I sat staring at my monitor not really seeing anything on it. Rafferty came up and placed a book in front of me. I looked down and I saw it was the sketch pad that I had let the homeless man keep.
I opened it and it was like starring right back at myself. I kept turning the pages. All of them were of me. The man had had so much talent. What had led him to the life of a homeless addict? So many homeless people had great abilities like this. What made them choose the life of the streets?
"The next two are quite interesting and if you're wondering I'm the only one who's seen that book." I looked up at Rafferty puzzled and then back down, as I turned the page. I gasped at what the next sheet of sketch paper revealed.
It depicted me walking along what looked like the deck of a yacht with only a bikini on. While the amount of exposure was in and of itself alarming, it was who was walking beside me that had my breath escaping from me.
It was Flint!
In direct contrast to my nearly bare attire he was dressed in a pair of crisp slacks and what looked like a silk shirt. The end of an automatic pistol stuck up from the waistband of his pants and his right hand went around my back to rest on my right hip in a very familiar and possessive gesture.
Everything about the picture was absolutely crazy! Perhaps craziest of all was the content smile on my face that looked like I enjoyed being where I was.
"Why would he draw something like that?" Rafferty asked, eyeing me up closely.
"I have no idea!" I said louder than I should have, which prompted a few looks by others nearby.
I quickly closed the book so nobody could see the picture. Rafferty gave me a comically not-so-serious eye over before saying, "Not only was our artist friend gifted with a photographic memory, but he must have had x-ray vision to capture you so well." The picture had captured me rather well, but how would he know that? Then I remembered a sting operation two years earlier involving a group of high priced escorts that were systematically being knocked off.
I had gone undercover as an escort. That had been an embarrassing investigation, but I had caught the killer. Rafferty wasn't done though.
"I wonder if he couldn't see the future too?" he said in a leading tone.
What did he mean by that? I reopened the sketch book reluctantly to the last page drawn on in it. I stared at the picture in shock. It depicted both me and Flint locked together in an extremely intimate and passionate looking kiss. I slammed the book closed and kept my head down.