Protecting His Witness

For a moment, Zack wrestled with his thoughts. He’d been undercover for several months now and things were obviously coming to a head. But his gut told him that this woman had no connections to the identity-theft ring he and his team were trying to break up. Wounded, bleeding and disoriented, he had come to her, she hadn’t sought him out. That made her an outsider.

He didn’t want to repay her act of kindness by telling her a lie. He really didn’t have to tell her very much at all beyond a few nebulous pieces of information. At the very least, she deserved to know who she’d gone out of her way for.

“My name’s Zack McIntyre.”

“Okay,” she said gamely. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

She really didn’t want to know anything, did she? That either made her incredibly unique, or afraid of something. “No, but you didn’t ask me what my name was after you told me yours.”

Slender shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “I figured if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” She looked at him as if her point was made. “And you did.”

Zack shook his head. His sisters could certainly take a few pointers from her. They acted as if they had the right to know every single detail of his life.

“You don’t have any curiosity, do you?” he marveled.

“I know all I need to know to get me through the day,” she replied complacently.

He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that as far as she was concerned, that was enough.

Zack watched her as she got ready to leave. “I’d be careful if I were you,” he told her.

He was kidding, she told herself. But she still couldn’t bank down the fear that suddenly spiked through her. Was he giving her a veiled warning? She succeeded in keeping her voice cool as she asked him, “And why’s that?”

He watched as she slipped on her high heels. They gave her an extra four inches. “Well, a woman with no curiosity is a rare creature. Someone might be tempted to kidnap you and put you in a museum dedicated to rare and mythical creatures—like the unicorn.”

Kasey slipped her purse straps onto her shoulder. “There are no such things as unicorns.”

He winked at her as she crossed to the door. “Or so they’d like us to think.”

It was just a simple little movement, a flutter of an eyelid. Why did that feel so unsettling? She hadn’t even looked at another man since Jim had died. Hadn’t even thought about anyone else. Where was this coming from?

It didn’t matter where it was coming from, she upbraided herself sternly. What mattered was sending this man on his way, out of her life.

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” she asked as she opened the front door.

Home, Zack thought. Either the bachelor digs where he kept most of his clothes, or better yet, his mother’s house where he and his brother and sisters had grown up. Just the sight of his mother would make him feel that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. Especially now that Lila McIntyre was finally going to be marrying the man she should have been married to all along, her former partner and the current chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh. She would have had a much more peaceful life had she been Brian’s wife and not his father’s. They would all have had more peaceful lives if she’d married Brian instead.

Zack locked away the thought. No point in going there. And physically, he couldn’t go to his mother’s house anyway, not right now. Until he was told otherwise, until his captain pulled him off the case, he was still Danny Masters, a hacking genius with a talent for resurrecting information on so-called reformatted hard drives and with an unending need for other people’s money.

So for now, he would return to the run-down motel room where he’d been staying for the duration of this charade. Because Danny Masters couldn’t afford any better digs. Master computer wizard though he was and blessed with a silver tongue, he had one very bad fatal flaw. He gambled. On anything and anyone. Which made him the ideal employee for an unscrupulous employer. His addiction made him easier to control, easier to have power over. In essence, “Danny Masters” owed his soul to the company store.

He leaned against the whitewashed brick as he waited for her to lock the front door. “I’ll give you the address,” he promised, “once we get into your car.”

The look in her eyes was wary, as if she was debating whether or not to believe him. And then she seemed to make up her mind and nodded, tucking her purse under her arm.

“All right,” she announced briskly, turning away from the house, “let’s go.”

Zack caught his lower lip between his teeth to suppress any sound of discomfort that might escape. His side really hurt. He fell into place beside his solemn angel of mercy, moving not nearly as quickly as he would have liked to.

But he was making progress, which was all that counted to him. His life and his job had taught him how to be a patient man.

Andrew Cavanaugh threw open the front door before his younger brother even took his finger off the doorbell. Brian had the keys to his house, as he had to Brian’s, but an inherent respect for each other’s privacy kept those keys in his pocket.

“We need to talk,” Andrew declared, doing his best to harness the emotions that had prompted him to call and ask Brian to come over as quickly as possible.

“As I recall, you do that far better than me, big brother.” Chief of Detectives Brian Cavanaugh braced himself as walked into his older brother’s house.

The former chief of police had summoned him via a voice message that he’d left on his answering machine. Andrew’s message, unlike his normal, friendly fare, was very somber. He hadn’t a clue as to why.

Considering the fact that he and Lila McIntyre had given Andrew carte blanche to do whatever he wanted for their wedding reception, he would have expected his brother to be in fantastic spirits. Since leaving the force to care for his then-motherless brood of five, Andrew had turned his attention toward his second passion: cooking. Cooking was his way of keeping not just his immediate family but his entire family together. With one hand tied behind his back, the man could create huge, sumptuous meals for an amazing amount of people. No one who ever went to Andrew’s house remained hungry once they crossed his threshold.

But one look at Andrew’s face told Brian that this wasn’t about food. Still, trying to keep the mood light and far too happy to allow himself to be brought down, Brian cracked, “What’s the matter, the man doing the ice sculpture decide to back out?”

Andrew didn’t even attempt to smile. Instead, he led the way to the kitchen and nodded toward a chair. “Sit down, Brian.”

Something in Andrew’s tone undercut any further attempt at humor. Andrew sounded just the way he had when he’d broken the news to him that their middle brother, Mike, had been killed in the line of duty.

They’d all followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the force in their early twenties. Of the three of them, Mike had been the black sheep, the one who grew more and more resentful of the rut he found himself in. Andrew had done his best to keep Mike in line, to make him see and appreciate just how rich his life actually was. But Mike would have none of it, becoming envious as both his brothers received accolades and promotions while he remained a beat cop. Toward the end, there’d been hatred in Mike’s eyes when he looked at them. Hatred because he felt he could never “measure up.” Hatred mingled with self-loathing he’d tried to anesthetize with progressively more alcohol. All that did was generate even more problems.

Brian looked at his brother, trying to fathom whatever was coming. “I’ll take whatever you have to say standing, Andrew.”

This wasn’t easy for him. Andrew had been the patriarch ever since a heart attack had claimed their father all those years ago. The patriarch and the voice of reason. After everything he’d been through in his life, he’d earned the right to expect tranquility, not turmoil, to fill the end of his days. But even beyond the grave, Mike managed to toss a little chaos their way.

“I had a visitor the other day,” he began, searching for the right words. This was going to be a shock. Not just to Brian, but to Patrick and Patience, Mike’s kids. Maybe especially to them. “Three visitors, actually,” Andrew amended.

When Andrew paused, Brian prodded him along. He’d promised to stop by Lila’s. Her oldest was on some special assignment and she hadn’t heard from him in a week. She needed reassurance.

“And?”

Andrew gazed at him. Brian tried to remember when he’d seen so much sadness in his brother’s eyes. “They were Mike’s kids.”

Was Andrew getting muddled? He knew the names and ages of not only his kids and their spouses and children but the names and ages of all his nieces, nephews and their spouses and children.

“Mike didn’t have three kids,” Brian reminded him. “He had two. Patrick and Patience.”

Andrew’s expression never changed. “Besides Patrick and Patience.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed and his mouth dropped open. “Mike had three other kids?” That didn’t seem possible. They would have known, he and Andrew. “You’re kidding, right?”

If anything, Andrew seemed more somber. “You know me better than that. I never kid about family.”

“When? How?” Questions popped up in Brian’s head like wild mushrooms after a summer rain. “Do they live in Aurora?”

An ironic smile twisted Andrew’s lips. “Not only do they live in Aurora, but they’re all cops, the lot of them.”

“I’ll take that seat now,” Brian murmured, sinking down onto the barstool.

Chapter 4