She was chilled, soaked to the skin, and she was ready to be done with this damn day, more than ready for a hot shower, a cold slice of pizza left over from a drive-through lunch, and eight solid hours of sleep. If not more.

“Hold your horses!” a male voice, surely Russ’s, called. “I’m coming!”

Apparently, the son-and-heir had inherited his parents’ flair for business, in addition to Motel Hell—and not much else, Shallie would have bet.

Finally, Russ lumbered in, a great hulk pushing the limits of ragbag sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt printed with some now unreadable but probably inflammatory slogan. Never the middle-of-the-road type, Russ had always chosen the course most likely to piss off as many people as possible.

Like his father before him, he had been aggrieved from birth, had scores to settle with the known universe and all its occupants.

Recognizing her, Russ came to a dead stop. With one sweep of his eyes, he took her in, head to toe.

“You,” he said, affronted it would seem, not only by Shallie’s presence, but by her very existence.

Maybe, Shallie thought, numb with fatigue, she should’ve waited until morning, come here in daylight. She could have booked a clean, pleasant room at the new-looking hotel in town, one with maids, room service and a Wi-Fi connection.

Except that she’d made a plan and intended to stick with it.

Like it or not, she was going to stay right here at the Painted Pony Motel, preferably in Room 2, where she’d been abandoned. There, she hoped, some dim fragment of memory might surface. A glimpse of her mother’s face, a murmured goodbye, a promise to return.

Anything.

Not that the odds were with her on that score—years of online searches had yielded no information whatsoever about Christine Fletcher—but if there was the slightest chance that being back in the same surroundings might trigger some glimmer of recollection, she had to try. This was the biggest unanswered question of her life.

It was time. Time to go back to the source. To search in a more concerted, more serious way.

Besides, Shallie couldn’t drive another mile, not after the day she’d put in. So, she clung to that one flimsy hope and resigned herself to a lumpy mattress, a moldy shower stall and a slice of rubbery pizza for supper.

“Hello, Russ,” she said quietly.

“What do you want?” he demanded, his tone curt.

Shallie raised her shoulders slightly, lowered them again. “A room?”

“Here?” Russ frowned. He seemed not only confused but suspicious now.

No, Shallie replied in her mind, at the high-end lodge I passed when I came through town. The one that doesn’t look like something out of a horror movie.

“Here,” she confirmed, hoping her voice sounded steady.

Russ studied her again, no friendlier than before. And he still hadn’t moved. “Why?”