LITMIR.BIZ

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Her issue hadn’t been the lips at all, but the mouth in general. And, oh, she could rail about how David had tricked her, about how she specifically meant the lips and the deal would be negated.

      But she should have caught that. Even the tiniest of details, as they’d both just learned, could ruin a project.

      “David Hennings, I don’t know whether to kill you or kiss you.”

      His hand shot up. “Can I vote?”

      She cracked up. “No. But darn it, I can’t believe I didn’t catch that.”

      “You were looking too hard. Happens to me sometimes when I’m working cases. I’ll be searching for precedents and—bam—someone else reads my notes and in five minutes knows exactly what I need. It’s irritating as hell.”

      “It sure is.”

      “That being said...”

      He strode back to where they’d been sitting, his smile growing wider by the second. So smug.

      And she’d just handed him that victory.

      He slid his phone from the side pocket of his jacket and held it up for her to see. “What time shall I tell the detective we’ll be there?”

      * * *

      DETECTIVE LARRY MCCALL ushered Amanda and David into a small conference room at Area North headquarters. The old building didn’t have the charm her building had, but with a few fixes and a splash of fresh paint the dreary and dull white walls wouldn’t feel so confining. Then again, Amanda supposed a police station wasn’t meant to be paradise.

      Inside the room, a veneer table large enough for six had been jammed into the corner. Probably the only way it would fit. Five chairs—what happened to the sixth?—were haphazardly pushed in, a couple almost sideways. Maybe the last meeting had ended in a rush.

      Amanda took the chair Detective McCall held for her while David remained standing, casually leaning against the wall directly across from her. “Thank you,” she said.

      “No,” the detective said. “Thank you for coming in.”

      “Detective, please, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As I said—”

      McCall waved her off. “Yeah, I know. You’re not a forensic artist and you’re only having a look. I get it. Still, I appreciate whatever you can do.”

      He slapped a file onto the table, the fwap reverberating in her head, making her ears ring. What am I doing? She shouldn’t be here. She’d spent years running from the lure of this kind of work. Years. And for good reason. As talented as her mother had been, her work with law enforcement had been the end of the fairy tale. For Amanda. For her father. And most of all, for her mother.

      David shifted, drawing her attention, and she brought her gaze to his. He cocked his head—he did that a lot—and stared at her face while she worked on arranging her features into neutral. No clues here. Still, he narrowed his eyes and she knew he’d sensed something. Those haunting dark blue eyes of his burned right through her.

      The file McCall had slapped on the table was open in front of her and she pulled her gaze from David, needing to be free of whatever psychoanalysis he performed on her. In front of her was a two-dimensional facial reconstruction—a detailed sketch—of a woman with shoulder-length dark hair flipped up at the ends. Big eyes. So young. The woman appeared to be late teens, perhaps early twenties. If so, the hair was wrong. No teenager would wear her hair in that style.

       Not my call.

      Keeping her hands in her lap, Amanda leaned forward. The drawing had been done on bristol paper, its surface rough and able to tolerate abundant erasures.

      She glanced at McCall. “Was this done from the skull itself?”

      “Uh, no.” He reached over, shuffled through some pages in the file and pulled out photos of the skull. “These. Why?”

      “Photos can distort the skull. If the lighting is wrong, the artist can misinterpret something.”

      Which could have been her problem with the photo of the firefighter.

      “No foolin’?”

      Amanda sat back, still refusing to touch the pages. If she did, they’d somehow bond her. “It can happen. The hair is long. Was there hair found near the skull?”

      “Yeah. A few strands. We have it in evidence.”

      Okay. Well, she knew that was right at least. But truly, if they wanted an accurate image, the artist should have been given access to the skull.

      “Did you have any hits at all on the drawing?”

      “Not a one.”

      David finally moved from his spot against the wall and looked over her shoulder at the photo. His presence behind her, looming and steady, sent her body mixed messages. Messages that made her think he could handle anything. That the sheer size of him wouldn’t relent. Ever.

      Her gaze still on the composite, Amanda cleared her throat. “No missing-person reports?”

      “Nothing that fits the timeline. Or her age.”

      “I’m assuming an anthropologist has studied the bones and given an age estimation?”

      “Yeah. His notes are in there. He thinks she was early twenties. White.”

      Amanda dug through the stack of papers, located the anthropologist’s notes and began her review, alternately checking the photos of the skull until she’d read the entire report.

      David moved back to his spot against the wall, this time crossing his legs at the ankles and sliding his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “What do you think?”

      “About?”

      He shrugged. “Anything. The photo, the file.”

      “The drawing is good. At least from what I can tell. One thing that’s bothering me is that the artist didn’t have a chance to study the skull. If I’d been assigned this, I would have requested to see the actual skull.”

      “What would that have done?”

      “Sometimes photography distorts images. As I mentioned, the lighting could throw something off. Plus, I’d want to check tissue-depth data and get a frontal and lateral view of the actual skull. Looking at these photos, it’s hard to tell how big it is. All of that plays in to the drawing.”

      And might be why they didn’t get any hits on this poor woman. The artist, although quite good, could have missed something simply because he—or she—was not given the actual skull to sketch from. This victim was buried in a field, tossed away like trash, and the drawing might not even be accurate.

      Which meant a family somewhere was still wondering where their loved one could be. And that old yearning for her mother kicked in.

      At least she knew where her mother was.

      She glanced at the drawing again, and McCall jumped all over her. “What if I could get you the skull? I cleared you with the brass already. They’re on board with any help you can offer.”

      Oh, no. She stacked the papers, setting the anthropologist’s report on top of the drawing and the photos of the skull so she didn’t have to see them. Didn’t have to feel the pull of a dead woman begging for justice.

      She bit her bottom lip, really digging in because—what am I doing?—as hard as she tried to bury the image of that young woman, it was there, flashing in her mind.

      “Amanda?”

      David’s voice. He was still leaning against the wall, once again studying her, trying to read her. Such a lawyer. Damn him for bringing her here. And damn her for allowing him to do it. For making that stupid bet.

      She shoved the folder toward Detective McCall.

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