Reacher stepped into the motel office. It looked like a hundred others he had seen. It was very similar to the fat man’s place from early that morning. There was a reception counter, and lobby furniture, and a table with space for coffee and breakfast muffins. There was vinyl on the floor, and pictures on the walls, and lighting chosen more for a small electric bill than adequate illumination.
There was a plump, motherly woman behind the counter. She was smiling, in a kind, welcoming fashion.
She said, ‘Mr Reacher?’
Reacher said, ‘Yes.’
‘We’ve been expecting you.’
‘Have you?’
She nodded. She said, ‘We have rooms with kings, queens, and twins, but I’ve gone right ahead and put you in a room with a queen.’
‘Have you?’ Reacher said again.
The woman nodded again. She said, ‘I think the rooms with the queens are the nicest. They feel more spacious, with the armchairs and all. Most people like those rooms the best.’
‘Most people? How many guests do you get?’
‘Oh, we have quite the procession.’
He said, ‘I guess I’m happy with a queen. I’m on my own.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’
She wrote in a book and took a key off a hook. She said, ‘Room twenty. It’s easy to find. Just follow the signs. They’re all lit up at night. Dinner starts in an hour.’
Reacher put the key in his pocket and went back outside. It was nearly full dark. As promised he saw knee-high fingerposts lit up by nearby spotlights set on spikes in the ground. He followed the sign for rooms sixteen through twenty. The path was brushed concrete and it wound its curving way around empty flowerbeds and it came out at a long low block of five rooms together. Room twenty was the last room in line. The empty swimming pool was not far from it, and beyond the pool was the decorative wall faced with stucco, and beyond that was the security fence. Up close it looked tall and black and angular. The mesh was a matrix of flat steel blades welded into rectangles smaller than postage stamps. Too small to put a finger in. Way too small for a foothold. Plus loops of razor wire overhanging the whole thing. It was a very efficient fence.
Reacher unlocked his door and let himself in. As promised he saw a queen bed, and armchairs. There were clothes on the bed, in two neat piles. Two outfits, both the same. Blue jeans, blue button-down shirts, blue cotton sweaters, white undershirts, white underwear, blue socks. Every garment looked to be exactly the right size. Not easy to find, at short notice.
There were pyjamas on the pillow. There were toiletries in the bathroom. Soap, shampoo, conditioner, shaving cream. Some kind of skin lotion. Deodorant. There were disposable razors. There was toothpaste, and a new full- size toothbrush sealed in cellophane. There was a hairbrush and a comb, like the toothbrush brand new and still sealed. There was a bathrobe on a hook. There were little hotel slippers in a packet. There were all kinds of towels on the rails, and a bath mat.
Just like the Four Seasons.
But there was no television in the room, and no telephone.
He locked up again, and went out exploring.
Overall the whole compound was roughly rectangular, indented here and there for the sake of interest and variety. A complicated network of brushed concrete paths wound in and out and visited everywhere of significance, including five separate accommodation blocks, and the main building, and the pool, and a mini golf installation way in one far corner. There were raised flowerbeds everywhere, edged with lower versions of the low stucco wall. In the gaps and the angles between the buildings and the walls and the flowerbeds there was crushed stone. A simpler network of concrete roadways connected the gate to the turning circle near the office, and then onward to five separate five-space parking lots near each of the accommodation blocks, and to a delivery bay behind the main building.
Four rooms were lit up inside. Two of them were near the two parked cars, and two of them weren’t. The parked cars were Ford Crown Victorias, police spec, with needle antennas on their trunk lids. Reacher checked their dark interiors through their windows, and saw empty cell phone cradles on their dashboards, just like Sorenson’s.
He stood for a minute in the dark and listened hard. He heard nothing. Total silence. No traffic. No airplanes. Just vast night-time emptiness all around. Common sense and dead reckoning told him he was in Kansas, somewhere on the axis between Topeka and Wichita, probably halfway between the two, or maybe slightly nearer Topeka, possibly someplace near the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. But as far as physical evidence was concerned he could have been on the dark side of the moon. The sky felt heavy and cloud-covered and there was no world beyond the dense mesh fence.
He turned and strolled back the way he had come, past one of the lit-up windows, and then he more or less bumped into a guy coming out of a room marked
The guy smiled like he had a shared secret and said, ‘Hi.’
Reacher said, ‘You’re the eyewitness.’
The guy said, ‘The what?’
Reacher said, ‘You saw the red car.’
‘Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. But we’re not allowed to talk about any of that. Not even to each other. Didn’t they tell you?’
The guy was wearing new blue jeans, and a new blue button-down shirt under a new blue cotton sweater. Exactly like the clothes on Reacher’s bed, but smaller. His hair was clean and brushed. He had a fresh shave. He looked like a guy on vacation.
Reacher asked him, ‘When did you get here?’
The guy said, ‘Early this morning.’
‘With Dawson and Mitchell, or with someone else?’
‘I didn’t get their names. And we’re not allowed to talk about it, anyway. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘Who’s supposed to tell me?’
‘Didn’t you get a visit?’
‘Not yet.’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Just now. A few minutes ago.’
‘They’ll come pretty soon, then. They’ll come to your room and they’ll tell you the rules.’ The guy shuffled in place on the path. Like he was impatient about something. Like he had somewhere else to be.
Reacher asked him, ‘Where are you going now?’
The guy said, ‘To the dining room, man. Where else? They got beer there. A whole bunch of different brands. Long neck bottles, good and cold. I mean, no work all day and free food and free beer? Does it get any better than that?’
Reacher said nothing.
The guy said, ‘You coming?’
‘Later, maybe.’
‘No rush,’ the guy said. ‘I’m planning to snag a few, but they got plenty. They ain’t going to run out any time soon. You can trust me on that.’ And then he hustled onward along the winding path, at first all lit up from the waist down by the fingerpost spotlights, and then eventually out of sight.
Reacher stayed where he was. Room fourteen. One of the two lit-up rooms without a Bureau car parked nearby. The other was room five. He turned around and backtracked, all the way past the six-through-ten block, around a flowerbed, across the gap to the next block, to the first door in line. Room five. He was planning to knock, but he didn’t need to. When he was still six feet away the door burst open and a girl ran out, all arms and legs and
