Cavanaugh's Surrender

Right now, all her energy was focused on not breaking down and, more important than that, on finding who had done this to her sister.

“It’s not a suicide,” Destiny informed the detective firmly.

About to walk to where he could view the deceased’s body, Logan turned instead and focused on the intense crime scene investigator. She sounded as if there was no room for argument.

“Why?” he asked, the detective in him pushing the playboy far into the background. “Did you find something that would indicate that the woman was murdered?”

“Not yet,” Destiny answered between clenched teeth. “But I will.”

Okay, he was officially confused, Logan thought. Was there some sort of an agenda he was missing? Exactly what did this woman mean by “not yet”? What did she know that he didn’t? He didn’t like playing catch-up.

“If there are no indications that it’s not a suicide, what makes you think that it isn’t?” he asked the shapely blonde.

“Because she wouldn’t commit suicide,” Destiny informed him heatedly.

Really curious now, Logan looked at the young woman who, he realized, had more going on, even without the aid of painted-on clothing, than Stacy ever did. She didn’t reek of raw sex, but there was a subtle promise there that intrigued him. A lot.

Since the department paid him to solve cases, not ruminate on beautiful women who said baseless things, Logan forced himself to focus on the wild claim the crime scene investigator had just made and not the fact that the words had come out of nearly perfect lips.

“And you know this because …?”

A very tempting chin shot up like a silent challenge. “Because she’s my sister.”

It took him a second to absorb that. “You weren’t called in, were you?” Logan guessed.

No, she hadn’t been. She’d come here looking for answers and had wound up face-to-face with a dreadful question: Who killed Paula?

“I did the calling,” she told him.

As if in a bad dream, once she knew that Paula was beyond resuscitating and she’d stopped crying, she’d pulled herself together and called her boss, even though protocol would have had her calling 911 first.

The sound of Sean Cavanaugh’s voice had almost made her lose it again, but Destiny had managed to hold herself together enough to describe what she’d found when she’d walked into her sister’s apartment. Sean in turn had set everything else in motion, promising to be there as soon as he possibly could. He told her not to leave.

As if she could.

With no knowledge of what had taken place between his father and the crime scene investigator, Logan had a different take on things.

“You can’t be here,” he told her, transforming from a devil-may-care man who enjoyed his share of the nightlife to a homicide detective who was considered to be damn good at his job.

Logan saw the woman’s slender shoulders stiffen as if she’d been jabbed with a hot poker. She reminded him of a soldier, galvanized in order to withstand whatever came her way.

The flash of anger in her eyes was almost mesmerizing to him.

“The hell I can’t,” she snapped. “She’s my baby sister and the only family I have left. Had left,” Destiny amended, trying hard not to allow the words to choke off her air supply. “Somebody killed her, and I intend to find out who.”

Having brothers and sisters of his own, Logan could easily relate to the way she felt. But she still needed to go. “I get it, but leave it up to—”

“To who?” Destiny demanded. “To you? To the professionals?” She guessed at the word he was about to use. “I am one of the professionals.”

That might be true, but there was another, bigger factor that she was apparently missing—or deliberately ignoring. “You’re also personally involved—”

“You bet I am,” Destiny snapped, her eyes flashing again, “and no rules and regulations are going to make me stand on the sidelines like some clueless civilian, waiting for someone to find something that would point to my sister’s killer—especially when they’re not even going to be looking.”

“Now wait a minute—”

No, she wasn’t going to “wait a minute.” And she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to snow her with rhetoric.

“A minute ago, you were all ready to write this off as a suicide. You were willing to go with what you saw—or thought you saw.”

Only up to a point. Where did she get off, criticizing his work if she hadn’t seen him in action? Gorgeous or not, she needed to be told a few things and put in her place.

“Not if the autopsy contradicts the idea of a suicide.”

Autopsy.

The very word brought up a chilling scenario with it. Someone cutting up her little sister, reducing Paula to a mass of body organs examined, weighed, catalogued and then impersonally stuffed back into her body like wrinkled tissue paper that has served its purpose.

Suddenly, Destiny could hardly bear the wave of pain she felt.

Logan saw the horror that washed over the woman’s fine-boned features before she apparently got herself under control again. Observing her, he had to admit he felt really sorry for the woman. He knew how he would have reacted if that was Bridget, or Kendra, or Kari in the next room.

No rules or orders would have kept him on the sidelines. If he couldn’t have been part of the investigation outright, he would have found a way to conduct his own investigation covertly until he found answers that satisfied him.

Until he found the killer.

He felt a budding respect as he looked at the woman for the first time, not assessing her comely features but taking measure of the person who existed beneath. Thinking of what she was feeling and taking stock of what had to be crossing her mind right now.

Logan relented, backing off from his initial stand. “Look, what if I promise to keep you filled in? Will that be enough for you?”

The moment the words emerged from his mouth, he knew they had come out wrong. He made it sound as if he was trying to dismiss her. He wasn’t doing anything of the kind.

Destiny tossed her head, anger and sadness mingling with the very stubborn streak that had seen her through a less than typical childhood, one that would have conquered a lesser person. And she had been a child at the time.

“No, sorry, not good enough,” she fired back.

“He’s right, you know.”

She didn’t have to turn around and look to know who was behind her. But she turned around anyway. Turned around and looked up at the man she respected and secretly regarded as the father she hadn’t had for all these many years, not since he’d walked out on her, Paula and their mother.

“I thought you’d be on my side,” she said to Sean. She was more than a little disappointed to hear him taking the side of company policy.

“I am always on your side,” Sean reminded her kindly. “But the rules are clear about working on a case that you’re personally involved in.”

She knew all the rules backward and forward. She also knew they weren’t going to stop her from working this investigation.

“Sean, please,” she implored hoarsely, her voice brimming with emotion. She laid a hand on Sean’s arm in mute supplication.

“Of course,” Sean continued loftily, as if she hadn’t said anything, “you are a grown woman and I can’t be expected to tie you up and throw you into some corner if you happen to do some poking around into the present case behind my back.” He saw his son staring at him, undoubtedly surprised at this break with protocol. “Oh, like you and those brothers and sisters of yours never bent a single rule,” he mocked.