Serial affair, p.1
Serial Affair, page 1
There was more going on here than just a simple detective trying to cut her teeth on her first murder case, he thought. This case meant something to the woman and he intended to find out just what it was.
But he could also see that he wasn’t about to get it out of her by pressuring her or bombarding her with questions at this point. This would take finesse—and patience.
If the woman wound up hanging around that long.
As he came up to the door to the medical examiner’s offices, he paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Something wrong?” Liberty asked him when he made no move to go in.
“Just making sure you’re up to this,” Campbell told her. “First times are hard.”
“This isn’t my first time,” Liberty informed him.
He smiled at her, sending shockwaves all through her system. “Just making sure.”
She resented his inference. She didn’t like being a lightning rod for someone’s concern. It made her feel fragile and those days were permanently behind her.
Or they were supposed to be.
Dear Reader,
Liberty Lawrence was an orphan from her very first memory. For the first eighteen years of her life she was passed around in the foster care system, and for purposes of self-preservation she never allowed herself to form any sort of attachments with any of those people. When Florence, a registered head nurse, took her in, the woman was determined to get through to Liberty. It was because of Florence that Liberty got her BA and a degree in criminology, and eventually went into law enforcement. It seemed ironic that the only person who ever cared about Liberty was murdered by a serial killer. The case eventually went cold, but Liberty never gave up on it.
When a new case surfaces with the same MO in Aurora, California, Liberty takes what vacation time she has amassed and goes to see if the detective who caught the case in Aurora has any leads.
And so begins an unlikely partnership...and a chance at love with Campbell Cavanaugh.
I hope you enjoy reading about Liberty’s journey and transformation half as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Thank you for reading one of my stories and as always, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.
With thanks,
Marie Ferrarella
CAVANAUGH JUSTICE:
SERIAL AFFAIR
Marie Ferrarella
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author Marie Ferrarella has written over three hundred books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.
Books by Marie Ferrarella
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Cavanaugh Justice
Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard
Cavanaugh Fortune
How to Seduce a Cavanaugh
Cavanaugh or Death
Cavanaugh Cold Case
Cavanaugh in the Rough
Cavanaugh on Call
Cavanaugh Encounter
Cavanaugh Vanguard
Cavanaugh Cowboy
Cavanaugh’s Missing Person
Cavanaugh Stakeout
Cavanaugh in Plain Sight
Cavanaugh Justice: The Baby Trail
Cavanaugh Justice: Serial Affair
The Coltons of Colorado
Colton’s Pursuit of Justice
Visit the Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles.
This Book Is Lovingly Dedicated
To The Most Important
People In the World to Me:
My Family:
Charlie, Jessica, Nicholas,
Melany, Logan
And my brothers,
Michael and Mark
Without You There Is Nothing
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Excerpt from Her SEAL Bodyguard by Cindy Dees
Prologue
At first, Liberty didn’t even realize that the murders were connected. It was a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees—until she suddenly began comparing notes.
Calhoun, Arizona, wasn’t exactly a big town. The population numbered less than a thousand even during the times when it was “booming,” and the town wasn’t thought to be booming for a while now. However, what Calhoun had always been was a nice, peaceful, law-abiding town right from the very beginning.
Or at least that was what Liberty had believed until she’d begun to compare notes and notice things that had escaped her attention before.
For the first tumultuous eighteen years of her life, the young woman who was to become Detective Liberty Lawrence had lived an altogether different, nomadic life.
Abandoned almost from the moment she was born, Liberty had never had a place she could call home and was, quite frankly, on the path to self-destruction—until Florence Bishop had come into her life.
Florence had been a forty-five-year-old head nurse working in the ER when Liberty had been brought in looking as if she had beaten and abused to within an inch of her life. The tough-talking sixteen-year-old orphan had rejected any and all pity. All she’d wanted to do was to leave the site of her humiliation and possibly find a way to retaliate against her newest foster mother who had done this to her.
Despite Liberty’s attempts to push her away, Florence had seen something in the angry young orphan and immediately opened her heart to her.
Even though Liberty had fought her at every turn, Florence decided to take her in as a foster mother, consequently providing the rebellious teenager with the only real home she had ever known.
It wasn’t an instant alliance and definitely not all sunshine and roses. It had taken Liberty a while before she let even some of her barriers down. Although she never said the words out loud, Liberty was eventually very grateful to the sharp-featured nurse for taking her into her home and for making sure that she went to school even as she rebelled against any show of authority.
There was no doubt about it in Liberty’s mind. Florence brought out the best in her; a “best” Liberty hadn’t even been aware of having until Florence had taken her in hand.
It was because of Florence’s efforts that Liberty had graduated high school and then gone on to get a college degree. And it was because of Florence, Liberty finally told the woman during what turned out to be their last visit, that she actually had a life.
Things at that point had looked as if they were finally on the right track.
And then tragedy struck.
Less than three weeks later, Florence’s body had been found lying in the alley behind the hospital where she worked. The nurse had been strangled.
Liberty had been beyond devastated.
By that time Liberty had worked her way up to being the small police department’s only other detective, and she was determined to find Florence’s killer. At the time of the murder, she had absolutely no experience in murder cases—Calhoun wasn’t exactly a place that had any sort of a body count. Despite that, Liberty threw herself into working the case every chance she could for the next few months. Come hell or high water, she was determined to find her foster mother’s killer.
It was during this time she discovered that Florence was not the killer’s first victim.
Or his second.
The more Liberty looked into the cases, studying similar ones in the southwest area, the more she discovered. She found that this was not just an ordinary killer. This was a serial killer. A serial killer with, it eventually turned out, a high body count.
In total, there were thirty victims spread out across small towns in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. The cases all had a few things in common. The victims were all nurses over the age of twenty-five and under the age of fifty. They each had also all been strangled with piano wire.
Becoming almost obsessed with finding the killer, Liberty investigated as much as she possibly could while still doing her regular day-to-day job at the police station.
And now the latest victim had just turned up in Aurora, California.
That meant that the killer was getting bolder because, looking up information about the most recent place that a killing had taken place, she found that Aurora had a much bigger police force than any of the other towns where the killer had struck.
Was the killer getting more brazen, or was there another reason for this sudden switch in venue?
The more research she did, the more confident Liberty became that she could get someone interested in the fact that all of these murders had been the work of a serial killer.
Her own chief, Elliott Atwater, had just expressed relief
But for Liberty, life would never get back to even close to normal until she could finally achieve closure. And closure would only come once the killer was captured and stopped.
The only way that was going to happen, Liberty decided, was if she took some time off and followed this latest trail to the killer’s most recent killing site: Aurora, California.
Making up her mind, Liberty walked into Atwater’s small office and announced, “I’m going to take my vacation now, Chief.”
The chief looked up from his morning coffee. He didn’t look surprised. “It’s that serial case of yours, isn’t it?”
Liberty saw no reason to pretend otherwise. He had always been good to her, if somewhat too lax in his methods for her taste.
“It is,” she replied.
Atwater paused to examine his records. “Well, since you’re not that big on taking vacations, you’ve got a total of three weeks amassed.” Because she was the youngest on his force, he apparently felt it behooved him to warn her. “But if you wind up taking any longer,” the chief told her, “you might not have a job to come back to.”
Being a detective was very important to Liberty. It finally felt as if she fit in somewhere. But finding Florence’s killer was worth every sacrifice. She owed the woman a huge debt she would never be able to even begin to repay.
“I understand, sir,” she told the chief. “And I’m willing to take my chances.”
Elliot Atwater merely shook his head. He didn’t want the young woman taking chances, although he knew she would. He had come to learn that Liberty was exceptionally stubborn once she set her mind to something.
“Stay safe, Liberty,” the chief ordered her. “I don’t want to lose my best detective.”
Her mind was already making plans for her trip to Aurora and she was only half listening. “Don’t worry, Chief, you won’t. I fully intend to remain safe,” Liberty promised the older man, her partial mentor, with feeling.
The chief almost believed her.
Chapter 1
The anger was finally beginning to fade.
But then, it usually did right after one of his eruptions. And this flare-up had really felt like a major one. So much so that it felt as if it would never pass.
But, eventually, it did.
Exhaling a long breath, he glanced at his watch to see how long it had taken this time. He never managed to keep track while it was going on—predominantly because he couldn’t.
The anger and rage that had shot through him, causing such damage as it vibrated within him, left him on the very brink of oblivion until it was all finally over with.
The last time it had happened, it had taken over twelve hours for him to emerge and come up for “air” again.
Someday he knew he probably wouldn’t emerge. But “someday” wasn’t now, and that was all he was concerned about.
Now.
All he could remember when one of these eruptions hit was an overwhelming wave of white heat.
And anger.
Lots and lots of anger.
When it was finally over, he would always find himself standing in an entirely different place than before.
And she was dead.
Again.
The problem was she never stayed dead. Oh, she tried to fool him. She would take on different voices, different features, different hairstyles and color, but it was always her.
Always.
She couldn’t begin to really fool him.
She had never been able to fool him. Evil had a certain kind of look about it, and no matter what, it always came through. Sometimes it just took longer, but it couldn’t remain hidden indefinitely.
She couldn’t remain hidden indefinitely.
This time, he left the body where it had fallen. Hidden in the weeds.
It was time to get back to his life again and finally put Sarah behind him where she belonged.
Until she emerged again the next time.
* * *
“Hey, Cam, there’s someone out here to see you,” Campbell Cavanaugh’s partner, Brandon Choi, called out as he crossed the squad room floor to reach Campbell’s desk.
Brandon found he had to put his hand against his partner’s chest to keep the man from shooting out of the room like a launched missile.
Detective Campbell Cavanaugh was a man who was obviously on a mission.
The next minute, he said as much. “Do me a favor,” Cam requested. “I’m planning on getting a head start on Christmas shopping this year. You see this guy for me.”
Brandon frowned, momentarily sidetracked. “Christmas shopping? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this just the beginning of December? You don’t usually get rolling until the second week of December is over. And, besides, I thought you and that lady friend of yours broke up and became history a while back ago. Is there someone new in your life you haven’t told me about?” Brandon studied the man whose ability to attract women without any effort had made him envious, despite the fact that Choi was happily married himself.
Campbell shrugged off the question. “It never hurts to be prepared,” he told his partner. “Besides, I do have other people to buy gifts for,” he pointed out. “The people in my family could populate a small town as it is. I learned my lesson last year when I wound up forgetting Jacqui, my own sister. This year I’m bringing a checklist so nobody gets left out.”
“Well, look at you being all conscientious and everything,” Choi marveled with a laugh. “Personally, I don’t know how you manage to keep track of your family. Hell knows I couldn’t.”
He wanted to get going. “So you’ll talk to this guy, whoever he is?” Campbell asked as he started to walk out of the room.
“Well, number one, I would, but Susan might get really jealous,” he said, referring to his wife of less than two years. “And number two, this isn’t a guy,” Choi added.
Campbell raised an eyebrow, his interest clearly piqued. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” his partner replied, grinning. “Definitely ‘oh.’”
Despite Campbell’s reputation as an appreciator of lovely-looking women—a street that ran both ways—the homicide detective was not the type to be easily fooled or led astray, no matter how beautiful the woman promised to be. Beauty alone was not enough to sustain Campbell’s interest—but it certainly was enough to capture it for a short while.
Campbell looked at his partner suspiciously. Something didn’t seem quite right about this. “Okay, what’s the catch?”
“No catch, partner. The woman is here on business,” Choi informed him.
But Campbell wasn’t buying it. Something was up—or maybe he had just been on the force too long and had grown too suspicious.
“What sort of business?” He wanted to know.
Choi merely smiled again at his partner in response. “Tell you what, why don’t you ask her?”
“Because I’m asking you,” Campbell pointed out. His green eyes met his partner’s. “I’d rather not have any surprises.”
Choi’s wide grin seemed to almost say, Yes, you do. His smile grew even wider. “Sorry, partner, can’t help you there.”
All thoughts of getting a jumpstart on his holiday shopping—he was a sucker for Christmas, always had been—was pushed into the background. This person who had come looking to talk to him had captured his attention—but not to the exclusion of everything else.
“Try,” Campbell stressed, his eyes pinning his partner in place.
“Okay, but you’re taking all the fun out of this,” Choi told him more seriously, “She’s a detective out of Calhoun, Arizona—”
“Where?” Campbell asked. To his recollection, he had never heard of Calhoun, Arizona.
“Calhoun,” Choi repeated. “From what I gather, it’s more or less a hole-in-the-wall in Arizona.”
“Okay.” Campbell nodded, accepting that for now. “And why is she here?”
“It seems that case you caught the other day when I went in to fix my broken tooth...” Brandon began to explain.
“Okay, what about it?” Campbell pressed.
