Cavanaugh's Secret Delivery Read online

  The woman grabbed on to part of the steering wheel with one hand and the back of the headrest with the other. Breathing hard, she arched and pushed down hard for all she was worth.

  Mentally, Dugan counted up to five.

  “Okay, stop. Stop!” he ordered her again when she didn’t. “Scarlet, I know this is hard, but you have to stop when I tell you to stop,” Dugan told the frazzled woman.

  The look she gave him said a lot more than she was able to at this point. It didn’t take him much to fill in the blanks.

  “Yes, I know, it’s your body, you’re in pain and I’m just the jerk issuing orders. But if you push too hard, you’re going to wind up tearing things I can’t repair here,” he warned her. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  Her eyes were on him and then she finally nodded.

  “Okay, ready?” he asked. She looked at him with wide eyes and he told her, “Push!”

  “I...am!” she cried, squeezing her eyes closed as she pushed down for all she was worth.

  She fully expected this to be it—but it wasn’t.

  She fell back against the seat cushion, breathing hard and ready to give up.

  As if sensing what was going on through her head, Dugan told her, “You can do this, Scarlet. You know you can. C’mon, just one more time.”

  “I...don’t...believe...you,” she whimpered, panting and trying very hard to catch her breath.

  Her head was spinning, making her feel as if she was going to go on like this forever, in pain and pushing until she died.

  “C’mon, Scarlet, you’re made of better stuff than this. Just one more time,” Dugan urged her, repeating the words he’d already used.

  “I...hate...you!”

  “I can live with that,” he told her. “Now push!” he ordered.

  She had no choice. It was as if the baby had taken control of her instead of the other way around. The baby was pushing its way out.

  “It’s...coming!”

  “It sure is,” Dugan agreed, excited. “One more push,” he told her. “Just one more—that’s it,” he encouraged. “That’s it!”

  And then, just like that, he found himself holding a baby in his hands. For a second, Dugan was in complete, mind-numbing awe.

  Despite everything he’d told her, he had never been in this position before. He’d never actually had to put his training—which was far from recent—to use like this before.

  And then Dugan came to life.

  “Here,” he told the brand-new mother, placing the baby on her stomach. “Hold her and don’t move,” he ordered.

  “It’s a girl?” the woman asked him, relief highlighted in her face.

  “Oh, yeah,” he answered, realizing that he hadn’t said that before. “It’s a girl.”

  The next moment, he was taking out a knife from his pocket. It had been a gift from his mother for his fourteenth birthday, the last gift she had ever given him and he was never without it.

  “Do you have a paperclip?” he asked the new mother.

  She was holding the baby in her arms, totally stunned and totally in love with the baby girl she was holding. She blinked as she looked up at him.

  “A what?”

  “A paperclip,” he repeated. “I’m going to need something to temporarily stem any blood that might start flowing from the cut.” Dugan was already several steps ahead in his mind.

  “What blood?” she asked, looking at the baby, panicking. “Is there blood?”

  “No, but there will be when I cut the cord,” he told her.

  “Oh.” She thought for a moment, then asked, “Will a hairclip do?”

  He put his hand out. “It might. Let me see it.”

  “It’s in my hair,” the woman told him. She was still having trouble catching her breath. “You’re going to have to get it out,” she told him, almost apologizing. “My hands are full.”

  He grinned at her. “Right.”

  Leaning over the baby and looking closely at the new mother’s head, he saw the hairclip. She’d had it loosely holding back her dark-blond hair. He took it out as best he could, trying not to pull. He failed.

  “Sorry,” he apologized for the umpteenth time. “Got it,” he told her. “Okay, now for the last part.”

  She eyed the knife, her apprehension growing again. “Is this going to hurt her?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Dugan said it in such a way that she felt she could believe him. “Okay,” she said tentatively.

  Taking the knife back in his hand, he quickly cut the cord, then swiftly placed the hairclip just at the baby’s end of it. Once he was sure the clip would hold—he watched it for a minute—he stripped off his hoodie.

  “Now what are you doing?” the woman asked him, not sure what to think.

  He had delivered her baby, but she knew nothing about this man, other than he’d said he was a cop. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. But even if he was one, that still wasn’t enough to convince her that everything else was all right.

  She looked up at him now, wondering if she could get away with her baby if she had to.

  “It’s chilly,” Dugan told her. “The baby’s going to need something wrapped around her while we wait for the ambulance,” he explained.

  “The ambulance?” she repeated. She’d forgotten about that. Forgotten about everything except for this baby she was now holding.

  “Unless you’d rather stay here for a while,” Dugan told her, looking perfectly serious.

  No, it was definitely better for her to be around other people. “No, I—”

  “I’m kidding, Scarlet,” he told her, waving away his previous words. “Just hang on. We’ll get you and your girl to the hospital and all of this will seem like just one bad dream,” he promised.

  “No, I didn’t mean that—” the woman began, but Dugan was already on the phone.

  Holding up his hand as a silent request that she should hang on to her thoughts until he was able to get off the phone, he started to talk to the person on the other end.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a female dispatcher asked.

  “This is Detective Dugan Cavanaugh,” he said, then gave the woman on the other end of the phone his badge number. “I need a bus sent out right away to the corner of Dyer and Santa Rosa. I’ve got a mother and a baby here.” He smiled at them as he said it. “The city just gained a new citizen about three minutes ago. Mother and baby seem to be doing fine, but I’ll leave that up to you to determine,” he told dispatch.

  “Very good, detective. I can have an ambulance out there within the next ten minutes. Will you be there, as well?” she asked.

  “Got nowhere else to be,” he answered, still looking at the woman and the baby he had helped to bring into the world.

  “Fine. Ten minutes,” the woman repeated, then ended the call.

  “Are you coming with me?” the new mother asked, looking at him above her mewling baby.

  “Unless you’d rather end our beautiful friendship right here,” he said, giving her the option.

  “No,” she answered. And then, in words that had been entirely unfamiliar to her these last few years, she said, “I’d like you to come.”

  “Then I will,” he told her. Cocking his head, he listened for a second, then said, “I think the ambulance’s already coming. Must be a slow night,” he told her with a wink.

  Just then, as the baby began to cry, he felt his phone ringing. “I think I spoke too soon,” he said as he took out his cell phone and looked at the call number on the screen. “Yup, I spoke too soon.”

  The number on the screen was one he knew very well.

  Chapter 2

  “Dugan Cavanaugh,” Dugan said as he answered the phone.

  “We’ve got a problem, Cavanaugh,”
the voice on the other end of the line told him. It was the detective he’d been partnered for over the last year and a half, Jason Nguyen.

  Dugan watched as he saw the ambulance pulling up into the alley. “Now?”

  “No, tomorrow,” Jason answered. “Of course now. Look, tell the honey you’re with you’ll get back to her as soon as you can, but that something’s come up and you need to go.”

  “For your information,” Dugan informed the other detective, “I’m not with a ‘honey.’”

  “Good, then that’ll make it easier for you to get over here,” Jason said. Dugan could hear noise in the background, but he refrained from asking what was going on. Jason had a habit of leaving no detail untold if he could possible help it.

  “Look,” Jason was saying, “I don’t like getting up out of a dead sleep, either, but you need to have gotten your tail out here at least five minutes ago.”

  The ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were getting out. Dugan silently waved the two men over toward the woman’s car even though he was still on the phone.

  “Why?” he asked, asking Jason. “What won’t keep until tomorrow morning?”

  “Mitch Gomez was just fished out of the lake twenty minutes ago,” Jason answered flatly.

  “That’ll do it.” Dugan didn’t have to ask if the man was dead. Nguyen wouldn’t be calling him if he wasn’t. “Where are you?” He paused as the other detective rattled off the address. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Dugan said grimly.

  He terminated the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

  Meanwhile, the two paramedics were bringing around the gurney. “You the father?” the paramedic closest to him, Jeff, asked.

  Still in the vehicle, the woman cried, “No, he’s not!”

  Dugan shook his head. “Just a Good Samaritan in the right place at the right time,” he told the paramedic.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll get you and your baby to the hospital quickly,” the other paramedic, Nathan according to his tag, was saying to the woman. Before he tried to get her and her baby out of the car, he looked back toward Dugan. “Are you coming with her, Good Samaritan?” he asked.

  The next moment, he handed the baby over to his partner and then he took the woman gently into his arms. With a minimum of effort, he transferred her carefully to the gurney.

  “Something I have to do first,” Dugan answered the paramedic. When both the new mother, now on the gurney, and the paramedic looked at him, Dugan explained, “I’m a cop. Something’s come up.” Turning his attention toward the woman he’d just aided, he told her, “But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding.

  Dugan had a feeling she didn’t believe him, but there was nothing he could do about that right now. All that mattered was that she was in safe hands and that was all that really counted, anyway.

  “I’ll see you later,” he told the new mother as he watched the paramedics place her gurney in the back of the ambulance.

  “Right, later,” she replied, then added, “Don’t worry about it.”

  Dugan frowned. He should have called his aunt’s ambulance, he thought as he watched the paramedics close the doors and then round to the front of the vehicle. He knew all the drivers there. But there was nothing he could do about that now.

  Dugan sprang into action. He quickly closed up the woman’s car and then, finally, ran to his own a block away.

  Starting it up, he took out the detachable light and stuck it on top of the roof. He didn’t like doing it to the Mustang, but the situation was dire and he needed to get there ASAP.

  He still couldn’t believe that Gomez was dead. He’d only managed to finally talk the guy into being his confidential informant less than a month ago.

  * * *

  “I don’t think he ever knew what hit him,” Jason said as he stood there, looking down at the sprawled-out body lying before him.

  Dugan had managed to get there in record time. Luckily, at this time of night, most of Aurora’s citizens were asleep and traffic was close to non-existent except for a few hotspots. As it was, this had happened near the lake that was located in the next town. By the time he had gotten there, Mitch Gomez’s body had not only been fished out, it was now about to be taken away by the medical examiner.

  Dugan had arrived just in time to see the ME begin to zip up the black body bag. Stopping the man, he looked down at Gomez’s lifeless face.

  “Three shots to the back of the head,” Jason told him. “Execution style.”

  Dugan blew out a breath. “Damn. Any chance we can get jurisdiction over the body?” he asked.

  The medical examiner didn’t answer him. Instead, he just finished closing up the bag, then with the help of his assistant, he took it away.

  Jason was left to answer the question. “Hey, it happened here, away from Aurora, but I don’t think they’re going to fight you for it if you want to claim the body as ours. Just remember, it becomes our unsolved murder,” the detective told Dugan. “Not exactly brownie points for that as far as I can see if we don’t solve it.” He looked at Dugan closely. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “He was my CI,” Dugan said, looking at the body as it was being taken away. “Hell, he wasn’t even old enough to legally drink,” he added, shaking his head. The next moment, he went after the ME and said, “Leave it here. We’ll take the body.”

  The medical examiner shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. I’ve got more than enough bodies in the morgue as it is,” he told Dugan. “Leave it,” he said to his assistant.

  “He wasn’t legally old enough to do any of the things he did, but that didn’t keep him from doing it,” Jason told his partner. “Hey, it’s not your fault,” he said, seeing the look on Dugan’s face.

  “I know that. But it still seems like a huge waste. I can’t help but feel being my CI was what got him killed,” Dugan murmured. He took out his phone in order to call their medical examiner and tell her that they had another body.

  “Yeah, well, he knew what he was doing,” Jason argued.

  “Doc? Sorry to get you up at such an ungodly hour, but we’ve got a body for you.”

  “Flowers would have been nicer,” the voice on the other end of the line mumbled. He heard another voice in the distance asking something. “I think it’s one of your cousins,” Kristin, the head medical examiner said, answering the other voice. “He’s trying to cull my favor with a body.” Returning to phone, she said, “Okay, give me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Dugan gave the woman the address then terminated the call. Tucking the phone away, he looked back at the body, hidden now beneath the black body bag.

  He had caught the one-time college student on a possessions charge and managed to flip him when Gomez said he had current intel he could trade. It turned out to be good information. Better than Dugan had thought, at first. So good, apparently, that it had wound up costing his confidential informant his life.

  “I don’t think he did know what he was doing,” Dugan said thoughtfully, referring to what Jason had said before he called Kristin. “I think that he thought it was all going to go his way and turn out the way he wanted in the end.”

  Looking at the black body bag, Jason shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it now.”

  “Except catch the son of a bitch who killed him,” Dugan pointed out, saying the words with such a passion it caused Jason to look at him uncertainly.

  “Yeah, there’s that, too,” Jason agreed, trying to lighten the mood. “Hey, I really didn’t roust you out of the arms of some nubile young woman?” Jason asked, curious.

  “Actually, I had just finished delivering a baby when you called me,” Dugan answered, turning away from the body.

  Rather than say anything, Jason just started to laugh. “Yeah, right.”


  “No, I’m serious. When you called, I had just finished delivering this woman’s baby and there was an ambulance on its way to take her to Aurora Memorial,” Dugan said, mentioning the name of the closest hospital to that particular place, which was also known as the best one in the county.

  Jason began to laugh again, but this time, his laughter was very short-lived. He paused, looking at his partner. Dugan wasn’t even smiling. Dugan usually smiled by now if he was putting him on.

  Jason eyed his partner. “You’re serious.”

  “You already asked me that,” Dugan pointed out. In the back of his head, he couldn’t help thinking that one life had just ended while another life had just started. He supposed that was what real life was all about, but somehow, it still didn’t really feel like things equaled out.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think—damn, a baby,” Jason repeated, shaking his head and grinning. “So? How did it feel?” he asked.

  “Well, it all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think or feel anything,” Dugan admitted. “And by the time I could, I was already on my way to the scene of the crime.”

  “And she’s no relation? Not a girlfriend or a...?” Jason let his voice drift off as he looked at Dugan, waiting for the other detective to fill in the blank about the woman’s relationship to him.

  “No, not a girlfriend or a...” Dugan repeated. “I was going toward my car when I heard this unearthly scream. I looked to see where it was coming from. This woman was sitting in her car, looking like she was about to pop at any second.”

  “So you delivered the baby?” Jason asked, as if he was trying to wrap his head around the whole scenario.

  “Well, I started out to do that,” Dugan answered. “But she actually wound up delivering the baby on her own for the most part.”

  “Wow.” Jason shook his head, envious of the experience. “All I did after I left the bar tonight was finish up the puzzle I was working on for the last week and a half,” he admitted quietly. “You going to go there now? To the hospital?” Jason prompted when Dugan just looked at him blankly.

  “No, not until we file all the paperwork on this,” Dugan answered. “He was my CI.”