Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Judgement

And then he heard the receiver being lifted on the other end.

Thank God.

“Bad day in court?” he heard his father ask. “The story’s all over the TV,” Alexander Kincannon, retired marine sergeant and practicing malcontent, grumbled. “It preempted my show. What the hell kind of security have you got down there? Can’t even hang on to one skinny criminal?” he demanded.

Blake was not in the mood to get drawn into a lengthy discussion about how lax current law enforcement had gotten. He needed for his father to listen to him. “Dad, I don’t want you answering the door.”

He heard his father blow out an irritated breath. “What am I, twelve?”

For a second, Blake lost patience. “You’re a hundred and seven, but I want you to make it to a hundred and eight, Dad. Don’t answer the door, do I make myself clear?”

“Why?” the gravelly voice demanded, sounding significantly less combative than it had just a moment earlier.

Reaching the judge and able to make out what the person on the other end was asking, Brian raised his voice so that the judge could hear him over the loud voice on the cell phone. “Tell him I’m sending a patrol car over. It’ll be there in a few minutes.” He made eye contact with Kincannon. “We’ll keep him safe.”

Blake nodded his thanks toward the chief. “Dad, they’re sending a—”

“I heard, I heard.” Alexander cut him off. “I’m not deaf yet, you know.” And then a degree of excitement entered his voice. “This have anything to do with that pusher who took a powder?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.” Although, he added silently, he was pretty certain that it was. Blake heard his father sigh dramatically and then abruptly terminate the connection. Closing his own phone, Blake slipped it back into the pocket of his robe. He looked at Brian, his gratitude rising to the foreground. “Thank you.”

“Least I can do,” Brian acknowledged, then he nodded toward his niece. “Greer alerted me to the message you received on your laptop.” He lowered his eyes to the state-of-the-art computer on the judge’s desk. “I’m going to have to take it, Your Honor. Maybe one of our people can trace where the e-mail originated.” He knew for a fact that Brenda, his son Dax’s wife, would all but make a computer sit up and beg. Maybe she could pull this miracle off, as well.

Ordinarily, Blake might have protested about protecting the privacy of his court cases, but in this case, there was no need. Brian Cavanaugh was a veritable pillar of ethics. So he nodded, turning the laptop around and handing it over to the chief.

“Whatever you need,” he told the older man.

Brian closed the lid, securing it in place. “Right now, it’s what you need that’s important,” he corrected. “It looks as if this Munro character feels he has a specific beef with you that goes beyond his own case. As I heard it, you sent several of his people away with the maximum sentence when they were convicted a couple of years ago.”

Blake wanted no credit for serving justice. It was what it was. “Just doing my job, Chief.”

“And now I’m doing mine,” Brian countered. “You need protection, Judge.”

Blake did not savor relinquishing his privacy, but there was his father to think of, so he nodded.

“A patrol car making the rounds every hour or so should do it,” he speculated.

“What about the other fifty-nine minutes?” Brian asked mildly.

Blake’s eyes narrowed as he tried to follow the chief’s reasoning. “Excuse me?”

“The way I see it, Judge, until this drug dealer is caught, you’re going to need twenty-four-hour protection, not just a patrol car passing by every now and then.”

Blake didn’t want to argue, but he definitely didn’t want to acquiesce, either. “Isn’t that a little extreme, Chief?”

“Death is extreme, Judge, everything else is a distant second,” Greer pointed out, feeling that the chief could use a little verbal backup right about now. She could understand the desire to remain independent. In the judge’s place, she’d feel the same way. But Munro would think nothing of putting a bullet right between the judge’s eyes. It would seem like a crime to disfigure that noble profile with a bullet.

In return for her support, Greer saw the chief smile at her. She returned the smile, not recognizing the expression for what it was. Had she been part of the family longer, she might have known that the smile that was curving his mouth was the one Brian wore when he was about to deliver a very salient point, and triumphantly drive it home.

“I’m glad you feel that way, Greer.”

She might not have been able to pick up on the chief’s expressions, but there was something in his tone of voice that softly warned her she was in big trouble. Not the disciplinary kind, but the kind that meant she was on the verge of something she would regard as less than pleasant happening.

“Why, sir?” she asked her superior quietly, never taking her eyes off Brian’s face.

Even as Greer asked for clarification, she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she knew why Brian had just expressed his satisfaction at her agreement.

“Because I’m assigning you to be Judge Kincannon’s bodyguard.”

It was hard to say which of them was more averse to the news they’d just received, she or Kincannon.

“I’m not going into hiding,” Blake protested with feeling.

“Nobody said anything about hiding,” Brian told him. With enough effort, they could keep the judge safe and still presiding over his courtroom. But it would be tricky. Which was why he felt that Greer was the person for the job. She was a self-starter who thought outside the box.

“Look, Chief Cavanaugh,” Blake began again, picking his words slowly, “I’m very grateful that you’re sending a car to watch over my father, but I’m not a helpless old man—”

He could just hear his father’s reaction to that description. At seventy-three, the former gunnery sergeant was still fit, still capable of pummeling someone to the ground with his fists as long as that someone didn’t tower more than six inches over him. There was nothing “ex” about this marine.

“A bullet is a great equalizer.”

Had that come out of her mouth? Greer thought suddenly. Even suppressing annoyance at the confining assignment she’d just been handed, she found herself still performing like a good little soldier. Pressing her lips together, she caught herself longing for the days that she’d been a rebel. A rebel wasn’t in danger of going comatose standing guard over someone. Being a bodyguard was only marginally better than being forced to sit in a car, maintaining surveillance on a suspect. She hated both assignments with a passion. Inactivity was not in her DNA.

But it looked like, judging by the chief’s expression, she was stuck.

Maybe so, she thought the next moment, but she wasn’t about to go down without a fight—or without going on record that she was less than thrilled with the assignment.

“That’s right, it is,” Brian agreed with Greer’s succinct assessment. He smiled at his niece, clearly appreciating the backup. “Now,” the chief continued, “until we finally catch this Munro character, you’re assigned to the judge.”

Finally. She didn’t know if she had as much faith in the wheels of justice as he apparently did. Finally could mean days, or, more likely, it could mean weeks. She didn’t want to spend weeks babysitting, even if the person she was watching over was an incredibly good-looking specimen of manhood.

She was a good detective. She belonged in the field, damn it, not hovering over the judge like some misguided shadow.

“Chief, could I have a word with you?” she requested as he began to walk away.