The Strong Silent Type Page 7

  Chapter Six

  H awk frowned. It was taking far too long to down this one beer. Every time he bent his elbow, about to drink some more of the deep amber liquid, someone else would come up to bend his ear instead.

  If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that the whole establishment had been packed with people who belonged to T.A.—Teris Anonymous, there to try to purge as many words out of their system as was humanly possible without imploding.

  It was his idea of a living hell, being surrounded by an endless supply of people who did nothing but talk. And talk. And talk.

  Even people he thought kept mostly their own council, like his partner’s older brother, Shaw, couldn’t seem to pass up the opportunity to stop by and say something to him tonight.

  In Shaw’s case, it was advice. The tall, muscular detective took a chair next to him at the small table Teri had staked out for them while her older sister, Callie, flanked him on the other side. He was getting a triple dose of Cavanaughs, the only saving grace being that the older two didn’t talk nearly as much as his partner did.

  Straddling his chair cowboy fashion, Shaw took a healthy swig from his mug before saying, “You’ve got my sincere pity, Hawk.”

  With a lead-in like that, Hawk supposed he was expected to bite, so to save time, he did. “And why’s that?”

  “Being partnered with Teri.” He nodded toward his middle sister, who had temporarily gotten up to say something to one of the other detectives. “She’s relentless. I’m pretty convinced that she could get Satan to do her bidding if she kept after him long enough.”

  Hawk couldn’t help wondering if the other detective was somehow making a comparison here, equating him to the prince of darkness. The thought amused him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been thought to walk on the dark side.

  Which was fine with him. The less people knew about him, the better. He didn’t particularly like the idea of his life being up for public viewing. He was an honest cop—that was all anyone needed to know about him. Anything else was no one’s business but his.

  “Good to know,” Hawk murmured. He took the momentarily lull to finally drain the last of his beer. It was way past time to go.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teri on her way back. For a moment, he watched as her hips gently swayed with every step she took. And then he realized she was motioning to the bartender to send over one more beer, pointing to him as the recipient.

  Hawk set his mug firmly on the table. “You said one,” he told her as she rejoined them.

  Callie looked from her sister to Teri’s partner. “One doesn’t really mean one.”

  Was this one going to be as irritating as her sister? Hawk wondered. “It does in my book.”

  Looking at Callie, Teri shrugged. “He follows a straight and narrow path.” With a wave of her hand to the bartender, she canceled the new order.

  She was disappointed, but a deal was a deal, even if it hadn’t turned out the way she’d wanted. She’d hoped that since he’d finally joined her for a sociable drink, she could get Hawk to come around, to open up—at least just a tiny bit.

  Although he seemed to get along well enough with Shaw and Callie, as always, Hawk seemed to prefer to sit back and listen. Or least give the appearance of listening. With Hawk, you could never tell if he was taking everything in or if he was off somewhere else entirely in his head.

  She wondered why he was content to be alone. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it. There was so much you missed that way.

  Teri looked at the empty mug, knowing he was about to leave. “Doesn’t seem like nearly enough to say thanks,” she told him.

  He hadn’t come here so that she could say thanks. He’d come because…well, he wasn’t really sure why he’d come now that he thought about it. Maybe it had been his attempt at shutting her up so that he wouldn’t have to hear her invite him here anymore.

  Even as he formed the thought, he knew it was a lie. Nothing could shut Cavanaugh up for long, and after nine months, he’d be the first to testify to that.

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Like I said, one canceled out the other.”

  Teri studied him for a moment, temporarily ignoring the fact that they weren’t alone, that there was more than a score of ears within hearing distance. “Then why did you come?”

  He gave her the excuse that came up most readily. “Because you wouldn’t stop pushing until I gave in. Now you’ll stop.”

  Shaw laughed, shaking his head. “You don’t know her very well yet, do you? You gave in to her. Refueled by her triumph, she’ll just push more. It’s the nature of the beast.” Teri swatted at Shaw. He ducked a beat too late. Her fingertips made contact with the back of his head. “Emphasis on beast,” Shaw added, ducking before she could make contact this time around. He pretended to eye his middle sister. “Dangerous thing, the department giving her a gun. But then, if they gave one to Rayne, I guess they’d issue a weapon to just about anyone.”

  “Hair-trigger temper?” Hawk asked mildly, not even knowing why he was bothering. What these people did or didn’t do or have, he told himself, made no difference to him as long as they didn’t interfere with his life.

  “Reformed hair-trigger temper,” Teri corrected, coming to her younger sister’s defense. “Apparently,” she added, looking at Hawk significantly, “there’s hope for everyone.”

  Really time for him to go, Hawk thought. “As long as you don’t raise the bar too high.” He rose from the small table that barely accommodated the four of them. He looked at Teri. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Before she could say anything further, he was on his way to the front door. With a sigh, Teri lifted her mug again.

  “Talkative devil,” Callie commented, watching Hawk disappear into the crowd.

  “I’m sure that he’d tell you Teri makes up for it.” Shaw grinned at his middle sister.

  Callie downed the last of her own beer, setting the mug on the table. “Reminds me of Patrick before his epiphany.” She rose. “Time for me to call it a day, too.” She stretched a little like someone coming out of a confining space. “A long one.”

  Nodding, Teri got up, as well. Shaw was already on his feet. She wanted to ask her question before they left. She’d been waiting to get them alone, not wanting to have to hear Hawk make another comment about privacy. “Do either one of you have any idea what Dad might be dropping off at the criminal lab?”

  Callie, looking mildly interested, hesitated as if waiting for a punch line. “No, why?”

  “I bumped into him earlier today and he didn’t say a word about it, but Mulrooney told me he saw Dad with Claude Wilkins. According to Mulrooney, Dad was giving him a spoon and a book.”

  “Maybe it was a gift,” Shaw suggested.

  That would have been her take on it, if Wilkins hadn’t seemed so reticent to disclose any information. “When I asked Wilkins about it, he said he wasn’t comfortable discussing the matter.”

  Callie looked unfazed. “If Dad wants us to know, he’ll tell us. He’s never kept secrets from us,” she reminded her.

  “Maybe it has to do with Mom.” The thought had lingered on Teri’s mind all afternoon and now the words came blurting out. The others looked at her. “You know how he gets.”

  Shaw exchanged looks with Callie. It was a gray area they talked about less and less. “All the more reason not to ask him for details. He needs to let go and he will in his own time. The rest of us have.”

  Had they? Teri wondered several minutes later as she walked to the far end of the open parking lot and her car. She knew they all said they had accepted what everyone felt was the inevitable, but in their hearts, had they? Had they really extinguished all hope that maybe, just maybe, against all odds, their mother was still out there?

  Teri knew there were times, in the dead of night, when the loneliness would come creeping in like a deadly cancer and she’d wanted to cling to the belief that her mother would
come home.

  But then daylight would come, pushing away the somber thoughts, the unrealistic scenarios, and she would take up the rest of her life, knowing her mother was gone.

  “Stop it, Teri,” she upbraided herself sharply as she turned on the engine, “you’ve got a case to solve. Don’t go thinking about things that have no solution.” There was never going to be a final answer as to what became of their mother. The most likely scenario was one she didn’t want to entertain. Her mother was gone. That was the bottom line and she had to make her peace with that. Again.

  But then, she was always tilting at windmills, always taking up challenges that no one else wanted.

  Like bringing Hawk out of his armored shell.

  The evening hadn’t exactly gone swimmingly, but he had come out. He had accompanied her to the Shannon, she reminded herself. That had been a first and she shouldn’t be minimizing it.

  One small step for Hawk, one giant leap for me.

  With a smile, she pulled out of the space, her eyes glued to the rearview mirror, alert for any lit taillights. After several minutes, she was on the road, heading for home and rest.

  Though she hated to admit it, she suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired and was secretly glad to be on her way home. As always, her stubbornness had caused her to overdo it. But they’d have to pry the admission from her cold, cold lips because she’d never readily own up to the fact that maybe her father was right and that she should have remained home an extra day.

  When she saw the porch lights at her house, she sighed with relief.

  The telephone rang at eight that evening, its shrill noise breaking into the silence that hovered around the house tonight. Andrew hadn’t felt like turning on the TV or the radio. He was too afraid he might not hear the phone when it rang.

  Before the first ring had died away, he had the receiver up and against his ear.

  For all intents and purposes, he was alone here tonight. Teri had gone to bed after a light supper, for once listening to him about getting her rest. She’d looked ghastly pale this evening. It’s what she got for being so stubborn.

  For being his daughter, he’d thought, because he would have done exactly what she had and gotten back up on the horse that had thrown him. She was that determined to break a case, one that went beyond a single simple home invasion.

  “Hello?” His own voice sounded a little breathless to his ear. But he’d been waiting for this call. Waiting for it even before he’d left the crime lab.

  “Andy, it’s Claude.”

  Andrew could feel his pulse accelerating. He dispensed with his customary cheerful chitchat. There was only one thought on his mind. One thought that had been there all afternoon, stilling his brain activity to such an extent that he had exchanged perhaps ten sentences with Teri from the time she came home to the time she had gone to her room.

  Not since Rose had first disappeared had he felt such a high level of anticipation wrapped in dread. “Did they match?”

  There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. Andrew braced himself for disappointment. “Had some trouble getting a clear print.”

  C’mon, c’mon, don’t talk me to death, just tell me what I need to know. He knew how Wilkins worked. “But you did.”

  “I did. Finally.”

  Claude Wilkins was the best at what he did, none better. But the man was incredibly long-winded and given half an opportunity, could talk on for hours about virtually nothing. And this was far from nothing. This was his very future on the line.

  “And?” Andrew urged, trying to curb his impatience and keep from snapping at the man he’d known for over thirty-five years.

  “They match. Whose are they, Andy?”

  He had refrained from telling the head technician his hopes on the matter. He knew what the others thought, how they felt. Pity was something he had no desire to encounter again. “They belong to someone I once knew.”

  “Long-lost friend?” Wilkins probed.

  “Yeah.” It was a safe enough answer, although she’d been more than a friend, more than a wife to him. Rose Gallagher Cavanaugh had been the other half of his soul, and he’d been incomplete ever since she’d disappeared. “Thanks, Claude, I owe you one.”

  He heard a soft chuckle on the other end of the time. “Prime rib dinner comes to mind.”

  Wilkins had wandered onto territory reserved for the other major love of his life after his family and police work. Cooking. “You got it. I’ll be by for the spoon and book tomorrow.” About to hang up, there was something in the other man’s tone that stopped him.

  “Oh, I think you should know. Teri came by this afternoon and asked if you’d left something for me to examine.”

  “What did you say?”

  Wilkins was glib and open. “That I wasn’t comfortable talking about it. Not a hell of a whole lot I could have told her, anyway, Andy,” he pointed out. “You never said who you thought the prints belonged to.”

  “No,” Andrew said with finality, terminating this part of the conversation. “I didn’t. Dinner sometime next week all right with you?”

  If he felt he was being dealt with abruptly, Wilkins gave no indication of it in his voice. “You’re on. Just call and tell me when. I’ll bring my appetite.”

  Saying something that passed for appropriate, Andrew hung up. He’d barely heard Wilkins. Even thoughts of possibly being discovered by his daughter before he was ready to share this with them slipped into the far recesses of his mind.

  He’d found her.

  After all this time, he’d found her. He’d known it all along. Known that she was alive.

  Tears gathered in his eyes.

  Tears of joy.

  And tears of sorrow, for everything Rose had missed over these last fifteen years.

  “So, was it good for you?” Teri asked cheerfully as she walked into the squad room.

  Her question was directed toward Hawk who was just hanging up the phone. His desk, including the keyboard he rarely used, was completely covered with notes he’d been poring over since early this morning. He looked up now and sent a dark look his partner’s way.

  “It was good for me,” she told Hawk when he made no response.

  When she’d woken up this morning, she’d felt as if her world was completely filled with sunshine. Never a sluggish riser, the way her younger sister, Rayne, was, this was still an unusual high even for her and she had nothing to pin it on—except perhaps that she had finally gotten Hawk to come to the Shannon. Success, no matter how minor, always felt good.

  The look Hawk gave her was that much darker because her question had aroused a scenario in his head that had no place being there.

  “Hey, you two talking about what I think you’re talking about?” Mulrooney asked, lowering his voice even as his eyes darted from her to Hawk and then back again.

  “Number one,” Hawk began tersely, “I’m not talking, she is so there is no ‘two’ here. And number two, God only knows what Cavanaugh is babbling about this time.”

  “I’m in too good a mood to let your grumpiness affect me,” she informed Hawk. Coming up behind Hawk’s chair, she placed her hands on his shoulders as if he were a budding protégé she was sponsoring for an exclusive club. “You weren’t there, Dan, but Hawk here finally made it to the Shannon last night.” She beamed down at him. God, but he had thick, black hair. The kind that tempted a woman to run her fingers through it. She leaned her face down to be level with his. “So, the next office barbecue, your place?”

  Hawk purposely turned around in his chair, breaking the connection. Funny, he could almost still feel her hands on his shoulders. “If I’d known you’d act this crazy, I would have never said yes. What the hell’s gotten into you this morning?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Maybe I’m just glad to be alive.”

  Mulrooney laughed shortly. “Yeah,” he agreed. “The alternative really stinks.”

  “All depends on your take on this life and the
afterlife,” his partner, Tom Kassidy, a man half his girth and almost half Mulrooney’s height, piped up as he joined the forum.

  Teri looked at her partner. “How about it, Hawk? Do you believe in an afterlife?”

  Hawk looked at her pointedly. “Wouldn’t know about that.” He wrote something down on his small, worn pad before sticking it back into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m pretty sure about hell on earth, though.”

  Mulrooney laughed as he crossed to the doorway. It was time to scrounge up his morning snack from the vending machine. “He’s got you there, Cavanaugh.”

  Actually, Teri thought, looking at Hawk, the man had her in a lot of ways she didn’t have time to dwell on right now.

  “So,” she began, just as cheerfully as she had before, settling in behind her desk, “we find anything new on the home invasions?” As far as she knew, Hawk didn’t get any personal calls. He hadn’t in the nine months they’d been together. Which meant that the call he’d just finished had to have something to do with work. With their case if they were lucky.

  Hawk rose to his feet. “I’m going to check out something.”

  She stood in an instant, picking up the small shoulder purse she hadn’t had time to put away yet. “Okay.”

  “Alone.” The look he tossed over his shoulder was meant to glue her feet in place.

  It didn’t.

  “Hey, we’re partners, remember?” She fell into step beside him. “Where you go, I go—unless it’s the men’s room.”

  He paused, debating. He really did prefer doing things alone, especially when it came to seeing his contacts. But there was no reason he could give her that would make her stay in the office. “You can come, as long as you leave the sunshiny attitude behind.”

  She saluted, earning herself a deeper frown. “I’ll do my best.”

  Without saying another word, he led the way out of the office. He had a feeling that her best was going to fall woefully short of his expectations.