Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Fortune

“As I recall, you shot him from quite a distance. Most people play it safe and go for a kill shot from that far away, but you didn’t,” Brian said.

“He can’t talk if he’s dead, sir,” Alex told him simply.

“Very true,” Brian agreed. His eyes never left the detective’s. “Detective, I’m going to be giving you a temporary partner for this assignment.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex replied stoically.

He was trying his best to have his mouth offer at least a half smile, but he wasn’t quite succeeding at the moment. He was having better luck at steeling himself for what he sensed was going to be a bomb landing squarely on him.

Brian laughed softly. “It’s a temporary partnership, Detective. Not a life sentence,” Brian told the detective. “Loosen up a little.”

“Of course, sir,” Alex answered, struggling to restrain his uptight feeling, or at the very least, to keep it from showing. But he had worked long and hard to get to this position within the police force. He hadn’t done it to be turned into what, in his book, amounted to a glorified babysitter.

He slanted another, longer look at the officer sitting in the other chair. Even though she was in uniform, wearing her dress blues, she still seemed more like a cheerleader playing dress-up for Halloween than an actual police officer.

Judging by her face alone, he wouldn’t have said that she was actually old enough to be wearing the uniform. But she had to be, right? He sincerely doubted that the chief would have bent the rules and gotten her into the academy if she were underage. That wasn’t the kind of thing that Brian Cavanaugh would do.

Besides, that sort of thing was out of the chief’s hands, as far as he knew.

Still, none of that changed the fact that he felt as if he were being asked to supervise a totally wet-behind-the-ears beat cop.

Alex had never been the kind of man who stewed about something in private until it all but exploded inside him. Though restraint was his first order of business, if there was something he couldn’t docilely accept, the thought of registering a complaint was not beyond him. He didn’t want to rock the boat—this was the first professional interaction he’d had with the chief—but he wasn’t about to meekly accept the situation without a few facts.

“Could I ask why, sir?”

“Why what?”

“Why me?” Alex asked bluntly, for once not relying exclusively on his ability to charm people. The chief, he well knew, was a man who appreciated directness.

Brian paused for a long moment, studying both his cousin and the young detective. “You mean why am I saddling you with someone who is completely green when it comes to being out in the field as a detective?” Brian asked.

“Not exactly in those words,” Alex replied a tad uneasily, aware that the officer was looking at him intently. “But, well, yes. I’m really not much good at teaching anyone anything.”

It wasn’t modesty that prompted the disclaimer but rather honesty. He knew his strengths, of which he felt he had many, and his weaknesses. Mentoring or, more bluntly, teaching was among the latter.

The chief’s mouth curved ever so minutely. “Actually, I thought that Detective Cavanaugh—” he glanced toward his niece and saw that she brightened at the sound of her new title “—might be able to teach you a few things.”

Alex blinked. Now he was really lost.

“Sir?” Alex asked, requesting an explanation for that last statement.

“You’re dealing with a dead gamer who, I’m told, was also rather a well-known and proficient hacker. Both professions, from all indications, do not promote lasting friendships. It’s more of a case of the exact opposite being true. A lot of people hated this man’s guts. His ego, his bravado, all that made Hunter Rogers a walking target.

“I want to find out who decided to indulge in target practice and why . I also want to find out if Rogers’s laptop can be salvaged.”

There, at least, he could offer the chief some definitive information—or so he believed. “Only if you’re interested in hanging on to a very unique doorstop,” Alex told him.

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew what he’d just said was wrong. The look on the chief’s face said as much.

“You and I see it that way,” Brian said. “But that’s where Detective Cavanaugh comes in.” He gestured toward her. “She thinks that there might be something that can be saved on that laptop.”

Alex remained unconvinced and he shook his head, contradicting what the chief had just said.

“No way,” Alex said firmly, then turned toward the woman and said, “No offense, Officer, but I saw it and you didn’t. That thing is now just a thin, broken waffle.”

Her interest fully engaged, she wasn’t about to let the detective stand in her way. “Then you won’t mind me looking it over.”

Alex shrugged. He knew when fighting city hall was useless. And this was one of those times. “Hey, knock yourself out. Look all you want. You still won’t find anything.” He turned back toward Brian. “It’s a waste of time, sir.”

“Duly noted, Detective,” Brian replied in a tone of voice that told Alex the chief still intended to have this pseudo-detective take a look at it.

Well, it was her time to waste, Alex supposed. And if she was busy playing detective and attempting to resurrect that wreck of a laptop, well, then, she wouldn’t be getting underfoot and in his way, would she? And, if for some remote reason she did find a scrap of viable information on the laptop, so much the better. Alex saw it as a win-win situation.

“Take her up to Homicide,” Brian instructed the detective. “I’ve given permission for Detective Cavanaugh to take over a desk and a computer. She’ll be using Montgomery’s for the time being, until he gets back,” he told Alex.

“And then what, sir?” Alex asked. He wasn’t one to plan too far ahead, but he did believe in having something in place against a future that didn’t treat slackers kindly.

“Well, by then I expect you and Detective Cavanaugh to have the murder solved,” Brian informed him in a voice that could be described only as confident. “That’ll be all for now,” he told the duo, dismissing them. “Oh, and Detective?”

Both he and the cheerleader he’d been saddled with said “Yes?” at the exact same moment. Alex did his best not to appear annoyed.

Brian smiled at the stereo response. “Keep me posted,” he instructed before getting back to reviewing the report that was currently on his desk.

“Yes, sir,” Alex replied, trying not to clench his jaw too hard.

“Absolutely!” Valri declared happily.

Alex suppressed a sigh. It was going to be a very long investigation.

As they left the outer office and went into the hall to get the elevator, Valri found she was having trouble containing a surge of enthusiasm.

“This is exciting,” she announced, feeling as if her feet were barely touching the ground. Just this morning, she’d been wondering how long it would take her to work her way up to detective, and now here she was, trying the role on for size. It just did not get any better than this.

Reaching the elevator half a step before Alex did, she pressed the up arrow and continued talking to her new partner.

“I mean, it’s not exciting for Hunter. He’s dead. But this is going to be my first case.” That wasn’t quite accurate, so she backtracked a little. “Well, my first case that I get to solve . All the other times, I just got to be there at the start, putting up yellow tape, taking notes, then handing them over to the detectives who took the case.”

She was fairly floating as she continued, taking no notice of the fact that there was no feedback coming from her tall, dark blond, handsome green-eyed partner.