Lisa Jackson - The Mccaffertys - Matt

“It’s possible. We’re looking into it.”

“Well, you’d better look harder,” he suggested, his nostrils flaring.

The guy was getting to her. Again. He had a way of nettling her—getting under her skin and irritating her. Kind of like a burr caught beneath a horse’s saddle. McCafferty straightened, swept his hat from his head and raked stiff fingers through his near-black, wavy hair. “Before someone actually dies.”

“The feds are involved in the plane crash.”

“That doesn’t seem to be helping a whole helluva lot.”

“We’re doing everything in our power to—”

“It’s not enough,” he cut in. Again fire flared in his eyes. “Are you in charge of this investigation, Detective?” he asked, casting a glance at the badge she wore so proudly. He was crushing the brim of his Stetson in fingers that blanched white at the knuckles.

She held on to her patience, but just barely. “I think we’ve been over this before. Detective Espinoza has been assigned the case. I’m assisting him, as I was the first on the scene of your sister’s wreck.”

“Then I’m wasting my time with you.”

That stung. Kelly gritted her teeth and stood.

“Tell Espinoza I want to talk to him.”

“He’s not in right now.”

“I’ll wait.”

“It might be a while.”

Matt McCafferty looked as if he might explode. He dropped his hat on a nearby folding chair and leaned over her desk again, shoving some file folders out of the way as he pushed his face closer, so that the tip of his nose nearly touched hers. The air seemed to crackle. The smell of wet suede, horses and a faint hint of pine reached her nostrils. Snow had melted on the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket, and there were a few damp spots on his face. His fists opened and closed in frustration on the desktop. “You have to understand, Detective, this is my family we’re talking about,” he said in a low whisper that had more impact than if he’d raged. “ My family. Now, the way I see it, my sister was nearly killed, and not only that but she was nine months pregnant at the time.”

“I know—”

“Do you? Can you imagine what she went through? She went into labor when her Jeep careered over that embankment and crashed. She was just lucky someone came along and called 911. Between the paramedics and the doctors over at St. James Hospital and a lot of help from the man upstairs, she pulled through.”

“And the baby survived,” she pointed out, remembering all too clearly the condition of mother and son.

Matt wasn’t about to be deterred. Like a runaway freight train gathering steam, he kept right on. “ After a bout of meningitis.”

Her fingers coiled over a pen on the desk. “I understand all this—”

“Fortunately little J.R. is a McCafferty. He’s tough. He pulled through.”

“So he’s fine,” she reminded him, trying to keep emotions out of the conversation, which, of course, was impossible.

“Fine?” He snorted. “I guess you might say so, except that he needs his mom, who is still comatose and lying in a hospital room.” For a brief second Matt McCafferty actually seemed as if he cared about his nephew, and his brown eyes darkened in concern. That got to Kelly, though she refused to show it. Of course he was worried about the kid—McCaffertys always looked after their own. To the exclusion of all others. “And that’s not all, Detective,” he added.

“I’m sure not,” she drawled, and he scowled at her patronizing tone.

“It’s a miracle that Thorne survived the plane crash and ended up with only a few cuts and bruises and a broken leg.”

Amen to that. Thorne was the eldest McCafferty brother, a millionaire oilman who hailed from Denver. He’d been flying the company jet back to Grand Hope, hit bad weather and gone down.

“The way I see it, either the McCaffertys are having one helluva string of bad luck, or someone’s out to get us.”

“Randi was driving and hit an icy patch. Your brother was flying alone in the middle of a snowstorm. Bad luck? Or bad judgment?”

“Or, as I said, a potential murderer on the loose.”

“Who?” she asked, meeting his glare, not backing down an inch though she was beginning to sweat, and the office, filled by his presence, seemed even smaller than usual.

“That’s what I was hopin’ you’d tell me.”

God, he was close to her. Too close. The desk between them seemed a small barrier.

“Believe me, Mr. McCafferty—”

“Matt. Call me Matt. There’re too damned many McCaffertys to call us by our last name.”

She wouldn’t argue that point.

“And somehow I have the feelin’ that you and I, we’ll be workin’ real close together on this one. I intend to stick to you like glue until you find out who the hell is behind this, so we may as well cut the formalities.”

The thought of working closely with anyone named McCafferty stuck in Kelly’s craw, and this one, this damnably sexy, cocksure cowboy, was the most irritating of the lot, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. “All right, Matt. As I was saying, we’re trying our best here to find out the truth behind both accidents. Everyone in the department is busting their hump to figure this mess out.”

“Not fast enough,” he growled.

“And none of us, me especially—” she hooked a thumb at her chest “—needs anyone looking over her shoulder.” She stuffed the pen in the mug on her desk. “Didn’t you hire your own private detective?”

His thin lips tightened a fraction.

“A man by the name of Kurt Striker?” She folded her arms across her chest.

He nodded. “We thought we needed more help.”

“So what has he got to say?”

“That he thinks there’s foul play,” McCafferty said, his eyes narrowing on Kelly as if he couldn’t quite figure her out. Tough. She was used to men distrusting her as a detective because she was a woman, and that’s what Matt McCafferty was saying; she could read it in his eyes. Well, that was just too damned bad. She wasn’t about to be bullied or intimidated. Not by anyone. Not even one of the high-and-mighty McCaffertys. Matt’s father, John Randall, had once been a rich, powerful and influential man in the county, and his descendants thought they could still throw their collective weights around. Well, not here.

“Has Striker got any proof that someone’s behind the accidents?” she asked.

Hesitation.

“I didn’t think so.” She slipped from the desk. “That’s it. Now, listen, I have work to do, and I don’t need you barging in here and making demands and—”

“Striker says there’s some paint on Randi’s rig. Maroon. Maybe from the other car when she was forced off the road.”

“ If she was forced off,” Kelly reminded him. “She could have scraped another vehicle in a parking lot at home in Seattle for all we know. And we already know about the paint, so don’t come in here and insinuate that the department is inefficient or incompetent or any of the above, because we’re just being thorough. Got it?”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen to me, okay?” Her temper was stretched to the breaking point as she stepped around the desk and went toe-to-toe with him. “This force is doing everything in its power to try and find out what happened to your sister and your brother. Everything! We don’t take either accident lightly, believe you me. But we’re not jumping off the deep end here, either. Your sister’s Jeep could have hit ice. It’s just possible she lost control of the vehicle, it slid off the road up in Glacier and she ended up in the hospital in a damned coma. As for your brother, he was taking a big chance with his life flying a small craft in one helluva snowstorm. The engines failed. We’ll determine why. We haven’t yet ruled out foul play. We’re just being careful. The department can’t afford to go off half-cocked and making blind assumptions or accusations.”