“Case over?” Brennan asked. Obviously his digging hadn’t turned up the whole story.
Brennan shook his head. “No, sir.”
“I see,” Brian replied quietly. And he did because all the pieces suddenly came together. “You blew your cover saving my brother.”
Brennan didn’t want any accolades. He’d done what needed doing. That it cost him wasn’t the victim’s fault. “I had no choice.”
“Some people might argue that you did have a choice.”
At bottom it was an argument that debated the responsibilities of a cameraman. Does he or she watch a scene unfold and film it as it happens no matter what that might be or interfere if what is being filmed depicts something immoral or illegal? Some felt it was their duty to record events as they happened; others felt duty-bound to come in on the side of right.
Brennan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what anybody argues. Way I see it, I didn’t have a choice. He would have been dead if I just stood and watched.”
Brian smiled and nodded. “Good answer—for all of us. So, does this mean you’re currently out of a job?” he asked.
“Change of venue,” Brennan corrected. “They put me on desk duty.”
“Until we can trust you to keep your assignment foremost on your ‘to-do’ list and not play superhero, you stay behind a desk,” Lieutenant Lisbon, his direct superior, had shouted at him. As fair skinned as they came, Lisbon had a habit of turning an almost bright red whenever he was angry and he had been very angry the day he’d thrown him off the case.
Brian looked at him knowingly. “Let me guess. You’re not a desk duty kind of guy.”
“Nope.”
Brian didn’t even pause before asking, “Have you given any thought to having a different sort of change of venue?”
Was the chief of Ds being philosophical, or—? “What do you mean, ‘different’?”
Brian felt him out slowly, watching Brennan’s eyes for his true response. “Let’s just say going from the DEA to being a police detective on the Aurora Police Department?”
Brennan’s electric blue eyes narrowed as he stopped taking in the people in the immediate vicinity and focused completely on the man he was talking to.
“Are you offering me a job, sir?” he asked a little uncertainly.
The politely worded question almost had him laughing out loud. “Boy, after what you did, you can write your own ticket to anything that’s within this family’s power to give, so yes, I am offering you a job. As a matter of fact, something recently came to my attention that you would undoubtedly be perfect for, given your undercover background.”
Brennan could feel himself getting hopeful. He needed to nip that in the bud if this wasn’t going to pan out. “You’re not just pulling my leg, are you, sir?”
“I have been known to do a great many things in my time, singularly or on an ongoing basis. However, leg pulling does not number among them, so no, I am not pulling your leg.”
Setting his own glass—now devoid of beer—aside on the closest flat surface, Brian turned his attention completely to the subject he was about to share with this new member of the family.
“Word has it that we’ve had more than our share of runaways lately. There have always been one or two in a year. However, the number went up dramatically recently. Ten in two months.”
“You don’t think they’re runaways?” It was a rhetorical question.
“I do not,” Brian confirmed. Runaways were bad enough. What he was about to say was infinitely worse. “Rumor has it that these missing girls are being ‘recruited’ one way or another for the sole purpose of becoming sex slaves, used to sate the appetites of men whose sick preferences tend toward underaged girls. Preferably untouched underaged girls. I’m putting together a task force to track down the people in charge of this sex-trafficking ring, and I could use a man like you on the inside to do what you normally do.”
“And that is?” Brennan asked, curious as to how the chief perceived him.
“Get the bad guys to trust you,” Brian said simply, humor curving the sides of his mouth.
This definitely sounded as if it had possibilities and it certainly beat the hell out of sitting behind a desk, aging.
“Who would I have to see about applying for the job?” Brennan asked.
“You’re seeing him,” Brian assured him, then Brian laughed softly to himself as he shook his head and marveled, “Who knew it would be such a small world and that someone from the very branch of the family that Andrew set out to track down wound up saving his life.” Brian straightened, moving away from the wall. “I guess that’s what they mean when people talk about ‘karma.’”
“Maybe,” Brennan allowed.
He certainly had no better or other plausible explanation for why he’d been where he was that fateful night. He hadn’t even known that his late grandfather had had any family other than the four children he had fathered.
The life Brennan had chosen didn’t allow him to make any unnecessary contact with anyone from his “other” life for months at a time. Since he wasn’t married and his last semimeaningful relationship was far in the past, he was a perfect candidate for the job he’d had.
Emphasis, Brennan reminded himself, on the word had.
Brian grinned at him as the man straightened and indicated a keg several yards away. “Let’s see about getting you that refill now,” he prompted.
Brennan looked down at the glass he was holding and noticed that it was empty. Without realizing it, as he’d talked to Brian, he’d consumed the rest of the beer.
He flashed a grin now and said, “Sure, why not?”
Brian clapped an arm around his shoulders, directing him toward the keg. “Can’t think of a single reason,” he confirmed. “Let’s go.”
* * *
“A little overwhelming, isn’t it?” the tall, broad-shouldered man who had joined Brennan nursing something amber in a chunky glass, asked, amused.
The dinner had been served and now everyone had broken up into smaller groups, some remaining in the house, some drifting outside. All in all, Andrew Cavanaugh’s “get acquainted” party was teeming with Cavanaughs. Brennan was still trying to absorb everything that his chance action several weeks ago had brought about.
So many names, so many faces, he couldn’t help thinking.
Brennan looked now at the man who was addressing him. They were around the same height and there was something vaguely familiar about him.
Or maybe it was that the amicable man looked a great deal like the lion’s share of the men who were meandering about the house and grounds, talking, laughing or, in some instances, just listening.
“You could say that,” Brennan agreed.
“Don’t be shy about it. First time I attended one of these ‘little’ family gatherings, I thought I’d wandered into a central casting call for Hollywood’s answer to what a family of cops was supposed to look like.”
“The first time,” Brennan repeated, having picked up the term. “Does that mean that you’re not a Cavanaugh?”
“Well, yeah, actually, I am,” the other man more than willingly admitted, then grinned as he remembered the confusion that had ensued over this discovery coming to light. “But at the time, I thought I was a Cavelli.”
If this was some kind of a riddle, it left him standing in the dark. “I’m sorry, but