At that moment, I hated him. I hated that he was playing me with his dangled carrot, and we both knew I wasn’t going to walk away, no matter what my pride was telling me to do.

I turned back to face him. “What’s a blood price?”

“It means if anything happens to you while I’ve sworn to protect you, Hank has the right to seek his own revenge.”

“As in kill you?” I asked in shock.

“If that’s what he chooses.”

“It could be something else?”

“Anything of his choosing. Anything.”

“Why would you agree to that?” I demanded.

“Because I wouldn’t let anything happen to you anyway. It was an easy oath to take.”

I struggled to catch my breath, daunted that Hank would ask for such a promise and that Wyatt would agree to it so willingly.

He cracked an egg and dumped it into the bowl. “I’m sure you want to know more about my history with Heather. I suppose that seems like a good place to start.”

“Hm,” I said noncommittally, then sat back down and pulled out my notebook again. I hadn’t used a notebook before, but looking back, I realized that had been foolish. And since I didn’t have Marco with me as a backup memory bank, the notebook seemed the best way to keep track of everything.

“You know, I was with Marco when I was looking for Lula,” I said. “I wasn’t investigating on my own.”

“I’ll be driving you around,” he said in a gruff tone as he whisked the batter, and I couldn’t help thinking what a contrast his domestication was to his burly frame and tone.

Nope. Not going there.

I had other issues to think about, especially since I had no intention of letting Wyatt play chauffeur, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.

“When did you first start dating Heather?”

He turned on the water faucet, collecting a small bit of water on his fingertips before flicking it into the pan he’d set on the burner. The beads of water sizzled and danced, and Wyatt turned down the heat. “We’d known each other since grade school. Her family moved to the area when she was in third grade, but I didn’t pay much attention to her then. It wasn’t until middle school that she caught my eye.”

I couldn’t help noticing the soft smile on his face.

“So you two became a thing in middle school?”

He released a chuckle as he poured batter into the skillet. “No. Believe it or not, I didn’t get up the nerve to ask her out until our sophomore year. I asked her to the homecoming dance.”

“And she said yes, of course,” I said, writing down sophomore homecoming dance.

He laughed again. “Actually, she said no. She’d already agreed to go with Herbie Metcalf, but she told me she would have chosen me if she could have. So she went to the dance with Herbie and I went with some friends, but she ditched him before it ended and asked me to take her home.”

I blinked hard. “She ditched him?”

“We were kids, Carly. Stupid kids.”

“And how did Herbie take it?”

Wyatt gave me a long look. “At the time, he seemed to take it okay.”

“You were popular, right?” I asked. “You were on the football team. You were good-looking.”

“You’re forgettin’ the part about my father havin’ money.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that part at all, but that’s a given.”

He scowled. “What are you getting’ at?”

“That you were big man on campus. Where did Herbie place in the high school pecking order?”

“That’s not fair, Carly.”

“What’s fair or unfair is irrelevant. I’m looking for facts.”

“What the hell does a high school dance have to do with the fact that Heather was buried out there in that field for nine years?” His voice rose then broke, and I realized he wasn’t angry with me. He was grieving Heather’s murder.

“The fact is someone killed your former girlfriend and her death, it seems, is about to be pinned on you, Wyatt, which means this could be like looking for a needle in haystack. So I’m digging through the haystack.”

He turned back to the skillet, flipping four pancakes. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He paused, considering, then said, “Herbie was in the middle, I guess. He wasn’t unpopular, but he wasn’t in the upper echelon.”

“How many kids were in a graduating class?” I asked.

“About a hundred to one-twenty,” he said. “It’s a county school. Kids from Ewing and the surrounding towns like Drum.”

I nodded, writing that down. “And where was Herbie from?”

“Ewing. Most of the kids were. There are more kids in the surrounding area, but there’s a Christian high school in Ewing, and some of the more rural kids homeschooled, or at least that’s what their parents told the school district. No one really pushed them on it.”

He grabbed two plates from the cabinet and placed two pancakes on each before pouring more batter into the skillet. He set a plate in front of me, along with everything I would need to enjoy it—a fork and knife, butter, a bottle of maple syrup, and a cup of coffee. “I don’t have any nondairy creamer, but I do have half-and-half.”

“That’s fine,” I said with a slight frown, feeling uncomfortable with the air of domesticity rolling off him.

He pulled the carton out of the fridge. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Nope. I’m good.” I poured some half-and-half into the mug and stirred it with my fork before taking a sip. “Did you have any enemies in high school?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” he asked.

“No,” I said, harsher than I’d intended. “I didn’t.”

He turned to face me. “Even with your father being who he is?”

High school seemed like light-years away, and talking about my past as Caroline felt off and wrong. “I went to a private school where everyone’s parents had money. I was shy and quiet.”

“And from what I gathered, you had Jake looking out for you,” he said with a bit of an edge of his own.

My back stiffened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you don’t have any right to judge me. Was I an asshole in high school? Yeah, I was. I had a chip on my shoulder because in the eyes of the school, I was the kid to knock off a pedestal, even if I never wanted to climb onto it in the first place. But I was a Drummond, and my father had expectations, even in school. Even with sports. And people hated that I was a Drummond, so plenty of people stepped up to challenge me. If I didn’t defend myself well enough, my father would be quick to rake me over the coals at home for not acting like a leader. So yeah, I was admittedly an asshole with absolutely no real friends. Until Heather.”

I set my mug on the counter, my edge softening. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it was difficult.”

He shrugged and flipped the pancakes in the skillet. “It was like Heather could see right through all my layers of bullshit.” He snuck a glance toward me and just as quickly looked away. “Just like you.”

Had Heather been more tolerant of all his secrets? Or maybe he hadn’t had them back then. Did it matter?