Free Cavanaugh Reunion by Marie Ferrarella Page A

me?”
    The woman looked as if she were seriously considering the question. “My first guess would be insecurity,” she said brightly.
    “Your first guess would be wrong,” he retorted.
    She paused before the cream-colored two-seater. She wasn’t really up on cars, but she recognized it as a classic. “It really is a beauty,” she told him.
    The compliment instantly softened him. “Thanks.”He pressed the security button on his key chain and released the locks. “You have the list of sites where the fires took place?” he asked. Since she’d already gotten in on her side, he slid in behind the steering wheel—and saw that instead of buckling up, she was holding up several sheets of paper. He presumed they were the list he’d referred to. “Okay, where to first?”
    “How about MacArthur and Main?” she suggested after a beat. “That’s the church,” she explained, shifting as she buckled her seat belt. “That was the second fire,” she added in case he’d forgotten.
    He hadn’t. “Where that firefighter rescued the visiting priest from Spain. The priest was sleeping in Father Colm’s room,” he recalled.
    She vividly remembered all the details of that one. Daring, last-minute rescues like that always tugged on her heartstrings. “There was footage of the old priest being carried out of the burning building.”
    The media, always hungry for something to sink its teeth into, carried the story for days, and the morning talk shows vied for the exclusive rights to being the first to interview both the firefighter and the priest, sitting in the studio side by side.
    He thought of the theory that he’d espoused. It seemed rather shaky here. “I really doubt that the church is being put up for sale.”
    “I doubt it, too,” she agreed. Since he’d backed off, she could afford to be magnanimous. “But we can still ask if anyone made any offers on the property since the fire.” She shrugged again. “At any rate, it’s better than nothing.”
    As he drove, he slanted a glance at her, looking forconfirmation in her expression. “You’re humoring me, aren’t you?”
    “No,” she said honestly, sitting back in her seat, “what I’m trying to do is prove or disprove your theory once and for all so we can move on.”
    He knew which side of the argument she was on, and he didn’t care for being summarily dismissed. “What if it turns out that I’m right?”
    “Then, most likely,” she recited, “you’ll be impossible to live with and I’ll be happy that I’m not part of the police department, because I won’t have to put up with it. But even if hell does freeze over and you’re right, the upshot will be that we’ve caught the person or persons responsible for all this destruction, and that’ll be a very good thing.” And then the corners of her mouth curved in a forced smile. “But you won’t be right, so there’s no point in anticipating it.”
    The woman was being downright smug, he thought. Since when did he find smug so arousing? “You’re that sure?”
    She lifted her chin ever so slightly, making it a good target, he couldn’t help thinking. Damn, his feelings were bouncing all over the place today. “I’m that sure.”
    The light up ahead turned yellow. In any other car he would have stepped on the gas and flown through. But this was his baby, and he eased into a stop at the intersection several beats before the light turned red.
    “Tell me,” he said, turning toward her, “do you walk on water all the time, or just on Sundays?”
    “Mainly Sundays,” she answered with a straight face. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile. “There’s thechurch.” She pointed to the building in the distance on the right. “Looks like it’s being rebuilt.”
    The light turned green. Ethan drove over to the church and said nothing as he pulled the vehicle into the parking lot. He brought his vehicle to a stop in front of the partially demolished building.
    Kansas was out of the