Cavanaugh Heat (Silhouette Romantic Suspense #1499)

The abrupt ring of the telephone didn't wake her.Despite the fact that she'd gone to bed more than an hour ago, she was still awake. Tense.Waiting.Waiting to have the last fragments of serenity wrenched from her. Again. It had been happening more and more frequently. The middle-of-the-night phone calls shattering her peace of mind.She supposed that she could have closed off the landline, muting the ringer so that when the call came, it wouldn't register, wouldn't cause her heart to race.But she couldn't shut the phone. She didn't have that luxury because if one of her children called, if she shut off the phone, she wouldn't be able to take the call. She didn't want to worry them, making them wonder why she wasn't home at this hour or wasn't answering her phone.Or they could need her. All four of them, Zack, Taylor, Riley and even Frank, were on the force as she had been.As their late father had been.She would never be able to forgive herself if she missed a life-and-death call just because some phantom nutcase seemed bent on spooking her.Sitting up, Lila McIntyre turned on the lamp and squinted at the light's harsh intrusion. Over in the corner, Duchess, her ten-year-old German shepherd, picked up her head as if to ask, "What's wrong?""Go back to sleep," she told the dog, but Duchess kept on eyeing the ringing phone. And wouldn't stop until she answered it.Edgy, Lila felt like throwing the phone across the room instead of picking up the receiver. With effort, she made herself calm down. Whoever was on the other end of the line wanted her to lose control. If she gave in to a fit of temper, she'd be playing into his hands, doing exactly what he wanted her to do.Lila looked at the phone's LCD screen. All it told her was that the incoming call was "out-of-area." No number, no hint.Whoever it was was playing mind games, she thought. But why? Nothing came to her.Maybe it was just a nut job, pure and simple. It was the most plausible explanation, but her intuition told her no.Drawing in a long breath, Lila snatched up the receiver and pressed it to her ear. The very act made her shiver."Hello?" she snapped. It wasn't a greeting, but a demand. A demand for a reply.There was no answer on the other end of the line. Only the faint sound of someone breathing. Someone listening to the sound of her voice while keeping his own a secret.What do you want from me? she asked silently. Out loud, she did her best to sound bored. "You know, this isn't funny anymore. I can have this traced and when I find out who you are, there are going to be consequences. Consequences you're not going to like." Lila looked down and saw that she had dug her nails into the comforter, gathering it into a wad. She released it--but wasn't able to do the same with the tension that rode roughshod over her. "So why don't you do yourself a favor and stop acting like an eight-year-old?"There was no response, just another soft breath drawn in and exhaled. And then came a "click" in her ear. The caller was gone.Lila sat there, holding the receiver, annoyed with herself. Annoyed because she was allowing this jerk to get to her."If you'd like to place a call..."Lila jumped as the metallic female voice instructed her to dial again. With a muffled curse, she threw the receiver into the cradle. The recording was abruptly silenced.Her hand shook as she dragged it through tousled honey-blond hair.It was the twenty-first call.By definition, a peace officer should like peace. Despite the fact that he had risen up through the ranks and was now the chief of detectives, a position he had held for quite some time, Brian Cavanaugh still considered himself a peace officer.A peace officer who hated peace and quiet.Oh, he didn't hate it on the streets of Aurora, a city that he and rather a large portion of his family patrolled and thought of as their own. The peace on the streFerrarella, Marie is the author of 'Cavanaugh Heat (Silhouette Romantic Suspense #1499)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373275694 and ISBN 0373275692.