“Come, let’s go to my office. I can go over what we found with y’all.”

Eric and Julian walked lockstep down the bare hall lit by a stark fluorescent light. There were offices on either side of us, some of them larger, others appearing as cramped as broom closets. Noah stuck close by my side.

“Did you ever tour one of these for school?” I asked.

“No, it was never on the agenda. We got field trips to Disney World and Six Flags, not the county prison. Where the hell did you go to school? Alcatraz?”

I chuckled, enjoying the ribbing when it came from Noah. He had a way about him—it allowed him to say the snarkiest and shadiest comment known to man but pull it off with a smile that buried itself directly into the center of your heart.

“I think they wanted to scare us into never getting in trouble.”

“Did it work?”

I shrugged. “For me, it did. But then again, I was always a Goody Two-shoes. I only started rebelling in college, once I was out of my parents’ house.”

“And what did rebelling consist of?”

That got another chuckle out of me as memories started to rush back, some of them more blurry than others. “Getting drunk and blowing closeted frat guys. And some uncloseted ones, too.”

Noah nearly tripped. He looked like he was about to say something but was too tongue-tied to get it out. If he managed to untangle his thoughts, I’d never know since we made it to Captain Julian’s office at that very moment.

I walked past him, bending and whispering, “Unexpected,” in his ear before entering one of the more spacious offices we had seen. Playing around with him like that made me giddy, reminding me of the early stages of a blossoming… something. A blossoming friendship.

Captain Julian took a seat at his clutter-free desk, the notepads organized in a stack by increasing size. Behind him was a rectangular window that had a much nicer view than the parking lot, this one looking out to a wooded area that blocked the highway on the other side. A photo of Julian and his husband kissing at their wedding took up a large portion of the sturdy desk, confirming my suspicions and making me that much more comfortable.

“Alright,” he said, hands on his desk, “so I’ll start with the bad news first since there’s a bit of that: we didn’t find any prints. Forensics is still going through, but they aren’t expecting to find any DNA either. I’ve got a handwriting expert looking at the address, but without samples to compare them to, they won’t get us very far.”