Cavanaugh Watch Read Online Free PDF Page A

life. There didn’t seem to be another way to end the unending onslaught of nightmares. The nightmares that haunted him both waking and sleeping. Nightmares about Allison.
    Allison had been senselessly wiped out less than a month before their wedding, killed because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While two worthless pieces of scum had been trying to even some imaginary score.
    She’d been in her car, stopped at a light, when she’d been caught by a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting. A gang member had peppered a rival gang member’s home. And snuffed out his Allison’s life.
    If Allison hadn’t been so damn altruistic, if she hadn’t been part of that free legal aid firm, if she’d just gone into practice with that Beverly Hills firm that had wanted her instead of following in her father’s foot steps, she would be here today.
    Or rather, Sawyer thought, his expression dark as he looked from one person to the other in the D.A.’s office, he would have been there. With her. Living with Allison in Southern California instead of here, being asked to do stand guard over the chief of detectives’ little darling because the woman had been spooked by the sound of gunfire.
    His superior, Lieutenant Richard Reynolds, had been waiting for him when he’d gotten back from testifying in court. At first, he’d thought the man had been just making conversation, informing him of what he’d just heard had happened. Maybe even waiting for Sawyer to fill in the details. But it had very quickly become apparent that he was being given an assignment. The only kind of assignment he would have turned down. If he’d been given a choice, which he hadn’t.
    The incident had taken place less than an hour ago and already the call for bodyguards had been put out and filled. No paperwork or red tape to impede anything.
    Apparently, he thought cynically as his eyes washed over the petite blonde in the navy suit, when necessary, things moved fast within the halls of the Aurora police department.
    Protesting the assignment would do no good. He’d just wrapped up a case and was considered free. The fact that he didn’t have a relationship of any sort with the woman or any of her family was considered a plus.
    “She’s a mite headstrong, I hear,” Reynolds had told him. “All the Cavanaugh women are,” he’d added after lowering his voice. “The D.A. requested someone she couldn’t bully into her way of thinking.”
    Well, that was him, all right. He wasn’t about to be bullied by anyone, least of all a woman who thought her name earned her privileges.
    Sawyer took slow, careful measure of her now, the way he would have any assignment he’d been given, any person he encountered on the job. Survival usually depended on observation.
    He had to admit that, at about five-four, with no spare meat on her bones and honey-blond hair worn up and away from her face, the woman was fairly easy on the eyes. But it wasn’t his eyes that concerned him. He had no desire to be a glorified babysitter under any circumstances and, while the crime organization in question was a formidable one, he was of the personal opinion that what had happened in front of the courthouse an hour ago was an isolated incident, meant as a warning, nothing more.
    The man Marco Wayne bore allegiance to was not about to waste money or manpower getting into an unofficial war with the members of the Aurora police department or the district attorney’s office over some lowlife, even if that lowlife was Marco’s son. Marco Wayne had to be acting on his own. And treading a very fine line. In order not to do anything that would put him in disfavor with his boss, or jeopardize his own life, he would have only done something to shake up the D.A.’s office, nothing more.
    And the sooner he was done with this assignment, the better, Sawyer thought.
    Janelle’s eyes met the detective’s. The connection was instantaneous. She could read his every thought.