[center][h1][color=82ca9d]"Emerald"[/color][/h1][/center]
[center][h2][color=82ca9d] Gilded Heights Apartment Complex, Room #67[/color][/h2][/center]


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As the hours passed by with no sign of a foaming at the mouth murderer, Emerald found her fear dissipating and her curiosity swelling. There she sat smack in the middle of an apartment owned by one of the police department’s finest detectives, and she’d wasted so much of the time she could have used for sleuthing. 

It wasn’t every day she had a direct tap to free information about an easily manipulated man in an authoritative position— but even as she rummaged about his apartment she found her heart wasn’t truly in it. She was no saint by any means, but the idea of using the man who had been nothing but understanding of her situation left a bad and bitter taste on her tongue. And if she was being completely honest, she had never felt more alone than she felt right now. Was isolating herself by turning her only real connection left into a tool really in her best interest? 

It made her sad. A genuine cop was hard to come by these days, and she could tell just by looking at him that the city was eating him alive for it, albeit slowly. 

She shook the thoughts out, pulling the blanket she had strewn about her shoulders tighter. A stupid line of thinking. His motivations were purely self serving, that’s all anyone’s were. She had vigilantly taught herself this and cursed herself for forgetting. If it weren’t for her doe eyes and soft skin he would have left her there in the gore. He would have become pathetically blind to her plight, for what even is plight if not belonging to a lovely woman? What was her deformed mother’s plight to the detective who wrote off her assault as an occupational hazard? Emerald clung to her beauty like a child to its mother for it was all she had in this world to keep her head above water and keep air in her lungs. It was all she had to keep herself from disappearing in the muck she surrounded herself with.

She would use him like he no doubt thought of using her. It’s what he deserved. It’s what all men deserved.

She paused, slowly turning with a flick of her hair to examine a reflective glint in the bottom drawer of his bedside table. She gently slid the old thing open, hungry eyes and nosy fingers locking in on the picture frame she found within. A woman’s face smiled back at her, eyes wrinkling at the corners. As she ran her thumb down the woman’s pictured cheek, she looked about the apartment again. 

“Detective Gallagher you are my favorite riddle yet.” She declared to the empty space, clutching the picture to her breast thoughtfully.