“But be aware of the fact that there’s nowhere else I can put you right now, so your choice, I’m afraid, is limited to yes or no,” he said as Esteban rose to his feet. Getting up as well, Brian leaned over his desk and shook the other man’s hand. “I’d hate to lose you, Detective,” he added with conviction.
Esteban had lived the past three years exclusively in a world where lip service was commonplace and actions spoke far louder than anything that could be said.
Still, despite his wariness of the spoken word, Esteban had the feeling that the Chief was being sincere. It didn’t change what he felt was going to be the ultimate outcome of this meeting, but it was still nice to be appreciated, even if just for a fleeting moment.
“Think long and hard, Detective,” Brian counseled somberly.
“I plan to, sir,” Esteban answered.
Deliberately avoiding any eye contact with either the Chief of D’s or the pretty blonde in the room, Esteban strode out of the office.
Kari watched in silence as the detective walked away. She was still debating whether or not this was the same person who had created such a stir in high school eight short years ago.
His gait was different, she decided. But the set of his shoulders... That definitely reminded her of the Steve she knew. She had a feeling that if she came right out and asked whether he’d attended Aurora High School at the same time that she had, he would just find a way to stonewall her.
No, this was going to require a little detective work on her part.
Kari made a mental note to dig out her yearbook when she got home and look through it.
Right now she was still on the job. Sort of. Turning around, she faced the man whom she had recently established a personal connection with and looked into his eyes.
Never one to beat around the bush, she said, “He’s planning on turning you down, you know.”
It was nice to know that gut instinct and intuition were alive and well in the next generation, Brian thought with satisfaction.
“I know,” he replied. “I also know he doesn’t have anything else in his life.” Brian had always made it a point to know everything that was pertinent about his people and about those who were going to become his people. Detective Esteban Fernandez was no exception.
Then this couldn’t be the Steve she’d gone to high school with, Kari decided. That Steve had had a mother, a stepfather and a younger half brother he’d doted on. Julio had come to cheer him on in all the football games.
She’d only been a detective for a short while, but she had learned very quickly how to read her superiors without making it seem as if she was trying to second-guess them.
“Would you like me to see if I can change his mind for you?” she asked.
For his part, Brian did not answer yes or no. What he did was tell her simply, “I’d like you to be Kari.”
It was enough.
She smiled, inclined her head and said, “Yes, sir,” before turning on her heel and leaving his office.
She had people to see and information to gather.
Chapter 2
Kari focused on her assignment the moment she walked out of the Chief’s office. As far as she was concerned, it was unspoken but understood that she could avail herself of all the resources she needed in order to bring Detective Esteban Fernandez back into the fold.
Being a Cavanaugh certainly had its perks, Kari couldn’t help thinking with a smile. Because there were so many Cavanaughs in the actual police department, as well as various offshoots’such as the D.A.’s office’she had access to places and entities she hadn’t even known existed before she discovered her connection to the large family.
Technically, she hadn’t actually “discovered” the connection’she, along with the rest of her siblings, had been told about it by her father, who also happened to be the head of the CSI day unit. He’d called a family meeting shortly after he’d been informed by none other than Andrew Cavanaugh, the former Aurora chief of police, that he was actually a Cavanaugh.
According to Andrew, her father, Sean, had been the victim of a distraught nurse’s error. Reeling from the news that her fiancé had been killed serving overseas, she’d completed her rounds in a total emotional fog. It eventually came to light that during this time he and another male infant, born on the same day and having the same first name and the same first three letters of the last name, had accidentally been switched.
The end result was that her father had gone home with Mr. and Mrs. Cavelli, while the Cavellis’ real son had gone home with Shamus Cavanaugh and his wife.
Her father had grown up completely unaware of the mix-up, but secretly haunted by the strange feeling that something was off in his life. Not to mention that he didn’t resemble any of his four siblings.
Meanwhile, Kari and her family eventually found out that the real Sean Cavelli hadn’t grown up at all. He’d died in infancy, long before his first birthday, throwing the woman who ultimately turned out to be her grandmother into an all-consuming depression. That mental condition was compounded by the fact that even before the SIDS death had occurred, Martha Cavanaugh had maintained that the infant was not hers. That he was not the child she’d given birth to and held in her arms in the delivery room.
No one had paid any attention to her, thinking that she was just suffering from postpartum depression as well as the guilt and emotional trauma that went with losing an infant to what was then termed “crib death.” It wasn’t until more than four decades later, long after Martha had died, that she was proven right. The infant who had died wasn’t her son.
The discovery that the infants had been switched at birth threw both families into emotional tailspins. The various members on both sides dealt with the news in their own ways. The ones who were most affected, of course, were the Cavellis. Not only did the revelation create turmoil, but it also caused each of her six siblings as well as her father to suffer through their own personal identity crises.
But, unlike some of her siblings, finding out that she was actually a Cavanaugh did not throw Kari for a loop or cause her to stay up nights, questioning who she really was in the grand scheme of things. She accepted the change in status cheerfully, seeing it as an expansion of her base family.
In her heart, she was still a Cavelli’because to her, family had never just been about DNA or bloodlines, it was about a connection, a state of mind. Consequently, she only saw the upside in being related to the Cavanaughs, a large, prominent family most of whose members were dedicated to the principle of protecting and serving the citizens of the city in which they lived.
As far as Kari was concerned, one could never have too much family. A big, extended brood meant there was always someone to talk to, someone to side with you. Someone to have your back.
Happily, a large family also provided a wealth of connections to be tapped into. And that was exactly what she intended to take advantage of now in order to track down Fernandez’s permanent home address.
Or to at least find out where the man got his mail delivered when he wasn’t deeply immersed in the drug cartel. She reasoned that before he’d gone underground for the good of the department, he had to have hung up his clothes somewhere...and she intended to find out where that “somewhere” was located. Because with any luck, that was where he was now, weighing his options and contemplating his choices.
She intended to convince him that there was only one conceivable option with his name on it.
Brenda Cavanaugh, married to the Chief of Detectives’ son, Dax, was the police department’s reigning computer tech nonpareil. Though there were several other techs within the small department, if information was possibly obtainable, she was the one who could find it. To Kari’s way of thinking,