Tessa smiled. “I’m happy for you,” she said honestly, “but don’t think I’m about to let this go. I know Damon thinks you’re a hooker, but you don’t really expect me to believe that you spent the entire night with a man that looks like he descended from the gods, and you didn’t have sex? My interrogation skills are top notch, you know. I once made a man piss himself.” It was true – she bragged about it often enough. “Lunch time,” she intoned seriously. “Your ass is mine.”

Micah had no choice but to agree before heading to the restroom. After attempting to make his hair lay flat with the water from the sink, he eyed the folder Jensen had given him.

Maybe his Monday wasn’t destined to be horrible, after all. Tessa’s anger had been easy enough to sooth, and he’d gotten the lead on a case that wasn’t cut-and-dry (like the armed robbery with ten witnesses he’d been assigned to earlier in the month) or completely trivial (like the petty property crimes he was often tasked with).

Micah opened the folder. The first thing he saw was the guy’s picture. He was young with golden skin that spoke of Hispanic descent, and his hair was comprised of dark brown ringlets that curled over his forehead. Bright hazel eyes shone out at him.

He was cute.

Micah read through the missing persons form his parents had filled out for him. Nico Sanchez was the kid’s name. He was nineteen and studying computer science at Queen’s College, where he apparently lived in the dorms. His parents didn’t know the last thing he’d been wearing, but the last time they’d heard from their son was over the phone on Friday at 7:00 PM. It was now nearing 9:30 on Monday morning, which meant there had been just over 60 hours since last contact. When they’d called campus security to check on their son before coming into the station, Nico’s roommate had said he’d been in the dorm on Saturday morning, but that he hadn’t seen him since.

So, probably only missing for closer to 48 hours then.

Micah knew immediately why he’d been selected for this case.

It wasn’t a particularly glamorous assignment.

Nico was a college student, who hadn’t answered his parents’ calls over the weekend or returned to his dorm since Saturday. Odds were, he’d gotten shitfaced and crashed somewhere else, possibly losing his phone in the process, but most likely just too wrapped up in his life to realize he was genuinely worrying his family.

Of course, it was nearing December and finals were quickly approaching. It was just as likely the stress had gotten the better of him and Nico had simply taken off – completely of his own volition – for a while.

Either way, the prognosis was good that Nico was alive somewhere – especially if he was the average thoughtless nineteen-year-old who simply just did some very dumb things on occasion.

That’s what Micah’s limited experience and common sense told him, anyway. Still… for some reason, when he looked at Nico’s picture, gazing into hazel eyes not dissimilar to his own, Micah got a heavy, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he vowed to do everything he could to find the young man, whether he was just off being a typical, reckless nineteen-year-old or not.