Dangerous Games

There were two years between the sisters and if there was one thing Rayne hated, it was to be made to feel like the baby of the family. At twenty-five, she was hoping to have finally left that issue behind her. She was beginning to realize that the odds were she never would.

But that didn’t mean she was about to accept it docilely. “That’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” They all knew that Teri loved to sleep in whenever she could.

With a sound of finality, Andrew placed the plate of hotcakes in the middle of the table, giving each of his daughters a warning look. Unlike Callie who’d never given him any grief and who’d now settled in with a good man, Teri and especially Rayne enjoyed burning the candle at both ends whenever the opportunity arose. There were nights when both or either of the girls would roll in only to have to leave for work a short while thereafter. He was utterly convinced that youth was wasted on the young.

“No bickering at the table—any table,” he deliberately underscored before one or the other resorted to a sarcastic question.

“Nope, that’s your domain,” Rayne pronounced cheerfully just before she bit into the short stack she had liberally doused with maple syrup.

The battleground between father and daughter was familiar, if no longer so frequently tread. “I don’t bicker, I impart wisdom,” Andrew informed Rayne, then widened his scope. “The rest of you bicker with it.”

“Not me, Dad.” Rising, Teri crossed to her father and kissed his cheek. “I know you just spout pearls of knowledge.”

He looked at the plate Teri had left in her wake. She’d hardly touched any of it. He was a firm believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day. “Is that all you’re eating?”

It had never taken much to fill her. She was usually the first one up from the table. This morning was no exception. Besides, there were reports waiting for her, reports she’d put off filing. She had that in common with the rest of her siblings.

With a grin, Teri patted her flat stomach. “I eat any more and I won’t be able to catch the bad guys.”

“You could always try talking them to death,” Clay suggested. It earned him a sharp poke in the ribs from his fiancée who sat beside him with the little boy he’d only recently discovered was his.

Ilene flashed an apologetic smile in Teri’s direction. “He hasn’t had enough coffee to seal his mouth yet.”

Teri returned the smile. “Don’t need to explain Clay to me. I had his number years ago, right, Clay?” She sent a penetrating, affectionate look his way before going toward the back counter where all of their weapons were carefully placed whenever they entered the house. With six of them police detectives, that made for quite an arsenal.

Rayne glanced in Teri’s direction. The display of weapons was something they all took for granted, but sometimes she saw it through the eyes of an outsider, a role she’d once occupied within her own family. “Enough hardware there to start a gun shop,” she commented, shifting her attention back to her meal.

At any one given mealtime, there were anywhere from the three Cavanaughs who still lived in the house Andrew and Rose had bought on their fifth anniversary to the eighteen members and almost-members of the Cavanaugh family. Most of the time, the count was far higher than three. That was due in equal parts to Andrew’s skills in the kitchen where the love of cooking he’d inherited from his own mother bloomed, and to the fact that they were a tightly knit family, a credit to the man who required their presence on a regular basis.

Rayne knew he was determined to keep them all together no matter what went on in their separate lives. “In family there is strength” was something he’d instilled in all of them.

The credo was fashioned after Rayne’s mother’s disappearance and in no small way helped to keep Andrew Cavanaugh going from one day to the next.

Sitting at her side, Callie leaned over and whispered, “It’s the anniversary of Uncle Mike’s death.” The expression on her face told Rayne that Callie was certain she’d forgotten the date. Rayne said nothing because she had remembered. “He’s a little touchy today. Try not to get under his skin too much, okay?”

Rayne bristled slightly. She would have done more so if it hadn’t been for the fact that her oldest sister was right. In her time, she’d gotten under her father’s skin far more than the rest of them combined. But then, she’d been the youngest when her mother disappeared, not quite ten at the time, and it had been an almost impossible adjustment for her.

She’d been the closest to Rose. It had taken her a while to get over her resentment toward the others who had had more time with the mother she adored. She’d felt cheated somehow, both by fate and her siblings who could recall more things, had more stories concerning their mother than she did.

It had taken her more time still to forgive her father for the argument that had caused her mother to leave the house that day in the first place. Heated words had been exchanged, and Rose Cavanaugh had gone for a long drive to cool off. It was a habit of hers. Except that this time, she’d never returned home.

A massive dragnet had been set in motion. Only three Cavanaughs had been on the police force then: Andrew, Mike and Brian. Her father and his brothers, aided by the entire force, had hunted extensively. Rose Cavanaugh’s car was found at the bottom of the river the next day.

It took little imagination to piece the sequence of events together. Visibility had been poor that morning, with a low-lying fog enshrouding the winding road that was her favorite route to take. The car had swerved and gone over the side, plunging into the river just beyond. “Death by drowning” was the official verdict when the case was finally closed.

But Rose’s body had never been recovered and so, Andrew maintained, she was still out there somewhere. Everyone outside of the family had given up hope of finding her alive years ago. And then, one by one, though none ever put it in so many words, everyone within the family had eventually accepted what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion: Rose Cavanaugh had perished that morning and her body had been swept out to sea.

Everyone within the family except for Andrew. Taking early retirement and leaving the force, he still retained the copious notes on the case, still periodically pored over them in hopes of seeing something that he hadn’t seen the other thousand times he’d reviewed the file. Something fresh that would lead him in the right direction and to Rose.

He didn’t seem like a man given to unfounded optimism, but he clung to his hope the way a drowning man clung to a piece of floating wood.

“I might be retired, Callie, but my hearing’s not.” Andrew turned from Teri as she took her leave and looked at his oldest daughter. “When you’re a cop, or an ex-cop,” he added significantly, even though he maintained that once a cop, always a cop, “death isn’t something you like to joke about. It sits in that squad car or unmarked vehicle beside you every day, keeping you company whether you want it to or not.” He looked at his late brother’s children, Patrick and Patience. His door was always open to them as it was to his brother Brian’s four. He couldn’t love any of them any more than if they were his own. “Mike’s death just reminds us of that.” He felt himself tearing up and deliberately turned back to the stove, even though there was nothing left on there to cook. “I’ll be going to the cemetery around three today. Any of you is welcome to join me.”

Rayne didn’t wait for any of the others to say something. She knew they’d all be paying their respects, one way or another, when they could manage it during the day.

“I’ll see if I can stop by, Dad,” she told her father.

He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. Everyone knew that there was a special place in his heart for the child who had caused him the most grief. “That’s three today, not tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, but without animosity in her voice. There had been a great deal of it once, but all of it had long since been leached from her. She’d come to terms with her demons. Gulping down her coffee, she snatched up a piece of toast to see her on her way. Her plate was immaculate.

Rising, she shoved the chair back into place. “Well, if I’m going to claim some personal time today, I’d better put in a few hours first.”

Clay shook his head as he looked at his sister’s plate. The last one at the table, she was technically the first one finished. This after two servings that had gone by at lightning speed. “Damn, but you eat faster than any three people I know.”

Rayne gave him a knowing look before glancing sympathetically toward the woman next to him. “That’s because until Ilene had the clear misfortunate of hooking up and taming you, all you knew were exotic dancers who consumed a grape a day and pronounced themselves fat.”

The disgruntled look her brother shot her was reward enough for her. Rayne headed toward the collection of weapons on the counter. Hers had been there since last night.

“Cole Garrison’s back in town,” Patrick told his cousin just as she was about to strap on her holster.

It stopped Rayne in her tracks. Cole. She hadn’t thought anything would bring him back to town. “What?”

Patrick looked at the others. It was clear that he had the inside track on this piece of news. “Yeah, I heard that he came back last night, driving a flaming red Porsche. I guess he doesn’t hate money anymore.”

Shaw gave a low whistle of appreciation. “A flaming red Porsche. Not bad for a black sheep.”

Left in the dark, Ilene looked from Patrick to Shaw to Clay, waiting for enlightenment. Like the others, she’d grown up in this city, but she’d gone to a private school. “Cole Garrison?” The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Someone I went to school with,” Clay told her.

Shaw drained the last of his coffee. “The town’s official bad boy.”

“Except that it’s his brother who’s accused of murder, not him,” Callie said as she pushed her plate back. “That makes Eric Garrison the new winner of the title, wouldn’t you say?”

“Keyword ‘accused,”’ her fiancé, Brent Montgomery, reminded her.

As a criminal court justice, Brent had been the presiding judge who had placed bail for the younger Garrison. The amount had been high, but certainly nothing to cause Eric’s affluent parents more than a momentary pause. It had surprised everyone when they hadn’t come up with the money. Especially when they had gone through the trouble of securing Schaffer Holland, an excellent defense lawyer for him. Currently, Eric was still in lockup.

“There’s an awful lot of evidence against him,” Patrick pointed out.

Without realizing it, Rayne squared her shoulders. “Maybe.”

Rayne saw the others all turn to look at her. She knew what they were thinking. That she was tilting at windmills again. Maybe that made her like her father, unwilling to accept something that everyone else took to be true.

Shaw put the obvious into words. “So you don’t believe he killed Kathy Fallon?”

The blond crop of curls moved about her head like rays of sunbeams dancing along the wind as she shook it. “Not a hundred percent, no.” It was a gut feeling, but she wasn’t about to admit that to this crowd. She knew what they’d say. Gut feelings were instincts reserved for the older members of the family, not her. “Eric’s spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he’s not violent.”