Cavanaugh Watch. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ ventriloquist, to utter words without moving your lips? she wondered, dropping her hand to her side. Her unwanted bodyguard seemed to be communicating through clenched teeth and barely moving his lips. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that he was using mental telepathy. Except that it was obvious to her that she wasn’t the only one who had heard the deep, rumbling voice.

      She found it difficult to keep her annoyance under wraps, but she was determined not to make any undue waves. When she’d signed on to the D.A.’s office, she’d known it wouldn’t be all fun and games, that there would be times she’d find trying, but she’d just assumed it would have to do with the workload and hours spent, not with having to put up with Darth Vader’s better-looking cousin.

      Her eyes shifted toward Kleinmann. The man looked rather satisfied with himself for some reason. Sure, why not? He wasn’t the one who had to put up with this tall, hulking shadow.

      “How long?” she asked.

      “Until the trial is over.” Kleinmann appeared to consider his answer, then added, “Maybe longer.”

      Janelle’s eyes widened. Was this some kind of torture devised for assistants to the A.D.A.? Like an initiation for a fraternity?

      She glanced over toward the assistant district attorney, hoping to get an inkling of support. But Woods didn’t seem put off by the idea of having a constant companion wherever he went. Well, maybe he didn’t mind, but she did. A line had to be drawn somewhere, didn’t it?

      “Longer?” she echoed, staring at Kleinmann. “Why longer?”

      “Retaliation—for when we do convict,” he added in a voice that refused to entertain the possibility of anything less than a conviction. No one liked to lose, but Kleinmann had made it known that he passionately hated it.

      “Maybe I can get his lawyer to accept a plea,” Woods suggested.

      Kleinmann shook his head. “I doubt it. Not after he hears about the attempted shooting. He’ll feel as if his side has all the marbles.”

      “It’s not about marbles,” Janelle interjected. “It’s about justice.” She saw Sawyer roll his eyes. Was that contempt she saw on his face, or just badly displayed amusement? She turned on him, her patience at an end. “What? You have something to say? Why don’t you say it out loud, Detective Boone, so that the rest of us can share in your wisdom?”

      He’d never liked being singled out, not when he’d worked in L.A. and not here. He was one of those people who wanted no attention, craved no spotlight. He just wanted to do his job and go home.

      “Nothing,” he bit off.

      She had to be satisfied with that. Until after the D.A. had dismissed them from his office. Once outside Kleinmann’s door and clear of his secretary, a woman who had the hearing range of a bat, Janelle abruptly stopped walking and turned to the man at her side.

      “Why did you roll your eyes back there?”

      She’d thrown him off by stopping and by the antagonistic tone in her voice. He had no desire to engage her in conversation or to have any exchange of ideas. This woman was his assignment, just like infiltrating a local drug dealer’s gang, following the trail to the top, had been his assignment, the one that had brought him to court this morning.

      Except that with the latter, he’d assumed a persona, had come up with a speech pattern, a background for himself, a made-up life he’d stepped into. Here, he was supposed to be Sawyer Boone, a detective on the APD, and he didn’t do all that well as himself. Because being himself meant sharing, something he’d only done successfully once in his life, and she was gone.

      “You don’t want to know,” he told her.

      Now there was a chauvinistic answer if ever she’d come across one. Raised with and around as many males as she had been, Janelle still had never experienced chauvinism in its truest sense. She was tested as a person, as a Cavanaugh, not as a female in a male world.

      “If I hadn’t wanted to hear the answer, Detective Boone,” she told him evenly, “I wouldn’t have asked the question.”

      He watched her for a long moment, as if he was weighing something. And then he said, “Because if you think any of this is about justice, you’re more naive than you look.”

      Her eyes narrowed as she asked, “And just how naive do I look?”

      Sawyer snorted. “Like you could be their poster girl.”

      Normally, being referred to as a girl didn’t rankle her. She had no problem with the word because she had no problem with her self-esteem. And anyone who knew her knew what kind of mettle she was made of. But for some unknown reason, everything out of this man’s mouth, including probably hello, promised to rankle her. Clear down to her bones.

      She didn’t waste her breath denying his statement or reading him the riot act because of it. She had a bigger question on her mind. “If you find this assignment beneath you, why didn’t you protest when you were given it?”

      “I did,” he answered simply. Sawyer led the way to her office on the other end of the building. He obviously already knew the layout of their floor, she thought. “I got overridden.”

      “That makes two of us,” she told him. Sawyer looked at her and she could have sworn she detected a hint of surprise in his eyes. “I guess then,” she continued, “this is something we both will just have to suffer through.”

      Sawyer said nothing. He barely nodded in response to her last statement, hiding his surprise that someone he’d just naturally assumed had been spoiled within an inch of her life would balk at being offered protection from the “bad guys.”

      Unless something wasn’t kosher here. Maybe this was a publicity stunt on her part to attract attention to the case. Maybe she was after a change of venue and this sort of thing could just do it. Not unheard of.

      “For the record,” she said as they reached her office door, “I don’t want you here as much as you don’t want to be here.”

      For the first time since he’d rescued her, the corners of his mouth curved up just a fraction. “I really doubt that, Cavanaugh.”

      Without making a comment, Janelle opened the door and walked into the office she affectionately called her cubbyhole. It was no more crammed and cluttered now than it had been before she’d left for the courthouse this morning. But somehow having an extra body with her cut down on her space. She hadn’t minded when Woods had given the tiny office to her. She didn’t require much.

      But there was hardly any room within the enclosure to stuff in another book, much less a warm body that was larger than hers by a long shot.

      She glanced around, trying to see the area through his eyes. “I really don’t know where you’re going to hang around,” she finally said.

      “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of me. And you,” he added after a slight pause.

      She felt as if she were being put on notice. And she didn’t like it. Didn’t like not feeling in charge. Control was a very, very important thing to her, something she had had to fight for ever since she could remember. That, and respect. It had been awarded within her household, but not automatically. You received respect СКАЧАТЬ