Cavanaugh Stakeout. Marie Ferrarella

       Prologue

      He hated the expression “feeling your age.” More than that, the onetime robbery detective hated the fact that getting in behind the wheel of his dark blue sedan was now a two-step, sometimes three-step, procedure that involved lowering himself into his seat, then physically picking up and lifting his left leg in order to maneuver it into position inside the vehicle.

      Not that he would ever actually admit as much to anyone. After all, he was Seamus Cavanaugh, the eighty-one-year-old patriarch of the Cavanaugh clan, a family known and respected for its many members within the law-enforcement community.

      Cavanaughs didn’t complain, not when it came to things they had no control over.

      Like time.

      That sort of thing came under the heading of resigned acceptance.

      If his sons ever suspected how often various parts of his body ached and gave him trouble, there would be no end to their trying to talk him into permanently retiring from the security firm that he had founded.

      A laugh rumbled deep within his chest. As if that would ever happen.

      He had tried retirement once and had concluded that retirement, even retirement in comfort, was for the birds—definitely not for him. He liked being active, even if that activity came with a price, like painful knees, aching shoulders and a back that insisted on periodically acting up.

      To him the alternative was to slowly wither away and then finally die.

      No, thank you, Seamus thought, shifting so that he could get comfortable—if that was even possible—behind the wheel before he started up the engine. The hell with retirement. He needed to be vital. That was why he was out here in one of the industrial-complex areas within Aurora’s neighboring cities long after dark. He was doing an unexpected final check on one of the buildings his security firm protected. There’d been an attempted break-in on the building a little more than a week ago and he just wanted to be sure there were no repeat occurrences in the making despite the fact that the alarms and cameras on the premises had been silent.

      Thanks to his grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews, he knew how easily systems could be bypassed or hacked into. The expert IT crew he employed at his firm was considered to be the best in the business, but Seamus was still old-fashioned. As far as he was concerned, nothing beat a hands-on approach.

      So he had deliberately gone through all the safety protocols within the building, then driven around the building’s perimeter just to put any apprehensions to bed. Now that he had, he was ready to head home and have that well-loved nightcap he’d been promising himself. His cardiologist, Dr. Benvenuti, a specialist who had