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They drove through the lot, in a slow U around the grungy motel. They knew the woman would no longer have the 4Runner; she’d rented something, make and model unknown.

“We check out every car?” Desmond asked. “Figure which one’s theirs. Take them when they come out.”

Moll shook his head. “What would they leave in the car that would identify them? They would take everything into the room. I say we just go in, have a conversation with the clerk.”

“Fine by me. Where’s Merritt?”

“Not far,” Moll said.

“We don’t wait for him?”

“Not necessary. We get the girls in the van, pacify them a little and go somewhere to wait for him.”

“In the van,” Desmond repeated slowly and gave a thoughtful smile that Moll found disturbing in the extreme.

Ski masks and gloves.

These were uncomfortable. But they had no choice. All motels, even the unfortunate Sunny Acres, had video cameras nowadays. They’d try for the hard drive but there was that damn thing called the cloud.

They walked fast into the lobby, guns up, ready to shoot. This was the world of concealed carry. Moll always assumed everyone over fifteen was armed.

“Oh, Lord,” the chubby clerk said, his face and bald head burning red. His hands shot up. When he spoke it was a single long sentence. “Take the money but there isn’t much we’re mostly credit card you can understand I’ll give you my ATM the PIN is 8899 take it all...”

Desmond’s punch to the face was quite satisfying to Moll.

“No, no, no!” The man’s hands came away bloody. He stared. The color seemed as troubling as the pain.

“Guest. Allison Parker and her daughter. Checked in yesterday.”

“That name I don’t know it nobody here like that name, sir, really I mean it we’re a small place and my mother and I are doing the best—”

Now Moll slugged him. The jaw. He yelped.

“You know who we mean.”

“Room three oh six, sir, three oh six.”

They escorted the miserable man into the office. “I don’t know anything about you I didn’t see your faces of course you’ve got those masks on and I wasn’t looking at your clothes or height or anything and I’ve got a terrible memory anyway everybody knows that and—”

Moll made a fist and the man shut up and squinted, turning his head away.

“Security camera hard drive.”

The man nodded toward a black box, holding a 3½-inch drive. Moll ripped it from the desktop and pocketed the unit.

Desmond zip-tied him and Moll found some packing tape, which he used to wrap his mouth. They left him on the floor to spend time in the company of the misery of signing the death warrants of two of his guests.

They started down the hall that led to the rooms, past the ice, past the vending machines. The corridor ended at a wall with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Why that? Moll could not figure. To the right were rooms 301–319. The two men walked quickly that way.

As they approached 306, the door opposite opened and an elderly couple stepped out, both in leisure suits, hers pink, and blue for him. On the man’s head was a gray herringbone Greek fisherman cap. They stopped about as quickly as you would expect.

“Oh, my,” the woman whispered.

Moll glanced to Desmond, who said, “Hey there, folks, let’s go inside for a minute.” He ushered them back in and the door closed.

He emerged only three minutes later. “He called me an a-hole. Wouldn’t even say ‘ass.’ I don’t like people like that.”

The men walked to 306. Moll bent close to the wood, listening. He could hear a TV program playing. He sniffed. “Coffee and bacon.”

Having been in the business of making bodies and hiding them for some years, Moll had learned a half-dozen ways to get through doors. He’d taught himself lock picking and he became pretty good at the art. But then hotels started to go with electronic locks and key cards, which was as irritating as the discovery of DNA.

But there was a technique that was tried and true.

He glanced at Desmond, who nodded. Moll stepped back, took a deep breath, which for some reason seemed to help, and drove his size-twelve foot into the wood just below the lock with all the force of his solid right leg behind it.

44

Colter Shaw steered his Winnebago over the cracked asphalt of the Sunny Acres motel’s parking lot, off Route 92.

Even in broad blaring daylight there would be nothing sunny about the place, given the trash-filled grassland encircling it. Small industrial facilities were the view to each side, if you could see over the green-slatted chain-link. In the back was tall grass, from which rusty appliances and machinery rose like cautious soldiers, awaiting a skirmish.

In the distance was the telltale water tower.

He checked his Glock 42. The slim gun contained six rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. He sometimes carried an extra mag — always left hip, as his father had taught. Sometimes two. Today, he clipped both, each in its own leather holster, on the sinister side of his belt. He untucked his black knit shirt to make sure the weapon was covered; it tended to be visible underneath the leather jacket when he bent or turned.

In a rare moment of verse, his father would recite the rule:

Never reveal when you’re supposed to conceal...

Hand near the weapon, he moved fast toward the motel office, scanning for Merritt’s pickup or Parker’s 4Runner. Neither vehicle was here, though he was sure she’d swapped her wheels for something else. Was one of these others theirs? There were some sedans, some SUVs, a white Ford Transit, two tractor-trailers. Many had out-of-state plates, but one could still be a rental of Parker’s; the companies were forever moving cars here and there.

Inside, no one was behind the counter.

He rang the clerk’s bell. No response to the ding.

He drew his weapon and started up the hallway, knocked on the door to the office.

A grunting voice responded.

A thud.

Shaw pushed inside, gun up, holding it two-handed. There he found the clerk, zip-tied and gagged, thrashing frantically, trying to free himself. The round man whose face and shirt and hands were covered in damp blood, panicked even more when he saw Shaw and the gun and tried to scrabble away, as if there were a hiding place in a twelve-by-twelve box of a room.

He yanked the tape off.

“Ow, Jesus.”

“When was he here?”

“I’m bleeding.”

“When?”

“Five minutes.”

“He armed?”

“They both were.”

“Both?”

“Two of them.”

Two? What was this about? Merritt and someone else? Or men working with him?

“Describe them, fast.”

He hesitated.

“Now!” Shaw growled.

“A big guy in a suit, one in a tan jacket. He was skinnier. Masked. Guns. Big guns. They were going to kill me!”

“What room?”

“They—”

“I’m not asking again.”

“Three oh six.”

Shaw flicked open his locking-blade knife and sawed through the zip. “Call the police.”

Gun in hand, Shaw moved fast along the Lysol-scented hallway. The door to the room had been kicked in. He moved in slowly, gun low and tight to his right side.

Never extend a handgun out in front of you when entering a blind doorway...

Then, inside, keeping low, pivoting, aiming at every site of concealment.

All the doors were open, bathroom, closet. The place was vacant. The remains of breakfast were scattered over the bed and floor. Articles of clothing and toiletries too.