Destiny drew in a deep breath and then another, trying to make herself come around.
With renewed purpose and borrowed energy, she walked briskly from the entrance to the apartment building to the curb where she’d parked her car.
And then she stopped dead.
There was no way she was going anywhere. Some jerk had double-parked his car parallel to hers and was completely blocking her exit.
She was stuck.
Biting back a barrage of less than flattering words that leaped to her lips, Destiny peered into the offending vehicle, trying to see if she could ascertain what kind of village idiot belonged to the car.
That was when she saw the official markings. And the communications radio that was mounted beneath the dashboard.
A standard Crown Victoria, the white car was an unmarked police vehicle. And she had a really strong hunch she knew whom it belonged to.
Chapter 4
W
hen he heard the elevator opening, Logan automatically looked in that direction. He was surprised to see Destiny getting off.
“Forget something?” he asked, raising his voice in order to be heard.
Canvassing the floor, he was clear down the hall from the elevator. So far, he’d had next to no luck getting anyone to answer, despite the hour.
The only door that had opened so far had been by a very grumpy older man in a stained T-shirt and rumpled trousers of an indeterminable color. Both items of clothing looked as if the man had slept in them for at least the past year.
The man also, when questioned, didn’t seem to speak any English. Whatever language he did speak, Logan was entirely unfamiliar with it. He was fluent in Spanish and knew a handful of other languages well enough to at least identify what they were. The old man was muttering at him in what he could only guess was an offshoot of some Slavic language, definitely not Russian in origin.
Thanking the man, Logan went to the next door. And the next.
So far, no one else had answered, but he’d canvassed only a quarter of the floor before his father’s chief assistant had stepped off the elevator again.
“No, I didn’t forget anything,” Destiny retorted, irritated because she wanted to be on her way already, “but I think you did.”
Logan cocked his head and eyed her, the person who might or might not be behind the next door temporarily forgotten. He watched as she walked toward him, appreciating the subtle sway of her hips. She was one of those people who was totally unaware of just how stunning she was.
But it wasn’t lost on him.
She didn’t seem like the type to play games, especially not at a time like this, so whatever she was referring to had to be on the level. The problem was, he had absolutely no idea what that was.
“Come again?” he finally said.
“You double-park your car downstairs?” she asked pointedly.
“No. Yeah,” he amended in the next breath, remembering.
His automatic response was “no” because as a rule, he never double-parked. Aside from it being against the rules, he liked his car, and that was a good way to get it nicked and dinged. But this evening he’d made an exception because there’d been no spots and he thought he’d be finished and out in no time. But he’d obviously miscalculated.
“That was your car I blocked?” he asked incredulously. Wow, what were the odds?
“That was—and still is—my car,” she told him. Why wasn’t he moving? “Could you come down please and move your car?” It really wasn’t a request.
Logan could see that begging a couple of minutes’ indulgence, until he was at least finished with this side of the floor, was just
not
going to fly in this case. So he dropped his hand away from the door he’d been knocking on, nodded and said, “Sure,” just as the door in front of him opened.
This time, the responding tenant was definitely
not
a rumpled, grumpy old man. It was a barefoot blonde wearing the tightest cutoff denim shorts he’d ever seen. The white T-shirt she had on told him that she didn’t believe in bras.
“Yes?” she asked in a small, soft voice. She looked from him to Destiny and then back again, making no secret of the fact that she preferred talking to men.
Holding up his badge and police ID, Logan flashed what one of his sisters referred to as his “bone melting” smile at the woman in apartment 3D.
“Detective Cavanaugh with the Aurora P.D., ma’am. I need to ask you a few questions, but first I have to tend to something else. I’ll be right back, I promise,” he said, sounding as sincere as a preacher on Sunday. He held up his index finger as if that somehow reinforced the fact that he wanted her to just hold on for a few minutes until he could get back to her.
“What’s this about?” the woman asked, calling after him as he walked into the elevator right behind Destiny.
“I’ll explain everything in five minutes,” he called back, raising his voice as the elevator door slid closed, cutting him off from the blonde. “Sorry about the car,” he told Destiny, turning his attention to her and never missing a beat. “I thought I wasn’t going to be here long.”
“I guess it’s a night for surprises,” Destiny quipped dryly, saying the words more to herself than to him.
But something in her voice managed to catch his attention. As the stainless-steel door opened and she stepped out, Logan caught her by the elbow before she could get too far.
Startled, she turned to look at him quizzically. Now what?
“Do you have anyone?” he asked her.
No, not anymore.
The words seemed to echo in her head, draining her soul. Shaking it off, she stared at him.
“What?” she demanded.
“Do you have anyone to talk to?” he elaborated. “Someone to stay with or to have them come over and stay with you?”
Destiny raised her chin, the barricade she kept around herself growing a little higher. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking, but I don’t need a babysitter.”
That meant the answer was no, Logan thought. The woman had already said that her sister was her only living kin. With her gone, that left no one to call family. He had no idea what that was like. All of his life, from his very first memory, he’d always had siblings and cousins, and now that he knew he was a Cavanaugh, he had enough relatives to populate a small city.
Despite the fact that there were times he felt as if he would have traded his soul for some privacy, for an island of time alone with his thoughts and away from well-meaning relatives, he knew that if he had to endure that on a full-time, daily basis, it would have eaten away at him.
“I didn’t say that you did,” he told her, his voice low-key. “But if you want to wait around for a bit while I finish knocking on these doors to see if there’s anyone willing to talk and tell me if they saw or heard something, maybe we could go out afterwards, catch a cup of coffee. Talk,” he emphasized. The elevator stopped. A moment later, as if it first had to pause, the door to the lobby opened.
She walked out of the building’s glass doors ahead of Logan. Her first thought was that he was hitting on her, but that cocky expression she’d noticed earlier on his face was absent. And to give him his due, he did sound sincere. Since he was Sean’s son and she dearly loved the man, she gave Logan the benefit of the doubt. After all, since he
was
Sean’s son, maybe a little compassion had rubbed off on him.
She realized, in a moment of weakness, that she appreciated the offer. But that still didn’t mean that she wanted him hovering around her, possibly witnessing her break down.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid or drastic,” she assured Logan.
Logan shrugged as if that had never crossed his mind. “I’m just in the mood for some decent coffee. By definition that means not the kind that comes in a paper cup,” he told her.
She’d never been discerning about her coffee. As long as it was black and hot, that was all that she required.
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted, then softened a little as she added, “But thanks.”
“No problem,” he murmured. He caught himself wondering, just for a split second, what she was like without all that barbed wire around her.
She watched him get into his vehicle. A moment later, he turned his ignition key and the car came to life. With his eyes all but glued to the rearview mirror, he eased his car out slowly, going backward one inch at a time. Traffic was light at the moment, but that was subject to instant change, even at this hour of the evening.
Clearing her vehicle, he pulled up the handbrake. Logan allowed his engine to idle as he waited for her to get into her car and pull it out of its current parking spot.
“I’ll take a rain check,” Destiny impulsively called out through the open passenger side window just before she peeled out of the spot and seamlessly merged into the flow of cars.
She didn’t stop until she came to the next light. It was red, but the color barely registered with her brain in time.
She was too busy upbraiding herself.
A rain check? What the hell had possessed her to say that? Was it just to establish some kind of connection with another human being, subconsciously comforting herself with the knowledge that she didn’t have to be alone if she didn’t choose to be? That she could establish some kind of contact with another human being anytime she wanted to? And that if she was alone, it was because she
chose
to be that way.
Words, she was playing with words.
It didn’t make the empty, gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach go away.
She vacillated between being numb and being shattered.
“Oh, Paula,” she murmured under her breath, blinking back hot tears. “What did you go and leave yourself open to?”
No matter what the answer to that was, if her sister had openly invited her killer into the apartment or the person had let himself in with a copy of her key, Paula was still dead.
She was still not coming back.
Paula had always been a delicate, small-boned little thing, and even if she hadn’t been drugged, she wouldn’t have been able to fight her attacker off if he had been any larger than a small field mouse.
“I tried to get you to take self-defense classes,” Destiny angrily shouted into the emptiness, the feeling of helplessness snowballing into outrage and fury. “Why didn’t you listen to me? Why the hell didn’t you
ever
listen to anything I said to you?”
It seemed to her as if, up until these past two years, anytime she’d made a constructive suggestion, Paula would turn around and do the exact opposite.
And yet, she knew her sister had always loved her. Loved her as fiercely as she loved Paula.
A lot of good that did either of them now, Destiny thought sadly.
With a sigh, she stepped on the gas.
* * *
One Police Plaza looked mournful silhouetted against the dark, moonless sky. The building had a minimum of lights on, beneath which a handful of detectives were burning the midnight oil, trying to solve a case or just tying up the loose ends on one.
A slightly lesser complement of officers patrolled the streets now than during the daylight hours. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Parking her vehicle near the building, Destiny got out and began to hurry up the ten stone steps.
What she was really doing, she knew, was trying to outrun the loneliness inside her. She was having little success at that.
The only way she would be able to get through this, Destiny told herself, was to find Paula’s killer and make him pay.
“Damn it, Paula, you should have told me who you were dating.”
Maybe the guy wasn’t responsible for what had ultimately happened, but at least it would have been a start, someone to question so she could begin putting the disjointed pieces together.
The last phrase echoed in her head.
Begin putting the disjointed pieces together.
Well, if she didn’t have Paula’s mystery man’s name, she would have to start somewhere else to make this puzzle come together.
Destiny suddenly thought of the prescription bottle that Logan had found in the medicine cabinet. Now that she thought about it, the whole thing just didn’t seem to ring true to her. It didn’t seem like Paula.
Granted her sister did have a lot of trouble sleeping and she had taken the drug when it had first come out. But Paula was stubborn. She would have never allowed herself to be dependent on a drug. Most likely, she would have tried her best to use the prescription as little as possible.
Now that she thought about it, she remembered that Paula was adamantly against taking drugs of any kind. This even went so far as to include simple painkillers. She wouldn’t take them even when she had one of her excruciating headaches.
She and Paula had argued over that more than once. But Paula wouldn’t be budged. Her deep aversion came from the fact that her best friend in high school had had a drug problem. A week before her graduation, the girl, Rachel Wyman, had accidentally overdosed. She was dead before she ever reached the hospital.
Paula had been the one to find her.
Just like I was the one who found you,
Destiny thought ruefully.
That was when Paula started getting involved in anti-drug campaigns, volunteering her time and considerable artistic talents to do whatever she could to try to save someone else from ending up the way that Rachel had.
So, feeling that way, what was Paula doing with a brand-new prescription for sleeping pills?
Making a decision, Destiny turned on her heel and hurried back to her car. Blessed with what amounted to total recall, she had the ability to remember anything that had crossed her line of vision.
Right now, as she concentrated, she remembered the name of the pharmacy that was written across the top of the bottle.
She also remembered the prescription number on the bottle, a long fourteen-digit number. What she hadn’t noted at the time, because she’d been so focused on keeping herself together, was the prescribing doctor’s name. She wanted to speak to him because, as a rule, her sister didn’t go to doctors.
* * *