Read Online Cavanaugh on Duty by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page A

already caught your first homicide,” she told him.
    Esteban said nothing in acknowledgment of the dubious so-called “honor.” Instead, she saw him begin to clear away the piles of boxes and other various possessions that were surrounding the rug.
    Kari shifted so that she managed to block his access to the closest pile of clutter. “Hold it,” she cried. “What are you doing?”
    He would have thought that was self-evident, but maybe she wasn’t as savvy as he’d thought. “Pushing things aside so that we can unfurl this damn rug and take a closer look at the victim.”
    But as he turned to get back to what he was doing, Kari caught his arm by the sleeve and tried to hold him back. Even though she’d managed to catch him off guard, holding his arm still took more effort than she’d anticipated.
    “You can’t do that,” she told him.
    The look he gave her clearly said he thought she’d lost her mind. “Why not?”
    Rather than answer him, Kari glanced at Jennings. The storage-facility manager looked as if he had become one giant set of ears.
    “You can go now,” she said, dismissing the man. “We’ll call you if we need anything else.”
    “I got no place else to be,” Jennings said, remaining firmly planted where he was and intently staring at the rolled-up rug.
    “Yes,” she informed him firmly, “you do.”
    The man’s squinty eyes narrowed even more. “Where?” he challenged.
    “Anywhere but here.” Kari’s tone left no room for argument. Having no choice, Jennings was forced to withdraw, and she heard him grumbling to himself as he stomped away.
    Kari waited until the man was completely out of the storage unit before she turned back to look at Esteban. He was still waiting for his answer.
    “We have to wait for the CSI unit to get here and process this crime scene before we can actually touch anything in it.”
    Following protocol, she knew that she shouldn’t have even pulled back the rug the way she had, but if she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been able to actually label this a crime scene, so she supposed she could be forgiven in that instance.
    After three years of living solely by his wits and going with gut instincts, Esteban was accustomed to following his own rules. By-the-book procedure was something he vaguely remembered coming across at the academy, but he hadn’t ever followed that in the field. It didn’t really make much sense, especially not when it came to dealing with life-or-death situations.
    “You mean we just have to sit here and cool our heels?” he asked impatiently.
    She nodded her head. “That’s just how it’s done.” She didn’t like it any more than he did, but she liked having cases thrown out of court even less, especially when she busted her tail to put the cases together in the first place.
    He snorted dismissively. The look on his face was not impassive at the moment, and it told her exactly what he thought of how “things were done.”
    “Not in my world,” he responded.
    “But we’re not in your world anymore,” she informed him, making the best of an irritating situation. “We’re in mine. And in case you think you can argue me out of following proper procedure, I think you should know that my dad’s the head of the CSI day unit.”
    She couldn’t quite fathom the look he gave her, but it definitely didn’t even remotely fit under the heading of agreeable.
    Or even resigned.
    “Of course he is,” Esteban responded curtly. Looking down at the hold she still had on the cuff of his shirt, he said, “You can let go now.”
    No, I can’t, not yet, she thought.
    She continued clutching his sleeve. “And I can trust you to back away from the body and just wait for the unit to arrive?”
    He didn’t like it, but he’d do it. He’d had enough friction for the time being.
    Shrugging, he told her, “Pay’s the same whether I wait or not, so yeah, you can trust me to back away from the body and wait for the crime unit to come with