I’d fallen asleep watching a cheery little show about plane crashes on the Discovery Channel and by the looks of things had forced Alex onto the rollout. Oops. Squinting at the clock I saw it was eleven thirty and a note on the bedside table told me he’d gone out and would be back around four. I yawned, stretched, rolled out of my feather down bower and staggered over to the mini bar to pillage a tiny, outrageously expensive packet of real coffee I’d spied there the night before. I shook the precious grounds into a small plunger and snooped through Alex’s things while I waited for the trendy stainless steel kettle to boil. I was hoping to find something pertaining to his fraud case, but all I came across was a black leather toiletry kit, a copy of Time magazine and a pair of balled-up socks. Alex’s room was at the back of the hotel and when I took the plunger out onto the small semicircle of a balcony I expected it would overlook another garden of shiny sculptures and undulating shrubs.
