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RIDGE
There was that glint I liked so much. This time, though, instead of frowning, Seraphina smiled.
“You’re an interesting character,” she said, dishing some of the Greek salad onto her plate. Somehow, I’d known she’d like it.
By her coloring, she could be Greek. Her shoulder-length wavy hair was darker than mine, and her brown eyes turned almost black when she gave me that look. In flat shoes, like she was wearing today, she barely came up to my shoulder.
Unlike Alex, whose model-thin body I’d always considered my ideal, Seraphina was curvy. Her breasts would be more than a handful for the average man—something I’d never been. My mother joked I wore size-twelve men’s shoes when I came out of the womb. And while her heart-shaped ass was squeezably lush, her waist was tiny. I remembered being surprised at the size of it, last night, when I picked her up and set her on the seat of my truck.
Until today, and last night, I’d only seen her in business attire. She seemed more relaxed while dressed casually. She’d probably sway the opinions of many more jurors if she were able to wear tight jeans to court.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, bringing a forkful of salad to her lush lips.
“You,” I said, reaching over and plucking a Kalamata olive off her plate and popping it into my mouth.
“Elaborate.”
“You tell me what you were thinking about earlier when your eyes took in every inch of me, then I’ll tell you.”
“I was thinking you need a new pair of jeans.”
“You were not.”
She raised a brow. “You’re a mind reader?”
I shook my head and took a big bite of an Italian sub.
Seraphina patted her lips with her napkin, sat up straight, and folded her arms.
“Tell me about Luisa,” I said when her expression went from smiling to serious.
“If you think I get a glint in my eye, you should see my sister. She is a force of nature, that one.”
“More than you? I find that hard to believe.”
She cocked her head and smirked. “Luisa is like a hurricane. She’s calm one minute, then raging the next. She and my mom are so much alike.”
“Are you more like your dad?”
Seraphina shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe at one point in his life. By the time I was old enough to really know him, he’d changed.”
“How so?” I took another bite of my sandwich, waiting as she thought about her answer.
“I guess life got the better of him.”
“You went into law, and your sister business?”
“One lawyer in the family is enough.” She set her fork on her plate. “Have you been able to find anything about her boyfriend?”
“Not yet.” That wasn’t exactly true. What little we had found was curious, bordering on troubling.
Beau had hacked into Luisa’s cell phone records, and the number we guessed belonged to Jorge was no longer working. When he took a deeper look, he found it was a burner phone. Then, when he tracked where she’d been, the house we guessed Jorge had lived in was vacant. The other troubling thing was, the last activity on Luisa’s phone was from the morning she’d gone missing. Last known location—the vacant house.
Given they were more likely to get answers from neighbors than he was, Beau asked Snapper and Kick to see what they could find out.
While they looked almost like twins, two years separated the brothers, who were champion team-ropers who competed on the PRCA—Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association—circuit. Having spent so much time at their uncle’s ranch in Mexico when they were growing up, both spoke fluent Spanish, like most of the residents in the neighborhood surrounding the vacant house.
“How many languages does your sister speak?”
