“Not when it comes to muggers and bank robbers and druggies, maybe, but you are sure as hell one hundred percent scared of Dan Summers.”

Melba sputtered, clearly on the verge of telling Eli—boss or not—what he could do with his taunts, but not quite able to bring herself to do it.

“Or are you afraid of yourself, Deputy?”

“With all due respect, Sheriff,” Melba answered moderately, “go piss up a rope.”

Eli gave a husky guffaw, and the release of tension was downright restorative. “Thanks for that,” he said. He wasn’t talking about the suggestion; he was talking about the reason to laugh.

“Unless you’ve got something to say that’s related to Jane Doe, boss man, this conversation is done.”

“Well, then,” Eli answered, in a teasing drawl, “if that’s the case, over and out.”

Melba was no longer on his frequency.

Roughly ten minutes later, Eli pulled into the gravel and grass parking lot in front of Russ’s motel.

He’d done some renovations, with financial help from Shallie and Cord, but the place still looked as though it had been dragged into the twenty-first century by its gutter pipes.

Russ’s car, a rust-bucket sedan, was the only one in sight, and the motel’s vintage sign, equally rusty and very weatherworn, was either shut off from inside or simply too tired to light up.

Shallie had grown up here, with Russ and Bethanne and their folks; in those days, she and Reba had hung out together, working for next to nothing, cleaning rooms whenever some hapless customer showed up.

Reba had left town the night of the bonfire, when he and Cord and J.P. had found out, simultaneously, that they’d been played, big-time, and Shallie had taken off soon afterward, only to return to Painted Pony Creek last year, looking to lay a few ghosts to rest.

She’d succeeded in that—found the mother who had abandoned her, right here at the Bates Motel, when she was two years old. They had a decent relationship now, mother and daughter, and Shallie and Russ were on fairly good terms, too.

Shallie and Cord had connected through Cord’s work, and look at them now. Happily married and hoping to start a family soon.

Eli felt a stab of envy.

He hadn’t thought all that much about having a wife and family of his own, at least, not until Brynne Bailey had come home to the Creek. Before that, he’d had plenty of women—more than he’d had time for, actually—but he hadn’t allowed any of them to get too close.

When Brynne came back, things had shifted. He’d lost interest in casual dating, casual anything, and he’d been forced to acknowledge, if only to himself, that when he let himself slow down enough to consider his life, he was lonely as hell.