Cavanaugh on Duty - By Marie Ferrarella Page 0,4

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