Detective Kellen Weber, Nick’s brother from another mother and former partner in the Harrisburg Police Department, had taken the disappearance of his little sister hard. They both had. And in the long-standing tradition of testosterone, neither of them had handled it well. They’d blamed each other and, until Riley, had allowed that blame to ruin their friendship.
It had been six long years since Beth had disappeared. Six years with no clues, no hope. Six years of grief that had slowly turned to a grim acceptance that what was lost could never be found. Until Riley’s grandmother, famous psychic medium and all-around snooty pain in his ass, Elanora Basil, had announced that she couldn’t contact Beth’s spirit because she wasn’t dead.
Just like that, he and Weber were partners again, trying to uncover a trail gone cold.
Only this time, they had hope.
“Hey.”
Nick turned away from Beth’s smiling face to find Riley standing in the doorway.
Four months into this relationship thing, and she still made him feel weird glowy shit in his chest whenever she walked into a room. She’d dressed for the day in jeans and a red tank top under a fuzzy cardigan. Her thick, wavy hair was pulled up in one of those messy knots that all women seemed to favor and all men wanted to deconstruct.
“I promise I’m not going to keep dumping her on you. I just really need to focus on this.” He gestured behind him at the mess.
His girlfriend’s warm brown eyes swept the room to take in all of the “this” before returning to him. “I miss you,” she confessed.
“How can you miss me? We live together. We work together. We have sex together,” he teased.
“You’ve been…busy.”
He closed the distance between them.
Riley Thorn was everything he hadn’t known he wanted. Everything he hadn’t thought he deserved. And as soon as he found Beth and brought her home, he would make sure Riley knew exactly how he felt.
He hooked a finger into the neck of her tank top to see the color of her bra. Red to match.
“I’m not too busy to appreciate you,” he said.
“Are you talking to my boobs?”
“Step away from the rack, Nicky.” Nick’s cousin Brian and his wife, Josie, rolled into sight. Brian was flashing his wife a lecherous look as he wheeled his chair toward them. His hair was standing up all over, and his shirt was missing a button. Josie looked like a self-satisfied bird of prey. She was dressed in head-to-toe black. Her fingernails were painted a morbid purple that matched her thick, smudged eyeliner.
Brian was Santiago Investigations’ secret weapon when it came to technology and light hacking. He was a computer genius and incurable gossip. Josie was the muscle of the company. If Nick ever needed someone scared shitless, he sent Josie in to do her thing.
On the outside, they were the odd couple. But beneath those exteriors, Nick knew Brian and Josie shared a deep bond of what really mattered in life. Like a shared interest in collecting antique weapons.
“Hey, guys,” Riley greeted them. “How’s the baby-making going?”
The couple shared another look, this one downright filthy.
“Practice makes perfect,” Josie said, stepping past them to enter his office.
“What is this?” Nick asked, stopping Brian before he followed.
“Impromptu staff meeting,” his cousin said innocently.
“I didn’t call a staff meeting,” he said.
“Hence the impromptu part,boss,” Josie said.
Nick shot Riley a look. “Thorn?” he began.
She raised her palms. “Don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with whatever this is.”
“You’re my psychic girlfriend. You’re supposed to tell me what’s going down before it goes down.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” she said before ducking past him and entering the office.
