Owen was sitting behind the wheel of his car, leaned back, but he popped up straighter when he saw me approaching him. I opened the back door and slid in, barely getting the door closed before he started pulling out of the parking space.

“I take it from the fact that you took so long that you saw Brady.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the heads-up. That could have been bad.”

“How did you explain being there?”

“I had enough time to get out into the hall. I told him I’d shown up to talk to him about what he said to Martinez this morning.”

“And he bought it?”

“There was nothing to buy. I really did want to talk to him about it. He corroborated what you said about Martinez thinking I’m back in town because of my father.” I leaned forward and put my hand on the back of his seat. “Brady says he trusts you with his life.”

Owen tensed. “Way to drive the knife of my betrayal deeper, Magnolia.”

“Do you think he’s guilty of something?” I asked.

“Not exactly, but I think he’s gotten in deep with something he doesn’t want to be involved in.”

I considered it for a moment. “I think so too.”

“So why do you want to work with me?” Owen asked.

“Because you’re not emotionally entangled with me. And because I need someone I can trust implicitly.” I leaned forward more, catching his eye. “But if you betray me, Owen Frasier, you will spend the rest of your short life regretting it.”

He nodded with a grim look. “And if I find out you’ve made all this shit up to get even with Brady over some lover’s spat, I’ll personally run you out of town.”

I gave him a grim smile. “We’re a fine pair.”

He glanced toward the digital clock, and I reflexively did the same. 1:25. “I need to find out what you know. Do you have time to go somewhere and talk?”

“I’ve got all the time in the world, but we need to go somewhere outside of Franklin. Can you make sure we’re not being followed?” I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Someone might be following you?”

It was time for me to let him know what he was getting into. “You know that serial killer we were talking about?”

Owen swerved his car into a strip mall parking lot, jerked the engine into park, and whipped around to face me. “What the fuck, Magnolia?”

“That’s why I really left town ten years ago.” My throat tightened, and I forced out the next words. “I witnessed Melanie Seaborn’s murder.”

Some of the color left Owen’s face, and I could see he was struggling with whether or not to believe me, but he simply turned around and faced the front, put the car into drive, and took off.

I figured he was taking me back to my car, but he headed south—out of Franklin—frequently checking his mirrors. We sat in silence for ten minutes until he pulled into a diner.

He opened his car door. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

I followed him inside. He chose a table in the back, and it was late enough that the lunch crowd had already left. The nearest person was halfway across the restaurant.

He slid into a booth seat facing the door, and I sat across from him.

“We should be good here,” he said. “Debbie closes the diner at two, so we’ll have privacy.”

“She won’t kick us out? That’s twenty minutes from now.”

He shrugged. “She knows me. She closes for a few hours and starts her dinner prep. She lets me hang out in a booth and work on paperwork. She won’t care.”

A woman who looked to be in her forties came out and headed for our table. There was a huge smile on her face, and she did a double take when she noticed me.

“Brought a friend today, Owen?” She had a hopeful note in her voice.

He laughed. “Stop with the matchmaking, Debbie. This is business.”

Her brow lifted. “You don’t usually bring anyone but Brady here for business.”

He grinned, but I could see it was slightly strained. “This case needed a little more privacy than usual.”

She nodded. “Well, let me take your orders, and I’ll let you get to it.”

I grabbed a laminated two-sided menu. Owen, who’d clearly been here enough times to know the menu by heart, ordered a Reuben sandwich, fries, and tea, and I ordered a salad and water.

Debbie headed to the kitchen, and Owen took a deep breath and then said, “How did you happen to witness Melanie Seaborn’s murder?”

“You decided to jump right in, huh?”

“Sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” he said. “Might as well get to the heart of it.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Debbie to bring our drinks first?” I asked. Once I started this story, I wasn’t stopping.

“Good idea,” he grudgingly said.

The few seconds of silence that followed were so tense, I found myself breaking it. “How long have you been coming here?”

“We’re not here to make small talk, Magnolia.”

“I’m about to tell you some very difficult things, Owen. A little bit of small talk would help put me at ease.”

Guilt flooded his eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s easier to dislike you.”

His words hurt more than I’d expected. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you need to hate me?”

“Because of your father.”

I didn’t respond. I understood why he would feel that way, but it renewed my reservations.

“I was wrong, Magnolia,” he said softly. “Your father left when you were barely a teenager. You had no say in what he did, and unlike Maria, I don’t believe you’re helping him now.”

“So you believe he’s alive too?” I asked.

“I know you don’t believe it. Brady told me you were on a mission to prove he’d been murdered.”

“I don’t believe that anymore.”

His eyes flew wide. “Have you been in contact with your father?”

“Not in the way you think.”

His guard was back. “Does Brady know?”

I shook my head. “No. I only just found out my daddy’s still alive, and Brady’s been giving mixed signals lately. I know he wouldn’t intentionally hurt me, but I don’t totally trust him.”

The hangdog look on Owen’s face told me that he felt much the same way. “I’m going to need details.”

Debbie walked out with our drinks, and I clammed up. She set them down and said, “I won’t be back out for another ten minutes, so holler if you need something before then.”

“Thanks, Debbie,” Owen said.

When she was back in the kitchen, I leaned closer. “I’m about to give you a ton of information. We still haven’t worked out what you’re going to give me in return.”

“What do you want?”

I took a moment to think it through. “I think I need protection.”

He nodded slowly. “Does Brady know about your connection to the serial killer?”

“He was the one who figured it out.”

“What does that mean?”

“The killer gave me a scar to remind me to never talk about that night.”

He looked surprised and took a moment before he asked, “Why do you think the killer’s after you now?”

“He keeps sending me texts.”

“Holy shit.” He sat back and rubbed his hand over the top of his head. “And Brady knows?”

“Yeah, but he says he won’t officially make a report about it because he’s afraid of dirty cops.”

Pain flickered in Owen’s eyes. “He didn’t tell me.”

I almost said I was sorry, but the sentiment would seem empty coming from me.

He pushed out a huge sigh and got out a small notebook and pen. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”

I nodded. He was right. But it was still hard to open up to him.

After several long seconds, he said, “Magnolia. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, and I’m sure my past animosity is making it difficult for you to trust me with your traumatic experience, but I promise I’m on board now. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

“What about Brady?”

“If you’re really being harassed by a serial killer, he should have reported it. Or, at the very least, told me. The question is why didn’t he?”

“I was hoping you would know. There have been a lot of red flags with him,” I said. “The burner phone. Knowing where I am all the time. The fact that he hasn’t told anyone about what I witnessed. The FBI not sending an agent after all.”

Owen held up a hand. “Whoa! What’s this about the FBI?”

“Brady said he’d contacted them about the serial killer. And last week, he told me they were sending an agent. But when I asked him about the other day, he told me they didn’t have the manpower to send someone.”

He shook his head with a worried look. “I don’t know anything about an FBI agent.”

“So he lied?” I asked.

“Not necessarily.” But there wasn’t much conviction behind his words. “Maybe we should start with the files first; then we can ease our way into your story,” he said in a soft voice. “By the time we finish, maybe I’ll have proved that I’m not a total asshole and you’ll trust me more.”

I gave him a grudging grin. “That’s a big maybe.”

He laughed. “No wonder Brady likes you. He’s used to getting what he wants and never having to work for it. I can see you keep him on his toes.”

“Do you think he’s bad?” I asked quietly, my stomach churning at the thought.

“No, Magnolia. Like I said, I think he’s caught up in something that’s spiraled out of control, and he’s in too deep to ask for help.”

I took a moment to absorb that. It rang true to me, though I had no idea what it might mean. “I want to tell you everything, Owen,” I finally said, “but I need to tell Owen Frasier, the nephew of Gordon Frasier, not Detective Frasier. Can you separate the two?”

“In the interest of transparency, I feel that I should tell you that I might not be Detective Frasier much longer, so it might be a moot point.”

“I need your assurance anyway.”

He studied me for a moment before meeting my eyes and holding my gaze. “Magnolia Steele, everything you tell me is friend to friend.” Then he extended his hand across the table.

I hesitated. How many friends had I acquired since I’d come back to Franklin only to find out that they had secret agendas of their own? At least I knew exactly where Owen stood. I grabbed his hand and shook. “Friend to friend.”

He dropped my hand and offered me a genuine smile. “Let’s get to work.”

I pulled the envelope out of my bag, but after I placed it on the table, I kept my palms on it, holding it down. I wasn’t ready . . . not yet. “I haven’t seen much of this. The night you brought Melanie’s and Amy’s files over, Brady stayed up to look at all of these. When I woke up a few hours later, he was still looking at them, at well past three in the morning. I asked if he’d been up all night, but he told me he’d gone to bed and gotten up to look at them again. I have no idea if he was being truthful or not. I saw a few photos on the table and something about one of them looked familiar. It didn’t immediately strike me that they were all dead, more that they were naked. At first, I thought he was looking at porn. But it all happened so quickly. He gathered them together and told me to go to bed, saying he’d be in there soon. But I kept thinking about those files, and after he was asleep, I got up and found the envelope in his hall closet. I took it to his guest bath and dumped it out and started to look it over, but it all hit so close to home . . . and then I saw Melanie’s photos, and I knew it was her.”

“And you said they were connected by a mark?” Owen asked.

“Yeah, a backward C with a line through it.”

“Like a brand?” Owen asked with a frown.

Why had I never thought of that? Anxiety swamped my head. “Exactly like a brand.”

“If Brady knew about your connection to the case, it helps explain why he latched on to you so fast,” Owen said. “He seemed so protective so quickly.”

But he hadn’t known until last week, and he’d been protective weeks before that. Literally since the first time we’d met.

Owen gave me a sad smile, putting his hand lightly over mine. “We’ll face this together, Magnolia.”

“That’s exactly what Brady told me.”

That gave him pause. “In all fairness, I’m not taking this to the department either, so maybe you’d feel better sticking with him.”

I shook my head. “No. I already told you that I like that you aren’t emotionally involved with me. I need someone more clearheaded.”

“I’ll try my best to be that person,” he said, holding my gaze.

I lifted my hands and let him tug the envelope across the table. I rested my hands in my lap and glanced at the single other guest in the diner, the man halfway across the restaurant from us, as Owen dumped the contents on the table.

“This is all kind of a mess,” Owen said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, turning back to face him.

“Brady’s usually neat and organized. This is unlike him.”

My mouth dropped open as I saw the haphazard way the papers and photographs were stacked. “He never looked at it again.” I lifted my gaze to Owen’s. “I was looking at the photos in the bathroom, and Brady somehow figured out what I was doing. He unlocked the door and found me. I had gotten some of the papers and photos stuffed back inside the envelope, but he cleaned up the rest. If it’s all unorganized, that must mean he never looked at it again, right?”

His mouth twisted to the side. “Yeah.”

A shiver ran down my spine. “It’s like he wanted me to see them.”

He didn’t protest at first, but after a few seconds he said, “Now, that’s a stretch.”

“Brady had seen my scar the night before. He reacted to it but didn’t say anything. He was very curious about where I’d gotten it. Maybe he couldn’t tell me there was a connection between me and the serial killer, so he planted those files so I’d make the connection.”

“Again, it’s a stretch,” Owen said. “He could have pressed you more. I’ve seen the man in an interrogation room. He has a way of winning people over and getting them to share things no one else would share.”

The blood rushed from my head.

Owen cringed. “I’m not suggesting what he told Maria was true—that he befriended you to get information.”

It was impossible for me to consider that possibility right now, so I just shook my head. “I must be mostly immune to whatever charm Brady possesses. I had way too many secrets for his liking, even if he told me he’d be patient about getting answers. He saw my scar, and I refused to tell him about it. Of course, Emily was killed hours later, and she supposedly had the mark too.”

Owen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not suggesting that Brady’s the killer, are you?”

“No. There’s no way he could have gotten out of bed, left to kill Emily, then come back in time to get ‘woken up’ by the call to go to her murder scene. And he seemed freaked out the next morning—like he’d just made the connection. He came to find me at Ava Milton’s because he was terrified the killer had found me. There’s no faking that kind of worry and fear.”

“Good, because secrets or no, he’s not capable of doing something like that.” He glanced down at the pile and picked up one of the photos. Not Melanie. I’d tried to avoid looking at them last week, but there was no ignoring them now. Tears clogged my throat.

“Good God,” Owen muttered as he looked at another photo. “I’m guessing the wounds weren’t postmortem.”

“I read a few of the reports,” I said in a broken voice. “They all had the same cause of death: blood loss. I think he slashed Melanie Seaborn’s throat, but only after he cut her many, many times first. He was punishing her for something—something she said she didn’t do, but I didn’t hear what it was. At the end, she kept saying she was sorry.” I paused. “But I had a concussion, so a lot of what I remember is blurry and fuzzy.”

Owen’s gaze lifted to mine. “You were in the same room? You saw the entire thing?”

“I have no idea how long she was there. I was running from my best friend’s boyfriend. I’d caught him cheating and taken an incriminating photo, and he chased me deep into the woods. It was raining and I was drenched, and I found a deserted house and went inside. I’d lost Blake by then. I thought I heard a woman scream under the floor, but it was storming, so I wasn’t sure. Then a man came out of the basement and dragged me down the stairs. The woman, Melanie—” I choked on her name, “—was tied to the rafters with her arms over her head. She was only wearing her bra and panties, and her body was already covered in slashes.”

Owen looked grim.

I took a second to regain control before continuing. “He tied me to a metal pole, and then he realized who I was. He called me by name.”

“He called you Magnolia?”

I nodded. “And my last name too. He slammed my head into the pole, and I lost consciousness for a while, but I could hear the woman screaming and saying she hadn’t done it. The man came back to me and threw my dress up. He cut that mark into my thigh and told me that if I said anything to anyone, he would kill my mother and brother and make me watch before he killed me too. Then he killed the—Melanie. Her screaming suddenly stopped.”

“How did you get away?”

“I have no idea. I passed out, and when I came to, I was at the edge of the woods behind my mother’s house.”

“He let you go,” Owen said in amazement. “Why?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but he told me if I was a good girl, he’d let me go.”

“Did he force himself on you? Or coerce you into doing something?”

I studied him for a moment. “Are you asking if he raped me? No. It felt like he was letting me go for personal reasons.”

“Then you might be right about the connection to your father.”

“Yesterday, I asked Brady how Melanie had been taken. He said she was a nurse and hadn’t shown up for her shift the next day.”

Owen looked surprised. “A nurse. Do you think she was connected to your father somehow?”

“I have no idea. Two weeks ago, if you’d told me that my father had been unfaithful to my mother, I would have called you a bald-faced liar. Now I know that he likely had at least three affairs. Maybe she was another one of his liaisons.”

“You said you think he’s alive?” Owen asked.

“I’m pretty sure I saw him at Momma’s funeral. In the trees at the edge of the cemetery. I waited until everyone left and shouted at him to leave me alone.”

Owen looked shell-shocked.

“This is where I need to make sure you’re really keeping this to yourself,” I said. “There’s a risk of incriminating myself.”

He turned even more serious. “You have my word.”

“I’m 99.9% sure that Daddy killed Rowena Rogers.”