Cavanaugh Reunion (7 page)

O’Brien hesitated. Kansas saw no reason for secrecy, not with the priest. So she was the one who answered the man. “We’re investigating the rash of recent fires in Aurora. Yours was among the first. We’re attempting to find a common motive.”

Father Colm looked horrified. “You seriously think
that someone
deliberately
tried to burn down St. Angela’s?”

“All evidence points to the fact that the fire here wasn’t just an accident. It was set,” Ethan told the priest.

“You’re kidding,” Wicks said, looking as if he’d been broadsided.

Father Colm shook his head, his expression adamant. “No, I refuse to think of this as a hate crime, Detective O’Brien. That’s just too terrible a thought to entertain.”

“I don’t believe that it was a hate crime, either,” Kansas assured him. Although, she supposed that would be another avenue they could explore if they ran out of options. “This is the only church that was burned down. If it were a hate crime, there would have been at least a few more places of worship, more churches targeted. Instead, the range of structures that were torched is quite wide and diverse.”

The priest looked as if he were struggling to absorb the theory. “But the fires were all deliberately set?”

O’Brien looked as if he were searching for a diplomatic way to phrase his answer. Kansas took the straightforward path. “Yes.”

The old man, a priest for fifty-one years, appeared shell-shocked. “Why?” The question came out in a hoarse whisper.

“That, Father, is what we’re trying to find out,” Ethan told him, thinking that they had just come full circle. He was quick to launch into basic questions of his own.

Again the priest, and this time Wicks, were asked if there was anything unusual about that day, anything
out of the ordinary that either of them could remember seeing or hearing, no matter how minor.

Nothing came to either of the men’s minds.

Kansas nodded. She really hadn’t expected any earthshaking revelations. Hoped, but hadn’t expected.

She dug into her pocket and retrieved two of her cards. “If either of you
do
think of anything,” Kansas told the men as she held out her business cards, offering one to each of them, “please call me.”

Ethan gave the priest and Wicks his own card. “Please call us,” he amended, glancing in Kansas’s direction and silently reprimanding her for what he took to be her attempt to edge him out.

“Right, us,” Kansas corrected with a quirk of a smile that came and left her lips in less than a heartbeat. “I forgot I’m temporarily assigned to Detective O’Brien’s task force,” she confided to the priest.

Father Colm nodded, apparently giving his wholehearted approval to the venture. “The more minds working on this, the faster this terrible situation will be resolved.”

She’d never gone to any house of worship. There’d been no one to urge her to choose one religion over the other, no one to care if she prayed or not. But if she were to choose a single place, she thought, it would be one whose pastor was loving and kind. A pastor like Father Colm.

Kansas flashed a grin at the cleric. “From your lips to God’s ears,” she said, reciting a phrase she’d once heard one of the social workers say to one of the other children in the group home.

Father Colm laughed warmly in response. Kansas
found the sound strangely reassuring. “I’ll be back,” she promised.

The bright blue eyes met hers. “Feel free to stop by anytime,” the priest urged. “God’s house is always open to you.”

Kansas merely nodded as she left.

O’Brien and she made no headway of any kind at site of the second fire. The charred remains of the building were still there, abandoned by one and all and presently neglected by the city. Kansas made a mental note to look up the current status of the property and see who owned it.

The site of the third fire, a movie triplex that had gone up in flames long after the last show had let out, appeared to be suffering the same fate as the second site. Except that someone had put in a bid for it.

In front of the burnt-out shell that had once contained three movie theaters was a relatively new sign announcing that several stores were coming soon to that area. The name of the developer was printed in block letters on the bottom right-hand side of the sign. Brad McCormack and Sons.

Kansas wrote the name down in her small, battered notepad. “What do you say to paying Mr. McCormack a visit?” she asked when she finished.

“Sure,” Ethan agreed. He glanced at his watch. “How about right after lunch?”

“It’s too early for lunch,” she protested. She wanted to keep going until they actually had something to work with.

“It’s almost noon,” he pointed out. “What time do you eat lunch?”

It couldn’t be that late. Kansas glanced at her watch, ready to prove him wrong. Except that she couldn’t. “You’re right,” she muttered.

“I know. I had to learn how to tell time before they’d let me join the police force,” he told her dryly.

She sighed, walking back to his car. “Did you have to learn sarcasm, as well? Or was that something you brought to the table on your own?”

“The latter.” He waited until she got in. Because she’d leaned her hand on the car’s hood for a moment, Ethan doubled back and wiped way the print with a handkerchief before finally getting in on his side. He didn’t have to look at her to know that Kansas had rolled her eyes. “And speaking of table, where would you like to go for lunch?”

He wasn’t going to stop until she gave in, she thought. That could start a dangerous precedent.
Where the hell had that come from?
she wondered, caught off guard by her own thoughts.

Out loud she asked, “What is it with you and food?”

“I like having it. Keeps me from being grumpy.” He looked at her pointedly as he started up the vehicle. “You might want to think about trying it sometime. Might do wonders for your personality.”

She let the comment pass. “All right, since you have to eat, how about a drive-through?”

He was thinking more in terms of sitting back and recharging for an hour. “How about a sit-down restaurant with table and chairs?” he countered.

She merely looked at him. “Takes less than twenty minutes to start a fire.”

Yeah,
he thought, his eyes washing over the woman sitting next to him in the vehicle.
Tell me something I didn’t already know
.

And then he sighed. “Drive-through it is.”

“I
s it okay to pull over somewhere and eat this, or do we have to ingest lunch while en route to the next destination?” Ethan asked dryly, driving away from the fast-food restaurant’s take-out window.

The bag with their lunches was resting precariously against his thigh while the two containers of economy-sized sodas were nestled in the vehicle’s cup holders. The plastic lids that covered the containers looked far from secure.

Amused rather than annoyed by the detective’s sarcasm, Kansas answered, “It’s okay to pull over. I just meant that going inside a restaurant is usually a full-hour proposition, especially at this time of day. And if we’re going to spend time together, I’d rather it was at one of the sites where the fires took place.”

Driving to a relatively empty corner of the parking lot that accommodated seven different fast-food
establishments, Ethan pulled up the parking brake. He rolled down his window and shut off the engine. Glancing inside the oversized paper bag he’d been awarded at the drive-through window, he pulled out a long, tubular, green-wrapped item and held it out to her.

“This is yours, I believe. I ordered the cheeseburger.”

“I know. Not exactly very imaginative,” Kansas commented, taking the meat-and-cheese wrap from him.

She tried not to notice how infectious his grin was. “Sue me. I like basic things. I’m a very uncomplicated guy.”

Uncomplicated?
Kansas raised her eyes to his.
Who does he think he’s kidding?

Drop-dead gorgeous men with their own agendas were generally as difficult to figure out as a Rubik’s Cube. Definitely
not
uncomplicated.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she muttered audibly just before taking her first bite.

With a cheeseburger in one hand, he reached into the bag with the other and pulled out several French fries. He held them out to her. “Want some of my fries?” he offered.

She shook her head, swallowing another bite. She hadn’t realized until she’d started eating just how hungry she actually was. If she didn’t know better, she would have said her stomach was celebrating. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

A hint of a smile curved his mouth. “I’m sure you are.”

The low, sultry tone he’d used had her looking at him again, but she kept silent. She had a feeling that she was better off not knowing the explanation behind his words. No doubt, the path to seduction, or what he perceived as the path to seduction, was mixed in there somewhere.

Giving her full attention to eating the turkey-and-pastrami wrap she’d ordered, Kansas was in no way prepared for what came next.

“You never knew your mother?”

The bite she’d just taken went down her windpipe instead of her esophagus. She started coughing until there were tears in her eyes. Abandoning his lunch, Ethan twisted her in her seat and began pounding on her back until she held her hand up in surrender.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she protested, trying to catch her breath. When she finally did, her eyes still somewhat watery, she looked at O’Brien. “Where did that come from?”

He slid back into his seat. “From what you said earlier.”

Her mind a blank, she shook her head. “I don’t recall.”

He had a feeling that she remembered but was dismissing the subject outright. “When I made that crack about your mother teaching you not to talk to strangers and you answered that you were sure she would have if you’d had one.”

Kansas placed what was left of the wrap down on the paper it had come in and looked at him. “Where is this going?”

There was a dangerous note in her voice that warned
him to tread lightly. Or better yet, back off. “I was just curious if your mother died when you were very young.”

Her expression was stony as she told him, “I have no idea if she’s dead or alive. Now could we drop this?” she asked in the coldest tone she’d ever summoned.

It wasn’t cold enough. “You didn’t know her.” It didn’t take much of a stretch for him to guess that.

The first reply that came to her lips was to tell him to damn well mind his own business, but she had a feeling that the retort would fall on deaf ears. He didn’t strike her as the type to back off unless he wanted to. The best way to be done with this was just to answer his question as directly and precisely as possible.

“No, I didn’t know her.” She addressed her answer to the windshield as she stared straight ahead. “All I know is that she left me on the steps of a hospital when I was a few days old.”

Sympathy and pity as well as a wave of empathy stirred within him. There’d been times, when he was much younger, when he’d felt the sting of missing a parent, but his mother had always been there for all of them. What must it have been like for her, not having either in her life?

“You’re an orphan?”

He saw her jawline harden. “That’s one of the terms for it. ‘Throwaway’ was another one someone once used,” she recalled, her voice distant, devoid of any feeling.

She wasn’t fooling him. Something like that came wrapped in pain that lasted a lifetime. “No one ever adopted you?”

She finally turned toward him. Her mouth quirked in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Hard to believe that no one wanted me, seeing as how I have this sweet personality and all?” One of the social workers had called her unadoptable after a third set of foster parents had brought her back.

He knew what she was doing, and he hadn’t meant to make her feel self-conscious or bring back any painful memories. “I’m sorry.”

Her back was up even as she carelessly shrugged away his apology. “Hey, things happen.”

“Do you ever wonder—”

She knew what he was going to ask. If she ever wondered about who her parents had been. Or maybe if she wondered what it would have been like if at least her mother had kept her. She had, in both cases, but she wasn’t about to talk to him about it. That was something she kept locked away.

“No,” she said sharply, cutting him off. “Never.” Balling up the remainder of her lunch, she tossed it and the wrapper into the bag. “Now, unless you’ve secretly been commissioned to write my biography, I’d appreciate it if you'd stop asking me questions that aren’t going to further this investigation.” She nodded at the burger he was still holding. “Finish your lunch.”

Not until he evened the playing field for her, he thought. He didn’t want her thinking he was trying to be superior or put her down in any manner. That was not the way he operated.

“I never knew my father.”

Oh no, they weren’t going to sit here, swapping deep-down secrets that he hoped would ultimately disarm
her so that he could get into her bed. It wasn’t going to work that way. It had once, but she’d been very young and vulnerable then. And stupid. She’d grown up a lot since she’d made that awful mistake and married a man she thought could be her shelter from the cruelties of life. Grown up enough to know that there would never be anyone out there to love her the way she needed to be loved.

The way she so desperately wanted to be loved.

Like it or not, she’d made her peace with that and she wasn’t about to suddenly grow stupid because the guy sitting across from her with the chiseled profile and the soulfully beautiful blue eyes was doing his best to sound “nice.”

Kansas looked at him and said flatly, “I don’t want to know this.”

Ethan didn’t seem to hear her. Or, if he did, it didn’t deter him. He went on as if she hadn’t said anything.

“My mother told us he died on the battlefield, saving his friends. That he was a hero.” For a moment, a faraway look came into his eyes as bits and pieces of that time came back to him. “She told us a lot of things about our father, always emphasizing that we had a lot to be proud of.”

She had no idea why he was telling her this. Did he think that sharing this was going to somehow bring them closer? “Okay, so you had a legend for a father and I didn’t. How does this—”

She didn’t get to finish framing her question. His eyes met hers and he said very simply, without emotion, “She lied.”

That brought what she was about to say to a screeching halt. Kansas stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“She lied,” he repeated and then, for emphasis, said again, “My mother lied.”

Despite her initial resolve, Kansas could feel herself being drawn in ever so slowly. It was the look in his eyes that did it. She supposed, since O’Brien seemed so bent on talking, that she might as well try to gain a measure of control over the conversation. “About his being a hero?”

If only,
Ethan thought. If it had just been that, he could have easily made his peace with it. But it went far beyond a mere white lie. And it made him slow to trust anyone other than Kyle and Greer, the only two people in the world who had been as affected as him by this revelation.

“About all of it. Everything she’d told us was just a lie.”

Kansas felt for him. She would have been devastated in his place.
If
what he said was true. “How did you find out?”

“From her. On her deathbed.”
God, that sounded so melodramatic,
he thought. But it was the truth. Had his mother not been dying, he was certain that the lie would have continued indefinitely. “She knew she didn’t have much longer, and apparently she wanted to die with a clear conscience.”

Kansas took a guess as to what was behind the initial lie. “She didn’t know who your father was?”

“Oh, she knew, all right.” An edge entered Ethan’s voice. “He was the man who abandoned her when she told him she was pregnant. The man who bullied her
into not telling anyone about the relationship they’d had. If she did, according to what she told us, he promised that he would make her life a living hell.”

Kansas didn’t know what to say. Going by her own feelings in this sort of a situation, she instinctively knew he wouldn’t want her pity. She shook her head, commiserating. “Sounds like a winner.”

“Yeah, well, not every Cavanaugh turned out to be sterling—although, so far, my ‘father’ seems to be the only one in the family who dropped the ball.”

The last name made her sit up and take notice. Her eyes widened. “Are you telling me that Brian Cavanaugh is your father?”

He realized that he hadn’t been specific. “No, it’s not Brian—”

“Andrew?” she interjected. She’d never met the man, but the detective had mentioned him and she knew the man by reputation. The very thought that Andrew Cavanaugh would have a love child he refused to publicly acknowledge sounded completely preposterous, especially since he was known for throwing open his doors to
everyone
.

But then, she thought, reconsidering, did anyone really ever know anyone else? When she’d gotten married, she would have sworn that Grant would never hurt her—and she’d been incredibly wrong about that.

“No, not Andrew, either.” He would have been proud to call either man his father, but life hardly ever arranged itself perfectly. She frowned.
Was
he pulling her leg? “All the other Cavanaughs are too young,” she retorted. The oldest
was possibly ten or twelve years older than O’Brien. Maybe less.

“It was Mike Cavanaugh,” he said flatly.

Mike. Michael. Kansas shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”

“Was,” he corrected her. “Mike Cavanaugh died in the line of duty a number of years ago. Patience and Patrick are his legitimate kids—”

She stopped him cold. He was treading on terrain that encompassed one of her pet peeves.

“Every kid is ‘legitimate,’” she said with feeling. “It’s the parents who aren’t always legitimate, not thinking beyond the moment or weighing any of the consequences of their actions. Allowing themselves to get careless and carried away without any regard for who they might wind up hurting—”

Ethan held up his hand to get her to stop. “I’m not trying to get into an argument with you,” he told her. “I’m trying to make you see that we have more in common than you think.”

Not really,
she thought.

“At least you
had
a mother, a mother who tried to shield you from her mistake, however badly she might have done it. A mother who tried to give you something to believe in. Mine couldn’t be bothered to do anything except to literally pin a name on me that would always make me the butt of jokes.” She saw him looking at her quizzically and elaborated. “She pinned a piece of paper to my blanket that said, ‘Her name is Kansas. I can’t raise her.’ That’s it. Eight words. My entire legacy, eight words.”

“At least she did give you a chance to live,” he pointed
out. “I’ve seen newborn babies thrown out in garbage cans, discarded by the wayside, like spoiled meat.” He recalled one specific case that had taken him months to get out of his head.

Kansas sat silent in the car, studying him for a long moment. Just as the silence began to seem as if it was going on too long, she said, “You’re a silver-lining kind of guy, aren’t you?”

Kyle had been the last one to accuse him of that, except that the terminology his brother had used wasn’t quite as squeaky-clean as what Kansas had just said.

“Once in a while,” he allowed. “It does help sometimes.”

Kansas didn’t agree. Optimists tended to be stomped on. She’d been down that route and learned her lesson early on.

“Being a realist helps,” she countered. “That way, you don’t wind up being disappointed.” Her mouth feeling exceptionally dry, she stopped to drain the last of her soft drink. “What do you say we get this show on the road and go talk to Mr. Silver, the owner of that discount store that burned down?” In case he’d forgotten, she prompted, “It was the fourth fire.”

He nodded, recalling the notes he’d written beneath the photos on the bulletin board. “That was the fire that led the chief of D’s to believe that there was just one person setting all of them.”

“Right.” Captain Lawrence had mentioned that to her in passing.

O’Brien turned the key in the ignition and started the car. Just as he was about to shift out of Park, she put her hand on top of his, stopping him. He could
have sworn he felt something akin to electricity pass through him just then. Masking it, he looked at Kansas quizzically.