Cavanaugh Cold Case Read Free Page A

under his breath. “I’ll get back to you,” he added without sparing the owner another look.
    â€œWho can I call to make this go away?” Harrison asked.
    â€œYou don’t,” Malloy answered with finality, tossing the words over his shoulder.
    Putting the abrasive owner temporarily out of his thoughts, Malloy made his way toward what was the only center of activity within the area—if he didn’t count a neighbor’s rooster.
    The lone fowl was housed in an opened coop facing the northern perimeter.
    Flapping his wings and moving about in what could only be called an agitated manner, the rooster crowed intermittently despite the fact that the sun had long since been up and the current hour was quickly approaching noon.
    Obviously the rooster’s inner clock needed some adjusting, Malloy absently thought.
    For the moment, his attention was not on roosters, or the dead bodies. It was strictly and exclusively on the attractive woman with the killer figure. Despite her appreciative male audience standing a few feet away, watching her every move, the woman appeared to be absorbed by the bones she and two of the CSI agents were digging up out of the ground and arranging on a long, extended roll of burlap.
    The annoying owner had been right, Malloy noted, scanning the immediate area. The construction crew Harrison had hired really were, for all intents and purposes, immobilized, no doubt ordered to remain that way by his uncle.
    But the crew definitely didn’t appear to be suffering any discomfort because of that edict.
    Instead, the idle four men looked to be quite entertained as they took in every nuance, every movement made by the young woman studying the various excavated bones.
    Malloy approached the young woman and placed himself between her and the sunlight that had, until that moment, been highlighting the collection of bones she had been assembling.
    â€œHi, I’m Malloy,” he told her.
    The voice and sudden distracting shift of light caught her attention. After a couple beats, Kristin finally looked up.
    If the exceedingly handsome, exceptionally confident-looking man with the sexy grin momentarily threw her off her game, Kristin Alberghetti gave no indication of that reaction.
    Instead, her eyes met his, and she silently waited for him to explain why he was here blocking her light.
    The name he offered nudged at something in the back of her mind. After a moment, recognition set in.
    Malloy Cavanaugh. One of the Cavanaughs.
    His reputation had preceded him.
    â€œOf course you are,” she replied, turning her attention back to her work.
    â€œAnd you are?” he asked after several seconds went by and she still didn’t volunteer her name, even though he had given her his.
    â€œBusy,” Kristin answered crisply without looking up. “And you’re in my light,” she added rather impatiently.
    â€œFunny, I would have thought that you cast enough light on your own to brighten up anything you needed to look at,” Malloy observed.
    The blonde looked up again, her expression telling him that the remark—and his charm—left her more than just merely cold.
    â€œSorry, no,” she replied. Ice chips formed around each word. “Would you mind stepping to the side? I got the impression that the owner of this nursery wanted me to be done before I even got here, so if you move out of the light, I can try to accommodate him.”
    â€œSorry,” Malloy apologized, following her request. “My bad.”
    â€œI imagine you probably say that a lot,” Kristin commented, sounding as if she were addressing the observation to herself instead of to him.
    Feisty, Malloy thought. Ordinarily, he probably would have backed away. This was, after all, a case, and he wasn’t the type to waste too much time trying to break through a woman’s barriers. For one thing, life was too short. For another, he was being paid to be a detective,