Page 33 of Chain Reaction

“I’m sure the Four Seasons’ system is harder than the motel’s, but maybe not much harder. In the grand scheme of things.”

“Should we wait for them to come out?”

“No point. All they’re going to do is get in the car and drive away.”

“So where now?”

“Let’s get a cab and head back to Palo Alto.”

They crossed the street and waited outside the hotel, the black SUV and its driver twenty yards to their right, the other two guys somewhere inside the building, behind them and by then probably above them. A taxi pulled in and a young Japanese couple climbed out. Reacher and Turner climbed in and took their places.

—

The 101 was slow. The thirty-two mile trip took an hour. They had the driver drop them on California Avenue, near a shopping mall. An unmemorable destination. Turner knew Lazarus Lorenzo’s address. She had checked it on her phone, from the Pentagon’s parking lot, before she left D.C. She had clicked on a map and seen its location. She figured they had about a ten-minute walk.

“We eyeball it from a distance,” she said. “That’s all. We don’t go near it. Not yet. They must have had the call by now, from the Four Seasons. We’re gone, current whereabouts uncertain. We need to know how they’re reacting. We need to assume we’re heading for an unstable situation. So we stay cautious.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Reacher said.

They found their way to a long street that fifty years before must have been lined both sides with sturdy and prosperous bungalows lived in by contented and prosperous families. Now the same buildings housed professional operations of every kind. Therapists, architects, real estate brokers, financial advisers, consultants. And lawyers. In every case the bungalows had been lovingly restored. They were better than new. The street was like a film set.

They stopped a block and a half from where they figured Lazarus Lorenzo must be. They counted even numbers from the place they were next to and settled on a dark blue midcentury masterpiece with a stone path and a shingle at the curb. The place was substantial. The American Dream. It was low and wide and deep. The original floor plan was probably four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, plus maybe a den. Which would give plenty of modern-day space for three attorneys, three secretaries or paralegals, plus a conference room. Boutique in every way.

“It’s smaller than I thought,” Reacher said. “I was expecting a couple of floors in a downtown building.”

“Difficult approach,” Turner said. “They would see us coming.”

“Nothing happening there,” he said.

“It’s a boutique law office. What’s supposed to be happening?”

“I don’t see any lights on.”

“It’s broad daylight. There are windows.”

“Is Elwood in the air yet?”

“He should be.”

“We need to be sure,” he said. “For the experiment to be valid.”

“I would need to switch my work phone on. We’re not ready to do that yet. We need to plan a time and a place.”

“Could you call the airline? You called my bank.”

“I would definitely need my work phone for that.”

“You could use your personal phone to call Elwood’s office with a routine inquiry about the status of his trip to Denver. His staff must know his whereabouts at all times. They’ll assume you want to talk to him. They would tell you if he’s delayed on the ground, because then you could get him right away. Alternatively they’ll say sorry, he’s already in the air. I think that would be good enough for the experiment.”

“Except then my personal phone would show up in the system. If Elwood is innocent, which I sincerely hope he is, then the hackers are guilty, and I could be leading them straight to us, before we’re ready for them. I could use my burner, but then I could never use it again, because it would stay in our system forever.”

“We could get new,” Reacher said. “We probably should anyway. My battery is running low. I don’t have a charger.”

Turner was looking at the building they were next to. It could have come from Pasadena. Now it was a real estate broker.

“What?” he said.

“Let’s use someone else’s phone,” she said.