As we pulled up to the hotel, a pelican swooped in toward the windshield and both Angie and I ducked, but the freaky-looking bird caught a bit of wind and rode it in a low swoop onto the top of a piling by the dock.

“Friggin’ thing was huge,” Angie said.

“And awfully brown.”

“And very prehistoric-looking.”

“I don’t like them, either.”

“Good,” she said. “I didn’t want to feel silly.”

Mr. Cushing dropped us at the door and the bellmen took our bags and one said, “Right this way, Mr. Kenzie, Ms. Gennaro,” even though we hadn’t introduced ourselves.

“I’ll meet you at your room at three,” the Weeble said.

“You bet,” I said.

We left him chatting with Mr. Cushing and followed our impossibly tanned bellboy to an elevator and up to our rooms.

The suites were enormous and looked down on Tampa Bay and the three bridges that intersected it, the milky green water sparkling under the sun and all of it so pretty and pristine and placid I wasn’t sure how long I could take it before I puked.

Angie came through the door that adjoined the suites and we stepped out onto the balcony and closed the sliding glass door behind us.

She’d changed from basic black city clothes into light-blue jeans and a white mesh tank top, and I tried to keep both my mind and my eyes off the way the tank top hugged her upper body so I could discuss the business at hand.

“How fast do you want to dump the Weeble?” I said.

“Now isn’t soon enough.” She leaned over the rail and puffed lightly on her cigarette.

“I don’t trust the room,” I said.

She shook her head. “Or the rental car.”

Sunlight streaked through her black hair and lit the chesnut highlights that had been hiding under all that darkness since last summer. Heat flushed her cheeks.

Maybe this place wasn’t so bad.

“Why’d Trevor put the pressure on all of a sudden?”

“The Weeble you mean?”

“And Cushing.” I waved my arm at the room behind me. “All this shit.”

She shrugged. “He’s getting frantic about Desiree.”

“Maybe.”

She turned and leaned back against the railing, the bay framing her, her face tilted to the sun. “Plus, you know how it is with rich guys.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Well, it’s like if you go out on a date with one—”

“Hang on, let me get a pen for this.”