Page 75 of Deep Tide

His face darkened. Then his attention went to the bourbon bottle. He grabbed the plastic bag on the counter and peered inside it. Nicole had gone by the pharmacy on her way home for some ibuprofen.

“Couldn’t they give you any real meds?” he asked.

“I don’t need any. I’m fine.”

His gaze narrowed. “Why are you downplaying this?”

“I’m not.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head and looked away. “What the hell were you doing at a homicide victim’s apartment at eleven at night?”

“Searching for evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Amelia’s mystery man.”

“We went through the whole place multiple times already. What could we have missed?”

She watched him for a moment. Then she slid her phone from her pocket and pulled up the photos she’d taken before dropping the sketchbook into an evidence bag.

She handed him the phone. “I found this in her beach bag. It’s a sketchbook.”

Emmet studied the photo. Then he flipped to the next one and the next. She’d taken two shots of the man on the bed and one of the unfinished profile.

“You can’t see who it is,” Emmet said as he scrolled through the pictures again. “And there’s no date or anything.”

“Correct. But there is a date on the drawing right before these. That one’s a picture of kids playing at the beach, and it’s dated March twenty-first.”

He lifted an eyebrow and handed the phone back.

“That’s four weeks ago,” she said. “Which suggests the other sketches were done since then.”

He just looked at her.

“Wouldn’t you agree?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “What’d you do with the sketchbook?”

“Sent it to the lab. Who knows? Maybe he touched it and we’ll get a print.”

Emmet shook his head.

“What?”

“You left out the part of the story where you got jumped by two men.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Callahan and Flores. Where do you think?”

The two patrol officers had responded to Nicole’s request for assistance after she was attacked. They had interviewed Amelia’s neighbors—none of whom had seen anything—while Nicole had collected her new evidence and resecured the apartment.

“It was one guy who jumped me,” she told Emmet. “The other one ran off.”

“Who do you think they were?”

Sighing, she reached for her mug. “Want some?”

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