own service revolver in her hand. “I’m not a civilian, Cavanaugh.”

“No, just a damn pain who never listens,” he snapped.

A quick surveillance of the area turned up nothing beyond a teen couple necking in a car in the girl’s driveway. By the look on their faces, Patrick had managed to scare ten years out of each of them. He withdrew with a curt apology.

Just then, someone peeled out of the development, tires screeching. Patrick was too far away to get off a clear shot, or even see a license plate. The car was dark, blending into the night. Even its make was obscured.

Disgusted, he holstered his gun. “Now what the hell was all that about?”

The first thing that popped into her head was that he was being set up. Someone had tried to sabotage his reputation and since that wasn’t happening quickly enough, they had resorted to plan B, trying to eliminate him. Or maybe that was the original plan, she thought, remembering the circumstances behind Ramirez’s death.

She bit back the urge to tell him what she was thinking. She couldn’t do that without risking the operation. And if he suspected that she’d been sent by IA to investigate him, he’d probably never speak to her again. She didn’t want to risk that, either.

Damn, but this assignment was tying her up in knots, leaving her feeling conflicted.

She speculated the only way left open to her. “Maybe someone thinks we’re getting too close to finding out something about Ramirez.”

It made sense. And troubled him, but there was nothing he could do about it tonight. He blew out a breath, centering himself. “You said something about decorations.”

His defensiveness was gone. Maggi smiled to herself. At least the shooter had managed to get her closer to Cavanaugh again. And that was a good thing.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

He was addressing the words to her posterior as she stood up on the ladder she’d had him get out of his garage. What the tree lacked in breadth it made up for in height and she intended to decorate every scrawny inch of it. When he’d hooted at it, she’d informed him that the tree needed love and she figured he and the tree would be good for each other.

She gave him the answer he knew she would.

“Yes, I do.” Holding on to the top of the ladder, she turned around so she was looking down at him with her back against the steps. She liked being taller. It gave her a certain advantage. “I’m an optimist, but I don’t believe in magic.”

He didn’t trust the ladder and stood holding it, more than vaguely aware that he was bracketing her thighs. “Magic?”

Something warm and soft stirred through her as she gazed down at him. The words, meant to be light, had trouble leaving her mouth at more than a measured pace. Things were happening inside her, things that shouldn’t. And she was enjoying them far too much.

“Yes, as in decorations magically going on the tree by themselves because you sure as hell aren’t going to put them on.”

Thoughts crowded in his head that had nothing to do with police work, or shift partners, or even Christmas. “Think you know me?”

She took a step down, then another, careful not to lose her footing.

Too late for that, Mag,
she mocked herself.

She ran her tongue along her lips, trying to fight the dryness. “I know that much about you.”

The ladder swayed a little as she took another step down. Patrick immediately tightened his hold. “Careful, the damn thing’s rickety.”

“That’s okay, so am I.” The words all but floated from her mouth.

She was too close to him. Too close to do anything sensible. She could hear a rushing in her ears and wondered if that was her blood, making a break for it.

Unable to help himself, to push away the sudden shaft of desire that shot through him, Patrick cupped her face with his hands and brought his mouth down to hers.