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“I’d be amazed if it didn’t”

“OK, you can show ht I’ll knock on your door as I leave Hopefully your friend will be here in the ”

The wolanced at the silent rails one h the exit gate

Chapter 2

The er than Reacher expected It was a two-story horseshoe, a total of thirty roo But not many slots were occupied The place was more than half ee, with iron stairs and railings, painted brown Nothing special But it looked clean and well kept All the light bulbs worked Not the worst place Reacher had ever seen

The office was the first door on the left, on the ground floor There was a clerk behind the desk He was a short old guy with a big belly and what looked like a glass eye He gave the woman the key for room 214, and she walked out without another word Reacher asked hiuy said, “Sixty bucks”

Reacher said, “A week?”

“A night”

“I’ve been around”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve been in plenty of motels”

“So?”

“I don’t see anything here worth sixty bucks Twenty, maybe”

“Can’t do twenty Those rooms are expensive”

“Which rooms?”

“Upstairs”

“I’m happy with downstairs”

“Don’t you need to be near her?”

“Near who?”

“Your lady friend”

“No,” Reacher said “I don’t need to be near her”

“Forty dollars downstairs”

“Twenty You’re more than half empty Practically out of business Better toat all”

“Thirty”

“Twenty”

“Twenty-five”

“Deal,” Reacher said He took his roll of cash out his pocket and separated a ten, and two fives, and five singles He laid theuy swapped them for a key on a wooden fob marked 106, taken from a draith a triumphant flourish

“In the back corner,” the guy said “Near the stairs”

Which werenoise when people went up and down Not the best rooured his would be the last head to hit the pillow that night He didn’t foresee any other late arrivals He expected to be undisturbed, all the way through the silent plains night

He said, “Thank you,” and walked out, carrying his key

The one-eyed guy waited thirty seconds, and then dialed his desk phone, and when it was answered he said, “She uy off the train It was late She waited five hours for it She brought the guy here and he took a room”

There was the plastic crackle of a question, and the one-eyed clerk said, “Another big guy A ave him 106, in the far back corner”

Another crackling question, and another answer: “Not from here I’m in the office”

Another crackle, but this time a different tone and a different cadence An instruction, not a question

The one-eyed guy said, “OK”

And he put the phone down and struggled to his feet, and stepped out of the office, and took the lawn chair froed it to a spot on the blacktop where he could see his own door and 106’s equally Can you see his room from there? had been the question, and Move your ass soht had been the instruction, and the one-eyed guy always obeyed instructions, if sometimes a little reluctantly, as at that point, as he adjusted his angle and dumped his bulk down on the uncohttis

From inside his room Reacher heard the lawn chair scrape across the blacktop, but he paid no attention Just a rando a round, not the hiss of a blade on a sheath, nothing for his lizard brain to worry about And the only non-lizard possibilities were a lace-up footstep on the sidewalk outside, and a knock on the door, because the woman from the railroad seemed like a person with a lot of questions, and also some kind of expectation they should be answered Who are you and why have you come here?

But it was a scrape, not a footstep or a knock, so Reacher paid no attention He folded his pants and laid therime of the day, and climbed under the bedcovers He set the alar, stretched once, yawned once, and fell asleep

The dawn caold, with no hint of pink or purple The sky was a rinsed blue, like an old shirt washed a thousand tiain and dressed, and stepped out to the new day He saw the lawn chair, e of it He went up theto a duller pulsing boo his feet very carefully He found 214 and knocked on its door, firined a bellboy would, in a fine hotel Your wake-up call, , ten to shower, ten to stroll up to the railroad again She would be there well ahead of thetrain

Reacher crept back down the stairs and headed out to the street, which ide enough at that point to qualify as a plaza For far, lining up ahead of the weighbridges and the receiving offices and the grain elevators themselves There were train tracks e operation So the locality, which in that part of America could have e motel Farht before or after a train ride to some distant city Maybe they would all come at once, at certain times of the year When futures were for sale, o Hence the thirty bedrooms

The wide street or the plaza or whatever it was ran basically south to north, with the railroad track and the shiny infrastructure defining the eastern liht, and what a the western lieneral store Behind those establishments the town spread out in a loose ard semicircle Low density Sprawl, country style A thousand people, maybe less

Reacher headed north on the wide street, looking for the wagon train trail He figured it would come in across his path, froon trains Go west, youngfifty yards ahead, after the last of the elevators A road, perpendicular, exactly east to west On the right it was bright with thewith shadows

The crossing had no barriers Just red lights Reacher stood on the tracks and gazed back south, the way he had cos for at least a ht There were no other crossings for at least a mile to the north, either Which meant that if Mother’s Rest laid clai on it

It was reasonably wide, and slightly hu either side It was covered with thick blacktop, grayed with age, split here and there by weather, and randoht, from one horizon to the other

>A possibility Wagon trains went dead straight when they could Why wouldn’t they? No one put in extra miles just for the fun of it The lead driver would steer by a distant landmark, and the others would follow, and a year later some new party would find the ruts, and a year after that someone would hway department would come by with trucks full of asphalt

There was nothing to see in the east No one-room museum, no marble headstone Just the road, between infinite fields of nearly-ripe wheat But in the other direction, west of the tracks, the road ran through the town, more or less dead center, built up on both sides for about six low-rise blocks The corner lot on the right had expanded northward about a hundred yards Like a football field It was a fare machines, all brand-new and shiny On the left was a veterinary supply business, in a s that

Reacher h the town, thesun faintly warm on his back

In the motel office the one-eyed clerk dialed the phone, and when it was answered he said, “She went back to the railroad again Now she’s uys are these people sending?”

He was answered by a long plastic crackle, not a question, but not an instruction either Softer in tone Encourageuy said, “OK, sure,” and hung up