Chloe had booked them into the Gulf City Hotel, which turned out to be a flat-roofed two-story motel painted in uneven shades of brown that reminded Desmond of pecan shells. The V-shaped building was broken into two long wings that angled out from either side of a glassed-in coffee shop and office, and it seemed to be embracing the parking lot, and, by inference, your most sacred possession: your car. Except today, there were only three cars in the lot; not much to protect.

As soon as she spotted the place, Chloe put down the electronic game and started making bleeps of her own. “This isn’t a hotel,” she cried. “It’s barely a motel. Talk about false advertising!”

“If you ran a place that looked like this,” Desmond said, “would you advertise honestly?”

“I guess I should have known something was up when they told me the price.”

“It’s fine,” Jane said, although, as far as Desmond could tell, she’d barely opened her eyes. “We’re only here for a few nights. As your executive producer, I approve.”

Chloe stepped out to the pavement of the parking lot and waved her clipboard in front of her face, indicating either the intensity of the heat or a bad odor. She was wearing black Capri pants and a skimpy white T-shirt and a pair of thick-soled, open-toed sandals that made her look especially tall and narrow. Her face was flushed a dark, pretty shade of copper, and her hair hung halfway down her back in long tendrils. In Boston, she’d stand out for being exceptionally attractive and perhaps only slightly underdressed, but walking across the parking lot of this unpromising motel in a remote finger of Florida that had been dubbed the “redneck Riviera,” she looked almost cartoonishly young and thin. And her confident stride in those thick sandals made her look more vulnerable than poised. She pulled open the glass door of the office and the white sunlight flashed in Desmond’s eyes. If he was seeing through Chloe’s well-made defenses to the weaknesses underneath, they were all in trouble. He looked up to the white sky and had a strong premonition that things were not going to go well here.

3.