Cavanaugh Hero Read Free

she always let Matt call them.
    Quite simply, unlike most brothers and sisters, Charley adored the ground Matt walked on and she knew the reverse was true as well, even if he never said as much. He didn’t have to. His actions spoke louder than any words.
    Matt was her rock.
    Which was why seeing him this way, consumed with sorrow because of a woman so unequal to even the dirt beneath his fingernails was just killing her. She didn’t know how to snap him out of it. She only knew she had to—because he’d obviously had a relapse.
    “Matt?” she called out again, feeling her heart constrict when she didn’t receive an answer. “Are you here? You’d better be, otherwise leaving this door unlocked was a really stupid move, you know that, right? And if there’s one thing Matthew Michael Holt isn’t, it’s stupid. Except whenever you’re around ‘Fluffy,’” she said, referring to Melissa by the less-than-flattering nickname she’d given the woman. “Then you have the brainpower of an amoeba on drugs.
    “Matt, come out, come out wherever you—”
    That was when she saw him.
    And that was when she stifled the scream that rose up to her throat, a scream that came from Charley, Matt’s sister, not Charley Randolph, police detective.
    Stunned, frightened and in a complete daze, she dropped to her knees beside the body.
    This was a dream, a nightmare, right? This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t!
    “Matt, Matt, what has she done to you? Matt, talk to me, ” she pleaded even as she felt his throat for his pulse.
    And found none.
    Somewhere in her horror-stricken haze, Charley managed to pull out her cell phone and press a key that was preset and quickly connected her to the necessary emergency number.
    Her voice trembled as she spoke. “This is Detective Charlotte Randolph.” She rattled off her badge number. “I need a bus. Officer down, I repeat, officer down. At 4832 Wayne Avenue. Hurry, ” she begged.
    She’d requested an ambulance rather than the coroner’s wagon because maybe she was too numb to find the pulse, maybe he was still alive, his pulse reduced to a reedy whisper of a beat, hardly detectable at all.
    The pulse Charley was praying that she had somehow missed.
    * * *
    Detective First Class Declan Cavanaugh turned in his swivel chair as he both listened to and watched his about-to-be-ex-partner Hollis Spenser give him the big news. Two years his senior, Hollis was leaving. Leaving the partnership, the department, the force. Leaving Aurora, California, for greener pastures.
    “You’re kidding.”
    Hollis moved the thatch of blond hair out of his eyes. “Nope. My new father-in-law thinks his daughter deserves a husband who comes home at night still breathing.”
    Cavanaugh frowned, regarding the man. “You look like you’re breathing to me.”
    “You know what I mean.” Hollis futilely pushed the hair out of his eyes, subconsciously knowing it would be back to position one in seconds. “Detectives who work in the private sector don’t get shot at.”
    “Usually,” Declan corrected. They all knew exceptions to that rule.
    “Better odds,” his partner of the past fifteen months corrected his almost-ex-partner’s correction. Some habits died hard.
    “Boring odds,” Declan allowed. He shook his head as if he really pitied the man—and, in a way, he did. Hollis had just agreed to go willingly to serve a life sentence—unless this was his trade-off, what he intended to do until something better struck his fancy.
    Still, Declan didn’t back off right away. “You’re going to be doing what, taking photographs of cheating husbands cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands? Is that really what you want to be doing with your life ten years from now? Trying to do with your life?” he amended in case the battle wasn’t going to be won with just one major skirmish.
    “The pay’s a lot better,” Hollis confided with a triumphant air. “I’m going to be earning at least