“Okay—yeah—” Dan mused aloud. “Tiffany’s been on the run from home for three years. Looks like the local PD and the home folks searched for her for a while, then gave up. I imagine our brothers and sisters in blue are as overworked and underfunded in Lubbock as they are everywhere else.”

“Anything on social media?”

“Yeah,” Dan said thoughtfully, “but they’re not our Tiffany.”

“Ulbridge can’t be that common a name,” Eli prodded.

He heard vehicles in the distance, bumping over hard ranch roads.

“I’m looking, I’m looking,” Dan chided. “Chill.”

“Oh, I’m chill all right. It’s a wonder my teeth aren’t chattering.”

Melba began to shrug off his coat, and Eli signaled her to keep it on, which she reluctantly did.

J.P.’s old truck arrived first, flanked by two deputies and Alec’s van.

“Look, I’ve got to get off the phone now,” Eli told Dan. “Keep looking. I want to know as much about this girl as I can.”

“Wait. You said you found Freddie Lansing dead? That’s the kid who threatened your niece and nephew, am I right?”

“That’s him. Keep it to yourself, Dan. His folks have to be told before this is made public.”

“Ten-four, good buddy,” Dan replied. “I’ll get the details later.”

“Much later,” Eli answered, with a sigh.

The call ended.

J.P. approached, handed Melba a woman’s ski jacket, red like her dress, and she took it gratefully, wriggling out of Eli’s coat and handing it back.

“Belongs to my sister,” J.P. clarified, though no one had asked about the provenance of the red jacket. “One of them, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Melba said, donning the jacket and zipping it to her chin.

Alec and Sam were climbing out of the van, equipment bags in hand.

“Not again,” Alec said.

“Sorry, but yeah,” Eli replied. “It’s Freddie Lansing. Looks as though he hanged himself, but you never know.”

Sam, thinking his own thoughts, as usual, said nothing.

Eli led them toward the barn. The doors had been partially off their hinges for years, so the entrance was clear.

If Freddie—and maybe Tiffany Ulbridge—had used this place for a refuge of some kind, they must have damn near frozen.

The two deputies—Jake Riverton and Amos Edwards—came up behind Alec and Sam. Jake had a camera in one hand.

Melba filled the lawmen in while Eli and J.P. walked around, looking for any evidence they might find on the ground.

They circled the barn, slowly, Trooper sniffing along behind them, but found nothing other than old bottles, scraps of wood and rusty nails. Back in the day, they’d partied here fairly often with all their friends until J.P.’s dad had landed in the middle of one of their shindigs like a fox in a henhouse and sent everybody scurrying for the hills.