Cavanaugh Rules (13 page)

She was having trouble reconciling what he’d just told her with the image she had of him. “That helpful little wide-eyed boy doesn’t really jibe with what I know about you.”

He opened up a cabinet and took out a heavy iron skillet, placing it on a burner adjacent to another, smaller pan. Watching him, she decided that maybe the man actually did know his way around a kitchen.

“You mean with what you
think
you know about me,” he corrected.

Oh, now he was going to tell her that he was a closet saint? “What? What I saw in public is just your secret identity and this is the real you? You’re a master chef who perfected his skills making Sunday brunch for his mother?”

“It was breakfast, not brunch,” he corrected. “And I didn’t claim to be a master—at least not at cooking,” he said, looking at her over his shoulder. The sexy grin on his lips went straight to her gut as if it was mounted on an arrow that he’d just shot. “People are complex, Cavanaugh.” Opening the refrigerator, he began to take out what he needed. Unlike when he’d been a boy, this refrigerator was well stocked and had a lot for him to choose from. “You ought to know that.”

The last remark had her radar going up. Was that a crack? About what, exactly? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Did she want to pick a fight? he wondered. Why? Because she’d enjoyed herself too much and was now waiting for him to disappoint her somehow, the way her fiancé had? Or was she just plain ornery?

He had a feeling it wasn’t the latter.

“That you’re not the only one with several layers,” he answered simply. “Why don’t you take a shower while I make breakfast?” he suggested, his voice mild, completely nonconfrontational. And then he grinned wickedly as he added, “Unless you want to wait until I’m finished out here and then we can take a shower together.”

“Worried about conserving water?” she asked. California had its share of droughts off and on and they were never completely out of the woods.

But to her dismay, rather than take the bait, Matt wound up disarming her again with another sensual grin.

“Conserving energy was the very
last
thing on my mind when I suggested showering together.”

Meaning she would have found out what it was like to make love in a shower stall while her body was being pelted by water.

Why did that sound hopelessly erotic to her? It was just water, for heaven’s sake. What was it about this man that just a simple suggestion from him could cause her breath to literally back up in her lungs like that?

Hell, he could achieve the same result with just a look, a phrase with a double meaning.

After all, it wasn’t as if she was some untried, vestal virgin. Granted, she hadn’t made love in a year and a half, but whatever pent-up energy, emotions and combustible feelings she’d been harboring all these months had all emerged, exploding out and making their presence—and exodus—known in a glorious shower of fulfillment.

So how could she be thinking about going to bed with this man all over again as if last night had never taken place?

Or was that because last night
had
taken place and she was desperate to re-create it?

She just didn’t know.

But Matt did.

She had a gut feeling that Abilene knew exactly what was going on in her head. He
had
to. There was no other reason why he was looking at her so knowingly right now.

“Bathroom’s right back there,” he told her, pointing toward the bedroom again. “You’ll find fresh towels in the linen closet on your way there. Breakfast will be ready soon. Don’t take too long,” he warned. “Or I’ll be forced to come looking for you.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” she quipped.

He merely smiled. “That remains to be seen,” he said under his breath.

But she heard him.

Kendra hurried away, giving herself a mental count of ten minutes to shower, dress and be back in the kitchen. Eleven, tops. Otherwise, she had absolutely no doubt that Abilene would make good on his promise to come looking for her.

The trick, she thought as she stepped into the light beige tiled shower, was not to allow herself to dawdle because that would mean that she
wanted
him to come into the shower with her.

And if that happened, she knew damn well that neither one of them would have any interest in the hot meal he’d have left waiting on the stove.

Chapter 13

F
orcing herself to hurry through her shower, Kendra was just about to turn off the water when she became aware of the noise.

Knocking?

No, more like pounding. Impatient pounding. The noise sounded like a woodpecker trying to penetrate a petrified tree.

Abilene.

But why was he pounding? Was this some Jekyll/Hyde thing? What did she really know about this partner of hers, anyway?

Thinking that any second the man who had made the very earth move last night would just barge in, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself.

“Hey!” she heard Abilene call through the door. “We finally got lucky!”

Lucky?
Was he actually saying what she
thought
he was saying? Denigrating the whole interlude from last night by describing it with the crass term of
getting lucky?

She felt a hot flash of anger.

“ ‘Lucky’?” she echoed, securing the towel around herself as best she could. “How can you say that?” she demanded.

“Well, what the hell would you call it?” he asked, mystified by her reaction. He’d thought she’d be happy. “Wong just called, said we got a hit on Burnett’s ATM card.”

The last part of his sentence dribbled from his lips in slow motion because she’d pulled open the door, her eyes flashing, obviously ready to confront him and give him a piece of her mind. Why, he didn’t know. What she gave him instead was an eyeful.

Never mind that he’d already seen every inch of her unclothed. This was somehow even sexier. The towel was barely large enough to cover the essentials. Had she been a woman with a longer torso, she would have had to make a judgment call as to which part of her she wanted to protect more from being exposed to appreciative eyes.

Coming to, Matt held up a piece of paper with the information he’d just hastily jotted down while on the phone with the other detective.

“I’ve got a location, but it’s Sunday. Nobody’s going to be at the bank to help us.” And then he grinned at Kendra. “God, you smell better than what I’m cooking.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,” she retorted. Though she could have gotten sidetracked more easily than she was happy about, Kendra forced herself to focus on the paper in Abilene’s hand. “We can get the name of the bank manager, have him come down to the bank and let us watch the footage on the surveillance camera,” she said. He’d been staring at her with a strange expression on his face the entire time. Impatient curiosity finally got the better of her. “What?”

“Why did you get so mad when I knocked on the door just now?”

“First of all, you didn’t knock, you pounded. And second, to answer your question, it was because I thought—I thought—” If she admitted to her mistake, he’d think that
she
thought there was something more to last night than just casual sex. Kendra decided that it was a subject better left untouched. “Well, never mind what I thought—”

The moment she stopped talking about it, the answer suddenly dawned on Matt. His grin was back, broader than before, if that was possible. “Oh, you thought I meant the other kind of lucky.”

“We don’t have time for this,” she informed him primly. “This is the first lead we’ve had on our suspect since we found that woman’s body. We need to follow it up. And I need to get dressed.”

She could all but feel his eyes raking up and down along her body. If there was more time...

But there wasn’t and she had to remember that. She was a police detective
and
a Cavanaugh now. That meant she had a great deal to live up to. That didn’t involve grabbing a little morning delight before going after a murder suspect.

“You might get more cooperation if you don’t,” he told her.

Kendra frowned, waiting for him to leave before she discarded the towel and started getting dressed. “I’ll chance it.”

Matt nodded toward the kitchen. “I’d better go turn off the stove.”

She could feel her stomach begin to growl. The prospect of a long morning loomed before them. “Wrap the breakfast up to go,” she called after him. “Shame to see it go to waste.”

Matt looked back at her over his shoulder, his eyes taking one final tour over her wet, barely covered body. “My sentiments exactly,” he confessed with a sigh he didn’t bother to suppress.

She forced herself to cross to the door and then shut it, leaving Abilene on the other side of it. Otherwise, with only a towel acting as a barrier, she wasn’t sure just how long she would be able to resist her very sexy partner and his bedroom eyes. Especially when she knew exactly what the man was capable of doing to her.

C’mon, Kenny. Focus, focus, focus,
she ordered herself, moving as quickly as she could.

* * *

“You come here from a picnic?” Detective Alexander Wong asked her when she first walked into the squad room just ahead of Abilene.

For a couple of minutes back there, she’d thought about making a quick run home to change into something a little less skimpy, but she didn’t want to waste the time. She was too eager to see if this lead did
lead
somewhere. And, since she was fairly certain that the squad room would be mostly empty, she thought she could get away, just this once, with wearing something that made the usual casual clothes seem formal in comparison.

“Long story,” she told Wong with a dismissive wave of her hand. She shot Abilene a warning look in case he had any ideas about picking up the narrative for the other detective’s sake.

For now, Abilene was humoring her.

“Hey, I’ve got time. Fill me in,” Wong all but begged.

“Some other time, Wong,” she told him, “when this case is behind us.”

Along with about fifty years or so,
she added silently.

She wouldn’t dare admit to
anyone
that she’d spent the night in Abilene’s apartment. Not that she was ashamed of what had happened last night—she was, after all, an adult—but neither did she want it broadcast on the morning news. What she did and who she did it with after hours was her business and she intended to keep it that way.

“Spoilsport,” Wong complained, all but pouting. It still didn’t prevent him from sending long glances her way.

“Yup, that’s me,” she admitted cheerfully. “Now that we have that out of the way, where are we on getting the bank manager to come down?”

“Still trying to track him down,” Abilene told her, chiming in. Getting the name and contact number for the bank manager had been his assignment the second they had set foot in the squad room. He held up the telephone handset that he’d been on. “All the calls keep going to his voice mail.”

There could be more than a dozen reasons for that. But right now, Kendra zeroed in on only one. The reason she
didn’t
like and hoped wasn’t true. “Think he could be dead, too?”

“Could be,” Matt allowed, hitting the Redial button on the keypad again. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he cautioned.

“That would have been a good rule to go by last night, too,” she murmured under her breath as she sank down in her chair to check out something on her monitor.

“Guess we’ve got a basic difference of opinion on that,” Abilene told her.

She flushed, then quickly struggled to get herself under control. She hadn’t thought he’d hear her, what with the air-conditioning unit struggling to come on and making rumbling noises.

Clearing her throat, she became all business. “Do we know where Mr. Bank Manager lives?” she asked. In response, Matt held up a piece of paper with the man’s home address on it. Leaning over her desk, she took possession of it. “Okay, let’s go.”

Abilene looked at her as she rose behind her desk. “Go?”

“Yes, ‘go,’ ” she repeated. As lead on the case, she didn’t owe him any explanations, but because he was looking at her, waiting, she said, “I’m feeling antsy and this is our only lead. Let’s see if Mr. Bank Manager is home and just not answering his cell phone. He might think he deserves some time off because it’s Sunday.”

“Poor delusional fool,” Abilene quipped, seeing the look in Kendra’s eyes. He quickly rose and followed her out. The bank manager had no idea what he was in for, Abilene thought with a grin.

* * *

This time, they did make a quick stop at her apartment. If she was going to be questioning a bank manager, she needed to have on something a little less casual than a pair of frayed shorts and a blouse that only came halfway down to her midriff.

Leaving her partner in the kitchen, she dashed into her bedroom to change. She opted for a black sleeveless pullover and a pair of jeans that had taken on her shape even when she wasn’t in them. The transformation took her exactly five minutes, counting entry and exit.

“Let’s go,” she declared as she sailed by him and out the door.

Matt took a long look at her as they hurried back to his car. “I dunno. Maybe the manager’d be more inclined to talk to you if you stayed dressed the way you were,” he speculated.

Getting in the car, she secured her seat belt. “If it’s all the same to you, I didn’t want him thinking I was going to trade a lap dance for a confession,” she told him as he got in on his side.

“You know how to give a lap dance?” he asked, intrigued. The car rumbled to life and they quickly pulled out of the development.

“Eyes on the road, Abilene—” She struggled not to let on that the gleam in his eye secretly pleased her. “And as for your question, giving a lap dance can’t be all that hard.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to show me sometime,” he told her.

She laughed shortly. “In your dreams, Abilene.” Kendra couldn’t help thinking that her words would have held a great deal more weight if they hadn’t just spent the night together.

Matt spared her a lingering, appreciative glance. “There, too.”

“The road, the road, watch the road,” she ordered. If the grin on his face was any wider, she couldn’t help thinking, it would have probably split his face right in half.

* * *

Kendra turned out to be right. The bank manager, a Howard Hanna, had turned his cell phone off because it was Sunday and he was trying to spend some uninterrupted quality time with his family.

Politely apologizing for separating him from that same family, Kendra explained that it was an emergency. The person they were looking for had most likely killed his girlfriend. And, as luck would have it, he’d used his ATM card to access his savings account at Hanna’s location. They needed to see last night’s tapes from the surveillance camera.

The bank manager seemed hesitant. “Can I see your IDs again?”

Kendra and Matt both took out their wallets and let him examine each in turn.

“Satisfied?” Kendra asked.

“Well, you know those can be faked,” Hanna said, still not looking completely convinced.

“You’re welcome to call the chief of detectives with our shield numbers,” Kendra told him.

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed on a Sunday,” Abilene told him matter-of-factly. “But he’ll talk to you and back up our story.”

Hanna appeared torn for a moment, then shrugged. “No need to disturb him. I guess you’re on the level. I’ll take you to the bank,” he agreed.

He accompanied them on the short run to the bank, but he was still uneasy about surrendering the surveillance tapes.

“I’m usually supposed to clear this with the corporate offices,” he explained. “Technically, the video feed belongs to them, not me.”

“Well, you can call them,” Abilene agreed. “But remember, by the time your request goes through all the proper channels, Mr. Hanna, our suspect could very well kill another woman—or just disappear. And that would be on you,” he added seriously, wielding guilt like a sharp scalpel.

“We really do need your help,” Kendra told the manager, trying to appeal to his sense of decency.

They were playing good cop/bad cop, Abilene mused. And watching Kendra, he had a feeling the woman was appealing to the man’s other senses as well. He’d already noted the way the manager kept looking at her—like a hungry stray mutt wanting to steal a bone from beneath another dog’s nose.

Not that he blamed him, Abilene thought.

Hanna’s dark eyes seemed to dart back and forth as he thought things over. It was a short battle.

“All right, wouldn’t want him killing someone else because I couldn’t get you a release fast enough through channels,” the manager told them—mainly Kendra.

They arrived in front of the bank branch where Burnett had used his card. Hanna took out an impressive set of keys and selected a key from among them to open the outer door, then quickly fed the security code into the keypad, disarming the alarm.

The inside of the bank was eerily quiet and the dormant air was stifling. No doubt eager to have the whole thing behind him, Hanna hurried over to the small room where the ATM video feed was recorded and stored.

The room could barely accommodate the three of them, especially since the manager was more than a little overweight.

“Now, when did you say this was?” Hanna asked.

Matt glanced down at the notes he’d made right after Wong had called this morning. “Early this morning. According to the hit that came up, Burnett withdrew two hundred dollars from his savings account.”

Hanna fast-forwarded through the videotape from the first half of that day. “Just two people used their ATM cards this morning,” he said. He stopped the tape, rewound it and started it again so that they could see for themselves that he hadn’t missed anything. “One of our senior citizens took out eighty dollars from her savings account,” he narrated as he played the image for them on a small flat screen. “And a teenager wearing his cap backwards like some would-be punk was the only other customer to use the ATM.” He turned from the monitor. “He took out the two hundred dollars you were talking about. Is he your killer?”

“No,” Kendra cried, frustrated. She knew what Burnett looked like. There’d been a couple of framed photographs of the man with his now-dead girlfriend in the apartment. Under no lighting and under no circumstances was the man in the photographs the teenager on the tape.