Tear of the Gods by Alex Archer

inclined to stop in this area. Maybe they would have in the bright light of day, but after dark was a different story apparently.
    Still, that might work to her advantage. She’d been worried about the police finding the car, but in an area like this, the car might not be there long enough for the police to find it.
    Especially if she left it unlocked with the keys in it.
    She tossed the keys on the front seat, grabbed her pack out of the back and walked down the street, leaving the door open behind her, the interior light gleaming like a beacon in the night.
    A few miles down the road she came to a run-down motel, the kind of place that would let her pay cash without leaving a name at the front and wouldn’t say a word about the bloodstains on her shirt. Noting that the elevator was out of order, Annja deliberately took a room on the fifth floor. Without the easy access the elevator would provide, the fifth floor was high enough to discourage all but the most determined of human predators; the casual thief didn’t want to deal with climbing five flights of stairs when there were easier pickings elsewhere.
    She used the cash she’d taken from the driver of the Mercedes and paid for two nights in advance. When asked to sign for the room, a fit of mischievousness overcame her and she used the name of her well-endowed and wardrobe-malfunction-plagued cohost from Chasing History’s Monsters, Kristie Chatham. Imagining the look on Kristie’s face when some paparazzo asked her what she’d been doing staying in a slum hotel in the north end of London nearly made her burst into laughter right there in front of the clerk and she vowed to herself that she’d leak the information the first chance she got.
    Annja climbed the narrow flights of steps to her room. Once inside, she locked the door behind her and then dropped her pack on the bed. There really wasn’t much to the place; a bed, a beat-up old dresser and a small nightstand were the only pieces of furniture in the room. There was a small safe set into one wall, but the scratches around the lock plate let her know just how safe it wasn’t. Rather than risk putting the torc in it, she began looking for a place she could hide it for a little while. Her first thought was to tape it inside the toilet tank, but one look at it told her that opening it might require a hazmat suit and a week of detox, so that was out. She dismissed the air-conditioning vent for the simple reason that too many Hollywood movies had used it as part of their plots—it would be the first place someone looked, whether they were conscious of the association or not. Inside the ceiling tiles was out for the same reason.
    Then her gaze fell on the thin piece of baseboard that ran around the perimeter of the room. A few pieces here and there were coming free from the wall and she could see a narrow space behind them.
    That will have to do, she thought.
    With the help of a hanger from the closet, Annja managed to pry one of the sections of baseboard free from the wall without damaging it or the nails that held it in place. Whoever had hung the baseboard on the walls had cut corners and hadn’t taken them all the way to the floor but stopped instead, leaving a two inch gap between the wall and the floor, a gap just large enough to hide the torc. Once she had it in place, she replaced the baseboard and carefully pushed the nails back into place. Standing, she backed off a few steps and gave it a once-over, decided after she’d done so that the casual observer wouldn’t know it was there.
    Satisfied for the time being that the torc was in a safe place—or, at least, as safe as she could make it—she stripped off her clothes and took a quick shower. Under the spray of the water she took time to clean out the wound on her head, discovering as she did so that it wasn’t all that bad. It had just bled a lot, as scalp wounds are wont to do. Padding naked out of the bathroom on bare feet, she picked up her