Chapter 16

I WAS kind of getting used to my little desk. And my dusty window. I’d also stored a couple six-packs of Monster Energy drinks in my bottom drawer and a bag of fun-sized Kit Kats that Kevin wouldn’t quit stealing. I grabbed a handful of them and snacked while I read the file Chevy had sent me on Brock Johnson.

It was thorough. He’d grown up in Brickell Bay, the son of a woman who worked in the school cafeteria and a man whose main occupation seemed to be trouble—finding it, making it, and staying in it. From the looks of Brock’s extensive arrest record, he had followed in his father’s footsteps. My eyebrows climbed as I perused the list. It seemed he couldn’t decide whether petty theft or battery was his favorite flavor.

None of that meant he’d ever gotten angry enough to kill someone, especially not someone he cared about. I needed to speak to him. Not to hear what he would say, but how he would say it. To watch the expressions on his face. Watch his fidgeting or lack thereof. But we had to catch him first.

I sighed and closed the file. It was a good thing I was so used to my little dusty corner, because I clearly wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. I checked my phone, but I didn’t have any missed messages from Danny. Obviously he decided to do his own thing. I guess I should probably do the same. I decided to utilize my day slogging through the tips file.

They were all over the place. Some enterprising soul had separated them into categories—sightings, suspects, and theories—and cross-referenced them by date and time. By the time the sun went down, I’d only gone through a quarter of them. According to the fine folks who called the tipster line, Amy was in Seattle, Mexico, Nebraska, and the Virgin Islands.

Her frequent-flier-miles plan must be off the hook.

The door to the conference room whammed open, and Kevin tottered in. At least I thought it was him. It looked more like a box perched atop Kevin’s jeans.

“For you,” he said, gasping for air. He dropped the box with a grunt and stayed draped over it for a minute.

“Can I get you anything? Water? Aspirin? A defibrillator kit?”

“Oh, you’ve got jokes.” He came up with a groan and set his hands on his hips. “That’s the last time I offer to make a trip down to the storage locker for you.”

“What the hell is all this?”

“I heard you were going through the tips. This is the last of them.”

I stared at the box in disbelief. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

He shrugged, clearly not fazed that we’d gotten a tip from everyone on planet Earth and the Mars Rover. “They put up a lot of reward money. You know that brings out the kooks.”

“En masse, apparently.”

He dropped into a chair at the table. “You should see the number of tips we had for the Becker case. Their daughter went missing in the early nineties? Her family put up a reward of a hundred grand. I think we’re still getting tips on that shit, and they found her five years ago.”

I could imagine, but I was eager to get back to work, so I looked expectantly at Kevin. He looked right back… and he looked… comfortable. Like he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “Well, thanks for the box,” I tried.

“No big.” He cracked his knuckles. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“I sure will.”

“Anything at all.”

“Uh huh.”

I gritted my teeth and picked up my place again in the tips file. If he wanted to watch me work, then that was fine by me. I was so determined to appear busy that I almost missed his next words.

“So… it’s probably strange to work with Danny again, huh?”

“What?”

“Danny.” He sketched out a shape in the air that I assume was meant to remind me of Danny but was more reminiscent of the Blob. “It’s probably kind of strange to see one another.”

“Oh. Well, yeah. But we’re still friends. Of a sort.”

“Friends.” He stretched out the word, and my eyebrows lifted. “Friends who live together? Work together? Sleep together?”

I stared. “Are you actually asking me about my sex life?”

“Living vicariously.” He shrugged. “I’m pulling a double this weekend. My wife has to take the kids to Disney on her own. The next time I’ll be getting some is the year 2040.”

“Honestly? No offense, but I don’t think my relationship with Danny is any of your business.”

His face hardened. “Everything about Danny is my business.”

My lips thinned in a flat line. Ah. So it was that kind of talk. I didn’t think Danny would appreciate me kicking his partner’s ass all up and down the station, so I set my temper on a low simmer. “Why don’t you just say what you want to say?”

“Maybe I am overstepping. And if Danny knew I was talking to you, he’d kick my ass.” His eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “That’s not going to stop me from speaking plainly, though.”

I could appreciate plain talk. I inclined my head in a nod. “Then speak plainly.”

“I like you, Christiansen. Always have. I liked you for Danny from the start. I thought you guys were great for one another, but I guess even I have a wrong thought every now and again.”

“That it?”

“No. I don’t really know what happened between the two of you, and I guess in the end, it doesn’t really matter.” He shook his head. “But I get to be worried about my partner. I get to be worried about whether I’m going to have to pick up the pieces when you get froggy and prance off. Again.”

My cheeks were heated, but I bit back my instinctive curse. I wanted to lash out and tell him to mind his own fucking business, but deep inside I knew he wasn’t wrong. “I don’t prance,” I finally said.

His mouth quirked. “Fine. Stride. You have a very manly stride.” He focused his blue eyes on me, and I had to fight hard not to squirm. There wasn’t a bit of their usual playfulness, and I knew he expected an answer. Wasn’t going away until he got one. “Are you here to stay?”

It was a fair question. A good question. One that deserved an honest answer. I shook my head slowly. “No.”

“Then treat him that way.”

He lasered through me a little longer until I finally gave a jerky nod.

It was strange talking to someone about my relationships, past or not. I guess it would be natural for Kevin and Danny to talk. They were partners. I just didn’t have that kind of thing in the BAU. We talked about cases. Murderers. Serial killers. That was about the whole of it. No one was in any rush to get profiled by talking to a fellow profiler. It wasn’t intentional. It was just the way it was. After so long on the job, we saw people differently.

Something about the thought of Danny having someone to confide in made me grateful, and I tried to be nicer. “We’re just friends. And we work well together.”

“That’s something in and of itself.” Kevin shook his head. “I mean, take my wife and me. Love her to death, but we couldn’t possibly work together. Anyone who’s ever made a life with another human being knows what it’s like to want to kill that person for something ridiculous. Like constantly leaving the flap on the pepper open.”

I stared. “What?”

“It’s just a little flap. But if you leave it open, who knows what can get in.”

“Kev.”

“I mean, they obviously put the flap there for a reason. You think she would know that.”

“Kev.”

“It even goes click when you snap it shut. Things that have a clicking lid should be closed.”

“Kevin,” I bellowed.

“What?” He had the temerity to look annoyed at the interruption.

“I don’t have the time or the interest to listen to your insane pepper gripes.”

“My point is… wait, what do you mean ‘insane’ pepper gripes? You leave the pepper open too?”

I sighed. “I have a grinder.”

“Hmm. A grinder that stays closed until use. And fresh pepper as a bonus.” Kevin licked his lips when he thought hard about something. It was half-endearing, half-annoying. At that point, it leaned more toward annoying. Like “I’m gonna have to kick his ass” annoying. Right about the time I was deciding on whether to use judo or aikido, he finally nodded. “I could get used to a pepper grinder. That’s not half bad.”

I remembered then why I don’t talk to people. “You owe me ten minutes of my life. And I do plan to collect. Now get out.”

“Good grief,” he grumbled as he pushed out of his chair. “You try to help people.”

I recalled my manners a scant second before the glass door swung closed behind him, and I begrudgingly called out, “Thanks for bringing the box.” I received an offhand wave in return as he ambled down the corridor. “And stop stealing my Kit Kats.”

He was probably going home. I sighed and rubbed my neck. That sounded kind of nice right then. But I had a sea of tips to wade through. I glanced at the dusty box, which was almost bursting at the seams.

Fuck. Guess I was a little hasty when I sent Kevin away.

I THOUGHT I felt fingers in my hair. A whisper of something on my forehead. It felt good enough, caring enough, that I gave a little moan of protest when the gentle fingers receded. Only to be hit in the shoulder.

“Ow!” I woke up with a start and popped my head up from the table, a piece of paper stuck to my cheek.

I glanced over to see Danny seated on the edge of my desk with a small smile on his lips. “Good dreams?”

“Not exactly. Did you hit me?”

“No,” he said innocently.

I gave him the stink eye as I peeled Tip #1282 from my cheek and dropped it on the desk. I scrubbed my hands down my face. On the downswing, I caught a glimpse of my watch. “Shit. That can’t be right.”

“After midnight,” he confirmed.

It was hard to tell the time in the police station, especially since I closed the blinds hours earlier. The lights were always on, bright and fluorescent as ever. The hallway was still filled with sound. The second shift was going about their business just like it was morning.

He sent me a fond look and tapped the two empty Monster Energy cans on my desk. “Just so you know, these are not a substitute for real sleep.”

I scowled and edged my garbage can under my desk so he wouldn’t see the third empty can. “I know that. I’m just trying to make some headway.”

He reached over and closed the binder. “Did you find anything useful?”

“Not really.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I stared at Amy’s lighthouse painting, and my brow furrowed in thought. I brought it upstairs on the first day, and some helpful soul had tacked it up next to my desk. It didn’t serve to soothe me—only to remind me we still didn’t know what the hell it meant. “I found a tip that a bus driver saw her boarding a bus to Tacoma. Two days after her disappearance. It’s worth checking out.”

“Bet he gets a lot of teens, though. Might be hard to tell one from the other.”

“I’d be shocked if it actually panned out, but we should still check it. There’s also an interesting tip from an unidentified man saying he bought a violin with the initials AMG on it.”

Danny raised a skeptical brow. “Her middle name is Maria.”

“Could be a Craigslist deal gone bad.”

“Private seller would be hardest to find,” he said. “Going to every local pawn shop and asking if anyone’s pawned a violin in the past five years? That ought to keep us busy for the next century.”

“I already have Chevy looking into it.” I stared at the painting some more. “That thing is really starting to bother me.”

“You don’t have any patience.” He smiled. “That’s the joy of being on a cold-case squad.”

“Being driven crazy by endless clues that never fit?”

“Time,” he corrected. “We have the time to make it all fit. And there’s nothing better than seeing someone’s face when the past catches up with them. When everything that they thought they’d buried comes to light.”

“That’s deep.”

“Just call me Mariana Trench.”

I thought about that for a minute, my chin in my hand. But patience had never been my strong suit. “Gimme a knife, Mariana.”

“Oh for Pete’s—”

“I just want to check something.”

He sighed heavily, but dug in his pocket. After a moment he tossed me a Swiss army knife that I wasn’t surprised he had. Always prepared. That was Danny. I flipped open the knife, turned the painting over, ran the knife along the seam, and cut carefully until the canvas flopped open. And then I raised an eyebrow in Danny’s direction as a couple of pictures fell on my desk.

“Yahtzee,” I murmured as I propped the painting up against my desk. I handled the pictures gingerly. “Isn’t this Jenna?”

“Looks like.” Danny took one of the pictures from my hand. “What kind of teenager has paper pictures?”

“They’re the kind from a photo booth. Like at some type of fair.”

In the picture, Amy was smiling and Jenna was kissing her cheek. The look in her eyes… well, it spoke volumes. I immediately felt stupid for my assumptions. Not only was I a profiler who should’ve looked into the possibility, but I was also a gay man. “We’re idiots,” I murmured.

“What?”

“We didn’t even entertain the thought that the new mystery man wasn’t a man at all.”