Cavanaugh's Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page A

doing it. Her eyes widened and she looked at him.
    “The slashes are both going in the same direction!” But there was more than just that, she realized. “And they’re both upside down.”
    Instead of slanting slightly at the top and then dipping down as it reached the opposite side, each cut seemed to go from the bottom to the top, left to right, on both wrists.
    “This is too awkward,” Destiny concluded, her excitement growing. And then she repeated what she had been maintaining all along. “Paula couldn’t have done this to herself. Someone else had to have done it to her.”
    He could see his father trying to spare his assistant and make her feel better, but there were other matters to consider, Logan thought.
    “There’s no sign of a struggle,” he pointed out, then continued, “There’s no huge amount of water along the perimeter of the old-fashioned tub, leaving the actual tub low, as if there’d been a wild, last-minute struggle. There are no outstanding bruises visible on the victim’s body, and her long, salon-applied nails all seem to be intact. They wouldn’t have been if she was fighting for her life.”
    “There wouldn’t be any struggle if the victim was drugged,” Sean told his son, his voice as mild as if he were discussing the garden section of the Sunday paper. Turning, Sean pointed to the wine goblet he had already photographed and that now stood, bagged, on the bathroom floor exactly where he had found it. “A simple analysis can tell us about that.”
    Logan still didn’t see that as proof. “A lot of suicides build up their courage with a drink first. Maybe the victim wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t experience a last-minute surge of regret that might cause her to stop what she was doing.” He looked at his father. “Despondence can do that to you.”
    “Maybe to you,” Destiny fired back. “But not to Paula. She did not kill herself. I’d stake my badge on it,” she insisted.
    “Besides,” Sean interjected, “there are the cuts to her wrists. Our killer obviously slipped up there.” Returning the items he’d taken out previously, as well as packing up the samples he’d taken into his case, Sean glanced at Destiny. “Are you absolutely sure your sister never mentioned this man’s name? Dropped a hint, used initials? Something like that?”
    To each suggestion, Destiny could only shake her head no. Each time she did so, she felt her frustration growing larger and larger.
    “No.”
    The truth of it was that despite her initial concerns, she’d been really hopeful that Paula was finally looking to settle into a lasting relationship. And due to that, she hadn’t wanted to cause any waves by hounding her sister for details.
    “And you didn’t press her?” Logan asked incredulously. What kind of a woman didn’t ask for details? he couldn’t help wondering. Was it because she was too wrapped up in her own love life? Was there some guy she was going to go running home to, to cry on his shoulder?
    From out of nowhere, Logan felt just the slightest prick of jealousy. He shrugged it off, thinking he was just frustrated because he’d had to break his date with Stacy.
    Destiny could only shrug impotently. “I figured she’d tell me when she was ready.”
    He couldn’t help staring at her. Was she for real? If this had been one of his sisters, the other two would have been all over her until she finally broke. The life expectancy of a secret in the household where he’d grown up had been about a day and a half—if the one with the secret was in a coma.
    “Wow, a woman with no curiosity,” he marveled, only half in jest. “I thought that was like, you know, an urban myth or something. Kind of like a unicorn,” he tagged on.
    If nothing else, the man was mixing his metaphors. He was also being colossally annoying.
    “Unicorns don’t wander around urban areas,” she pointed out, irritated at the detective’s flippant manner and not bothering to hide the