Page 5 of Cowboy Breaking Point

“Well, Livingston?” Barker-Moore set a hand on her hip.

“The phone’s in operating order. It wasn’t out in the elements.”

She nodded as if she didn’t need to even look at the phone to know what he said was true.

Irritation took his already poor mood and made it worse. He didn’t want to work with this know-it-all kid.

“Whoever killed him was lazy. Probably tossed him in the river.” He twisted to look at the bank a short distance from the road. Sure enough, the earth and grass were sunken under the weight of a truck.

“They probably backed a vehicle in, bed down. He rolled out, which accounts for the reason the body’s not submerged,” he continued.

Barker-Moore nodded and swiped a thermometer over the man’s ear. Once she had a reading, she cleared her throat. “Based off body temp, overnight temp and lividity, I’m going to agree with you, Livingston.”

He paused, shocked that she didn’t just propose a different plan—any other plan—to outshine him. Looking at her in a new light, he waited for more.

She continued, “I’m going to guess our killers didn’t want to get wet. They dumped the body in the easiest manner possible and avoided getting close enough to the mud to leave tire tracks.” She looked up. “Faller. Measure the width of those depressions on the bank where the tires were.”

If Faller had any reservation about taking orders from a kid, he didn’t show it. He set off to do her bidding.

The victim’s phone in Quaide’s hand vibrated. With a start, he glanced down at the screen to see a text popped up. He bent and pressed the phone to the dead man’s thumb, bypassing the lockscreen.

“Smart, Livingston.” Barker-Moore bobbed her head. “What do you got?”

The instant the phone totally unlocked to him, he set about changing the security measures that would lock him out again. He deleted the facial recognition and the need for a thumbprint. Only then did he check out the text.

“The contact’s name is MJ. Any idea who that could be?” He shot Barker-Moore a look.

“Nope. I don’t know who this guy is any more than you do. I’m just here for the investigation.”

“The text doesn’t have any message, only a photo.” He held up the phone to show her a map of the area that included the river they were standing beside right now.

“So somebody wants to meet our friend in this location,” she speculated while he scrolled through the camera roll.

He only made it through a dozen or so photos before he stopped dead, his finger frozen over the screen and his heart throbbing.

The photo was a headshot of a young woman. Honey-blonde hair with paler streaks, blue-gray eyes and an oval face that ended in a delicate chin.

His brain shot to the image burned into his brain. Onlythatwoman wore sexy eyeglasses that slid down her nose and she often took off to nibble the stem in thought.

His voice sounded as rough as a gravel road. “We need to find out who this girl is.”

Christ. It looked like Dove.Somuch like Dove. But he knew his lover’s face like he knew his own reflection in the mirror, and while this woman closely resembled Dove, it wasn’t.

He looked a second time just to be sure.

“I’m going to take the phone back to my office. Run these photos through the facial recognition program. You got this, kid?” He glanced at the medical examiner.

Still crouched beside the body, Barker-Moore leveled him in a serious stare. “That’s Dr. Kid to you.”

Ordinarily, he would jump into that conversation just to irritate her, but he needed to get out of here before he lost control of his emotions.

The woman in that picture looked like Dove. And Dove hadn’t been in contact with him or anybody from the FBI office in six weeks.

As he strode back to his vehicle, his mind argued with itself.

It isn’t her.

But it looks so much like her.

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