After that, Jasper flagged down a waitress, who quickly returned with to-go boxes for their pasta. Micah shrugged off Jasper when he tried to drag him out to the car, telling him he’d grab an Uber so Tessa could have some space to cool off.

That night, for the first time since Damon bought him his new bed, Micah had trouble sleeping.

He was disheveled and grumpy when he walked into work, a mood that only worsened when he presented Tessa with not only a king-size Butterfinger, but also a family-size bag of Sour Patch Kids, only for her to snub him when she spotted Damon’s watch on his wrist.

She snatched the candy from his hands, not even offering a “thank you”.

Multiple times after that, he tried to engage her in conversation, but she flat out ignored him unless it was work-related. And even then she only offered clipped, one-word responses.

It didn’t seem to matter to her that Micah had already been wearing the watch to work before she’d returned from Idaho, and Damon and his cronies had yet to storm the place. It didn’t seem to matter that if Damon really wanted to, he had plenty of other avenues available to him to find out Micah’s true identity. The man had his address, for fuck’s sake. It wouldn’t be all that hard to unearth his real last name, and from that information, discover his career as a police detective.

Tessa was determined to be pissed at him and give him the silent treatment.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Jensen.

He stopped by Micah’s desk late morning, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Micah, a word, if you please.”

Micah glanced up from his computer, where he was recording the results of his sixth phone interview of the day. The owner of spankbankboys.com had finally responded to the warrant they’d served him after the discovery of Nico’s body. (A task that was difficult in and of itself as the only means of contact the website offered was an e-mail address.)

The day before Christmas, he and Jensen had received an extensive list – it specified every user who had ever watched one of Nico’s live shows, messaged Nico, or sent money to Nico’s Venmo account.

The list had contained well over a hundred individuals, so they’d decided to prioritize Nico’s paying clientele first, of which there were only a dozen or so “regulars”.

Of course, the website couldn’t give them the actual names of Nico’s customers, as they weren’t required to identify themselves to use the site – just usernames and the IP addresses associated with them. But that was nearly as good.