Cassie Miles - Criminally Handsome

Because it was after three o’clock with the lunch rush over and only four other people in the place, Annie lingered at his booth. “Waiting for somebody?”

“My brother.”

“The FBI agent.” Her smile grew ten times brighter. “He’s really cute.”

Women had always responded to Dylan as if he were a rock star, which never made sense. They weren’t identical twins but resembled each other a lot, and the chicas never threw themselves at Miguel. “Better not let Dylan hear you call him cute. That’s a word for baby ducks and puppies.”

Annie laughed. “Handsome is a much better word.”

If anyone had heard about the FBI investigation, it would be Annie or the people in the café, which was frequented by many of the local law enforcement people. “How much do you know about Dylan’s investigation?”

“An agent got murdered. A woman agent. One of the other FBI guys was showing her picture around, asking if we’d seen her or noticed her talking to anyone.”

“Thanks, Annie.”

Miguel thought Emma might have picked up Agent Julie Grainger’s name from talking to someone at the café or someone else who had seen the photograph. That’d be a logical explanation for how she came up with Julie’s name. But it didn’t explain the VDG symbol or the grizzly paw necklace.

Later this afternoon, he and other forensic technicians would process the necklace in the hope that they might discover the identity of the owner. They probably wouldn’t be lucky enough to find fingerprints—not after it had been buried in the snow at the side of the road all this time.

How the hell had he missed finding the necklace when they first swept the scene? Sure, the leather was the color of dirt and would have blended in when there wasn’t snow on the ground. Sure, they’d had other urgent tasks—dusting for prints, measuring skid marks, photographing footprints. Sure, there was a blizzard on the way. But he wouldn’t easily forgive himself for overlooking such an obvious clue.

He had to be shown the way by a medium. By Emma. La loca bonita. A crazy, beautiful lady in a purple leather jacket.

Dylan came through the front door of the café and joined him in the corner booth. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No problemo. You okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, vato. ”

Dylan had always been the tough guy, the star athlete, the macho leader of the pack. It bothered Miguel to see his brother rattled.

Annie rushed to their booth as soon as Dylan sat down. She placed a steaming mug of coffee in front of his brother and set down two pieces of apple pie.

“On the house,” she said in a throaty voice. She leaned close to Dylan, giving him a glimpse of cleavage. “Is there anything else you want?”

Miguel couldn’t resist this setup. “My brother likes whipped cream. All over his pie.”

Dylan raised a hand. “Not necessary.”

The waitress fluttered her lashes. “You can have all the whipped cream you want. Your name is Dylan, right? And I’m Annie.”

And I’m yesterday’s fish stew. Amused, Miguel leaned back in the booth and watched as his brother doled out the charm. The guy couldn’t help it. He was a chica magnet.

When Annie finally moved away, Dylan said, “What’s so important that I had to see you right away?”

“The sheriff and I met with a woman today. Her name is Emma Richardson.”

Annie rushed back to their booth. “I love Emma,” she gushed. “She’s a real psychic, you know. She sees things. And she finds missing people.”

“Thanks for your opinion,” Miguel said in a quiet, firm tone of dismissal. The time for fun and games was over. He needed to talk seriously with his brother. “We’ll call you if we need anything else.”

“Enjoy your pie.” She turned on her heel and flounced back toward the counter.

“A psychic,” Dylan grumbled as he dug into his pie. “You interrupted my day to talk about a psychic.”

“I was skeptical, too.” Miguel kept his voice low so Annie wouldn’t come running back over to them. “You know I don’t like things that can’t be explained by logic or science.”

“You were always the smart brother. El Ganso. ” He smirked. “El Nerdo Supremo.”

“Because I think with my head, not my huevos. ” Miguel fixed his twin with a cool gaze. This wasn’t a time for joking. “I took the psychic—actually, she’s a medium—back to the crime scene where Aspen Meadows disappeared. She had a vision that turned up an important piece of evidence.”

Though Dylan continued to eat his pie, Miguel sensed that his brother was interested. “The sheriff still doesn’t have any leads on the missing woman?”

“Not yet. I don’t have much hope. Somebody who’s missing for over a month is either dead or doesn’t want to be found.” He frowned. “But Emma Richardson is certain that Aspen is alive. They’re cousins, and Emma is the guardian for the baby.”

“The father hasn’t come forward?”

“Not yet.” Miguel took out the piece of paper Emma had used to make her notes from the vision. He spread it on the table in front of his brother. “She drew the design of the leather necklace we found at the scene. And also, she drew this.”

Dylan picked up paper. His eyes narrowed. “VDG. Vincent Del Gardo.”

“There was a symbol like this on that map you showed me—the map that Agent Grainger sent before she died.”

Miguel and everybody else in the crime lab had tried every way possible to decipher that map. From satellite GPS to old-fashioned cartography, no one could make sense of those weird twists and turns. It didn’t match any known roads. The map could have been the path of a spreading river. Or trails through the forest.

At the counter, Annie was joking and laughing too loudly with a guy who had been sitting there since Miguel came in. He overheard the word psychic and glanced toward them. They had to be talking about Emma, and that bothered him. He checked out the guy so he’d remember what he looked like. He wouldn’t be easy to forget. Though big and barrel-chested, he was a sharp dresser in a fringed leather jacket with a turquoise yoke. The band around his cowboy hat was snakeskin with the rattles still attached.

Dylan tapped nervously on the tabletop. His voice went low and quiet. “What does this part of the note mean? A tall woman in an FBI jacket.”

There was no easy way to say this. “Emma’s spirit guide for this vision was Julie.”

“She saw Julie?”

“In the same sense that she sees everything. In her head.”

“If this is true,” Dylan said, “it means that the missing woman is connected to Vincent Del Gardo. Connected to Julie’s murder.”

“ Sí, I know.”

“This is big. It opens a whole new line of investigation.”

“Are you still searching for Del Gardo?”

Dylan nodded. “And for the money he’s got stashed away.”

Miguel had heard that Del Gardo’s illegal fortune was in excess of fifty million dollars. Not an amount that could be tucked away in a tidy little suitcase. “Your map with the VDG symbol might lead to both.”

“Let’s see if your psychic can point us in the right direction.”

BEFORE BABY JACK showed up on her doorstep, the bathroom in Emma’s house had been tidy with feminine decorative touches. Now, she had no time for long baths, scented candles and fresh flowers. Her mosaic-tiled countertop held a variety of baby products. She’d known that her life would be different if a man moved in, but she hadn’t expected pacifiers and butt wipes.

Confronting her reflection in the mirror, she dabbed a glob of spit-up off the shoulder of her beige turtleneck and ran a comb through her chin-length brown hair. Miguel had called and asked if he and his FBI brother could stop by and ask a few questions.