When asked if they’d noticed anything else unusual today, a couple employees had sworn they’d seen Selina Palacios herself walking down the halls with the late Barry Smythe, but the receptionist claimed not to have seen the reclusive heiress enter the building. She had seemed a little cagey as she gave her account, yes, but Andrews didn’t think she was lying. He liked to claim that he could always tell when a woman was lying to him, but that wasn’t entirely true. Historically, he’d just found that his good looks and a bit of charm could make a woman give him anything he wanted, even the truth. And boy, had he laid the charm on thick with Delilah. Maybe, once the case is over and she is a bit less traumatized, he’d drop by again, take her out for some real coffee.
Andrews glances up as the medical examiner’s team wheels the body bag out. It looks a touch smaller than they usually do, not because the victim was particularly short, but because techs are still scraping what remains of his head off the office walls. A lifetime ago, the thought would have made his stomach turn, but now, it’s just another day on the job.
“Huh,” Officer Daley says beside him, and Andrews turns to look at the woman. Under his tutelage she’s on a detective track, and she’ll probably make a damn good one someday, but he plans to advise the Lieutenant against keeping her in Homicide, when the time comes. She’s too soft. She can take a gory crime scene like a champ, but that’s not really the problem. People like her, people with a touch of light still left in them, shouldn’t be led down the path that turns them into men like him.
“What?” Andrews asks absently, following Daley’s gaze to the portrait of Selina Palacios hanging on the lobby wall.
“I think I saw that woman today,” Daley says, nodding at the smiling image. “At the station.”
Huh, indeed. Andrews steps closer, examining the photo. The young woman, barely more than a girl, wears a demurely tight-lipped smile. Her brown curls are perfectly coiffed, decolletage adorned with a string of saltwater pearls, but there’s a darkness in those amber eyes that makes Andrews frown. It’s probably grief, he thinks, remembering the quick history of the business that was whispered into his ear as they arrived on scene.
Still, in his line of work, cliché as it may be, there are no such thing as coincidences. This woman was at the police station earlier today, and then the CEO of her family’s company wound up dead. Andrews turns back to Daley and nods at her notepad, which she flips open, ready to jot down her next orders.
“Find out everything there is to know about Selina Palacios.”
Selina and Javier’s story continues in Glass Cage! Click here to start reading ASAP.
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Selina and Javier’s turbulent romance continues in Glass Cage. You can order your copy of that book HERE.
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Gold Cage Page 17