I'd been at it for three hours when the knock came.
County assessor's database on one tab, my own notes in a spreadsheet on the other, a cold cup of tea I kept forgetting to drink sitting on the nightstand. I'd been cross-referencing parcel boundaries against the historical filing dates, and I was starting to get somewhere, which was exactly when my focus broke.
I saved everything, checked the time, and went to the door.
Housekeeping doesn't come at 2am. Did I call the front desk for something? No. I didn't call anyone.
I opened the door.
Rhys Gray was leaning against the doorframe like he'd been there a while, which was absurd because I would have heard him in the corridor. Different clothes than this afternoon, a dark jacket, hair not quite as put together. He looked like someone who hadn't slept, which should not have made him look better.
It did anyway, and I was beginning to genuinely resent that.
I looked at him. He looked back, completely at ease, like turning up at a woman's motel room at 2am was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
"How did you get my room number?"
"Asked at the desk."
"They're not supposed to give those out." I stared at him. "And it's 2am."
"I know."
I waited for more. There wasn't more. "You drove forty minutes at 2 in the morning to a motel and just asked for my room number."
"I've got a face that makes people cooperate."
I looked at his face. It was a lot of things. Sharp, composed, a little too sure of itself. Maybe he was right.
"It's 2am," I said again, because I felt that point hadn't fully landed.
"You mentioned that."
"And you drove forty minutes."
"The roads were clear."
I stared at him. He looked back at me, perfectly comfortable, like we were having this conversation at a reasonable hour and everything about this was normal. Something about that was so absurd that I almost laughed, and I was not going to give him that.
He is not leaving. He is clearly, obviously not leaving, and the couple in the next room have probably been asleep for two hours, and the absolute last thing I need—
I had this sudden, completely unwanted image of my neighbors opening their door and finding Rhys Gray still standing in the corridor and drawing the most obvious conclusion. I stepped back and let him in before my imagination could make it worse.
He sat in the chair without being invited. I stayed standing.
"You could have just called, Rhys," I said.
"I could have, Elise."
"Or waited until morning."
"Could have done that too."
I looked at him. "But you didn't."
"No," he said it simply, like there was nothing else to add, and I had no idea what to do with that so I moved on.
"So. What's so important that it couldn't wait six hours?"
"The property has history that goes beyond what the county records show," he said. "There are things you should understand before you make any decisions."
"Like what, specifically?"
"I'm still working out what I can tell you."
I translated that immediately: I know things and I'm not ready to say them.
"So you drove forty minutes," I said, "to tell me that you might tell me something. At some point. To be determined."
He paused. "I drove forty minutes to tell you to be careful."
"Of what?"
He didn't answer right away, which was its own answer. His eyes moved to the notes spread across the desk, registering them and the fact that I had them, that I'd come here with actual preparation. Something in the way he looked at them shifted.
"You said you're a lawyer," he said.
"I may have mentioned it. Property law. Land disputes, boundary claims, overlapping jurisdiction. I've handled lycan territorial cases before," I paused. "Which you probably already knew before I arrived."
He didn't confirm or deny it.
Which confirmed it.
Of course he ran a background check. I'd have done the same.
I pushed off the wall and moved toward the desk to grab my water bottle. I misjudged the distance from the chair leg, and my foot caught it. I had about half a second of very clear awareness that I was going down before a hand closed around my arm and I didn't.
Rhys had moved fast enough that I hadn't seen it happen. He was just suddenly there, hand around my forearm, steadying me before I fully processed that I'd needed steadying.
We were close. Closer than we'd been all evening.
And then the room did something strange.
It was brief, maybe two or three seconds. A low vibration, almost like a pulse, moving through the floor and up through my feet. The lamp on the nightstand flickered once.
I took a small step back. He let go of my arm.
"Did you feel that?" I asked.
He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Yes."
"What was that?"
He didn't answer immediately, and I didn't like how he paused.
"I don't know," he said, which I was fairly certain was not entirely true.
Okay. Think. Low vibration, flickering light, old building, probably just the heating system. Or the pipes. Motels have pipe issues all the time. And I've been awake for nineteen hours.
"It's probably the pipes," I said. "Or I need sleep. One of those."
He looked at me for a moment. "Probably," he said, in the tone of someone who didn't think it was either of those things.
I crossed my arms. "You could call next time," I said. "I'm sure you already have my number."
"I could."
"But you won't."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Get some sleep, Ms. Winters."
He moved toward the door. I followed to close it behind him and reached for the handle, and he'd barely stepped into the corridor when my phone buzzed on the desk.
I picked it up. Unknown number. No name.
One text. Go back to the city, Ms. Winters, and never come back.
I held it out to him without saying anything.
He read it. And the version of Rhys Gray who'd almost smiled in my doorway thirty seconds ago went completely still.
His face closed like a door shutting.