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“Yeah, he did.”
He nodded. “Susan called me. Apparently something happened in town. A girl got killed.”
I felt a sharp freeze run down my back. “Really? Here?”
“Yeah, I know. Apparently it’s pretty bad. They wanted Easton to come take a look, see if he could help.”
I shook my head, at a loss. “That’s crazy.”
And it explained why he wanted me to lock all the doors and to set the alarm. Easton thought Seed was back, and he probably thought this murder was connected.
“Honey? You okay?”
I looked up, snapping myself out of it. Dad was staring at me, a concerned look on his face. “I’m fine. Sorry.”
“Sit down. I’ll make you something to eat.”
“No. That’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“I insist. I haven’t cooked for my daughter in . . . how long?”
I smiled softly and sat at the island. “Years at least.”
“Years. How did that happen?” He began to rummage through the refrigerator.
“Dad, how did you and Susan meet?”
He emerged with an armful of ingredients and began to cook. “Well, let’s see. We’ve known each other for a long time. You know how Mishawaka is.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“But the first night we start seeing each other, well that probably started at a fundraiser.”
“And how did you know that you wanted to marry her?”
He paused mid-chop and raised an eyebrow at me. “Why are you asking?”
“I don’t know. I’m curious.”
“Well,” he said, resuming, “that’s a hard one. I guess at a certain point I realized that I was happier with her than without, and I wanted to do something to make that feeling real.”
I nodded. That made total sense, though it was a little strange hearing my father say it. Actually, we’d probably never had a conversation like this in our entire lives.
The smell of cooking slowly began to fill the room. “How is working with Easton?” Dad asked.
“Fine, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“He’s a little . . . difficult.”
Dad smiled. “So I heard from Susan. But apparently he’s very good.”
“He is, actually.” I paused, not sure how much I wanted to tell him. “Did you know that he helps some of the local people out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he does jobs for cheap.”
“Sounds interesting. What did he do recently?”
Dad began to sauté some vegetables while a pasta began to cook in a large pot. I felt my stomach grumble as I realized that I was way hungrier than I had realized.
“Well, he helped one family out with a tough landlord. It was pretty amazing.”
Dad nodded. “Sounds like a good guy.”
“Do you know why he left the FBI?” I blurted out.
I had no clue why I’d asked him. I already knew the story, more or less. I’d seen it in that file, the file I wasn’t supposed to know about.
But I wanted my hunch confirmed. I wanted someone else’s take on the whole thing, because so far Easton was nothing but a mystery to me. He kept himself wrapped up so tightly that no matter how much I wanted to unravel him, he just wasn’t going to budge.
“Nobody told you yet?” Dad asked.
“No. And I’m not going to ask him.”
“Probably a good decision,” he said, laughing. “Well, from what Susan told me, Easton was involved with serial killers.”
I nodded. “He told me that.”
“About a year ago, he was hunting down a particularly nasty guy. Really disgusting apparently. Anyway, Easton got really involved with this case, really into it. He ended up finding the guy, but instead of waiting for backup to arrive, he charged in and tried to capture the guy himself.” Dad stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “His partner got killed in that confrontation, along with the murderer. Easton resigned after that, although they were probably going to let him go anyway.”
“Wow,” was all that I could say.
It wasn’t a new story for me, but hearing it from my dad made it all the more real. For some reason, part of me figured Easton couldn’t have done something like that, couldn’t have gone through that.
But he had. He had made a mistake that had cost the life of his partner, and now he was wallowing in it.
Worse, he was dealing with it all over again. Because the killer he’d thought was dead had come back.
“I don’t know how much of that story is true, though,” Dad said. “It comes second-hand. Maybe even third-hand.”
“Okay. I understand.”
