Free First Drop by Zoe Sharp Page A

that night arrives fast in Florida. You get maybe twenty minutes of sunset around six-thirty, then the day’s dead.
     
    The idea of driving around all night didn’t appeal to me. Not in a car that the bad guys could easily recognise. Particularly not with Trey in the passenger seat. We needed shelter and somewhere to hide, and the sooner the better.
     
    I was already heading towards the coast and the closer to the sea you got, the greater the proportion of motels to other buildings. I picked the first one that looked reasonable. Not too smart, not too shabby. The neon sign out front said they had vacancies and free HBO. Nevertheless, Trey looked horrified when I turned in.
     
    I drove straight through the parking area to the back of the small diner next door where the Mercury couldn’t easily be seen from the road, and reversed into a space. The car only had a numberplate on the back and there was no point it making it easy to read for anyone doing a casual drive-by.
     
    I switched off the engine. “Stay here,” I said. “Lock the doors when I’m gone and if anyone comes, hit the horn and don’t let them in. OK?”
     
    He shrugged and muttered, “OK.”
     
    I walked back to the reception via the central courtyard. The motel was made up of ugly two-storey blocks of accommodation lining the car park on three sides. Each block had ten rooms per floor. Their doors were all accessed from open walkways at the front with stairwells at either end. It looked more depressing from here than it had done when I’d picked it, but I wasn’t going to go back and admit defeat to Trey
     
    I walked into the reception, which was small and nastily lit by a string of fluoro tubes across the water-stained ceiling tiles. It smelt of coffee that was brewed two days ago and has been on the hot plate ever since. The black girl behind the counter met my arrival with unsmiling lack of enthusiasm. Her name badge told me her name was Lacena. She had hair so elaborately styled and set it looked like a sculpture, and her fingernails were too long for her to have been able to put contact lenses in without the serious danger of losing an eye in the attempt.
     
    She took an imprint of my credit card and a cursory glance at the photograph on my UK driver’s licence. Apart from my name, I filled in a completely fictitious set of details required on the registration form and took the key making as little eye contact as I could get away with.
     
    Trey hadn’t shifted when I got back to the car. He’d even had the sense to slump down in his seat. I tapped on the window and he followed me silently to the room we’d been given.
     
    We were in the left-hand block, on the top floor in the end room furthest from reception. The number on the key fob read 219, which was ambitious considering there were only around sixty rooms. Maybe they were just trying to make the place sound bigger than it was.
     
    I opened the door on a pair of twin beds with cigarette-singed floral covers. The low-wattage bulb made the whole place look dingy and depressing.
     
    “Oh man,” Trey moaned. “This place is a dump.”
     
    He grabbed the remote control for the TV and flopped down on one of the beds. Even channel-hopping didn’t appease him, as he soon discovered that the promise of Home Box Office movies was a broken one. The picture on the other channels was so badly adjusted they were just about unwatchable. Still, there were hundreds to go at and he seemed determined to try every one.
     
    I left him to it, pulling the edge of the curtain back slightly and looking down on the car park. It all looked quiet. No-one new had arrived since we’d checked in.
     
    In my head I backtracked, replaying the conversation I’d had with Livingston Brown III outside the house. So Keith Pelzner had gone, apparently of his own accord. Sean, on the other hand, had not gone quite so willingly. I would have put money on it.
     
    Then a man who’d come to the house as a