LITMIR.BIZ

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and fragile, she was no match against his father’s wrath.

      Neither was he, but maybe together...

      Kane had gotten to the kitchen just as his father’s anger had hit a new high.

      The flash from the handgun seized his attention as he struggled to process what he saw. What his brain already knew. He was terrified.

      He ran to his mother to block the bullet, to divert it from its course.

      But he was too late.

      The bullet from his father’s handgun had found its intended target less than a split second earlier.

      His mother’s face abruptly froze, highlighting surprise and pain. And then she pitched backward. Blood poured freely from the newly created hole in her abdomen.

      Kane opened his mouth to scream his protest, but nothing came out. Not a single sound came out to express his fear, his anger, his horrified outrage at the senselessness of it all.

      Unable to voice his reaction, Kane put all his energy into attempting to stop the bleeding. But his hands were too small for the task. Blood squeezed its way through his delicate, ineffective fingers, underscoring his helplessness.

      “Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me,” he begged the woman who was already gone.

      His voice only served to irritate his father further. “You love her that much, you little bastard? Then you’re going to join her!”

      The next second he heard his father’s gun discharge. Felt something sharp and painful tear through his chest. Felt something else oozing out.

      Blood.

      Was that his?

      Yes. He was bleeding. His blood was mingling with his mother’s.

      He sank to his knees in slow motion.

      At least it felt that way. The last thing he heard was the roar of the handgun again.

      The last thing he saw was his father going down.

      A cry of traumatized anguish tore from his lips. The sound of heavy breathing echoed in the empty room as he bolted upright.

      In his bed.

      In his bedroom.

      Kane looked down at his torso, checking for bullet holes. There were none. Just the scar of one, but it had healed.

      He was soaked, but it was with sweat, not blood.

      Shaking, Kane dragged his hand through his hair, doing his best to reclaim some sort of calm, and then resigning himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to find it in what was left of the night.

      The dream had found him again.

      He hadn’t had it in a long, long time, but now it was back, forcing him back to square one. He had to work at getting himself back on an even keel.

      Again.

      He was exhausted—and restless beyond words.

      Throwing off the covers, he got up. Beyond his window, darkness still embraced the city of Aurora, but there was no way he was going to go back to sleep. Not now.

      Resigned, Kane made his way to the kitchen, fervently wishing he hadn’t given up smoking last month.

      It looked as if his nerves were going to have to calm down on their own.

      He bit off a couple of colorful words under his breath.

      It wasn’t going to be easy.

Chapter 1

      The detective was ignoring her.

      Well, not so much ignoring her, Kelly Cavanaugh silently amended, as acting as if no one else was sitting in the chief of detectives’ office, waiting for the man to come in, except for him.

      They actually did know one another—by sight at least—from the department they both worked in. Robbery, a division in the Aurora Police Department, wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t exactly miniscule, either. She saw Detective Kane Durant in passing almost every day. He’d even nodded at her a couple of times in response to her voiced greeting, but they had never had any sort of conversation—not even an inane one—and that was on him. Kane Durant apparently wasn’t one for small talk.

      He didn’t seem to be one for big talk, either, Kelly thought now, even though she had tried to draw him out a time or two. His responses involved the absolute minimum of words. If something called for five words, she would offer ten if not more. Durant, however, seemed to be the type who would be hard-pressed to render more than three under the same set of circumstances.

      Doing her best not to fidget, Kelly tried engaging the stoic, dark blond detective in some sort of conversation now. The reason for that was her curiosity had gotten the best of her.

      “Do you know why we’re here?”

      Durant continued staring straight ahead, as if he was memorizing the titles of the books on the shelf behind the chief’s desk.

      Just when she decided he was going to continue ignoring her, the detective answered in a monotone voice, “Chief of ds called us in.”

      She took a breath. “Fair enough.” If the man had been any stiffer he easily could have played the part of the Tin Man in a production of The Wizard of Oz. Willing to give the stoic detective the benefit of the doubt, she told herself that maybe she should have been more specific in her query. “Do you know why he called us in?”

      “No.” The answer was given to the bookshelf, not to her.

      Kelly shook her head. She’d heard of the strong, silent type, but this was carrying things a bit too far. “You know, I had a hand puppet as a kid that talked more than you do.”

      This time, Kane spared her a glance before turning back around. It wasn’t exactly the kind of look that warmed a person’s soul, Kelly noted. It was meant to cut someone dead.

      Lucky for her, she had a thick skin and didn’t take offense easily.

      Just then she heard the door behind them open.

      Thank God! Kelly thought.

      It was all she could do to keep from breathing a huge sigh of relief. The ordeal of sitting here with this exceptionally good-looking sphinx hopefully would be over with soon.

      To acknowledge the chief’s presence, both she and the silent detective rose from their seats.

      “Sorry to keep you two waiting. I’m afraid I’m running a little behind today. But I didn’t have Raleigh bring you here to listen to my excuses.”

      Rounding his desk, Brian Cavanaugh, Aurora PD’s chief of detectives as well as Kelly’s granduncle, greeted both detectives in his office with an easy smile.

      “Sit, please,” he told the duo, underscoring his words with a hand gesture that indicated they should sink back into the seats they had vacated.

      Like everyone else in his family, Brian Cavanaugh had worked his way up in the ranks. He’d held down his current position for a number of years now and, by all accounts, the men and women who served under him gave him not only their undying loyalty but their admiration, as well. That, to him, was far better than any badge of honor or official recognition he would ever receive.

      His intent was to always do right by the department’s men and women.

      “Do either of you know why I called you in?” Brian asked, looking from the solemn-faced detective to his far more cheerful grandniece.

      He was looking at two completely different people. One reminded him of a sunny spring morning; the other made him think of a pending storm rolling in in the middle of the night.

      Neither, however, was answering the

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