Marie Ferrarella - The Cavanaugh Code

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Cover Page

Title Page The Cavanaugh Code Marie Ferrarella www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author MARIE FERRARELLA has written almost two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Dedication To Charlie, who I love more today than yesterday, but not half as much as tomorrow.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Copyright

MARIE FERRARELLAhas written almost two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Charlie, who I love more today than yesterday, but not half as much as tomorrow.

The way Detective Taylor McIntyre liked to work a homicide was to put herself in the victim’s place. Not just into his or her place, but into their actual lives.

To get a full sense of the person, she needed to walk through their homes, touch their things and imagine what it felt like to be this person who had fallen victim to a homicide.

In essence, Taylor, a third-generation law enforcement agent, wanted to walk in their shoes and examine what they normally had to deal with on a daily basis. She couldn’t accomplish that from a distance. And she had come to learn that sometimes the smallest of details was what eventually allowed her and her partner to find the killer and solve the crime.

Just because her partner, Detective Aaron Briscoe, was on a temporary leave of absence, immersing himself in the head-spinning roller-coaster ride of first-time fatherhood, and the precinct was shorthanded, didn’t mean that she had to change her approach. She just had to go through the paces alone rather than have Aaron stare at her as she wandered around, patiently waiting until she needed to use him as her sounding board.

Taylor had no doubt that her partner of almost three years considered her approach unusual, but he’d made his peace with it and generally went along with her method. That was what had made them such a good team and she missed him now, missed the sound of Aaron’s grunting as he squatted down to examine something close-up.

She even missed the way Aaron sometimes unconsciously whistled through his teeth, even though it had driven her crazy periodically.

Taylor half smiled to herself as she pulled up in front of an impressive, sprawling four-story apartment complex where the cheapest lease went for the paltry sum of $4,000 a month.

You just never know, do you? she mused. Right now, she’d welcome that awful sound Aaron made. It meant that he was thinking. And two heads were always better than one.

Entering the parking structure, she drove underground and parked in one of the spots designated for guests. Taylor got out and walked toward the elevator located against the back wall.

The late Eileen Stevens’s apartment was on the fourth floor. That made it The Villas—as this particular complex was whimsically named—penthouse. And, given the fact that the building was situated at the crest of a hill, anything above the second floor actually had a decent view of the ocean in the distance.

The Villas, a nine-month-old complex with rounded corners and panoramic windows, was situated directly across the street from a newly constructed, exceedingly popular outdoor mall. The mall boasted pricey stores of all sizes, exotic restaurants, a twenty-one-screen movie-theater complex and even had a merry-go-round located smack in the middle. It also promised a skating rink for the winter months. With Christmas less than a month away, there was one now. Hordes of humanity seeking entertainment and diversion swarmed there every Friday and Saturday night. The rest of the week saw a healthy dose of foot traffic, but it was the weekends that put the mall on the map.

Eileen Stevens would no longer be among the people frequenting that mall, Taylor thought, getting out on the fourth floor. Because Eileen Stevens, thirty-eight-year-old dynamo and newly made partner at her prestigious law firm, was found dead in her opulent, cathedral-ceilinged bedroom this morning. With a key to the apartment for emergencies, her personal assistant had come by to see why Eileen hadn’t shown up at the firm this morning and wasn’t answering her pager or her cell phone.

Upon seeing her dead boss, the young woman, Denise Atwater, had become so hysterical she’d had to be sedated by one of the paramedics summoned to the scene.

Death could be ugly, Taylor thought.

Marble met her heels. The resulting contact created a soft, staccato sound as she made her way from the elevator to Eileen’s apartment. In direct contrast to the holly decorating the walls, yellow tape was stretched out across the extra wide door, warning everyone that a crime had been committed here and that they were not allowed to cross the line.

With a sigh, Taylor lifted the tape, slipped beneath it and began to unlock the door. As she turned the key, she realized that there was no need. Someone had failed to lock up.

Sloppy.

Probably a patrolman. Good help was hard to find these days, she mused wryly. But then, life moved at such a fast clip, everyone she knew was juggling three things at once. Oversights were no longer as rare as they had once been. Made the job that much harder to do.

According to the thumbnail bio she’d gotten from the woman’s law firm, Eileen Stevens was currently juggling twice that. A criminal lawyer intent on leaving her mark on the world—and making a great deal of money while she was at it—Eileen was regarded as being at the top of her game. The list of clients that the law firm’s office manager had surrendered earlier indicated that all of Eileen’s clients were high-profile people, people who could pay top dollar for top-notch representation.

Someone obviously didn’t think that Eileen was so “top-notch.”

Closing the door behind her, Taylor stood for a moment just inside the foyer, trying to imagine what it felt like to come here at the end of a long, bone-wearying day. A sense of antiseptic sterility slowly penetrated her consciousness. Even the Christmas tree, silver with ice-blue decorations, felt sterile as it stood aloof in the center of the room.

“Home” to her had always meant a feeling of warmth and security.

Well, not always, Taylor silently amended.

A feeling of warmth and security was the atmosphere her mother strove to create for her and her three siblings when they were growing up. It had actually been achieved only when her father was out on assignment. An undercover cop, his work would take him away for weeks at a time. Her mother, Lila, also on the police force, came home nightly, no matter what. She was there to check their homework, to make sure they behaved. There to give them the love and support they needed so that they could turn out to be decent human beings.