In a flash, Eli saw the essence of Brynne Bailey, her goodness, her strength, her compassion, the very fabric of her finely woven soul. She was multifaceted, like a living gem, and he saw these facets clearly—Brynne as a human being, as a woman, as a wife and mother, even as an artist, the owner of a business. He saw her as a daughter, too; as an infant and as a very old lady.

He saw all that and much, much more, between one heartbeat and the next, and he knew he would need days, if not years, to sort these impressions.

Eli snapped out of his trance only because he dropped his knife and fork, sent them clattering onto his china plate.

Everyone at the table turned to look at him.

“You all right?” Dan asked. He sat beside Eli, one chair over, and yet the two of them might have been different planets, orbiting around separate suns.

No, Eli thought.

“Yes,” he said, literally tearing his gaze from Brynne, who had been watching him with some degree of alarm, like everyone else at the table. “I guess my mind went wandering there for a minute.”

“No wonder,” Melba commented, from her chair beside Brynne’s. “You’ve got a lot to deal with, between Jane Doe and—” She paused, swallowed a sip of water; like Eli, she wasn’t indulging in wine or whiskey today. “Sorry. No topic for the dinner table.”

Hayley, Jill and Carrie sat at the foot of the table, pretending not to listen and taking in every word, while Eric, squeezed in between Brynne and Melba, was, as they say, all ears.

“We know what’s going on, Mom,” Jill said. “There was a murder, out at the Painted Pony Motel. It’s all over the web.”

“Maybe Freddie did it,” Eric put in. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Eli narrowed his eyes, studying his nephew. Why hadn’t he thought to ask Eric for more information about Freddie? The kid was certainly in a position to know, having hung out with the punk for the better part of last summer.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

Eric shrugged, mighty casual now that he was safe in his own home, surrounded by protective adults. “Freddie’s mean. That isn’t exactly red-alert stuff.”

“Did he—or does he—have a girlfriend, by any chance?”

Jill, Hayley and even Carrie gave a collective, “Ewwwww!”

“He was always messaging girls online,” Eric replied, reaching for the mashed potatoes and slopping a spoonful onto his plate, which he had already cleared once. “I don’t know if he ever met any of them.”

“Freddie isn’t on social media,” Melba said. “I checked.”

“He’s on the dark web,” Eric responded, as though that should have been obvious.

And it should have been.

A chill trickled down Eli’s spine, pausing at every vertebrae. “Are you?” he asked pointedly.