Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh On Call

A cacophony of voices answered him as he made his way, nodding through the maze of desks and detectives, toward the exit.

He passed the blonde who was walking in. Assuming that she was there to take his place, Phelps nodded in her direction and, in a low voice, said, “The desk’s in the rear of the room. So’s your partner.” And then he smiled broadly. “Good luck with that.”

* * *

Scottie’s arm tightened around the small box she was carrying. It was only half filled, but she hadn’t been able to find a smaller box when she’d cleaned out her space in Homicide.

The transfer had come through so quickly, Scottie thought, it had almost taken her breath away. She’d been prepared to make several requests and to write long petitions before she got the okay to make the transfer from Homicide to Robbery. She’d been certain she would have to plead her case and be movingly convincing before the approval was given. After all, she’d been fairly certain she had done a more than decent job in Homicide.

She’d certainly managed to clear all her cases. But then, on the other hand, Aurora was not exactly a snake pit of crime. It habitually made the FBI’s top ten list of safest US cities for its size and she liked to think she was part of the reason for that. She worked hard, kept to herself and never challenged authority. As far as she knew, that was the winning formula for a valuable employee.

She’d thought that her commanding officer would have put up more of a fuss about losing her. But to her surprise, after she’d put in her request, stating only that she felt rather burned out working Homicide—it was the only thing that occurred to her to use as her reason for requesting the transfer—it had been granted the next morning. The captain hadn’t even tried to talk her out of it.

Her partner, Joe Mathias, had appeared a little surprised as well as dismayed when he’d learned she was transferring, but not enough to try to get her to change her mind or to attempt to block the transfer.

They had worked well together, but only in the way that two cogs located on the same machine worked well. They had never socialized after hours—her choice—and they didn’t even know any personal details about one another—also her choice. Mathias had tried—he had pictures of his wife and kids on his desk and on occasion would tell her about something he and his family had done over the weekend—but Scottie had zealously kept her private life just that.

Private.

Part of the reason for her secrecy was that she didn’t want anyone to find out about Ethan. He was not only her half brother, at one point she had also been his legal guardian. Her gut instincts had her hiding their connection—just in case.

And now “just in case” had happened—maybe.

For now, it proved to her that she’d been right about deciding to keep her private life under wraps. If her hunch was right, and Ethan was involved in what was now going on, there’d be no way that she would be allowed to work on the break-ins that had suddenly begun to plague the good citizens living in some of the more upscale neighborhoods of Aurora.

If anyone knew about Ethan and the nefarious life he had supposedly left behind, she would be barred from doing any sort of investigation that could clear his name—if Ethan was part of this. It was a phrase she kept hanging on to. She still had no actual proof that he was involved.

But then there was her gut, which compelled her to move forward. Always forward for him—just in case.

* * *

Newly seated, Bryce rose again to get a better look at the woman taking long, measured steps as she crossed the squad room. Just the faintest of hip movement marked every step she took.

He had trouble drawing his eyes away.

His first thought was that she was a hell of what his grandfather would have referred to as “a looker.” His second was that she was one of the city’s residents coming in to file a complaint involving goods stolen during the execution of some sort of a robbery.

But then he took a second look at the box in her hands, a far smaller one than Phelps had used to carry out his possessions, but still a box. That caused Bryce to reassess his initial take.

As he watched the leggy blonde walk in his direction, Bryce was vaguely aware that he wasn’t the only one assessing the woman. Small wonder. The statuesque blonde had a no-nonsense gait that captured a man’s attention from the very first moment she entered his line of sight. Slender, she was wearing a straight, light gray skirt that stopped a few inches above her knee, making her look as if she was all leg.

And what legs! he caught himself thinking. They were the kind of legs that walked right into a man’s dreams and had him fantasizing all sorts of things he had no business fantasizing about—especially if it turned out that there was some sort of a working relationship that had to happen.

Snapping out of his momentary reverie, Bryce crossed over to the newcomer as he summoned his most inviting smile.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

The low voice he heard in response sounded as if it had been wrapped in honey and dipped in warm whiskey before being poured over a glass of ice.

“With what?”

The woman’s response caught him off guard. Bryce heard himself say the first two things that came into his head. “With the box you’re holding. With finding whoever you’re looking for. Anything,” he concluded, leaving the offer open-ended.

“The box isn’t heavy,” she replied, tightening her hold on the box with its meager contents—just a few basic manuals she’d found useful during the execution of her job. “And I’m not looking for a ‘who,’ I’m looking for a desk.”

The grin was instantaneous, widening his mouth to reveal two rows of snowstorm-white teeth. “Fortunately the one next to mine just happens to be empty,” Bryce told her, pivoting on the ball of his foot and doing a 180 so that he was once again facing the direction he had come from.

“Fortunately,” Scottie echoed, her emotionless tone giving no indication she thought it was anything of the kind.

Since he had pointed to the newly vacated desk, Scottie walked toward it. Bryce was right behind her. He took the opportunity to drink in every nuance of her body from that vantage point before hurrying to catch up so that he could at least be at her side when she set her things down.

Which he was.

“I guess you’re taking Detective Phelps’s place,” Bryce said as she put the small box on the desk.

Ordinarily, Bryce didn’t have to search for an icebreaker or an opening line. In his experience, women, even those who were as easy on the eyes as this one was, didn’t need much encouragement when it came to making conversation. They were usually all too eager to do three-quarters of the talking, if not more.

But this one was different. She didn’t seem inclined to talk, which in itself was unusual. Unlike a couple of his brothers, Bryce had never fancied himself to be the strong, silent type. Besides, he’d found that the more someone talked, the more they wound up revealing about themselves. He had never been one who cared for surprises.

He liked knowing things right from the start, liked having things all laid out in front of him, nice and visible.

The blonde at Phelps’s desk obviously didn’t subscribe to that philosophy. At least, it didn’t seem that way.

“Apparently,” the leggy blonde said as she almost bonelessly slid into Phelps’s chair.

Having gotten involved in observing what was nothing short of poetry in motion, Bryce blinked then narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at the newcomer.

“Excuse me?”

Scottie recreated the last two bits of dialogue. “You said it looked like I was taking Phelps’s place. I said ‘apparently.’ There,” she announced in a tone that was nothing short of dismissive. “I think that we’re all caught up.”