Noelle took his hand and nodded. “Ranger Miller.”
Curious, she looked between him and West. “What’s your nickname?” She shook her head. What had McCrae called it? “Your team name?”
The ranger stilled and West shifted back in his chair. “They call him Fox.”
“Fox,” she repeated the name and nodded. “Hmm.”
West cleared his throat. “Likesilverfox.”
‘Fox’ glared at the Major.
That didn’t help jog her memory, so Noelle narrowed her eyes at his face. “You look familiar.” She looked away from his face. “Sorry. I’m usually really good with faces.”
He smiled and it was like the tumblers in a lock fell into place.
“You’ve done press conferences for the Texas Rangers before.”
“Guilty as charged,” he sighed softly. “They keep telling me that the ‘camera likes me’ whatever that means.”
“It’s true.” She held her up hands and waved them. “It’s true. But if I remember correctly, you didn’t have that mustache back then.”
Kelly lifted his hand and rubbed his hand over his mustache and the scuff on his chin and jaw. “It was too much work to shave all the time. My hair grows fast.”
She heard the hard T at the end of fast and nodded. “My dad was the same, she explained. He’d shave in the morning before work and by the time he came home it looked like he had shaved in a couple of days.”
“This way I only have to scrape off the scratchy stuff on my jaw before they shove me in front of the cameras, but since then, they’ve found other people who like being in front of the cameras so I’ve been relieved of that particular responsibility.”
Noelle saw that the relief was real.
He looked very pleased with that outcome.
“I get it,” she relaxed a little now that she’d figured out where she knew him from. “I’m not much of a fan of public speaking. I think it’s why art is my ideal profession.”
“Art?”
“Incredible artwork.” West stood up and gestured at the pictures on his desk. “Like this.”
Fox tilted his head tolook at the pictures on West’s desk, but changed his tact and walked around to the same side of the desk to stand beside the Major.
“This is…”
West nodded. “The skull they found on Duval’s family property. We brought Noelle in to give the body a face.”
Fox nodded. “There wasn’t any usable dna.”
West hesitated. “They’re still looking to see if the rest of the skeleton can provide some clues, but there wasn’t anything they could find. The higher ups okayed us bringing in Noelle as a consultant.”
“That’s a great idea.” Fox lifted up the finished artwork that Noelle had given West first. “If we don’t have anything to identify her with the body, maybe this picture will stir someone’s memory.”
He gestured at the other canvas and West handed it over. Fox lifted the vellum overlay and looked at the skull. Then he turned his head to look at the completed image. And back again.
“How…” He looked up at her. “How do you do this?”
She managed a little smile. “I’ve always been fascinated by anatomy. Especially drawing it.” She winced, her shoulders riding up. “It made my grade school teachers…reallyuncomfortable.”
Fox snorted a laugh and shook his head. “I bet. I would have loved to see Open House at your school when they posted artwork on the wall.”
Memories of just that situation popped up in her head. “It was… interesting,” she grinned. “Someone told my mother and father that they needed to send me to a therapist. A few teachers over the years insisted that I must have suffered some sort of trauma.”
