He just launched himself at the man, throwing his arms around Damon’s shoulders and squeezing tight. “Thank you,” Micah murmured into the heat of the man’s neck, feeling Damon’s beard brush against his temple and trying not to think about how it would feel elsewhere.

Judging by the way Damon stiffened in his arms, he was as taken off guard by the hug as Micah had been by the gift. After a moment, however, his hands slowly came up and returned Micah’s embrace. Damon’s breath was but a rustle in Micah’s hair when he whispered, “You’re welcome.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I’m just going to have to dress up as a hooker and work the streets again.”

Tessa sighed, shooting Micah an irritated glance over the sandwich she was eating at her desk. To be fair, she’d been listening to him complain about the idiosyncrasies of Nico’s murder investigation for the better part of a month.

It had been three weeks now since Micah had first been assigned to Nico’s missing persons case, two weeks since the young man’s body had been discovered, and one week since they’d received the tracking data back from Nico’s cell service provider.

At first, it had looked promising.

The last tower Nico’s cellphone had pinged at was one in downtown Queens.

Since Micah already suspected Nico had been going on a breakfast date based on his previous detective work, he’d quickly zeroed in on the dozen or so restaurants in the area covered by the tower.

Only about half of them served brunch. One of which was a café called The Tea.

Micah recognized the logo immediately – from all the Styrofoam coffee cups Nico liked to pose with on his Instagram.

It had been his first stop, and Micah had gotten lucky. The barista working behind the counter recognized Nico as a regular when he’d shown her his picture. She even recalled that he’d come in on the day in question. She remembered because Nico had arrived with a date, and she’d been fairly devastated since she’d had a bit of a crush on him.

(Though not nearly as upset as she’d been to learn she’d been one of the last people to see Nico alive.)

Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember much about the man Nico had come in with – just that he was white with dark hair, “probably” around six feet tall, and that he’d been “plain-looking”. Her description probably matched about a fourth of all the men in New York, and Micah had known immediately that bringing in a sketch artist would be a pointless endeavor.

There was no paper trail either.

When the girl had gotten her manager to look up the receipt for the day and time Nico and his unknown companion had visited, it’d turned out they had paid in cash.