LITMIR.BIZ

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he had no business being.

      “Will you?” he asked. The expression on his face told her he wasn’t that convinced.

      She instantly responded the way she knew he wanted her to. “Absolutely.”

      “I thought you always told the truth.” The skeptical note in his voice told her she hadn’t managed to fool him.

      Okay, time to go, Scottie decided. She’d done her due diligence, now she had to go home. She wasn’t sure just what her next move was since no one at the shelter had heard from Ethan in several months. Hearing that had just concerned her even more. Where was he? What had caused this break in his routine?

      She refused to allow panic to take center stage. If it did, then she’d be lost, not to mention that Ethan might very well be lost, as well. She had a feeling he might need her at her sharpest.

      Scottie pushed back her chair. “Well, this has been fun, but I’ve got to get going,” she told Bryce, preparing to get up.

      But what she’d hoped would be a clean getaway hit a rather large stumbling block when a tall, muscular man moved right in front of her.

      “Damn, it is you,” he said, surprised and pleased at the same time. He looked to Bryce, who was still seated. “Is the end of the world coming?”

      Scottie looked up and found herself staring into the face of Duncan Cavanaugh, Bryce’s older brother and one of the people she had worked with on occasion while she’d been assigned to Homicide.

      An incredulous expression on his face, Duncan looked at his brother. “How did you manage to talk her into coming to Malone’s? She always said no when she was working Homicide.”

      Bryce grinned. “I guess she just finds me better company than you.”

      “Yeah, like that’s the reason.” Duncan laughed, dismissing the answer and shaking his head. He turned back to Scottie who continued to look as if she was out of her natural habitat. “Well, it’s nice to see you, Scottie. Hope things are working out for you in Robbery.”

      “Too soon to tell,” she replied quietly, unconsciously slanting a glance toward Bryce.

      “Nothing’s changed, I see. Honest to a fault,” Duncan commented. He smiled at her. “It has its charm.” It was unclear if he was referring to her honesty or to her new department. With that, he raised his bottle in a silent salute. “Carry on, little brother.”

      “Shouldn’t you be home?” Bryce asked. When Duncan looked at him quizzically, Bryce elaborated. “Isn’t Noelle due any day now?”

      “Another week or so,” Duncan answered. A bemused smile played on his lips. “But you know that old adage about a watched pot not boiling—”

      Hearing that, Scottie couldn’t help commenting, “I’m sure your wife must love being compared to a pot.”

      “Actually,” Duncan told her, “she was the one who came up with that line when she insisted I go about my business normally. As if I could.” Duncan laughed with a shake of his head. “Lucy’s with her when I can’t be home,” he told his brother in case the latter thought he was just abandoning his wife.

      “‘Lucy’?” Scottie repeated.

      “Noelle’s grandmother,” Duncan told her. “She doesn’t like being called ‘grandma.’ Likes ‘great-grandma’ even less,” he added with a laugh.

      “Still, don’t you want to be sober for your firstborn?” Bryce asked.

      “I am sober, bro. So sober that it’s almost painful. This is a light ale,” he told them, holding his bottle aloft. “And I’ve only had one, which is my limit these days. I’m here more for the company than the libation,” Duncan confided. “Like I said, Noelle doesn’t like having me hovering around her, being nervous.”

      “You, nervous?” Bryce echoed incredulously. Growing up, Duncan had always been the one who leaped first then looked, practically giving their late mother a heart attack more than once. “I thought you were the brother with nerves of steel.”

      “His nerves might be made of steel, but he’s got a heart made out of pure mush,” Moira Cavanaugh, their sister, chimed in as she joined their small circle. “Hi, I’m Moira. I have the sad fortune of being their sister,” she told Scottie, indicating both men at the table.

      Duncan was about to defend his good name when suddenly the first few bars of a song that almost everyone was familiar with rang out. It was a marching song written by John Philip Sousa. Both Bryce and Moira looked right at Duncan who, for the first time in his life, turned rather pale.

      “It’s Lucy,” he cried before he even took out his cell. “I had Valri program that ringtone for Noelle’s grandmother so I’d know it was her calling.”

      “Maybe she’s just checking in to see when you’re coming home,” Moira suggested, even though it appeared to Scottie that she was beginning to get excited, as well.

      “What are the odds?” Duncan asked. Yanking the phone out of his pocket, he almost dropped it right in front of Scottie before he managed to get a better grip on it and then swipe it open. “Hello? Is it time?” he asked, his voice almost breathless. “Oh. Okay.” His shoulders sagged with relief as he told the caller, “I’ll pick it up on my way home. Be there in twenty minutes.”

      Terminating the call, Duncan saw that all eyes around the small table and beyond were on him.

      “Noelle wants me to pick up some mint-chip ice cream on my way home.”

      Like the others, Bryce had thought it was “time.” The false alarm had him laughing. “Better get going then, bro. And give my love to Noelle.”

      “Isn’t that how this whole thing got started?” Moira quipped innocently.

      Duncan waved a silencing hand at her. He left his half-consumed bottle of ale on the table, nodding at Scottie as he said, “Nice to see you finally out after hours.” And with that, he made his way to the front entrance.

      “I sure hope she gives birth soon,” Moira commented to Bryce and his new partner as she started walking away, as well. “Right now, Duncan’s moving around like a man in a trance.”

      “As opposed to the way he’ll be moving around after the baby’s here and he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week.”

      Scottie turned in her chair to see that the comment had come from Sean Cavanaugh, the head of the Crime Scene Investigation’s day shift and part of the older generation of Cavanaughs working in the precinct.

      Obviously having overheard their conversation, Sean smiled warmly at the young woman at the table with his nephew.

      “Poor guy doesn’t know that these are what he’ll look back on as ‘the good old days’ for the first couple of years as he struggles to get his ‘daddy legs,’” Sean said with a fond laugh.

      “‘Daddy legs’?” Scottie repeated, looking toward the older man for an explanation.

      “They’re just like sea legs except they’re a lot trickier to maneuver with,” Sean recalled, laughing softly as he remembered several instances. “After having seven kids, I ought to know.”

      “I thought it was the mother who stayed up all night with the kids,” Bryce commented.

      His uncle laughed, patting him on his cheek. “So young, so much to learn,” he commented with amusement. And then he looked at Scottie again, as if taking a close look at her this time. “You’re Bryce’s new partner, aren’t you?”

      She and Sean Cavanaugh had never crossed paths. That he even knew who she was really surprised her. “Yes, but how did you—?”

      The corners of Sean’s mouth curved, his expression almost bordering on the mysterious.

      “There

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