Page 21 of Missing Justice
The guy had a good heart and she appreciated his concern. If anyone found out she was consulting with him—continuingto consult with him on an active case—she could lose her job. “I’m a trained agent, Grey. I’ll be all right.”
His lips firmed and he moved aside.
Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she headed for the elevators to take her downstairs. Mitch’s voice called after her. “DNFU, Sinclair. Stay away from Stephens. I’m telling you, he’s a douchbag.”
Do Not Fuck Up. The irony of a screw-up like Mitch telling her not to fuck up her career, her life, made her want to match his earlier eye roll.
“Takes a douchebag to know one,” she called back, giving Mitch a cheeky smile and wave as she climbed into the elevator and hit the down button.
Before the doors closed, she saw him flip her the bird. Yep. Same ol’ Mitch and Grey. How the two of them ever stayed friends was beyond her.
* * *
Matt parked the Mustang in his normal spot behind the office and sat back for a second, letting the late morning sun warm the car’s interior. Rather than deal with the cost of rent in the nation’s capitol, the sisters had opted for a first floor unit in Vienna, Virginia, a thirty-minute drive from DC.
Meg’s minivan was to his left and on the other side of the minivan sat Charlie’s convertible. The sisters couldn’t be more different in their choice of vehicle. Being an artist, Meg liked the minivan for its cargo area and the resulting ability to transport big shit all at once. At any given time, Meg might have easels, various types of stands for sculpting, canvases, large bins with art supplies, whatever. And it seemed all of it was in her vehicle.
Her sister, on the other hand, preferred the sleek convertible BMW that Matt barely fit in.
Funny ladies.
A minute later, he pushed through the office’s back door into the narrow hallway. “Honey! I’m home!”
Ahead, on the right, were Meg’s and Charlie’s offices. Directly across from them was Matt’s. Meg had offered to switch offices with him and give him the bigger one, but given his schedule and the lack of time he actually spent in said office, he didn’t need extra space. All he needed was a desk, a chair, and a computer. Boom.
Besides, Meg’s office doubled as a secondary art studio and, like her vehicle, she needed all the room she could get.
“Hey, Matt.” Charlie’s voice drifted down the hallway, the echo gobbled up by the thick carpeting and array of Meg-created artwork lining the steel-gray walls.
Meg had given him a whole dissertation on the whys and hows of steel gray, but he was a guy. What the hell did he care what color the walls were?
He stopped at the first open door, found Meg, as usual, putting her hands to work. Today’s project? A skull reconstruction.
Entering the office, Matt let out a low whistle, drawing his boss’s attention. She tugged on her earbuds and swung them over her shoulder for safekeeping.
“Hi,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”
She rubbed the back of her clay littered hand across her forehead in an attempt to tame the wisps of honey blonde hair that had broken free of her ponytail. He studied her face, took in the slight darkness under her eyes contrasting with her pale face.
“You look tired.” He propped his ass on the cherry credenza that weighed more than him and gestured to the sculpture. “How long you been at it?”
“I couldn’t sleep last night. She’s bugging me.”
Meg went back to the sculpture. It appeared to be a woman, but, as yet, she hadn’t added hair or any sort of coloring to the face. Basically, what she had here was clay carefully molded over high cheekbones, but without a doubt, the vic was female.
“She’s young,” Matt said.
“My anthropologist says early twenties.”
Her anthropologist. The one she’d met while working a case last year. The two had dated briefly, but the relationship, from what Matt knew, fizzled. Meg, by her own admission, couldn’t dedicate herself to a relationship when there was so much to be done on the missing persons front.
“Cause of death?”
Using her thumb, she smoothed more clay around the eye area. Blue eyes. That’s what Meg had given her. Whether the young woman actually had blue eyes, Meg couldn’t know. If she didn’t have proof of the victim’s eye and hair color, she went on instinct.
“I’m not sure.”
Meg and Charlie had been contacted two weeks ago by the sheriff from a small town in Maryland. Months earlier, he’d read about the sisters in a law enforcement newsletter and had saved the article. After two years of holding on to this skull and trying to solve the case on their own, the sheriff’s need to identify the vic prompted him to pick up the phone and ask for help.
