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glanced up at the clock, grabbed his jacket from where he’d dumped it earlier over the back of the kitchen chair.
    â€œWhere you goin’?”
    â€œOver to Hank’s to pick up whatever Maddie’s left in her room.”
    â€œThink he’ll be up for a visitor this early?”
    â€œAsk me if I care,” Ryan said, punching one arm through his jacket sleeve. “I’ve got office hours starting at eight-thirty, and I figure Ms. Kincaid just might like her clothes before six o’clock this evening.”
    Â 
    Hank greeted him barechested and scowling, his jeans unsnapped. A toothbrush dangled out of his mouth; comb tracks sliced his dark, wet hair. Eighteen months older, two inches taller and twenty-five pounds heavier than Ryan, Hank Logan was what some folks might call “imposing.” Others bypassed niceties and went straight for “scary.” And with good reason. Nothing pretty about that mug of his, that was for damn sure, every feature sharp, uncompromising, anchored by a twice-broken nose that made a person think real carefully before disagreeing with him. Everything about Hank Logan said, “Don’t mess,” and most folks didn’t.
    Which led a lot of people to wondering what on earth had possessed the guy to buy a beat-up, run-down, sorry-assed old motel and go into the hospitality business.
    Hank had been a cop in Dallas, up until a couple years ago, when his fiancée had died in a convenience store robbery gone to hell. And so had Hank. The force shrinks had finally convinced him he needed to take some time off before facing the world again with a gun strapped to his hip. So Hank had come home on a six-month leave. But, while Ryan had his practice, and Cal, their youngest brother, the family horse farm to look after, Hank had been suddenly left with nothing.
    Until this motel.
    He never got back to Dallas.
    Hank took one look at Ryan and swore, the effect somehow not all that intimidating around a mouth full of toothpaste suds. “She had the baby?”
    â€œI won’t even ask you how you figured that out.”
    â€œHell, Ry—” Hank ducked back inside his apartment adjacent to the office, a hellhole if ever there was one, and strode back to the bathroom. Ryan followed, shutting the door behind him. As usual, some opera singer was holding forth from the CD player.
    â€œShe was in her ninth month,” Hank was saying over the sound of running water and an emotionally distraught soprano. “Her car’s not here this morning. And you are. Doesn’t take a genius.”
    Ryan, however, hadn’t really heard that last part, fascinated—in a ghoulish kind of way—with the state of his brother’s apartment. The only refined thing about it was the music. While none of the Logan brothers would win any housekeeping awards, from the looks, and smell, of things, Hank seemed determined to see just how bad his place could get before it ignited from spontaneous combustion. Layers of dirty clothes, moldering fast food containers as far as the eye could see, dishes stacked like drunken acrobats in the sink—the place redefined dump.
    â€œFor cryin’ out loud, Hank—why don’t you pay Cherise an extra fifty bucks to clean up in here once a week?”
    From the bathroom, he heard spitting and rinsing, before Hank reappeared, laconically buttoning up a denim shirt. Dry heat hummed from a vent under the no-color drapes, teasing the hems. “I do. She comes tomorrow.”
    â€œI take that back. Make it a hundred. And remind me to make sure her tetanus shots are up to date.”
    Hank grunted.
    â€œAnd how’d you know Maddie Kincaid was in her ninth month, anyway?”
    His brother had let his cop-short hair grow out—a lot—but he still moved with a kind of taut awareness, as if he expected the bad guys to pop out from behind his Murphy bed. His eyes as dark as Ryan’s were light, Hank