Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Or Death

The reluctance had faded when John—Davis could never bring himself to call him Uncle John because that was far too warm a title for a man who never smiled, never asked him how he was doing—had discovered that there was a substantial insurance policy to be held in trust for his nephew until his eighteenth birthday. His father had named John the executor of the trust.

John had turned out to be a rather resourceful man when it came to finding ways to siphon off some of that trust fund money to pay for the “expenses” involved in raising an orphan from the age of thirteen to eighteen. It eventually came to light that John had taken advantage of every loophole he could find or fabricate.

There was a coldness in John’s house that never abated; a coldness that seemed to set the tone for the rest of his own young life. Davis never felt any resentment toward his father’s older brother. He never felt anything at all. All he had wanted from the moment he had entered the man’s house was the freedom to leave it. That freedom came on his eighteenth birthday.

He’d taken whatever money was left in the insurance policy—precious little—and put it toward his education, becoming what his father had been before him: a cop. But first his father had wanted him to get his college degree. It was the only stipulation his father had ever placed on him.

“I miss you guys, but then, you already know that, don’t you?” Davis murmured. He sighed. “Well, I just wanted to come by, make sure that they’re keeping the weeds off your plot and—”

Davis stopped abruptly, certain that he’d heard a noise out of place in the eerie quiet that enshrouded the cemetery at this hour.

Cocking his head in the direction of the sound, he listened closely.

Intently.

Davis could have sworn it was the sound of a shovel accidentally hitting stone.

At this hour? Nobody buried anyone before the sun came up.

Either his imagination had gotten the better of him, or—

“Later,” he promised the pair who remained eternally young, eternally smiling, in his mind. “Something sounds off. You know what I mean, Dad.”

And with that Detective First Class Davis Gilroy silently hurried in the direction he could have sworn he’d heard something out of keeping with the sleepy rhythm of the cemetery.

When it came to hunches, Davis was hardly ever wrong.

The next moment, as he turned a corner, he thought he saw something moving in the shadows.

Two somethings moving in the shadows.

As he gained ground, zigzagging and sprinting around headstones, Davis realized that the shadows were actually people. Two people, dressed entirely in black. Black pullovers, black slacks, black boots and black ski masks pulled down over their faces.

They looked like second-story cat burglars—except that they were here in a cemetery, hovering around one of the tombstones.

“Hey, you!” Davis called out. “Stop!”

The two dark figures did the exact opposite.

They bolted.

Chapter 1

Every morning, halfway through her run, Moira Cavanaugh asked herself the same question: Why am I doing this?

The answer she’d arrived at some time ago, and that still held as of this morning, was that if she didn’t put her running shoes on, throw on a sweatshirt and shorts, then pound on the pavement for a good hour, she would be moving around at half speed for the rest of the day. Not to mention that she’d spend the rest of the day feeling guilty for slacking off. Because of what she did for a living, she needed to be at the top of her game all day, every day.

So here she was, a police detective like most of the rest of her vast, sprawling clan, sweating and breathing progressively harder in the predawn light, counting off the seconds until she was nearing the end of this self-inflicted torture. And fervently wishing that she was more like her older brother, Malloy, who rolled out of bed, hit the ground running, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by the time he drove into the Aurora Police Department parking lot.

But she wasn’t like Malloy. To be in peak condition, she needed to jump-start her day, and running seemed to be the only thing that accomplished that for her. Varying her route caused her to remain wide-awake instead of merely going through the motions.

By choosing a different route each morning—one of ten or so she’d marked down for herself—she had to stay alert to take the right path home. She only had twenty minutes once her run was over to get ready and be in the car, on her way to work.

The only thing Moira hated more than being sluggish was being late.

Jogging first thing in the morning before she was even fully awake kept both from happening—even though it felt like hell while she was doing it.

This morning’s route was the creepy route—especially since the street lamp in front of the cemetery had picked today to go out and there was only a half-moon up in the sky to guide her past the tall, imposing, black wrought-iron gates.

Cemeteries didn’t bother her in the light of day, but there was almost a sinister vibe about them before the sun came up.

However, this was the route she’d drawn out of the candy dish where she kept all the routes she’d picked to run. Being guided by the luck of the draw was another way she had of combating monotony.

“Just a little farther, Moy, just a little farther,” she mumbled, egging herself on. “You can do this. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again. Pay no attention to the eerie place on your left. It’s just your imagination, you know that.”

Her imagination and the ghost stories Malloy had loved telling her every night when their ages were both still in the single digits.

“Just keep on running. There’re no such things as ghosts or creatures that go bump in the night, just Malloy, doing his best to scare you. Think about something else.”

His best, back then, had always been more than good enough and it had laid the foundation for the uneasy wariness she experienced whenever she passed a cemetery after twilight.

Logically, the fear had no foundation. Emotionally, though, was another story entirely.

Emotionally, it was—

Moira’s breath caught in her throat.

There were two shadowy figures racing out of the cemetery—and they looked as if they were running right toward her.

Moira jumped out of the way, just in case they actually were running toward her, but the evasive maneuver only managed to complicate matters.

One of the shadowy figures slammed right into her, knocking the air out of her.

Her imagination going full blast, Moira had half expected the shadowy figure to go right through her, but it hadn’t.

And now that she thought about it, the figure had felt very solid for a ghost.

She watched, stunned, as the “ghost” scrambled to its feet and then proceeded to run off despite the limp it seemed to have acquired from the collision.

The shadowy figures just kept on going as if she hadn’t been there.

Maybe to them she wasn’t.

“Hey!” she cried, rattled and stunned as well as beginning to lose her temper. The notion that the duo were ghosts had quickly disappeared. Nothing that hit so hard upon collision was made of vapor and air. She had definitely been hit by a flesh-and-blood human being. It frustrated her that she was unable to specify anything beyond that vague description.

Because of the fact that both running figures had been covered in black from head to foot, she couldn’t have even identified the gender of either.

The next second she saw the reason that the duo had come flying out of the cemetery. They were being chased by someone.

Him she could make out.

He was a tall, dark-blond haired man who ran with both the grace and speed of a professional athlete. He’d appeared to be gaining on the slower of the two shadowy figures until he’d seen her sprawled out on the pavement.