Cavanaugh Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page B

continue focusing on herself or her reaction to things. There was a more important topic to pursue. “So, did you find out anything useful?” she pressed.
    What did she think she missed? “You were only gone a few minutes,” he reminded her. The rest of the time,she’d been with him every step of the way—not that he really minded it. Even with soot on her face, the woman was extremely easy on the eyes.
    “Crucial things can be said in less than a minute,” she observed. Was he deliberately being evasive? Had he learned something?
    “Sorry to disappoint you,” Ethan said. “But nothing noteworthy was ascertained.” He looked back at the building. The firemen had contained the blaze and only a section of the building had been destroyed. But it was still going to have to be evacuated for a good chunk of time while reconstruction was undertaken. “We’ll know more when the ashes cool off and we can conduct a thorough search.”
    “That’s my department,” Kansas reminded him, taking pleasure in the fact that—as a fire investigator—her work took priority over his.
    “Not tonight.” He saw her eyes narrow, like someone getting ready for a fight. “Look, I don’t want to have to go over your head,” he warned her. He and the task force had dibs and that was that.
    “And I don’t want to have to take yours off,” she fired back with feeling. “So back off. This is my investigation, O’Brien. Someone is burning down buildings in Aurora.”
    “And running the risk of killing people while he’s doing it,” Ethan concluded. “Dead people fall under my jurisdiction.” And that, he felt, terminated the argument.
    “And investigating man-made fires comes under mine,” she insisted.
    She didn’t give an inch. Why didn’t that surprise him?
    “So you work together.”
    They turned in unison to see who had made the simple declaration. It had come from Brian Cavanaugh, the chief of police. When Dax had called him, Brian had lost no time getting to the site of the latest unexplained fire.
    Brian looked from his new nephew to the woman Ethan was having a difference of opinion with. He saw not just a clash of temperaments as they fought over jurisdiction, but something more.
    Something that, of late, he’d found himself privy to more than a few times. There had to be something in the air lately.
    These two mixed like oil and water, he thought. And they’d be together for quite a while, he was willing to bet a month’s salary on it.
    His intense blue eyes, eyes that were identical in hue to those of the young man his late brother had sired, swept over Ethan and the investigator whose name he’d been told was Kansas. He perceived resistance to his instruction in both of them.
    “Have I made myself clear?” Brian asked evenly.
    “Perfectly,” Ethan responded, coming to attention and standing soldier-straight.
    Rather than mumble an agreement the way he’d expected her to, the young woman looked at him skeptically. “Did you clear this with the chief and my captain?”
    “It was cleared the minute I suggested it,” Brian said with no conceit attached to his words. “The bottom line is that we all want to find whoever’s responsible for all this.”
    The expression was kind, the tone firm. This was a man, she sensed, people didn’t argue with. And neither would she.
    Unless it was for a good cause.
     
    Kansas stayed long after the police task force had recorded and photographed their data, folded their tents and disappeared into what was left of the night. She liked conducting her investigation without having to trip over people, well intentioned or not. Gregarious and outgoing, Kansas still felt there was a time for silence and she processed things much better when there as a minimum of noise to distract her.
    She’d found that obnoxious Detective O’Brien and his annoying smile most distracting of all.
    Contrary to the fledgling opinion that had been formed—most likely to soothe the nerves