At first, he’d taken the attraction to Brynne lightly. After all, what red-blooded man wouldn’t be attracted to a woman as smart and sweet and beautiful as she was?

Eli brought himself back to the present moment.

Seeing that Russ had placed a paper Closed sign on the inside of the front door, which lead into the office, he knocked. Then knocked again, more forcefully this time.

Russ appeared, looking rumpled, a large smear of a man smudged onto the fogged glass in the door.

Reluctantly, he opened up.

“I didn’t kill that girl,” he said, before Eli could speak.

“I’m not saying you did,” Eli replied succinctly, “but I need to ask you some questions just the same.”

“Okay,” Russ said, stepping back so Eli could enter the building, “but I don’t have a lot of time. I’m invited over to Cord and Shallie’s place for dinner.”

“So am I,” Eli replied. “I probably won’t make it, though, because my sister is expecting me.” And because Melba told me Brynne will be at Sara’s.

The inside of that office smelled musty, though it was probably clean enough. The carpets, curtains—the very walls—were just plain old, past their prime.

In Eli’s unsolicited opinion, it would have made more sense to bulldoze the whole place, sell all that wood and wire and rebar for salvage, and rebuild.

The whole idea was to provide a place for Cord and Shallie’s students, all prospective horse-whisperers, to stay while they went through the six comprehensive weeks of the program. Like the clients who hired Cord to work his magic and train untrainable horses, the students tended to be well-heeled, used to comfortable if not luxurious accommodations, and even with renovations the property would still be haunted by its troubled past.

Russ led the way past the battered old reception desk to the living quarters in back.

The living room probably looked pretty much the way it had when the original owners, Russ’s drunken parents, were alive. The furniture was dated, and the carpet was the color of sliced avocado.

The TV, which still had knobs instead of buttons, sported an actual antenna flagged with tin foil. The volume was way down, but Russ had clearly been watching the news.

Eli watched himself on-screen, leaving the office, waving off reporters, climbing into his SUV.

In the next shot, a young man with an orange cast to his skin and ridiculously white teeth was shoving a microphone into Connie Sue’s angry, tight-lipped face.

Finally, there was a sweeping image of the field behind the motel and the crime scene, complete with yellow tape fluttering in the chilly breeze.

“No need for sound,” Russ lamented wearily. “They’re all saying the same thing, that nobody will tell them anything.”

“Typical,” Eli said.

“Have a seat,” Russ replied, with a nod. “You want any coffee? I’ve got instant.”