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“What about the father?”
“Aspen never said who he was.”
“We could run the baby’s DNA,” Miguel said. “The father might be in the database.”
“The guy obviously doesn’t care. Baby Jack is better off with Emma.”
The sheriff pulled into the driveway of a pretty little ranch-style house, white with black trim and a shake roof. The lot was huge and well-landscaped with indigenous pines and spruce. Empty flower boxes at the windows waited for their spring planting.
“Nice place.” The cleanliness and normality surprised him. He’d halfway expected a haunted house with cobwebs draped across the windows and a graveyard in the back. “What does this medium do to earn her living?”
“Some kind of consulting or editing. She works at home on her computer.” Patrick issued one last warning. “Be nice.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior, and that’s saying a lot. I used to be an altar boy.”
Like that churchgoing boy from so many years ago, he trudged along the sidewalk, dragging his feet. He’d rather be somewhere else. Back at the lab, he had work piling up and a new piece of audio analysis equipment he wanted to play with. He waited on the front stoop while Patrick rang the bell. From inside, he could hear a baby crying, which didn’t exactly reassure him about Emma being a good mother substitute.
The door swung open. Miguel found himself staring into the huge blue eyes of a slender woman with straight, silky brown hair that fell across her forehead and was cut in a straight line at her sharp, little chin. He saw hints of her Ute heritage in her dusky complexion and high cheekbones. Her lips pulled into a wide, open smile as she greeted Patrick. Though she balanced the fussing baby in her arms, she managed to shake his hand when the sheriff introduced them.
“Pleased to meet you, Miguel.”
“Same here.”
His first impression was all good, muy bueno. As he entered her house, he studied her more closely. As a CSI, he was trained to notice details. Her silver earrings and the necklace around her long, slender neck had a distinctive Ute design. Her beige turtleneck, almost the same color as her skin, and her jeans resembled the typical outfit worn by most people in the area at this time of year. But the fabric of her turtleneck was silk. He didn’t know much about women’s clothing, but he suspected that she shopped in classy boutiques.
In her sunlit kitchen, she offered them coffee.
With a glance at Miguel, Patrick said, “We probably shouldn’t waste any time.”
“No rush,” Miguel said.
“Oh, good,” Emma said as she bounced up and down with the whimpering baby, gently stroking the fine hair on top of his head. “Because it’s time for Jack’s feeding. I just finished heating the formula.”
“I’ll take the baby.”
Miguel held out his arms. Back home, he had a growing herd of nieces and nephews. Though his family lived only a few hours’ drive away from Kenner City, his schedule didn’t leave much time for visits, and he missed them.
When she handed over the baby, dressed in footed pajamas, he wrapped the blanket snugly around the infant’s tiny legs and cradled him in the crook of his arm. “Hush, mijo.”
The baby looked toward him. As soon as Miguel took a seat at the kitchen table, the fussing stopped. “How old is he? About three months?”
“Eleven weeks.” Her jaw literally dropped. “How did you get him to settle down?”
“He’s curious. Is that right, mijo? You’re figuring out who I am before you start making noise and complaining.”
“Let’s get him fed before that happens.”
She maneuvered in her kitchen with a graceful economy of motion. Her age, he guessed, was probably about thirty—the prime of womanhood, old enough to be done with girlish giggles and young enough to be open to new experience. The more he saw of Emma Richardson, the more he liked her.
After she handed him a bottle full of formula and placed two coffee mugs on the kitchen table, she said, “I made notes of what I remembered about my vision. I’ll go get them.”
As soon as she left the room, Patrick said, “No rush? I thought you were in a big hurry.”
He smiled down at the baby, who smacked his little lips as he sucked down formula. “You didn’t tell me she was pretty. How does a woman like that get to be in her late twenties and still unmarried?”
The sheriff sipped his coffee. Wryly, he said, “Maybe because she’s a witch, and she turns her lovers into toads.”
That was a chance Miguel might be willing to take if it meant spending more time with Emma. He settled Jack into a baby seat on the tabletop and kept the nipple plugged into his mouth. With the other hand, he lifted his coffee mug. The brew was lightly flavored with cinnamon, just the way he liked it.
Emma returned with a sheet of paper, which she placed on the table in front of her. “I’m not quite sure how to interpret everything I saw, but I believe Aspen is alive.”
Miguel’s infatuation slipped a few notches. Crazy wasn’t appealing. “Why?”
“Two reasons. I saw an aspen tree with green leaves. And the man who was chasing me in the vision said so. He said, ‘Aspen got away.’ I assume that means he failed to kill my cousin.”
“What else?” Patrick asked.
“I was next to a river. For me, water is a symbol of life. The river was to my right, to the east.” She frowned at her notes. “Directions seemed to be important, but I’m not sure why. It might have something to do with the medicine wheel.”
“The medicine wheel?”
“I’m part Ute. I was raised by my aunt Rose on the rez, and the medicine wheel is part of my culture. The east where the sun rises is associated with good things, new life. I always orient my desk toward the east so my work will go easier. West is the opposite. North is negative. South is positive.”
“This vision of yours,” Miguel said, trying hard not to be sarcastic. “Was it a road map to find your cousin?”
“I’m not sure what the directions mean. I’m hoping that if I take a look at Aspen’s car, I might get a clearer picture of where she is.”
“Like a psychic GPS system?”
Anger flashed in her blue eyes. Though Patrick had told him to be nice, Miguel couldn’t help teasing. Not when she left herself wide-open with such an irrational theory.
Her tone was curt. “You’re a forensic investigator, right?”
“Correct.”
“Here’s something specific for you to work with.” She pushed the paper toward him. “The man who was chasing me wore a leather necklace with a bear claw design. This is what it looked like.”
“A grizzly paw.” His gaze slid down the page and saw the words in quotation marks: Aspen got away. But you will die. Emma hadn’t mentioned that second part. Was that the way visions worked? Pick one thing and ignore another?
He also saw another scribbled design using the initials VDG. That was a symbol he recognized; it was important to another investigation. “What’s this?”
“I didn’t see it in my vision. When I started making notes, I just drew it.”
He adjusted Jack’s bottle. “You don’t know where it came from? You’ve never seen it before?”
“Not that I recall.”
Her smile was a treasure. So beautiful, muy bonita. And so crazy, muy loca.
He needed to inform the FBI about the VDG symbol.
Chapter Two (#ulink_32bd496a-26f4-53d1-bce3-36b29a181a7d)
On their way to the impound lot where Aspen’s car was being held, Emma rode with Miguel in her little gas-saving hybrid so they wouldn’t have to switch the baby seat in and out of the sheriff’s cruiser. Though they were in her car, she let Miguel drive so as not to further affront his authority. His sarcasm clearly told her that he didn’t much care for mediums, psychics or spirit visions. The only thing that sparked his interest was that VDG scribble.
She stole a glance at this dark, lean man with the shaggy black hair and dark green eyes—the color of a cool, deep forest. When he wasn’t making smart-alecky comments, he was attractive. And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Baby Jack adored him; they’d bonded in seconds. After finishing his bottle, Jack wiggled cheerfully in Miguel’s arms and made gurgle noises that sounded like an alien language. Riding in the backseat, Jack still hadn’t stopped burbling. His was the only conversation in the car.
Emma couldn’t think of a word to say. Though she’d always been terminally shy, this long silence was ridiculous. She cleared her throat. “The snow is melting fast.”
“Yeah, it’s about time it started feeling like spring,” he said.
More silence.
“So, Miguel, are you new to Kenner City?”
“I’ve been here about a year. I was one of the first employees at the new crime lab.”
“Where are you from?”
“You tell me.” He shot her a wry glance. “You’re the psychic. You’re supposed to know these things.”
Usually, she paid no attention to those who doubted her visions or—even worse—those who treated her with great deference as if she were the Oracle of Delphi. But she wanted Miguel to accept her. Maybe because he was good with the baby. Maybe because he could help her find Aspen. And maybe…just because. “Are you challenging me?”
“Go ahead. Astound me.”
“Fine.” She studied him for a moment. His identity shouldn’t be so hard to figure out.
The sheriff had mentioned that most of the employees at the lab were from Colorado. She assumed that Miguel wasn’t newly transplanted from a big city like Denver; his cowboy boots were well-worn and looked like his habitual footwear. He didn’t have the roughened hands of a cowboy or a farmer from the San Luis Valley, but she noticed calluses on his fingertips, typical of a guitar player.
She figured that he’d gone to college to study forensics. But where? Which school? She remembered that when he looked at the design on her pursuer’s necklace, he identified the marking as a grizzly claw. Not a bear, but a grizzly. And the grizzly was the school mascot for Adams State College in Alamosa.
“I’m not sure if you were born there,” she said, “but you lived in Alamosa.”
“Correct.” He arched an eyebrow. “The sheriff told you, right? Everybody thinks Patrick Martinez is the strong, silent type, but he can’t keep his mouth shut.”
“I never heard your name until I met you this morning.”
He pulled up at a stop sign, pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead and stared at her with an intensity that she found both intimidating and sexy. As his gaze scanned her face, searching for a hint that she was lying, she faced him without flinching.
He asked, “What else can you tell me?”
“You play guitar.”
He held out his right hand. “You saw the calluses.”
“You’ve got a fresh grease stain on your jeans. Maybe you ride a motorcycle.”
“A Harley,” he confirmed. “You’re using logic. Not psychic intuition.”
“Does it matter if I find the answers with logic or by a vision?” she asked earnestly. “Both are methods of observation. Different paths that lead to the same truth. You’d understand if you could be inside my head, walk a mile in my shoes.”
He glanced at her feet. “Purple sneakers with white stars? I don’t think so.”
“They match my jacket.” She ran her fingers down the zipper of the purple leather jacket she’d bought on her last trip to New York. The style was so not from the Southwest, but she loved it.
As her tone lightened to match his teasing, she realized that she was enjoying this conversation. Moments ago, she’d been tongue-tied. Now her wits were fully engaged. How lovely to talk to an adult who wasn’t a nagging ghost. “We have more in common than you think, Miguel. We’re both investigators.”
“But you see things that aren’t visible to the naked eye.”
“So do you. Every time you look into a microscope.”
“You make a good point.” His brow furrowed. “So much of forensics, like DNA testing and trace evidence analysis, isn’t readily visible.”
“Paranormal phenomenon is the same thing. It exists, but nobody has invented the tools to accurately reveal these signs and symbols.”
Until someone created a reading device, it was up to people like her—psychics and mediums—to interpret.
They parked outside the ten-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounding the police impound lot. The person in charge wasn’t a police officer in uniform, but a crusty gray-haired man who looked like he knew his way around a junkyard. As soon as Miguel showed his badge, the old man unlocked the gate and slid it aside.
After a brief discussion, Miguel agreed to hold the baby so she could concentrate, but he refused to wear the colorfully patterned designer baby sling she’d ordered online. Instead, he tucked the baby in the crook of his arm as he answered his cell phone.
Emma picked her way across the gravel lot where most of the snow had melted. Some of these tightly parked cars and trucks looked like they’d been here for years with their tires gone flat and the paint jobs dulled by constant exposure to the elements. Aspen’s beat-up sedan seemed new in comparison.
The last time Emma saw this vehicle, shortly after her cousin disappeared, she’d felt confusion and fear as she imagined the desperation Aspen must have experienced as she fled. Similar emotions roiled inside her, but this fear came from her own terrible foreboding that her cousin was never coming back. Please, Aspen, you have to be alive. She had so much to live for. Her son. Her new job as a teacher on the rez. After years of struggling and working lousy jobs at the Ute casino and in Las Vegas, Aspen had finally finished college at the University of Nevada. She’d been so close to reaching her dreams.
Miguel strolled up beside her. His calm, no-nonsense attitude reassured her. “That was Patrick on the phone. He has other police business and won’t be joining us. When we’re done here, can you give me a ride back to the lab?”
“Sure.” She circled the hood of the car, hoping to get a clue that would lead to her cousin.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Sometimes, when I touch things, I can tap into a spirit energy. In my vision, I saw the car. It must be important.”
“If your cousin isn’t dead…” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“Keep going,” she encouraged. “A mile in my shoes.”
“If your cousin isn’t dead, what spirit are you hoping to contact?”
“I saw a woman wearing an FBI jacket. I’m not sure, but I think her name is Julie.”
He reacted with a start. “And she’s dead?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tensed. “Don’t play games with me, Emma. You heard something about the FBI investigation. Correct?”
“I haven’t heard anything. Why would I?”
