CHAPTER 2

K ieran had been putting Diego off for three weeks, and he'd insisted that while he'd originally told her that the boxes and the bat bag could stay there indefinitely, he had since changed his mind. The very same basement that they'd never used for anything more than storage, despite her being interested in having her own at-home office, Diego was now going to redo as a game room with a small movie theater. Making junior partner had given him a bigger paycheck, and that meant more changes like this were probable. He might even go into a full mid-life crisis a little early and get a bright and shiny new car or a motorcycle. She also wouldn't put it past him to get a boat when the nearest big body of water was well over an hour away from him. That body of water was coincidentally located in the town one over from where she'd just moved.

"Oh, God… What have I done?" she asked herself as she pulled up to the house. "He's going to get a boat just to have an excuse to visit me."

She pictured him buying a boat, telling her all about it, and asking if she wanted to take it out for the weekend. Eventually, Kieran planned to buy a house, and if she did that, she could also see him asking if he could park the boat in her driveway just so it was easier for him to use it. He'd offer to teach her how to hitch it to her car and drive the thing so that she could take it out on her own if she wanted to, and the next thing she knew, he'd be trying to get her to move back in or ask if he could stay at her house sometimes.

"Hey," Diego said with a wide smile as Kieran got out of her car. "Thanks for coming by. I would've brought it over, though. It's not all going to fit in your car."

"It's fine. I'm sure I can just repack it and fit it all in," she said. "The trunk looks small, but it'll fit the books."

"Well, that's silly." Diego pushed the screen door open and ushered her through it. "You'll spend time repacking it here and then have to take ten trips when you get there."

"Home," she corrected after entering the house and looking around the entryway. "When I get home . And it's not a big deal."

"Right," he muttered.

The house hadn't changed much since she'd moved out. He still had the same framed photos of them leading up the staircase, despite their divorce being final and her telling him time and again that she wasn't coming back. Kieran hadn't asked him to take down the photos since this was technically his house now, but she wondered if she should since they were still up. The table by the door still held his keys, and she nearly tossed her own right there next to them out of habit as she'd done for nearly a decade. She held on to them, though, and tucked them into the front pocket of her jeans.

"Want some coffee?" Diego offered.

"No, I'm good. I'm not staying, remember? I need to get home. I have some work to do."

"On the weekend?"

Kieran walked around the main staircase into the kitchen, pulled open the door to the basement, and said, "One-hundred-percent you were working in your office before you saw my car pull up."

"I was, yes." He laughed. "But I'm a partner in a law firm. You're an engineer."

"Diego, you know I actually like my work, right?" she replied and started down the stairs. "And we're on a tight deadline to release a new feature. I've got to get my stuff done and over to QA by Wednesday so they can test."

He followed her down the stairs and pointed to the corner, where there were three small boxes and a bat bag that would all easily fit into her car. This had Kieran pulling air through her front two teeth because he'd made it sound like bringing it all home in her car would be an impossible task.

"This is it?" she asked.

"Uh… Yeah," he replied with a look that told her he was about to try to lie his way out of this. "I guess I thought it was more than that. There's probably some other stuff to look through to see if you left anything else here. Maybe that's what I was thinking."

"I'll get these out of your way. If you find anything else of mine, you can just text me or send me a picture, and I'll let you know if I want to come back and get it. I'm sure most of it could be donated or thrown out. I swear that I had these boxes on the moving truck. I remember the bat bag being there." She slung it over her shoulder and picked up one of the boxes.

"Weird." He shrugged. "Anyway, let me get this one."

"Diego, you spend an hour in the gym five times a week – you can grab two at once," she told him, nodding to the two boxes on the floor.

"No problem," he said. "And I was thinking that the basement is big enough for maybe a gym, too. That would save me some money on my membership. I could put a treadmill in here for you to use, if you want."

"You want me to drive an hour here to use a treadmill? My apartment has a gym with two treadmills, Diego."

"I wouldn't know. I haven't been over to see it yet," he remarked as they walked up the stairs.

"Not much to see. It's just a two-bedroom apartment, but it's nice enough. It has a parking garage instead of a lot and a gym with more than just the treadmills. I haven't used it yet, but I'll get back to my routine in a few weeks, once things settle down a bit."

"Well, the invitation still stands," he replied. "I'm thinking about putting in a wet bar, a pool table in the back, and maybe doing the gym where the big storage closet is. It's huge and could easily fit the equipment. That might still give me the space to wall off the front part by the stairs for a small theater, but I'm calling a contractor out to tell me what I can reasonably fit."

"A gym now and a theater, too?" she said as she made it to the top of the stairs. "Diego, you're hardly ever home. When are you going to play all this pool and watch all these movies?"

"I can work while I watch a movie. And I can invite partners and senior associates over to play pool, so it's working and playing at the same time."

‘It's just showing off, really,' Kieran thought to herself.

"Well, thanks for carrying the boxes for me," she said after pulling open the screen door.

"No problem. Are you sure you don't want that coffee or to go through the other boxes with me?"

"I'm sure. And, Diego, that big storage closet you've never used – you might want to think about that before turning it into a gym. You use the rest of the basement to store things now, but if you're putting things there, you'll need the storage closet for the boxes."

"Maybe, yeah," he said.

They were quiet while she got the boxes in the back seat and the bat bag in the trunk. The smell of it reminded her of her father. He'd wanted Kieran to be a fan of the game. And she had been to watch it, but when she'd been five and her dad had taken her to play T-ball for the first time, she'd mostly sat on the bench and hadn't been able to hit the ball even off the T. He'd kept trying to teach her, but she'd been much more interested in the bulky kid's laptop they'd gotten her that allowed her to play math and spelling games. Her dad had given up on that by the time she was nine and had only logged the innings required by the league to promote kids, giving even the bad players like her time to play. She'd been hit by pitches but hadn't gotten a single hit in all those years outside of the ones on the T because they literally let her stand there until she connected with the ball, and it ended up rolling fair. Her father hadn't ever gotten mad at her, though, and never seemed disappointed. He'd just wanted something to share with his only child, and he wasn't a techy guy, so computers were out.

Breathing in that scent took her back to the practices and games and their time together. Her dad would always buy her a candy bar, and while she ate it, they'd sit on the bleachers, and he'd tell her about the strategy of the game, explaining the rules and where each position was supposed to stand during certain plays. As much as baseball wasn't her thing, she still missed those candy bar chats.

"Thanks again," she told Diego after closing the trunk. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah. No problem," he said. "If I send you the stuff the contractor sends to me, will you take a look at it?"

"Why?" Kieran asked as she slid into her car.

"I'd like your opinion."

"It's your house, Diego."

"I know. I'd just like to know what you think."

"Sure. Yeah," she told him reluctantly. "Send me the blueprints or pictures or something. I'll take a look."

That wasn't something she wanted to do at all, but it was the fastest way to get her out of there. Diego wasn't a bad guy, but Kieran was pretty sure that he'd taken those boxes and bat bag out of her moving truck just to have a reason for her to have to come back, knowing she'd never want to part with her dad's baseball things.

She closed the door, started the car, and as she backed out of the driveway, he was waving at her with that big smile still on his face. Once, that smile had gotten her to go on a date with him, and there were times that she saw it today and remembered how much fun they'd used to have and how much she had loved him.

Her phone rang and connected to the Bluetooth in her car. Kieran didn't recognize the number, but she hit the button on the screen to answer anyway since she had an hour-long drive ahead of her and thought that if it was someone trying to sell her something, she could have a little fun telling them that she wasn't interested.

"Hello?"

"Hello. Is this Kieran Hart?" a female voice spoke.

"May I ask who's calling?"

"This is Lieutenant Dylan Easton. I'm a police officer."

"Um… Okay? Sorry. What's this about?"

"I have a few questions for you. I was wondering if you could stop by the station."

"Questions? Questions about what, exactly?" Kieran asked.

"It's a long story, Ma'am. But if I give you the address, are you available to come by today?"

"Do I need an attorney?" she asked, thinking of Diego.

"No, Ma'am. I just have a few questions regarding a case."

"A case? What case?"

"How about this…" Lieutenant Easton began. "You stop by the station, and if at any point you're unhappy with my questions, you're free to go. Or, if you want to call an attorney, you're more than welcome to do that."

"I'm sorry. I'm just really confused here. I don't even have a parking ticket. I don't think I've gotten a speeding ticket in years. What could you possibly need to talk to me about?"

"We generally like to talk to people in person, mainly to make sure that the person we're talking to is the person we need to be talking to. Hard to verify that over the phone," Lieutenant Easton replied.

"Am I a suspect in something?"

"Ma'am, it would be easier if–"

"Yeah. Fine. I get it: talk in person. Fine. I'll be there. But my ex-husband is a defense attorney, so I know the law. I'll call him and have him meet me there."

"It's really not necessary. But if you'd like, that's not a problem. Let me give you the address."

The address, surprisingly, was for the town over from where Kieran had just moved and only forty minutes away from Diego's house. She hadn't called him yet to ask him to meet her because she was more curious about what was going on and knew that if she did call, he'd rush over, and it would be a whole thing. Deciding to determine if it was necessary first, she walked into the small station and asked for Lieutenant Easton.

"Right this way," the man at the desk said.

Kieran followed him into the main part of the station and into a small room that looked like it had been taken straight from Law & Order , which made her more nervous than she'd been so far. With each step, she now heard that dun-dun sound from the beginning of every episode.

"Mrs. Hart?" a woman with a badge hooked on her hip said as she walked into the room and closed the door behind her.

"I'm divorced. And call me Kieran," she replied to the tall woman with short dark hair.

She'd been meaning to change her name back to her maiden but hadn't gotten around to it yet.

"Okay. Well, call me Dylan," the woman told her back and held out her hand. "Dylan Easton. Nice to meet you. Have a seat."

"I think I'll stand. I'm still not sure what you would need to talk to me about."

"I'll sit, then."

It was only then that Kieran noticed that Dylan had a file folder in her other hand. She sat down in the metal chair across from where Kieran was standing and placed it on the table.

"I'm not sure what you know about familial DNA searches being used to locate people who commit crimes," Dylan began. "In particular, it's been incredibly useful for cold cases, which I run for us."

"DNA for–" Kieran shook her head. "What?"

"Kieran, your DNA matched a cold case I've been working on for a few years now."

"My DNA did what ?! How did you even get my–"

"You submitted it to DNAdiscovery.com recently," Dylan explained. "The results popped up on our radar yesterday."

" I haven't even gotten the results yet. How did you?"

"I happened to log in yesterday and was looking into this case. I do that every day, and your results appeared for the first time."

Kieran sat down and said, "I work for DNAdiscovery. I sent in my sample a few weeks ago just to see if I had any blood relatives out there. Who popped up? What did they do?"

"Well, Kieran, that's the thing…" Dylan opened the file folder. "I'm looking into the unsolved murder of a man who was shot in the back of his head before his house burned around him. We've long since believed that his wife was the killer, but she disappeared right after the murder. We found her DNA at the scene in what was left of the house, but being his wife, she would have left that there at any time, obviously. Although, there was some DNA in an interesting spot related to the crime, and it finally matched."

"Someone I'm related to killed someone?"

"Kieran, the problem is that the person's DNA isn't a partial match to yours." Dylan picked up what looked like a photo, turned it around, and slid it over to Kieran on the table. "It's an exact match. Well, as close to it as you can get in DNA since experts never say it's one-hundred-percent."

Kieran looked down at the photo in shock. It was her. No, it wasn't her. It was a mug shot, and she'd never been arrested. The woman in the photo also had shorter hair that was dyed black, and she looked like she was a mess. Kieran hadn't ever had black hair in her life. What was going on here?

"So, you see my problem?" Dylan asked.