Page 12 of In Too Deep

The motel wason its own site, north of the highway, with entrances and exits fanning out to the east and west. The site was a large oval shape with a gas station at each end, a parking area in the center, and the motel and the diner Vidic had mentioned plus a bunch of fast-food outlets spaced out around the sides. Vidic pulled into a space on the edge of the lot, midway along the motel’s facade. Reacher counted twenty rooms. Ten, then an office, then ten more. The place had a fifties vibe, all neon and chrome and Sputnik-shaped ornaments. It could have been cool, once, he thought, but now it looked tired and worn. The building’s flat roof was in need of resurfacing and its wooden siding could have used a coat of stain.

“Stay here.” Vidic killed the engine and opened his door. He made sure to take his keys with him. “I’ll get you a room. Won’t be long.”

Reacher watched until Vidic disappeared into the motel office then turned his attention to the diner. It was the next building in line. It had a vaguely cutesy-cottage appearance with window boxes and curlicues cut into the woodwork, but structurally it was nothing special. The place could just as easily have been a convenience store or a dry cleaner. Reacher was more interested in its position than its architectural merit. It was set at an angle of maybe thirty degrees to the motel. So it was feasible for someone to have sat inside and to have seen a person leaving a particular room, as Vidic claimed to havedone. Possibly. If he had been in just the right position. At just the right time. And no vehicles or pedestrians had blocked his line of sight.

Vidic’s story about watching Gibson’s FBI handler leave the motel didn’t pass the smell test easily, Reacher thought. But it didn’t immediately fail, either. He resented the ambiguity. But more than that he resented the complete absence of recognition. Vidic said he’d been in this place before. The parking lot. The diner. That he’d been in a fight. Hitched a ride. Yet the whole scene was utterly alien to him. He could have sworn he’d never seen any of it before. He could have taken a lie detector test and passed with flying colors.

Chapter7

Vidic returned after five minutes.Reacher climbed down from the Jeep and Vidic handed him a plastic key card with a cartoon flying saucer printed on it in bright, primary colors.

“You’re in room 20. All the way at the end.” Vidic locked the Jeep with his remote then started walking. “The idea is to be invisible. Put theDo Not Disturbsign on the door, pull the drapes, and don’t set foot outside. Not unless the building’s on fire. And even then, only if the flames are actually heading your way. Are we clear?”

“Sounds straightforward enough. But tell me something. How did you register for the room without my ID?”

“No need to worry about ID. They’re not hard to get. And anyway, here they’re more interested in pocketing a few extra bucks than following a bunch of dumb rules.”

“Outstanding,” Reacher said. “My kind of place.”

—

Reacher got toroom 20 comfortably ahead of Vidic. He held the key card next to a black plastic rectangle below the handle, a red light turned green, and the door clicked open. Inside, there was a king-sized bed against the right-hand wall. The cover had a picture of a lunar lander printed on it and the headboard was a giant semicircle, grayish white, and textured to look like the surface of the moon. The carpet was orange. The walls were inky blue. There was a pair of chairs that were covered with teal fabric, a metal desk/vanity, a flat-screen TV, stars painted on the ceiling, and a pendant light shaped like a satellite. A door at the far side of the room led to a bathroom with a separate shower stall, but the fixtures in there were all plain white twenty-first century standard-issue items. They were totally anonymous. Reacher wondered if that was a design choice or the result of some miserly investor tightening the purse strings.

Vidic followed Reacher inside and closed the door behind him. He took a moment to look around then said, “Wow. What a place. I wasn’t expecting this.” He pointed at the ceiling. “I wonder if the paint glows in the dark? Then you’d have the whole Milky Way to keep you company.”

Reacher thought the painting looked nothing like the Milky Way. The constellations were completely wrong. He knew because he had gazed at them hundreds of times from dozens of countries in both hemispheres. But he had learned over the years to keep his more pedantic observations to himself, so instead he said, “This isn’t the room she was in?”

“Who?”

“Gibson’s handler.”

“Oh. No. She was in 1. At the opposite end.”

“No space theme over there?”

“Maybe. I couldn’t see. The door was only open for a second.”

“But you got a good look at her.”

“When she came out, sure. Why—”

There was a knock on the door. One sharp rap, a pause, then two softer taps.

Vidic said, “Hide the guns. I don’t want to put my guy in a jam.”

Reacher took the Sig and the Glock from his waistband and slid them under a pillow.

Vidic turned and opened the door and a man stepped inside. He looked to be six feet, even, and he was wearing dark chinos, a cream shirt, blue suit coat, and boat shoes. His hair was sandy-colored and thinning and his face was pink from the sun. He was carrying a backpack in his left hand. It was made of black ballistic nylon with all kinds of pockets and flaps and straps. It was scuffed and creased and a little dirty. It lived a busy life. That was clear. Reacher wondered if the bulk of the guy’s medical practice lay more on the unofficial side of the scale than Vidic had suggested.

“Buck, thanks for coming.” Vidic gestured toward Reacher. “This is the friend I was telling you about. He got banged up in a car wreck. Guess he broke his wrist. Hit his head pretty good, too, so maybe you could take a look at it, as well, while you’re here?”

“No problem.” Buck Holmes crossed to the bed and set his pack down on its back. He pulled the tag on a zipper that ran from the bottom left, around the top, and all the way down to the bottom right. Then he pulled the front of the pack, folding it over across its base so that it opened completely like a clamshell. The inside was full of small instruments in clear packets and all kinds of bandages and dressings in white sterile packages. “OK. Let’s get started. Shirt off, please. Pants, too.”

Vidic moved toward the door. “I’m going to step out now. I’ll get you some food. What do you like?”

Reacher said, “Sandwiches. Four. Meat or cheese. Nothing green.Chocolate bars. Nothing fancy. Pie, if you can find any to go. Plus coffee, black, and a couple of bottles of Coke.”

Vidic closed the door behind him and Reacher turned to Holmes. “You want me to strip? Is that necessary? I hurt my wrist and I’m wearing a T-shirt.”

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