Cavanaugh Cold Case Read Online Free

apparently serious.
    She turned back to her work. “If that were the case, Detective, it was a pretty exclusive burial ground. So exclusive that I highly doubt it existed.”
    â€œAgain, please,” Malloy requested. “In English this time.”
    Impatient, Kristin rocked back on her heels. In order to be able to look at him, she shaded her eyes. “The bodies that have been dug up so far all belonged to women. While there were some tribes that were predominantly matriarchal in nature, I’ve never heard of any of them segregating their dead.” And then she shrugged as she added a coda. “Anyway, these bodies aren’t really that old.”
    Malloy’s eyes swept over the various piles of bones. They looked dried and, in some cases, splintered. “Could have fooled me,” he murmured.
    â€œI’m sure a good many things could fool you, Detective, but I don’t have time to discuss that,” she said, getting back to work. “I’d like to finish up here before the turn of the next century.”
    Rather than take offense, Malloy merely shook his head. “That was cold, Doc,” he told her.
    Kristin felt herself bristling. She didn’t like the note of familiarity in his voice. “That was accurate, Detective Cavanaugh.”
    He didn’t back off, the way she’s hoped. Instead, he said, “Call me Malloy. All beautiful women do.”
    At a loss as to how to respond or how to put this man in his place, Kristin retreated. Sighing deeply, she went back to ignoring him. She turned her attention to tagging body parts.
    â€œAre you sure they didn’t unearth some kind of a cemetery when they broke ground over here?” Malloy pressed. There seemed to be just too many body parts for anything but a cemetery.
    Kristin raised her eyes to look up at him just for a moment. She didn’t bother hiding her disdain. “You have trouble understanding the word ‘no,’ Detective? Or is it that you’re just not accustomed to hearing it?”
    He didn’t answer her.
    He didn’t have to.
    The grin that found its way to his lips did it for him.
    Kristin bit off a few choice words that rose to her own lips. This wasn’t the time to get distracted or get embroiled in a verbal exchange that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Especially when what she had before her could very well be the defining moment of her entire career. She didn’t have time to get sidetracked by a sweet-talking, sinfully good-looking, dark-haired detective who obviously thought that all he had to do was glance at a woman with those bone-melting, seductive green eyes of his and she automatically became his.
    Her bone-melting days were definitely in the past.
    Long in the past.
    So rather than tell this man what she thought of him, Kristin restrained herself and asked what to her seemed to be an entirely logical question.
    â€œDon’t you have work to do, Detective? Or has the department taken to paying its detectives to stand around like obtrusive lead statues that do nothing but get in the way?”
    â€œIs there a problem here?” Sean Cavanaugh asked, coming up behind the unit’s newest—and in his estimation, brightest—medical examiner.
    He’d interviewed and hired her himself after Jacobs, the department’s last medical examiner, felt compelled to accept a better position in the private industry. Outside of proposing to his second wife, he felt it was one of the best decisions he’d ever made.
    â€œJust asking the doc here some general questions pertaining to this boneyard that’s being unearthed even as we speak.” He flashed a wide grin in her direction. “She’s giving me the benefit of her rather droll point of view.”
    Sean looked from his nephew to the young woman he felt was capable of great things. He knew all about Malloy’s reputation. He’d raised several sons like that himself