Page 18 of Forever Dead

“That gives us something,” Arnold said.

“He also gave me a bad feeling.”

Arnold frowned. “About what?”

“Says he got along with her,” Connor said. “I don’t believe him.”

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing useful. But when I left, he asked what was going to happen to her house.”

Arnold’s expression changed. “Already?”

“Exactly,” Connor said. “Look into him and Miss Marsh. Property records, disputes, complaints, civil filings. Talk to anybody who might know if they had trouble.”

“I’ll get on it,” Arnold said.

“Don’t lean on him yet. I want to know what’s underneath it first.”

Arnold nodded. “Got you.”

Behind him, Blethan stepped out onto the porch and removed his gloves.

Connor headed toward his SUV.

Arnold called after him. “Where you going?”

Connor opened the driver’s door. “I think I’ll go see Selena.”

“You leave that lass alone,” Blethan said. “She’s resting.”

“I’m just running some info by her,” Connor said. “I won’t have her jumping over fences just yet.”

Blethan stopped halfway down the steps. “Just don’t put too much on her shoulders, lad.”

“I know.”

Connor rested one arm on the open SUV door and glanced back toward Eleanor’s farmhouse.

“But I think someone should tell her that her favorite teacher has been killed.”

CHAPTER THREE

By midday, Selena had already made two laps of the Wilson Motel parking lot and regretted starting the third. The cane struck the pavement in a certain rhythm she had come to hate. Plant. Step. Shift. Repeat. Every circuit took longer than the one before it, partly because her knee stiffened as she went and partly because she had begun measuring the distance by landmarks she was tired of seeing: Eric’s office window, the vending machine, the cracked patch of asphalt near room twelve, the battered ice dispenser that had been making the same grinding noise since Selena was a teenager.

Beyond the rear edge of the lot, Elmsview Forest rose in bands of gold, rust and fading green. The October sun sat low enough to catch the upper branches, brightening them while the ground beneath remained in shade. As a child, Selena had spent whole afternoons in those woods. She had jumped ditches, climbed fallen trunks, scrambled up slopes slick with leaves, and once made it home with a torn jacket and blood running down one shin because she had decided she could leap from one boulder to another.

Her mother had been furious. Selena had been proud of the distance.

Now she stopped beside the motel sign and shifted more weight onto the cane. The knee gave a dull pulse beneath the brace.

She stared toward the trees and tried to picture herself running through them again. Not walking carefully. Not testing each step. Running.

Would the knee ever be the same?

Her orthopedic surgeon had told her not to think that far ahead. Healing came first. Strength after that. Then mobility, endurance, and whatever assessment the Bureau wanted before putting her back in the field.

Three more weeks before she could even begin to find out. Her physical therapist had told her to build distance in small increments. No heroics, no sudden turns, no uneven ground. Selena had nodded through the instructions as though she had never ignored medical advice in her life.