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with that thing.”
    She jammed the weapon back into her holster. “I know who you are. You wrote about the Woodlawn murders up in San Antonio.”
    He lifted an eyebrow and slouched against the wall beside the doorway. He was half in shadow now, while she was standing in a pool of light.
    With her shirt unbuttoned.
    “You followed me here,” she said, rebuttoning the blouse.
    “Nope.” He hooked his thumb through his belt loop and watched her.
    “How did you know I was here?”
    He shrugged.
    Either he was following her or someone was feeding him information. Given his line of work, she guessed it was a contact on the police force. Probably Maynard.
    She stared at him and hoped he’d shift under the scrutiny, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking nothing like a writer, all tall and broad-shouldered with muscles that bulged beneath his black T-shirt. Where was the pasty skin? Where were the horn-rimmed glasses from his book jacket photo? Must have been a prop, selected to create the illusion of scholarship.
    “You decided to stay,” he said.
    “I’m here for the autopsy.”
    “You weren’t invited.”
    She crossed her arms, and he shifted his attention out toward the water.
    “This beach gets pretty quiet ’long about midnight,” he said. “Just couples, mainly. No bonfires anymore, not since the burn ban.”
    She followed his gaze to the shoreline, where waves churned against the sand. In the moonlight, she could see a cluster of people standing beside a beached kayak. They were sharing a cigarette, and the ember glowed as they passed it around. A few other groups strolled down the beach, probably heading out to the bars.
    “He could have walked up to her door without anyone noticing. Maybe she recognized him from someplace, let him right in.” Troy turned to look at her. “Or maybe he let himself in.”
    “The lock wasn’t damaged.”
    His gaze dropped down to her top button, then drifted back to her face. “That lock’s a joke.”
    “How would you know?”
    “I’ve looked at it.”
    Gina’s girlfriends told police she’d gone back to her room alone on the night of her disappearance. And yetthe couple in the suite above Gina’s had heard muffled voices—a man’s and a woman’s—in the room beneath them. Who was the man? It was one of the central questions of the investigation.
    An investigation Troy Stockton seemed to know a whole lot about.
    Elaina pursed her lips. “Are you writing about Gina Calvert now? Another runaway bestseller about slashed-up women?”
    The muscle in his jaw twitched.
    “You seem to have all the right contacts around here,” she said. “Plenty of sources. Probably won’t take you too long to crank something out.”
    His gaze on her was steady. “You figure out why you’re here yet, Elaina?”
    “I’m still trying to figure out why
you’re
here.”
    Another shrug. “Just thought I’d drop by. Tell you to watch your back.”
    “Thanks for the tip. But listen—anything I say, whether you hear it from me or one of your friends, is off the record. I’m not here to talk to reporters, and if you quote me in your book, I’ll slap you with a lawsuit so fast, your head will spin.”
    His lip curled up at the corner. “I don’t doubt it.”
    Inside the suite, her cell phone chimed.
    “You’d better get that.” He straightened away from the wall. “Real nice meeting you, Agent McCord. Good luck with your mission tomorrow.”
    Elaina got up before dawn. By the time the sky’s purple had faded to orange, she’d run four miles on the sand.Her quads burned. Her lungs tingled. She’d passed Public Beach Access One, Two, and Three. She’d passed a sign telling her she’d entered the wildlife park. She’d passed yet another sign— ENDANGERED BIRD HABITAT —and sprinted on.
    All her life, she’d been a runner.
No pain, no gain,
her dad always said.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Or her favorite—which had taken on new meaning since