Cavanaugh Strong Read online

  “Absolutely,” Noelle confirmed. Then, looking at Duncan, she said, “Let’s get down there before Amanda-Susan-Virginia picks up her last piece of ‘mail’ and clears out.”

  “Who?” Valri asked, confused.

  “Inside joke. I’ll explain everything later,” Noelle promised. “But right now, we might be fighting a clock.” Actually, she was rather certain that they were. The woman was cutting her ties, leaving her familiar stomping grounds. That meant she was either getting ready to set up a new operation—or she was leaving the area altogether and calling it quits.

  Noelle rather doubted it was the latter. Once a thief, always a thief. But she had a gut feeling that their window of opportunity was about to close—if it hadn’t already.

  They were back in the car in another ten minutes. Valri had sent Duncan a text earlier that Woodland Life had received all the necessary documentation and had processed Henry’s life insurance policy. The check had been cut and made out to the charitable foundation the man had designated. It had been mailed out yesterday.

  That meant it was on its way to the post office box. With any luck, their suspect was going there to pick it up.

  Bending a few speed limits, they arrived at the address that Valri had given them and quickly verified that the box was indeed in use, having been rented out to a Curtis Abernathy over a year ago.

  “Who the hell is Curtis Abernathy?” Noelle wondered out loud when they got back into Duncan’s car, now parked across the street from the post office.

  “Beats me,” Duncan responded. Traffic was whizzing by in both directions, at times obscuring his view of the building’s door.

  “I think maybe we’ve stumbled across a ring, Cavanaugh,” Noelle theorized, quickly coming to the conclusion that there was no long-term comfortable position to be found sitting in a car. Surveillance promised to be an endurance test of both her patience and her posterior.

  Instead of commenting directly on what she’d just said, Duncan surprised her by saying, “We make a pretty good team.”

  She stopped shifting and let the words sink in. And then she smiled. “I guess we do. I had my doubts about us in the beginning,” she admitted, “but we seemed to have hit our stride.”

  “Speaking of which, what do you think about marriage?”

  Where had that come from? Stunned, she stared at Duncan, but there was nothing in his expression to tell her where he was going with this.

  The inside of her mouth felt rather dry as she asked, “As an institution, in general, or—?”

  Noelle didn’t get a chance to finish. “To me,” Duncan told her. “Marriage to me.”

  She took a breath and pretended they were just having a philosophical conversation. That he didn’t mean anything by his question and this was just a way to while away the time. “I think whoever winds up marrying you is in for one hell of a ride.”

  Duncan blew out an impatient breath. He should have known asking her wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. The woman was nothing if not complicated.

  “You want me to spell it out, don’t you?” he asked her. “Okay, I’m spelling it out—will you marry me?”

  Though she’d gone numb, she was pretty sure that her jaw had dropped. “You’re serious?” It was half question, half stunned statement.

  “Yes,” he replied firmly. “I am.”

  She had to be hallucinating—or just dreaming. There was no other explanation for this. “You’re actually asking me to marry you?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” he answered a little less patiently than before.

  This had to be a joke, or a test, right? “In the middle of a stakeout?” she cried.

  “No, not in the middle of a stakeout. We’ll have a few dates, see how that goes—and then we’ll get married,” Duncan told her. “Look, I’ve seen you under fire, I’ve seen how you operate, the way you can think on your feet—and most of all, I’ve seen you with your family and with mine. We’ve got the same values, and no other woman has even come close to making me want to have something permanent. But you do. So, what do you think?” he asked hopefully.

  As far as he was concerned, the conditions were right and he wanted to act on them before something happened to change the playing field. He was aware that Noelle had baggage that caused her to be spooked easily when it came to commitment—and prior to now, he had never even entertained the idea of commitment, but it was as if everything had suddenly aligned itself in his head and now this was all he wanted.

  Noelle stared at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “That wasn’t quite the answer I was hoping for, but no, not since I last checked.”

  “No,” Noelle answered with feeling, remembering what had happened to her last two fiancés. Maybe she was being overly superstitious, but she couldn’t help it. Not after having to go through the ordeal twice.

  Duncan’s eyes held hers, pinning her in place. “You’re turning me down?”

  “Yes.” It was the hardest word she had ever had to utter.

  Duncan grabbed on to the word as a response to his proposal. “You’re not turning me down?” he asked somewhat uncertainly.

  “This is for your own good,” she began to tell him, then stopped as she saw the object of their surveillance getting out of her car. The woman was heading straight for the post office. “Three o’clock,” Noelle exclaimed.

  Duncan blinked, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “You want to skip the dating and get married at three o’clock? Fine by me.”

  “No! Damn it, Duncan, get your mind on the case,” she cried, physically turning his head toward the post office. “Our quarry is at three o’clock. Or more like one o’clock now,” she amended.

  Duncan focused to see the woman Johnson had wistfully described and Lucy had identified walking into the post office. He was out of the car the moment she disappeared into the building. They had previously verified that there was only one exit out of the post office that was accessible to the customers, which meant that their suspect had to come out the exact same way that she’d gone in.

  Fifteen minutes after she had entered the building, the woman they thought of as Amanda exited, looking very pleased with herself.

  “Amanda Wright?” Noelle asked, falling into step with the former seniors’ home volunteer as she flanked the woman’s right side.

  The woman flashed an appropriate blank expression. “I’m afraid you have me mixed up with someone else,” she said.

  “Susan?” Duncan asked as he closed in on the woman’s left side.

  “I’m sorry, that’s not my name, either,” the woman replied, keeping her eyes straight ahead of her as she quickened her pace.

  “How about Virginia?” Noelle asked. “Does that ring a bell?”

  “No,” the woman snapped, then struggled to get herself under control as she continued walking quickly to her car. “Should it?”

  “Apparently not,” Duncan said philosophically.

  “Well, what’s in a name anyway?” Noelle shrugged dismissively. “As far as I’m concerned, you can call yourself Strawberry Delight, it really doesn’t matter. You’re still going down for the murder of Henry Robbins, Walter Teasdale, Sally Fowler and Alfie Brown. Probably more. Any other names will be added to the list as we uncover them,” she promised the other woman.

  “Amanda Wright” stopped walking and glared at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then we’ll explain to you on the way down to the precinct,” Noelle said, taking a firm hold of the woman’s arm. “Oh, and before I forget,” she plucked the letter that Amanda had in her hand, “we’ll be relieving you of that envelope you’re holding.”

  “You can’t take that. That belongs to the foundation,” the woman cried indignantly. “I’m just picking it up to
take over to them.”

  “Sure you are,” Duncan said with just a touch of sarcasm in his voice. Glancing down at the envelope to verify the sender—Woodland Life—he began to read the woman her Miranda rights, raising his voice progressively louder to be heard above the barrage of expletives she was hurling at both of them.

  * * *

  In the end, in response to a plea bargain that took the death penalty off the table in exchange for life in prison without the hope of parole, Alice Barnes, aka Amanda Wright, Susan Abernathy, Virginia Sommers and a host of other aliases, gave them the names of her two accomplices. One was an insurance broker Geraldine Lopez, who agented for all the major insurance companies and was instrumental in getting the policies fast-tracked. The other was a con artist, Willow Collins, who it seemed was responsible for coming up with the original plan. Among other courses of action, pretending to be affiliated with a local charity, Alice and Willow would pick up homeless men, provide them with food, clothing, a hotel room and money in exchange for their signatures on insurance polices.

  Initially, they had just held on to the policies until the policy holders died, but greed had them quickly escalating their approach, “helping” the people exit this life more quickly.

  “For six months to a year, we gave them a decent place to stay and we gave them hope, which was a hell of a lot better than anything they had going for them when we found them,” Alice told the assistant district attorney taking down her statement.

  After it was all over, Noelle was still stunned by both women’s callous approach to the string of murders. “I honestly think she has no regrets about what she’s done,” Noelle said. Closing her eyes, she rocked back in her chair in the squad room and shook her head. “Every time I think I’ve seen the worst mankind can offer, it gets worse,” she sighed.

  Duncan came around to her desk and sat down on the edge of it. “Not all the monsters are found in fairy tales and nightmares.”

  Noelle’s laugh had no humor in it. “You’ve got that right.”

  “Hell of a job, you two,” Jamieson said just as he was leaving for the evening. “Glad you kept at it,” he told Noelle. “Just hope this doesn’t mean you’ll be transferring to Homicide.”

  At this point, she couldn’t think of anything worse than looking at dead bodies for a living. “Nope,” she answered the lieutenant with feeling, “you’re stuck with us for good.”

  Jamieson nodded as a hint of a smile faintly curved his mouth. “I’ll try to bear up to that.” Executing a minor salute, the lieutenant left the squad room.

  The room was eerily quiet. Except for a couple of detectives on the far end of the room, the area was empty. The night shift hadn’t come in and day shift had left—except for them and two other detectives.

  Noelle stretched at her desk. “Guess it’s all over except for the shouting.”

  Duncan looked down at her from his perch. “Not yet,” he said.

  Had she forgotten about something? “Oh?”

  “You still haven’t given me an answer,” he reminded her.

  She knew immediately what he was referring to. “Yes I did. The answer’s no,” she said.

  “What if I won’t accept no for an answer?”

  “Too bad,” she said as she got ready to leave, “it’s the only answer you’re going to get.”

  He took her hands in his. Noelle tried to pull them away, but he held on. “You have feelings for me,” he insisted.

  Well, duh, she thought. “Which is exactly why the answer’s no.”

  Duncan shook his head and sighed. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Yes, I am,” she insisted. He knew her story, why was he giving her such a hard time? Why wasn’t he running for the hills? “Two people wanted to marry me. I said yes to each of them. Now they’re both dead. Can’t you understand? I want you to continue breathing. The answer’s no,” she repeated.

  He refused to believe she was serious. “You can’t be that superstitious.”

  Her eyes narrowed so that all she saw was him. “Try me.”

  He tried to find a way around this curse that had her paralyzed. “They were both your fiancés, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Engagement ring and everything?”

  He knew that, knew all the details. What did he hope to accomplish by reviewing everything? “Yes.”

  “Okay, then we’ll just skip that part. No engagement. We’ll go directly to getting married,” he told her.

  His smile was melting her heart despite all her precautions. “A week from Sunday okay with you?”

  Where did she even begin? “You are insane!”

  He didn’t bother to deny it. “Yes, I am. Insane about you.” He had to make her understand. He didn’t want to be single anymore, didn’t want to live without her. “I have been with scores of women—”

  Pulling her hands free, she held them up in front of her as if to block his words. “Too much information, Cavanaugh.”

  Duncan just plowed on as if she hadn’t said anything. “And I’ve never felt about any of them the way I feel about you. You make me want to settle down, Noelle. To sit on a sofa and pop popcorn, for God’s sake. You make me want forever,” he stressed. “I’d always heard that love packs a punch, but I thought it was just some dumb metaphor at best. Well, it’s not a metaphor, it’s true. I feel like I’ve been hit with a two-by-four.

  “The first time I kissed you—hell, the first time I saw you, I knew. Knew it was just a matter of time before I’d be doing this.”

  She looked at him uncertainly. “‘This’?”

  “Asking you to marry me,” Duncan explained. “Tell me that you don’t love me. It’s the only way to get rid of me.”

  Okay, this was for his own good, not hers. “I don’t love you.”

  He didn’t go, didn’t budge. “I don’t believe you.”

  She was running out of ways to get him to do the sensible thing while he was still breathing. “Okay, then believe this. I don’t want to take the risk.”

  “The risk is mine to take, not yours,” he pointed out. “I’ll wear a bulletproof vest if that’s what’ll make you feel better.”

  “Think about it,” he told her. “Let’s just say I believe in this ‘curse,’ I just have to get to the altar in one piece. After that, after we’re pronounced husband and wife, that so-called ‘curse’ will be lifted. What do you say?”

  “You’re not going to stop, are you?” she asked, sensing it was futile to keep saying “no,” especially when her heart was pleading “yes.”

  “Not until I get you to agree,” he told her truthfully.

  Noelle sighed. “Nobody told me how stubborn you Cavanaughs can be.”

  Duncan grinned, knowing he’d won. “It’s actually our best feature.”

  “One of your best features,” Noelle corrected just before she gave in to the overwhelming urge to kiss her very persuasive future husband-to-be. “Okay, yes, I’ll date you,” she teased just before her lips met his.

  Duncan had a feeling the rest of his life would be one hell of an adventure.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss Marie Ferrarella’s next romance,

  HER FOREVER COWBOY,

  available September 2014

  from Harlequin American Romance

  Keep reading for an excerpt from DEADLY ALLURE by Elle James.

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  Chapter 1

  Nicole Steele, “Tazer” to those who knew how lethal she could be, slipped through the loading docks entry of the corporate headquarters of Ryan Technologies. Dressed in the white coverall and cap of the Acme Cleaning Services’ staff, she blended in with others coming on to the night shift to clean the multistoried building.

  Once inside, she claimed a cleaning cart and followed the other janitors to the service elevators. At 2200 hours she didn’t expect many of the executives to be in their offices, most having gone home or out for drinks by now.

  The three other contracted cleaners who entered the elevator car with her talked about their kids, sports and the price of gasoline. Nicole kept her head down, aware of the camera located in the upper corner, above the control panel.

  A rounded woman with brassy orange hair, her gray roots showing, smacked her gum. “New at Acme?”

  “Yeah.” Nicole kept her answer short, abrupt, not inviting further conversation.

  Undaunted, the woman prompted, “Got kids?”

  “No.”

  “Guess that’s why you can still find your hips.”

  Nicole shrugged without responding.

  “I used to have a figure. Four brats ago.” The woman snorted. “Now I figure life’s too short to pass up a piece of apple pie and ice cream.”

  The others laughed and the car stopped on the seventh floor.

  “Well, this is my floor. Have a good night.” The brassy-haired janitor left the elevator and Nicole breathed a sigh.

  Another stop on the tenth floor and again on the twelfth left Nicole blissfully alone. She rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor, two floors short of her target, Brandon Ryan’s office. She’d take the stairs the rest of the way.