Chapter 13: The Starlite

The Starlite Motor Lodge had eleven rooms and one working letter on its sign.

It was ten to five, and the sky over Main Street had gone the color of dishwater.

Across the road the diner lights were already on, and four logging trucks sat nosed in at the curb.

Dane's gray Audi was parked outside room nine, with Portland plates and a dealership frame.

"Let me knock," Wyatt said.

"No," I said. "He's mine."

Pru cracked her knuckles. "I'll stand where he can't run."

She walked to the Audi and leaned on the driver's door with her arms folded.

I knocked three times.

The chain slid, and Dane opened the door in an undershirt and slacks, with his hair flat on one side.

He saw me and smiled.

It was the smile he used on clients, and I watched it work on nobody.

"Bethany. You drove all the way out here to find me?"

"I live here. You're the one who drove."

"I came to talk. You wouldn't answer my texts."

"Where is Sierra's phone?"

His eyes went past me to Wyatt, and then to Pru, and the smile slipped a notch.

"So this is the doctor," he said. "Does he know what you're like? She'll tell you she's a saint, Doc. Ask her where my money went."

"Your money," I said.

"I've got the paper trail."

"So do I."

Sierra's cracked phone was in my coat pocket.

I held it up and turned the speaker to full.

Dane's own voice filled the parking lot, thin and bright in the cold.

"She's nobody's friend. She's a line of credit with a pulse."

The door of the diner opened.

Pru's mother stood in it in her apron, and behind her came two loggers with coffee cups.

Across the road a trucker stopped with his hand on his door.

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