“Yo, Brett,” Alex shouted from his desk, that damn phone receiver still glued to his shoulder even two hours later. The man was the king of multitasking. “Report of our Jane Doe from Friday. Got a positive ID. Sending it your way.”

Brett threw his arm up in acknowledgment —no need to add to the late afternoon chaos around all the desks by yelling— and sent the electronic file directly to print.

Call him old school, but he preferred a hard copy of information in his hand. The tactile nature of it helped him think. He walked to the office’s common printer thankful it was fast. It was time to see their Jane Doe without any bruises, and hopefully be one step closer to proving, or disproving, his serial killer theory.

The name and general info sheet came up first: Teresa Cavasos. Single, Caucasian female, twenty-eight years old. 5’5, 120 pounds. No criminal record, so she hadn’t been in the system for easy identification. Between that and whatever had happened in the coroner’s office requiring bodies to be sent out to county morgues, it had caused a much slower identification of the body. Brett noticed the report had also been sent to an officer in missing persons a few hours ago. The missing person wasn’t missing anymore. She was dead.

The picture of the woman covered in bruises came next. Brett didn’t need to study that one, he’d remembered the bruising clearly enough from the crime scene. But the picture he grabbed from the printer after that had his stomach dropping; the picture of Teresa Cavasos with no bruising.

This was the woman Paige had drawn in her sleep.

Brett forced himself to loosen his grip on the papers so he wouldn’t crush them as he walked back to his desk. What the hell was going on?

He had totally believed Paige when she had said she had no idea who the woman she’d drawn was. That it was just someone Paige had made up in her mind. But obviously she had to have known Teresa Cavasos. The image couldn’t have been anyone but her.

Brett grabbed his cell phone to punch out a text message to Paige, since he knew her security team had gotten her a replacement one this morning.

I need to talk to you ASAP. Call me.

It wasn’t very romantic, or even gentle, but Brett didn’t care. He needed to know how the hell Paige was connected to Ms. Cavasos.

He stared at his phone for five minutes, willing Paige to reply. Nothing. He was still staring at it when Alex came over and picked up the picture.

“Teresa Cavasos.” Alex whistled through his teeth. “That’s a shame. Her family has been looking for her. They took out multiple ads in the paper, went on television, everything.”

“Really? I totally missed it. I’ve been caught up in so many other cases, I hadn’t even seen anything about her.”

“Yeah. They’ve got money. She was their only daughter, I think. I was hoping they’d get a ransom note or something. But at least now they know.”

Brett nodded. “I guess that’s better than never knowing.”

“Always.”

Alex left, leaving Brett staring at the picture of Teresa Cavasos. Damn it, he wanted to believe the best about Paige. The absolute best case scenario he could think of was that maybe Paige saw one of the ads Alex just mentioned and didn’t remember. Then had drawn Teresa from her subconscious.

The medium case scenario was that she had seen the ad, and drawing Teresa was a way of getting attention. Like what the other members of the police department had accused her of with the drawing of her own attack.

The worst case scenario was that she knew Teresa and didn’t tell him. That she had lied outright.

Actually, the really worst case scenario was that Paige had something to do with Teresa’s murder.

But no, Brett categorically refused to believe that. Actually, he had a difficult time believing any of the scenarios except the first. Paige wouldn’t purposely deceive him.

Right?

Her subconscious might have deceived them both. But she wouldn’t have lied to him outright.

Although Brett had been doing this job long enough to know that everyone was capable of deceit. And everyone was capable of letting their emotions cloud their better judgment where attraction was concerned.

And damn it, why had she not texted him back?

Brett called and left a message —similar to what he had said in his text— when the call went straight to voice mail. Then he sent another text.

If this all turned out to be nothing, she was going to think he was crazy. But Brett needed this cleared up for him. Right. Now. He willed her to call.

“Hey QB.”

Brett looked up to see Randal Younker standing by his desk. This was not the time that Brett wanted to turn down another dinner party invitation.

“Hey Randal. What’s going on? I’m pretty busy.”

“Janet Schliesman from down in Missing Persons sent me up to get you.”

“Okay. For what?” Brett asked.

“She heard you and Olivier are taking over the the Cavasos case now that it’s officially a homicide.”

Randal motioned for Alex to join them.

“They’ve got a present for you downstairs in Interrogation Room A having to do with the Cavasos case. A suspect.”

“Already? It just became a homicide case,” Alex said. “Based on what? Ransom? Family member?”

“No. Much better,” Randal shook his head in disbelief. “Woman came in with a drawing of Teresa in a strip mall parking lot in Healy Heights.”

Brett felt his stomach drop out. They had Paige in their interrogation room. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else but her. He stood up.

“Healy Heights?” Alex looked over at Brett. “The strip mall is just a couple blocks from where she was found in that hotel.”

Brett looked over at Randal. He didn’t want to give away that he knew the person they were holding was Paige. “A picture of Cavasos? Weird, but what makes the person a suspect?”

“The woman said she drew the picture, which is fine, Teresa’s picture has been all over the paper and news. Anybody could’ve drawn her.”

“Okay…” Alex said. “So?”

“So,” Randal continued, drawing it out in his usual dramatic fashion. “In this drawing, Teresa is wearing the outfit she went missing in. The one she showed up dead in. Which is not the same one her parents put in the paper or on TV. Only someone connected with Teresa’s death would’ve known what she was wearing.”

“And she just walked in and volunteered her drawing?” Brett asked. “That doesn’t seem very smart if you’re involved with a murder.”

Randal shrugged. “Actually, I think she came in under the pretense of helping with the missing person’s case. She thought the scene in the background might be helpful.”

“Still not particularly smart if you’re guilty and trying not to get caught,” Alex said.

“She said it was some sort of artist exercise where she just picked someone at random to draw. Replicates a scene from memory and then draws it.”

“And she just happened to choose Teresa Cavasos.” Brett said it and could see how the detectives downstairs would’ve found it pretty suspicious.

“Said she didn’t know Cavasos was missing at the time, and when she saw it in the paper today she came down to the station to see if she could help.”

Why the hell hadn’t Paige come to him?

Of course, Brett had no idea what he would’ve done if she had.

Alex stood up. “Sounds like someone needs to go question our artist friend downstairs.”