Page 31 of Deep Tide

He just looked at her.

“Are you here drying out? Did your wife give you the boot? What?”

“I’m not married.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, your girlfriend, then?”

“I told you, I’m here on vacation.”

She sighed and pushed herself to her feet. “Forget it. I don’t want to know.” She dusted the sand off her hands as he stood, too.

He gazed down at her with those ocean green eyes. “You really think I would ask you out if I was married?”

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t. I’m not like that.”

But what he would do was lie to her and evade all her questions. She shook her head and looked away. He’d caught her crying twice—and she wasn’t even a crier! Meanwhile, he wouldn’t give her a straight answer to even the most basic question.

She checked her watch. “Well, I’m off. See you around.”

He rested his hands on his hips as he watched her walk away. “Leyla—”

“Enjoy your run.”

CHAPTER

SIX

The lighthouse came into view as Nicole crossed the causeway over the sparkling water of Laguna Madre. Finally. Just the sight of the landmark helped loosen the knot in her shoulders that came from driving all morning. Her trip to the county crime lab had taken longer than expected, and then she’d hit a half-hour traffic snarl on the on-ramp to the bridge.

She dug her phone from her pocket and called Emmet.

“Hey, where are you?” he asked.

“About to exit the causeway,” she told him. “Are you at the station?”

“On my way. I just picked up a burger for lunch.”

She eyed the wrapper in her cup holder. Her lunch had consisted of a smashed protein bar from the bottom of her bag.

“So, did that phone dump finally come in?” she asked. They’d been waiting on Amelia Albright’s phone records for days.

“Yeah. I spent some time on it this morning,” Emmet said.

She felt a rush of relief. “Anything interesting?”

“I’m still going through it and running down numbers. The day of the murder, it looks like the last incoming call that connected was at three fifty-five, and it’s from Rachel Davies.”

“We knew about that one.”

It was Amelia’s sick co-worker calling to ask Amelia to fill in for her and deliver the cake to the wedding reception.

“That call lasted seven minutes,” Emmet said. “Rachel called again at five fifteen, but it went to voicemail. After that, nothing.”

“The perp probably took the battery out after he grabbed the phone so no one could ping it and locate it.”

“Yeah, probably.”

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