“Number twelve is a nice double,” the desk clerk said.
Harper nodded.
“OK, we’ll take it,” she said.
“We will?” Reacher said. “A double?”
“Talk about it later,” she said.
She paid cash and the desk guy handed over a key.
“Number twelve,” he said again. “Down the row a piece.”
Reacher walked through the rain, and Harper brought the car. She parked it in front of the cabin and found Reacher waiting at the door.
“What?” she said. “It’s not like we’re going to sleep, is it? We’re just waiting for Leighton to call. May as well do that in here as in the car.”
He just shrugged and waited for her to unlock the door. She opened up and went inside. He followed.
“I’m too excited to sleep, anyway,” she said.
It was a standard motel room, familiar and comforting. It was overheated and the rain was loud on the roof. There were two chairs and a table at the far
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end of the room by a window. Readier walked through and sat in the right-hand chair. Put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Kept very still. Harper moved around, restlessly.
“We’ve got him, you know that?” she said.
Reacher said nothing.
“I should call Blake, give him the good news,” Harper said.
Reacher shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Let Leighton finish up. Quantico gets involved at this point, they’ll pull him off. He’s only a captain. They’ll haul in some two-star asshole, and he’ll never get near the facts for the bullshit. Leave it with Leighton, let him get the glory.”
She was in the bathroom, looking at the rack of towels and the bottles of shampoo and the packets of soap. She came out and took her jacket off. Reacher looked away.
“It’s perfectly safe,” she said. “I’m wearing a bra.”
Reacher said nothing.
“What?” she asked. “Something’s on your mind.”
“It is?”
She nodded. “Sure it is. I can tell. I’m a woman. I’m intuitive.”
He looked straight at her. “Truth is I don’t especially want to be alone in a room with you and a bed.”
She smiled, happily, mischievously. “Tempted?”
“I’m only human.”
“So am I,” she said. “If I can control myself, I’m sure you can.”
He said nothing.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
“Christ,” he muttered.
I
It’s a standard motel room, like a thousand you’ve seen coast to coast. Doorway, bathroom on the right, closet on the left, queen bed, dresser, table and two chairs. Old television, ice bucket, awful pictures on the wall. You hang your coat in the closet, but you keep your gloves on. No need to leave fingerprints all over the place. No real possibility of them ever finding the room, but you’ve built your whole life on being careful. The only time you take your gloves off is when you’re washing, and motel bathrooms are safe enough. You check out at eleven, and by twelve a maid is
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spraying cleaner all over every surface and wiping everything with a wet cloth. Nobody ever found a meaningful fingerprint in a motel bathroom.
You walk through the room and you sit in the left-hand chair. You lean back, you close your eyes, and you start to think. Tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow. You plan the timing by working backward. You need dark before you can get out. That’s the fundamental consideration. That drives everything else. But you want the daytime cop to find her. You accept that’s just a whim on your part, but hey, if you can’t brighten things up with a little whimsy, what kind of life is that? So you need to be out after dark, but before the cop’s last bathroom break. That specifies a pretty exact time, somewhere between six and six-thirty. Call it five-forty, for a margin. No, call it five-thirty, because you really need to be back in position to see the cop’s face.
OK, five-thirty. Twilight, not really dark, but it’s acceptable. The longest time you spent in any of the previous places was twenty-two minutes. In principle this one won’t be any longer, but you’re going to allow a full half hour. So you need to be inside and started by five. Then you think it through from her point of view, and it’s pretty clear you need to be making the phone call at about two o’clock.