Cavanaugh's Missing Person Read online

  Does she have the key to solving a murder?

  A Cavanaugh is on the (cold) case!

  Kenzie Cavanaugh strives to prove herself to her legendary law enforcement family. But when her missing persons case grabs the attention of infuriating—gorgeous—Detective Hunter Brannigan, she grudgingly collaborates with her work rival to catch a killer. As the partners uncover a lethal conspiracy, they must learn to trust their instincts, and one another, to stay alive.

  “What interest do you have in John Kurtz?” Kenzie wanted to know.

  Hunter’s shimmering green eyes skimmed over her from top to bottom before he answered. “I don’t.”

  He could make her lose her patience faster than any human being she had ever encountered, and that included Billy. Kenzie struggled now to hold on to her temper as she asked, “Then why would you be going to the scene where he was found?”

  He slowly smiled at Kenzie, knowing that it annoyed her. He couldn’t explain why, but he really liked getting under her skin. “Let’s just say I have a real interest in the person who did this to him.”

  “Why?” Kenzie demanded.

  Hunter saw no reason to keep this a secret. Teasing Kenzie took a back seat to possibly solving a case—or at least getting one step closer to solving it.

  “Because I think that my cold case might have been this guy’s first murder.”

  * * *

  Be sure to check out the next books in this

  exciting miniseries:

  Cavanaugh Justice—Where Aurora’s finest are always in action

  * * *

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  think of Harlequin Romantic Suspense!

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  Dear Reader,

  I’m not sure if anyone is keeping count out there, but this marks my fortieth Cavanaugh Justice series book. What had started out as a limited, five-book series refused to fade away. To be honest, the idea of a law enforcement family, whose first allegiance was to each other and then to the law they had all taken an oath to uphold, fascinated me. Possibly because I had grown up with a family that could have easily fit inside a cereal box, I always wondered what it would be like to have cousins and uncles and aunts to add dimensions to my life. Creating them on paper was the next best thing. And, like Mickey Mouse creating helpers for himself in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, once I got started, I couldn’t stop myself. And I was further encouraged by wonderful letters from you, telling me how much you enjoyed the last Cavanaugh book and asking me if there would be more coming. Ask and ye shall receive (or careful what you wish for, take your choice).

  I hope you enjoy this latest entry in the Cavanaugh Justice series. As ever, I thank you for taking the time to pick up one of my stories to read, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  All the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

  Marie Ferrarella

  USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author Marie Ferrarella has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Cavanaugh Justice

  Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

  Cavanaugh on Duty

  A Widow’s Guilty Secret

  Cavanaugh’s Surrender

  Cavanaugh Rules

  Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

  Cavanaugh Fortune

  How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

  Cavanaugh or Death

  Cavanaugh Cold Case

  Cavanaugh in the Rough

  Cavanaugh on Call

  Cavanaugh Encounter

  Cavanaugh Vanguard

  Cavanaugh Cowboy

  Cavanaugh’s Missing Person

  Visit the Author Profile page at

  Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

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  To

  Nancy Parodi Neubert,

  Who patiently let me

  Try out my stories on her

  More years ago

  Than either of us

  Care to remember.

  Thank you, Nance.

  Love,

  Twinkles

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from First Responder on Call by Melinda Di Lorenzo

  Prologue

  She knew this location like the back of her hand. She brought them all here—while they were still alive—certain that they would view this as an intimate, secluded hideaway.

  She was just as confident as they were about it, but to her it also meant that she and the person she brought here would be isolated and that there would be no unwanted interruptions.

  Or any unforeseen last-minute rescues.

  There never were this far out from civilization. After all, no one had ever heard her cries when she had screamed for help all those years ago.

  She had chosen this place carefully, deliberately.

  It had to be this place for the purge to be effective.

  Despite that and all the precautions she took, she never failed to remain vigilant and alert. While she had always been confident, it had never been to the point that she became careless. Because carelessness would usher in error and error—any error—could wind up, in the long run, being fatal.

  For her.

  She had worked too hard to lose everything she had amassed because of an error.

  The door to this little “hideaway” was closed and there were no windows, at least none that allowed anyone to look inside. But even so, an unseasonable evening breeze had somehow managed to squeeze in through the cracks, causing the plastic that hung everywhere to move just the slightest bit.

  She didn’t see it. She heard it.

  Her pulse sped up.

  Instantly, her eyes went to the man who was at the center of it all. There was no way he could move and disturb the plastic that had been draped all around him, the plastic that was literally covering every square inch of the space. She’d seen to that.

  Even so, she had to reassure herself that he wouldn’t suddenly rise up and overpower her.

  There was enough ketamine in her would-be lover to put down an oversize water buffalo, but still she watched him, watched his chest to see if it would rise and fall, signaling a man who was coming to.

  It didn’t.

  The injection had done its trick.

  She had done her trick, she thought with a
small, tight smile.

  “And now it’s time for you to do your part,” she whispered to the inert form.

  With the precision of a surgeon, imitating the movements that Joel had shown her when the poor fool had tried to impress her all those years ago, she drove the thin boning knife in at just the right angle, just the right spot to end the life of this latest contributor to her thriving and ever expanding lifestyle.

  Taking their money was only part of it. Avenging herself was far more important to her.

  Blood spurted from the incision she had made onto the plastic that surrounded the man. She waited until it pooled around him, heralding the fact that his life had officially, and without fanfare, slipped away.

  When she was satisfied that he was dead, she turned toward her knapsack where she kept the rest of her tools. It was time to separate John Kurtz from the parts of him that would facilitate his identification.

  She had always liked tools, even as a child. They fascinated her. They could be used for so many things. People liked to build things with tools.

  She liked to dismantle them.

  Taking out the battery-powered saw, she switched it on. For a moment, she just listened to the high-pitched sound the saw made. The quiet, reassuring sound that promised to do its job and not fail her.

  So many things had failed her. But the saw wouldn’t.

  She could feel the vibrations going through her arms.

  She watched, almost mesmerized, as the gleaming, freshly polished blade sliced through the air like the sharp teeth of a tiger, straining to devour its prey. She always took care of her tools.

  A person’s work was only as good as the tools she used, she thought with a cynical smile.

  Feeling almost giddy, she hummed a little song under her breath, a song from her childhood before horror had swallowed her up. It was a tune that kept haunting her.

  She slowly lowered the saw blade and began to work.

  One more down.

  And tomorrow, tomorrow the hunt for a new, unwitting victim would begin all over again. Because this feeling, this satisfaction, lasted for only so long before it vanished.

  Like her innocence.

  But for now, she savored this part of her quest, savored it because she was victorious.

  And that was all that counted.

  Chapter 1

  “Hey, Cavanaugh,” a deep male voice called out. “There’s somebody here asking to see you.”

  Detective MacKenzie Cavanaugh, currently assigned to the Missing Persons Division of the Aurora Police Department, looked up from her computer. She raised her intense blue eyes in time to see Detective Kyle Choi pointing toward her for the benefit of a distraught-looking older woman.

  It took Kenzie a full minute to realize that the woman she was looking at wasn’t really old, just incredibly beaten down and worn-out looking, like someone who had spent a great deal of time crying.

  She actually recognized the dark-haired woman heading her way.

  Kenzie rose from her chair, still trying to reconcile the woman coming toward her with the person she had once known.

  Connie Kurtz.

  She’d gone to college with Connie not all that many years ago. Ten to be precise. Something had obviously happened to the once upbeat young woman. Something that had stolen the light from her eyes. Connie looked as if she had aged drastically since the last time Kenzie had seen her. Connie had never been heavyset, but her face now had a sunken in appearance, like someone who hadn’t slept or eaten in a while.

  The Connie Kenzie remembered had the kind of figure that turned heads while the woman approaching her had lost a significant amount of weight. The clothes she wore hung on her body like they couldn’t find a place for themselves.

  “Connie?” Kenzie asked uncertainly, wanting to make sure that this wasn’t ultimately a case of mistaken identity.

  Connie offered a spasmodic smile of acknowledgment when she heard her name spoken, but the smile faded away before it had a chance to register.

  The woman blew out a long, shaky breath. “When I asked the policeman downstairs for Detective Cavanaugh, he started to laugh and then he asked me, ‘Which one?’” Connie appeared somewhat dazed and bewildered as she repeated the incident. “How many of your family members are there on the police force?”

  “A lot,” Kenzie answered, thinking it might be simpler just to leave it that. “Sit down, Connie. Please,” she added when the other woman seemed disoriented.

  Rather than taking her seat slowly, Connie dropped into the chair facing Kenzie as if the air had suddenly been let out of her.

  Thinking to break the ice, Kenzie asked the haunted-looking young woman, “How long has it been?”

  “A long time,” Connie replied. She ran her tongue along her dry lips, as if they were stuck together, preventing her from saying anything further. It was as if she was afraid that if she did, something terrible would become a reality.

  Silence hung between them.

  Kenzie tried again. “Is there something I can do for you, Connie?” she asked.

  She was unable to think of a single reason why someone she’d known from three classes when she was a college senior would deliberately seek her out now—unless it was for professional reasons.

  “I hope so.” The words came out slowly, like bullets fired cautiously and one at a time.

  Since she’d begun working in the Missing Persons Division, Kenzie had become accustomed to talking to distraught family members, spouses and/or girlfriends and boyfriends. Getting any sort of viable information at times required a great deal of patience. Kenzie prided herself on being up to the job.

  There were other times when interrogation was called for, and she was just as good at that as she was at displays of patience and employing kid-glove treatment with fragile people. It seemed to her that this situation called for use of the latter.

  “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, Connie,” Kenzie coaxed, then told her, “Take your time.”

  Connie swallowed nervously. “You know, I’m probably just being paranoid,” she said.

  It was obvious that she was trying to talk herself into believing that. Kenzie could see that the woman was twisting her fingers together so hard, they looked as if they could just snap off at any moment.

  Kenzie put her hand protectively over the other woman’s hands with just enough pressure to make Connie stop twisting her fingers like that.

  “Paranoid about what?” Kenzie asked gently.

  Rather than answer, Connie said in a voice that almost broke, “He’s probably sitting on some beach, or vacationing in the mountains—like I told him to.” Connie looked at her, desperation once again entering her eyes. “You know, he used to talk about going to the mountains.” Tears were sliding down her thin cheeks now.

  Kenzie reached over on her desk and extracted tissues from a box she’d brought to the office to help her cope with her last cold. She offered the tissues to Connie, who took them after a beat, wiping away the telltale trail of tears from her face and dabbing at her eyes. She crumpled the tissues in her hand, as if holding them would somehow give her strength.

  “Who’s sitting on some beach or vacationing in the mountains, Connie? Who are you talking about?” Kenzie asked, thinking that Connie had to be talking about a boyfriend who had suddenly stopped returning her calls and pulled a disappearing act.

  When they were in college together, Connie had had a social life that would have kept three other women on their toes and busy. Heaven knew that Connie had never wanted for company. More than once Connie had offered to “fix her up,” but their taste in boyfriends were worlds apart. Back in those days, Connie was attracted to guys who easily came under the bad-boy heading.

  On the other hand, if she had brought someone like that home, said “bad boy” would have been summarily threatened with
bodily harm if he didn’t vacate the premises voluntarily and immediately. She’d grown up with four brothers, a father and countless cousins, all of whom were incredibly protective.

  Of course, that didn’t keep her from making her own bad choice in the end, Kenzie thought ruefully. She forced herself to focus on the woman crying next to her desk.

  More tears slid down Connie’s face as she choked out, “John Kurtz. My father.”

  “Your father?” Kenzie repeated, confused. “You’re talking about your father?” she asked again.

  Connie wiped away the tears from her cheeks and then blew her nose, as well. She took in a deep breath and released it.

  Kenzie pushed the box of tissues closer to her. “Why don’t you begin at the beginning.”

  Connie swallowed, struggling to get hold of herself. “I guess that would be when my mother died.”

  Kenzie could remember a vivacious, lively redhead who had attended their graduation. They had that loss in common, she thought.

  “I didn’t know,” she apologized. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Connie. When did your mother die?”

  Connie closed her eyes, as if summoning the memory was painful. “A little over three years ago.” Opening her eyes, she looked at Kenzie. “My father became almost a hermit after she died. It was understandable at first—” A sad smile punctuated her statement. “They’d been the classic high school sweethearts who got married right after graduation. My mother worshipped the ground my father walked on—and the feeling was mutual,” she added with feeling.

  Her voice cracked as she tried not to cry.

  “Take your time,” Kenzie told her again even though she really wanted to hurry the woman along and pull the words out of her throat. She tamped down her impatience. Kenzie was the type who always read the end of a book before she then turned to page one. She had always had an insatiable need to know how things turned out before she ever got to that part.

  But in this case, she kept quiet, letting Connie tell her story at her own pace, in fits and starts.

  Connie sighed again, as if that would somehow shield her from what she was talking about.

 
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