Flashback

with the tired eyes.
“Yeah. Straight into the academy from college.” He shrugged. “All I ever wanted to be.”
He still sounded a bit on edge, so she tried another tack.
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t expect anything from you. I’m not asking that you reactivate the case or get involved at all. I’m just letting you know I’m here, and what I’ll be doing.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Your thoughts about the case, mainly. And a look at the original file. I’ve seen ours but not yours. Although, if you have any personal notes or recollections, copies of those would help, too. Beyond that, I’ll stay out of your hair.”
He leaned back slightly, puzzlement replacing the frown on his face. “Why?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Because, this is personal, not official.”
“Oh? You guys took over the case in the first place, the vic being a senator and all, so why don’t you check with your own investigators?”
“I have. But you were first investigator on the scene. Your impressions are the most important.”
“So I’m supposed to believe an FBI agent—”
“Scientist.”
“Whatever. I’m supposed to believe the FBI shows up in tiny little Athens asking about the unsolved ten-year-old murder of a former U.S. senator, and it’s only personal, I’m not going to get sucked up into the federal wood chipper?”
Her mouth twitched. She fought the grin. “It is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?”
She finally got the smile she’d been thinking about earlier. And it did, as she’d suspected it would, transform his face. He went from guarded and world-weary to open and approachable—and charming—in the space of a few seconds.
“It really is personal,” she assured him. “Marion Gracelyn was a longtime family friend. She was like an aunt to me, and my family would really like to know the full truth of what happened that night.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Hunt said wryly.
“It means even more to me, because of where it happened.”
He lifted one sandy brow. “The women’s academy? You go there?”
“I did.”
He looked curious then. “I hear it’s quite a place. Lieutenant Ryan went there didn’t she?”
Alex nodded. “She did. We were best friends.”
“And she’s one of the best cops I’ve ever worked with.”
“I’ll tell her you said so,” Alex said with a smile.
“Oh.” He looked chagrinned. “I guess you already knew that.”
“We were in the same class,” Alex said. “So yes, I know how good she is.”
No point in trying to explain about the Cassandras; he didn’t need to know, and likely wouldn’t understand anyway. Nobody would who hadn’t been in that kind of situation where the bonding was deep and permanent.
Whether it was that she knew Kayla, curiosity about Athena or something else, she didn’t know, but he came over to her side after that.
“Look, your guys pretty much nudged me out of the whole investigation once they got here. Not that I blame them, really,” he added in a burst of refreshing candor. “I was pretty green.”
“Sometimes I think I still am,” she commiserated, and earned another smile.
“Naw. Definitely red,” he quipped, and to her surprise she didn’t mind the reference to her hair. Perhaps it was the boy-next-door thing that softened it from taunt to friendly tease.
“Anyway,” he said quickly, as if he’d embarrassed himself, “most of the files of that era aren’t digital, so they’re in storage in Phoenix. I can send for them, but it’ll raise a flag.”
She knew that was likely true; you didn’t dig out a murder case on a U.S. senator without drawing attention.
“I could tell them it’s just been bugging me, and I want to look at it again,” he said.
Something in the way he said it told her it wasn’t totally a ruse. “Does it? Bug you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted with a half shrug. “It does. It was my first murder, and probably the biggest case I’ll ever be involved in.”
She nodded in understanding. “Well, I’m not really trying to hide what I’m doing, just to keep it under the radar as long as I can. So if you think you can do it without sending up a flare…”
“I think so,” he said, and she smiled at the change in his attitude. Oddly, he glanced away for a minute, much as she did when she thought she was going to blush.
“Thank you.” She put every bit of sincerity she was feeling into her voice. “I really appreciate it.”
As if inspired by the positive reception of his first offer, he said “I can dig out my own notes, if you think it would help. I kept all the old ones on paper, so it’s not a digital file.” He gave her a slightly sheepish smile. “And back then, I wrote down everything.”
Definitely boy-next-door material, Alex thought.
“So did I,” she said, grinning at him. “I think it would probably help a lot, then. Thanks, Eric.”
He colored visibly then, and grinned back at the same time, a combination she thought awkwardly sweet.
It seemed she had gained an ally.
“Anything else, Agent Forsythe?” he asked.
“Alex,” she said, granting him the familiarity she’d already taken. She started to answer his question in the negative, then thought again. “Could you have a license plate run for me?”
He looked surprised, but nodded. “Sure.”
She handed him the piece of paper she’d scribbled the number from the blue car on. He took it and sat down at the computer terminal on a table behind his desk. Less than a minute later he handed her a printout.
The name and address meant nothing to her, but she hadn’t really expected it to. She tucked it away, just in case, while he dug into the bottom drawer of the big file cabinet that stood beside the desk. While it was in the back of the very full drawer, he had no trouble finding the file, and Alex guessed it was because he looked at it with some regularity. As did most cops with the cases they couldn’t forget.
He straightened, glanced inside the dog-eared and marked-up manila folder and then held it out to her.
She opened the