“Cole Garrison?” The name didn’t ring a bell.
“Someone I went to school with,” Clay told her.
Shaw drained the last of his coffee. “The town’s official bad boy.”
“Except that it’s his brother who’s accused of murder, not him,” Callie said as she pushed her plate back. “That makes Eric Garrison the new winner of the title, wouldn’t you say?”
“Keyword ‘accused,”’ her fiancé, Brent Montgomery, reminded her.
As a criminal court justice, Brent had been the presiding judge who had placed bail for the younger Garrison. The amount had been high, but certainly nothing to cause Eric’s affluent parents more than a momentary pause. It had surprised everyone when they hadn’t come up with the money. Especially when they had gone through the trouble of securing Schaffer Holland, an excellent defense lawyer for him. Currently, Eric was still in lockup.
“There’s an awful lot of evidence against him,” Patrick pointed out.
Without realizing it, Rayne squared her shoulders. “Maybe.”
Rayne saw the others all turn to look at her. She knew what they were thinking. That she was tilting at windmills again. Maybe that made her like her father, unwilling to accept something that everyone else took to be true.
Shaw put the obvious into words. “So you don’t believe he killed Kathy Fallon?”
The blond crop of curls moved about her head like rays of sunbeams dancing along the wind as she shook it. “Not a hundred percent, no.” It was a gut feeling, but she wasn’t about to admit that to this crowd. She knew what they’d say. Gut feelings were instincts reserved for the older members of the family, not her. “Eric’s spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he’s not violent.”
Shaw leaned back in his chair, his eyes pinned to her. “You went out with him, when? Seven, eight years ago? People change.” And then he laughed as he gestured at her. “For God’s sake, look at you. Eight years ago, your hair was blue, and so was your mouth. We all became cops so we could cover your butt and keep you out of trouble.”
Rayne rolled her eyes. “Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically.
“Hey, every family’s gotta have a goal that pulls them together,” Callie told her.
She was backed up by a chorus of murmurings. Amusement played on Callie’s lips as she looked at her watch. They all liked to tease Rayne, but there’d been a time when they’d been really seriously worried about the youngest Cavanaugh. A time when the future hadn’t looked as good as it did.
“I think all of us better be heading out.” Rising, Callie stopped to look at her almost stepdaughter, the child responsible for bringing her and Brent ultimately together in the first place. “Time to get you to school, Rachel, and your dad to the courthouse.” She looked at Brent. “Justice can’t make a move without him.”
A chorus of groans met her comment. “Kiss him and get it over with already,” Shaw ordered with a heavy sigh as he gained his feet and threw down his napkin.
“In front of all you Peeping Toms, no way.” Taking charge of Rachel, Callie moved the little girl toward the door, then paused to nudge aside Rayne and pick up her own holster and weapon. “You need a woman, Shaw.”
“I could fix you up,” Brent offered, helping his daughter on with her jacket.
Shaw held up his hands to ward off the offer and any others that might be following in its wake. “I’ll find my own woman, thanks a bunch.” He looked at the youngest Cavanaugh and attempted a diversion. “Besides, Rayne is the one you should be concentrating on. She’s the wild one, not me.”
“Not wild enough to want my own woman,” Rayne deadpanned. Ready, she paused long enough to brush a kiss on her father’s cheek. She figured if they both lived another fifty years, she might just be able to make amends for the way she’d treated him those awful years after her mother disappeared. “See you at the cemetery, Dad.”
Andrew eyed her. Like all his children, Rayne had good intentions. But her follow-through left something to be desired. Still, she’d come a very long way from the tremendous handful she’d been. There were times during those years when he’d been convinced he’d be celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday standing over her grave rather than joining the rest of her family at a ceremony naming her Aurora’s newest, youngest police detective. That had gone down as one of the proudest moments of his life.
He nodded, then winked. “I’m only half counting on that, you know.”
Stepping out of the way as Clay retrieved his weapon, she fixed her father with a reproving look. “Where’s your faith?”
“Plenty of faith,” he declared, sinking the skillet into a sink of sudsy water. “That’s why I’m half counting on it instead of not at all.”
“Someday,” Rayne told him as the rest of her family filed by on their way through the back door and to the cars that were parked outside, like as not blocking access to her own vehicle, “you’re going to learn to count on me completely.”
“I’m looking forward to that day, Rayne,” he told her as she hurried out the door, the last as usual. “I surely am.”
He glanced at the photograph on the seat beside him to make sure.
It was her.
Lorrayne Cavanaugh.
If his private detective hadn’t taken the photograph and given it to him, Cole doubted that he would have recognized her. Certainly not at first glance. She’d changed a great deal since he’d last seen her. The clothes were no longer this side of outlandish, but tasteful and subdued. She wore a crisp light gray jacket over pants the same color and a light blue blouse that even at this distance brought out her eyes.
The most startling thing about Lorrayne’s transformation was her hair. It was normal instead of the bright royal blue he recalled. She was a blonde now, like the rest of the females in her family. The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn it spiky. Now it was short, curly. Soft. It suited her.
So did the life she’d elected to follow instead of the hell-bent-for-leather one she’d led when he’d finally left town.
He supposed that gave them something in common. Once upon a time, while in their teens, they’d both been on a slippery slope, aimed toward inevitable self-destructive endings. But apparently she had reversed her course. Just as had he.
That gave them something else in common.
They had a third thing in common and it was that third thing that had brought him here to the Aurora police department’s recently repaved parking lot, waiting for her to put in an appearance.
A private detective was all well and good, but he needed someone on the inside. Someone in the know. Before it was too late.
He sat watching her for half a second longer. Lorrayne emerged from her vehicle looking a little breathless, as if she’d pushed her car to the maximum to get here. Slamming the car door, she took long strides toward the front of the building.
The expression on her face dovetailed with
