stubbornly. “And it’ll go faster if we don’t have to stop and call each other every time a new idea hits one of us. All we’ll have to do is look across the table—or however you intend to have your bull pen arranged,” he told her.
Stunned, she realized just what he was getting at. “You’re talking about getting a task force together,” Kenzie cried, part of her still hoping that he would deny it.
But he didn’t. Exactly.
“That all depends,” Hunter answered loftily. “Do the two of us constitute a task force?”
Suddenly feeling cornered, she searched for a way to put Brannigan off. “I need permission to get a task force together,” she told him.
Hunter looked totally unfazed by her excuse. “You’re a Cavanaugh. Do you really need permission to do something?” he asked skeptically. It was obvious that the detective didn’t think so.
So, he was one of those, was he? He thought she was privileged. Well, she didn’t think she was privileged and she certainly didn’t act as if she was, Kenzie thought, annoyed.
“It’s because I’m a Cavanaugh that I need permission,” Kenzie informed him, incensed that Brannigan had the gall to put her on the spot like this. “Just because I have that last name doesn’t mean I’m privileged.”
The smile on Hunter’s face seemed to mock her and she would have given anything to physically wipe it off his lips—with her fist.
“The chief of Ds told you to say that, didn’t he?” Brannigan guessed. His expression made it abundantly clear that he got a tremendous kick out of what Kenzie was saying.
She was not about to confirm Brannigan’s guess, even though she grudgingly admitted that it was dead-on. As things stood between them, she would rather die than come out and say that.
Instead, she resorted to wordplay. “That doesn’t alter the circumstances,” she informed Brannigan with a toss of her head.
“All right,” he obliged. “So go ahead, ask the chief for permission to put a task force together. The sooner you do, the sooner it’ll be granted—” he glanced down at the body parts that Jupiter had just unearthed “—and the sooner we’ll be on our way to finding the SOB who gets his jollies doing this sort of sick thing.”
“SOBs,” Kenzie corrected pointedly.
Hunter looked at her, confused. “What?”
“You said there might be two of them, remember?” she reminded Brannigan. “I’m just trying to cover all our bases.”
“Right,” he agreed. He had said that, Hunter thought. But at the time he was just making guesses. “Hard to believe there’re two people out there who are this depraved.”
Kenzie looked at him, wondering if he was really on the level or if he was just pulling her leg, trying to get on the right side of her for his own reasons.
The look on his face didn’t really give her a clue.
She had to ask him. “You’re serious?”
Hunter nodded. Since they were apparently going to be working together, he shared a little of his basic philosophy with her.
“Gotta hang on to the light, or you wind up sinking into the darkness and before you know it, you wind up giving up.”
That sounded deep, she thought. Too deep for Brannigan, she maintained. Kenzie was afraid to leave her defenses down, even for a moment.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Kenzie told him flippantly.
“Okay, so what’s your way?” Brannigan asked her as they watched the shepherd begin to dig into the earth for yet one more time.
Kenzie looked at the detective. Sunlight was weaving through his hair. She did her best to ignore that, looking for his flaws.
“My way?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he answered. Jupiter was growing more agitated. “How do you look at what you do?”
She recited the mantra she liked to live by. “Catching the bad guys and making the world safer for everyone else.”
Brannigan grinned at her and she was certain he was going to say something flippant or make fun of her. But instead, he surprised her by saying, “See, we’re not that different after all, you and I.”
She did not want to be likened to this man by anyone, least of all him.
“Oh, we’re worlds apart, Brannigan. Worlds apart,” she emphasized.
Hunter pointed over toward Jupiter, who apparently had unearthed still another would-be grave.
“I’d say that it looks like our worlds just got a little closer, Kenzie,” he told her.
She clenched her teeth. “I told you not to call me that. Only my friends and family call me that.”
“So how do I get to be part of your friends’ club?” he asked.
“Simple,” she told him. “You die and come back as someone else. Anyone else,” she underscored.
He laughed, obviously getting a kick out of her—that was not what she had intended.
“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Hunter promised just before he made his way over to Jupiter’s newest discovery.
Chief Sean Cavanaugh, head of the crime scene investigation day crew, surveyed the very large area that had been cordoned off. Sporadic piles of dirt and mud pocked the entire terrain at this end of the park. Three investigators were moving around, documenting everything that could even remotely pass for evidence.
“The park officials are not going to be happy about this,” Sean commented.
Vacation season had just begun and there were tourists to think of, not to mention regular residents who normally enjoyed utilizing the park’s many attributes and were now prevented from doing so.
It looked as if there were miles of yellow tape designating the entire area off-limits. It was the police department’s attempt to keep the public from accidentally trampling over any possible clues that hadn’t surfaced yet.
Hunter nodded in agreement. This was his first professional interaction with the chief. “I’m not overly thrilled with this either, but I’m willing to bet it’s most likely for a completely different reason,” the cold case detective said.
Kenzie was standing close by and she looked at Brannigan in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be thrilled to death with this turn of events, Brannigan,” she retorted.
“Thrilled?” Hunter echoed, puzzled. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not a ghoul—or
