Free Life or Death by Michael Robotham Page B

‘That came out the wrong way. I’m sorry. It’s just that somebody stole my wallet on the bus and I’m going to have trouble getting a motel room without identification. I got plenty of cash, but no ID.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
    ‘If you booked the room – I’d pay for it. I’ll pay for two rooms. You and Scarlett can have one of them.’
    ‘Why would you do that?’
    ‘I need a bed and we both need a shower.’
    ‘You could be a rapist or a serial killer.’
    ‘I could be an escaped convict.’
    ‘Right.’
    Cassie focuses hard on his face as though trying to decide if she’s about to make a stupid decision. ‘I got a taser,’ she says suddenly. ‘You try anything funny and I’ll zap you.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it.’
    Her car is a beaten-up Honda CRV, parked in a vacant lot beneath a Coca-Cola sign. She rips a ticket from beneath the wiper blades and crumples it into a ball. Audie is carrying Scarlett in his arms with her head resting against his chest. Asleep. She feels so small and fragile that he’s frightened she might break. He remembers the last time he carried a child – a little boy with eyes so brown they gave the word brown meaning.
    Cassie leans into the car, shoving sleeping bags into corners and clothes into a suitcase, rearranging their possessions. Audie slides Scarlett onto the back seat and puts a pillow beneath her head. The engine turns over a couple of times before it fires. The starter motor is almost shot, thinks Audie, remembering the years he spent in the garage watching his daddy working. The chassis scrapes on the kerb as they reach the deserted street.
    ‘How long you been living in your car?’ he asks.
    ‘A month,’ says Cassie. ‘We were staying with my sister until she kicked us out. She said I was flirting with her husband but he was the one doing the flirting. Couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I swear there’s not one decent guy in this freakin’ city.’
    ‘Scarlett’s father?’
    ‘Travis died in Afghanistan, but the army won’t pay me a pension or recognise Scarlett because Travis and me weren’t married. We was engaged, but that don’t count. He got killed by an IED – you know what that is?’
    ‘A roadside bomb.’
    ‘Yeah. I didn’t know when they told me. Amazing what you learn.’ She scratches her nose with her wrist. ‘His parents treat me like some sort of welfare witch who popped out a baby just to get a government handout.’
    ‘What about your parents?’
    ‘Don’t have no momma. She died when I was twelve. Daddy kicked me out when I got pregnant. Didn’t matter to him that me and Travis were gonna get married.’
    She keeps talking, trying to overcome her nerves, telling Audie that she’s a qualified beautician with ‘a diploma and everything’. She holds up her nails. ‘Look at these.’ She’s painted them to look like ladybugs.
    They take an exit onto the North Freeway. Cassie sits high in her seat with both hands on the wheel. Audie can picture the person she expected to be – going off to college, spring break in Florida, wearing bikinis and drinking mojitos and rollerblading along the beachfront; getting a job, a husband, a house … Instead she’s sleeping in a car and washing her kid’s hair in a restroom sink. That’s what happens to expectations, he thinks. One event or wrong decision can change everything. It could be the popping of a car tyre or stepping off a sidewalk at the wrong moment or driving past an IED. Audie doesn’t hold to the view that a person makes his own luck. Nor does he even consider the notion of fairness, unless you’re talking about a skin colour or someone’s hair.
    After about six miles, they take an exit onto Airport Drive and pull into the Star City Inn, where palm trees are standing sentry by the main doors and the parking lot glistens with broken glass. A handful of black guys in baggy jeans and hoodies are loitering outside one of the ground-floor rooms. They