Ignoring the voice in his brain, he picked the lock and found his way through an archway into what had once been a courtyard, a square surrounded on all sides by the two-storied inn. Each long side was divided into individual units, complete with doorways on the ground level and balconies with boarded over French doors on the second. The courtyard was already in shadow, the gloom of evening seeping around the chipped and broken statue of St. Miguel as the sun sank low behind the bell tower.

So far, so good, Bentz thought.

The place seemed empty.

Lonely.

Walking along the portico, peering through a few dirty panes of the remaining windows, he nearly stepped on a rat that scurried quickly through a crack in the mortar.

Not Bentz’s idea of a romantic getaway.

At least not now, not in the inn’s current condition. The place was downright creepy, a great setting for a horror film. Testing each of the doors along the covered walkway, he felt the prickle of apprehension on the back of his neck.

All rooms were locked firmly.

Number seven, a corner suite, was no different. The number dangled precariously from the frame and looked ready to drop into the debris collecting on the porch.

Using his set of picks, he sweated as he worked the lock and it finally sprang open, the old hinges creaking eerily.

Now or never, he told himself, but he felt as if he were walking upon Jennifer’s grave as he stepped into the stuffy, stale suite. In an instant he was thrown back to a time he’d tried hard to forget.

A table was broken and cracked. A television stand was overturned, the floor scraped and filthy. Cobwebs collected in the corners and the dried corpses of dead insects littered the windowsills.

The entire place was near being condemned, Bentz guessed, his skin crawling. Stairs wound upward and creaked with each of his steps as he painfully climbed to the second floor, where a landing opened to a bedroom. There were two other doors. One led to a filthy bathroom, where dingy, cracked sinks had been pulled from the wall and a toilet was missing. The second door was closed, its latch broken, but when Bentz pushed on the old panels, he discovered it opened to an inside hallway. In one direction was the emergency exit stairs. In the other a long corridor stretched along the back wall of the building. He walked it and found the hall eventually funneled into a staircase that dropped into the area that had once been the lobby and office of the inn.

Handy, he thought. A secret entrance for a priest who didn’t want to be seen going through the front door of unit seven to meet his mistress.

Bentz returned to the bedroom, dark and gloomy.

Their bedroom. Where the memories and despair and guilt still lingered.