Page 24 of Chain Reaction

“I passed through once,” he said. “Route 82 is the main drag. El Camino Real. That’s where the motels are. Pretty good, as I recall. Because of Stanford. Lots of rich parents visiting all the time. They like a decent place.”

“If everyone in the office is a nine-dollar bill, we have no way in. No way to get a foothold, because no one will talk to us. How do we find who we’re looking for?”

“Depends how physically large the office is. And how good your hearing is.”

“My last test was OK. Yours?”

“It was OK too.”

“When was it?”

“About a year before I mustered out. My last physical. But I still do OK with the frequencies that matter.”

“Which frequencies matter?”

Reacher dug in his pocket and came out with the tall guy’s burner. He switched it on and brought up the call log and scrolled back in time. Two weeks. He tapped his nail on the screen. He said, “This is the call to the brothers in Denver hiring them short-notice for the hit on Bisley. Then ten hours later the brothers call back to say mission accomplished. But before any of that happens, first they get a call from their contact at Lazarus Lorenzo, personally asking them to take an incoming call five minutes from then. That’s who we need to find. The guy who asked them to take that call. He got the incoming request from wherever, and immediately farmed it out to the brothers in Denver. Like a matchmaker. He knows who made the request. Probably knows them well. He told the Denver guys it was a favor for a friend.”

He left the phone switched on and put it back in his pocket.

Turner said, “He could be one of a dozen guys in the office.”

“Which is why we need good hearing. I’m sure all these guys use burner phones. Like we do. It’s how this kind of business seems to be conducted. It further seems to me that burner phones are regarded as personal and private secrets. We don’t share them. We keep them hidden away in our own individual pockets. So we’ll get into the office building under some kind of a pretext, and we’ll position ourselves strategically, and I’ll use the dead guy’s phone to call the matchmaker’s number, and we’ll listen out for whose pocket rings.”

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll improvise.”

Chapter 10

The taxi came off the 101 and cut through Menlo Park to Route 82, where it rolled south, slower, past one motel after another, some small, some large, all well kept and attractive. They saw one styled like a mountain chalet. It looked like it belonged in an upland wildflower meadow in Switzerland.

“This one?” Reacher asked.

“Why not?” Turner said.

The taxi pulled in. Reacher got the Chief of Staff’s wad out of his pocket and paid the driver, with a tip neither big enough nor small enough to be remembered. Then he followed Turner to the motel lobby. Her wheeled suitcase clattered along a cobblestone path.

The lobby had log-cabin walls and a stone fireplace. It was styled like a ski lodge. The kind of place you had a hot drink after a cold day on the piste. There were antique snowshoes on the walls. The clerk at the desk was wearing a brown wool suit cut like something a Swiss farmer might wear to church on Sunday. Turner asked him for two rooms. The Chief of Staff paid for them. The clerk slid two key cards across the counter. The cards were smart and glossy and printed with a picture of mountains with the motel building itself in the foreground. The cards were for rooms ten and twelve. Turner picked up ten, and Reacher took twelve.

Turner said, “Freshen up first, and then go find dinner?”

“Sure,” Reacher said.

“You know anywhere?”

“We should head toward the university. There are all kinds of places along the way. You choose.”

“Twenty minutes,” she said.

—

They walked south on El Camino Real’s handsome sidewalk, electric cars hissing past in the roadway, knots of people ahead of them, coming in and out of bars and restaurants and open-late stores of every kind. Turner saw an Italian bistro she liked the look of. Reacher was happy with it. They went inside. The place was half full. There was a choice of tables. The menu said payment could be made with cryptocurrency, if so desired. A waiter came over. A young man, wearing eyeglasses with clear plastic frames and dark purple lenses. Maybe a software guy, between jobs. Turner ordered pasta and Reacher ordered pizza. Still water for Turner, black coffee for Reacher.

Reacher said, “The vehicle fire west of Summertown was a fancy black off-roader. Not a white work truck. Probably cost a fortune. It was registered to Aurora Stone and Gravel.”

“Colorado is in the rearview mirror now,” Turner said. “We need to look ahead.”

“There was a lot of gravel involved in that project. Two or three square miles, maybe. Two or three inches deep, could be a million tons.”