On the other hand, he had apologized, and she didn’t want to leave him hanging, if only because she’d been wrong, as well. She’d seen Clay sitting at a table in her restaurant, gone from zero to a hundred in about two seconds and behaved like a hormonal teenager.

So she opened Eli’s text and replied. I’m sorry, too. Let’s step back for a few days—at least until after the Lansing funeral—and then take another run at acting like grown-ups.

Immediately, the small, flickering dots appeared, indicating an imminent response.

Brynne waited.

A smile curved her mouth when his answer came through.

I’m all for acting like grown-ups. Together. But I’ll settle for a fighting chance to get back in your good graces. Text me when I can grovel properly.

Her reply was a single emoji: thumbs-up.

ELI AND DAN watched the proceedings from the spacious office Alec and Sam shared with Pete Gilford, the funeral director and, conveniently, only son of the local florist. The surveillance cameras were state-of-the-art, taking in the corridors, lab and autopsy room.

These days, of course, there were cameras everywhere, which was mainly a good thing, in most cases. Here, it fell on the side of creepy.

Too bad there were no lenses trained on that vacant lot behind Russ’s motel, where Tiffany Ulbridge had died brutally and far ahead of her time, or the inside of that abandoned barn, where they’d found Freddie Lansing dangling from a rafter.

The shots Dan had found online of that place were all stills—the backpack, the cot, the chinks of sunlight showing through the plank walls.

Eli sighed, realizing he was about to chase yet another white rabbit down yet another hole, and returned his attention to the monitor, and the separate panel—one of several—showing the chapel.

Doris’s tasteful arrangements occupied every tabletop there and in the viewing room, and covered Freddie’s gleaming fiberglass coffin like a blanket of snow.

Most of the folding chairs were filled, though there was a barrier of empty space beside and behind Fred, Sr., and the Mrs.

Eli studied their grieving faces closely, bothered again, as he had been the night he’d gone out to their place and told them what had happened to their only son.

He’d taken Connie’s advice, tried to quit digging and think of other things, but it hadn’t helped. Whatever he was looking for, it was so subtle as to elude the senses, quite possibly a faint impression or subliminal insight.

The community of Painted Pony Creek had really come through for Fred, Sr., and Gretchen, leaving food on their porch, collecting donations for the coffin and burial plot in the town cemetery, showing up for the service.

He spotted Sara, sitting with Eric, Shallie, Cord and J.P.