Page 11 of Chain Reaction

“Dark is all I ever see.”

“What time do you get out of here?”

“Seven in the morning,” the old guy said. “Maybe I see the dawn come up, but that’s mostly all.”

“What time do you start?”

“Seven in the evening. It’s a twelve-hour night shift.”

Then you’re no good to me, Reacher thought. Bisley came and went in the afternoon sun. Out loud he said, “Well, have a pleasant night.”

“You too.”

Outside it was darker than ever. There were clouds over the moon. There was literally nothing to see. Reacher walked down the row. Room ten was no different from the last hundred he had seen. The door opened directly into the bedroom part. Queen bed, armchair, off-brand flat screen, bathroom and closet beyond. Nothing special. But it was well looked after. It was extremely clean. He propped his toothbrush in a glass on the vanity, hid his cash in his shoe, put his phone on the nightstand, put his pants to press under the mattress, peeled off his T-shirt and his underwear and dropped them on the chair. He got into bed. The night had gone cool. What he knew the locals called good sleeping weather. He punched a dent in his pillow and prepared to take full advantage.

—

In the office the old guy dialed the desk phone. The number he was calling rang a spell, and then it was answered. The old guy said, “This is the motel in Summertown. Reporting as you required. But this is the last time, OK?”

The voice on the other end said, “The last time will be when we say it is. Until then shut up and do what you were told.”

The old guy was quiet a beat.

Then he said, “A stranger just blew in. No car, no luggage, all cash. A big brute of a man. He said he’s here for tourism. Make of that what you will. I put him in room ten.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it, pops? Leave it with us.”

Chapter 5

Reacher woke himself at six o’clock, to pre-dawn darkness. The motel building was like a compass needle pointing west, so it would be the last to know about morning. He got out of bed and padded barefoot to the window. Nothing doing. Still pitch black. He pictured what he might see, when the sun came up. A big solar field to his left, the smaller field they had driven through to his right, some kind of a catering operation probably opposite. Engineers and software guys had to eat. Hopefully it was a plain old-fashioned diner. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what there would be. Was he in an actual town, or just a technology park? He didn’t know.

He spent his usual eleven minutes in the shower, dried off, dressed, and shoved the phone and the cash back in his pockets. By then the window was shading gray. No longer just black. He opened the door and walked out into the lot. He waited to see what the dawn would bring.

The reveals happened slowly, from right to left. The sun was coming up behind the motel office. First thing to show was the gleam of the smaller field’s glass. The two-lane road they had used ran through it. Good blacktop. Smooth surface. Neat edges. A bright center line.

The crossroads where the old Tahoe had turned left from the center lane was lit up next. The right turn was a mirror image, directly opposite, the same long smooth driveway, into the same generous lot, with a long low building in it. This one a diner. Turn right for a meal, turn left for a bed. All of life’s necessities, right there. The diner was not exactly plain or old fashioned, but it was trying to be. The outside was part Colorado-style stonework and part aluminum. It was dark inside. It had a seamed metal roof, pitched steep to shed snow in the winter. There was a lone pickup truck parked at the edge of the lot, dirty white, its back end to the diner, facing forward across the two-lane toward the motel. There was a single figure in it, probably a man, a pale hand up near his face, maybe talking on the phone, maybe ready for his breakfast, just waiting for the place to open up.

The sun inched upward. Daylight crawled onward, right to left, east to west. Finally it lit up the big solar field. And it was. It was gigantic. It ran on forever, out of sight. By then the dawn’s rays were golden, and they blazed over an area wider than a stadium and deeper than all the way to the far horizon. Impressive, the kid in the Tahoe had called it, and he had been right. It was a huge patch of the planet, wearing a ridged glass and metal skin, like the scales on a basking reptile’s back.

Twenty minutes later there was enough light in the sky to see what lay beyond the nearest features. Beyond the infinite solar field in the far distance to the west were the mountains, the Front Range, gray, ghostly, their tops still streaked with snow, even in August. Beyond the diner in the middle distance to the north were five low buildings, laid out in a line, widely spaced, grouped together as an ensemble on curbed acres of immaculate golden gravel. Each building was huge in size, with endless tan stucco walls the same color as the dirt in the distance behind them, with flat roofs bigger than football fields, all crowded with fat glittering pipes feeding giant air conditioning machines. Each building had its own tall black fence all around. The five giant data centers, presumably.

But that was all. There was nothing else man-made to see. No residential developments, no stores, no church spires, no movie houses, no gas stations.

Reacher turned around and scanned the motel itself. The barn-red paint was neat and crisp but artfully faded to look established. The trim around the doors and the windows was painted an old-world off-white, like a heritage color, as if George Washington himself had brushed it on. Reacher walked the whole exterior perimeter of the building, all four sides. He was looking for security cameras. He found plenty, high on the walls, under the eaves, pointed this way and that. More or less comprehensive. Good coverage everywhere, all the way out to the two-lane, the approach road, the car portico, down the row of rooms both front and rear.

He came back around to the office door a few minutes after seven. The light was on inside. The night clerk was gone. A new guy was behind the counter, much younger. He was tall and thin, and he had a shock of curly black hair. It made him look even younger than he probably was. What they used to call goofy, like a big kid. Reacher opened the door and stepped in. The guy looked up. The left side of his face was tinged yellow, and the skin looked tight and shiny. An old black eye, almost healed.

Reacher asked, “Are you the day guy?”

The kid said, “Sure am.”

“I’m in room ten.”

“I know,” the kid said. “My dad told me. He checked you in.”

He glanced past Reacher’s shoulder, at the window.

“That’s nice,” Reacher said. “A family business.”