Running Blind(The Visitor) - By Lee Child Page 0,125
the damn piano isn't going to change anything. So you step away from the fence and duck into the brush and work your way east and south, back toward the car. You get there and dust yourself off and slide in and start it up and head back down through the crossroads. Part two of your task ahead, and you've got about twenty minutes to complete it in. You drive on. There's a small shopping center two miles west of the junction, left-hand side of the road. An old-fashioned one-story mall, shaped like a squared-off letter C. A supermarket in the middle like a keystone, small single-unit stores spreading either side of it. Some of them are boarded up and empty. You pull into the parking lot at the far end and you nose along the fire lane, looking. You find exactly what you want, three stores past the supermarket. It's nothing you didn't expect to find, but still you clench your fist and bang it on the rim of the steering wheel. You smile to yourself.
Then you turn the car around and idle back through the lot, checking it out, and your smile dies. You don't like it. You don't like it at all. It's completely overlooked. Every storefront has a direct view. It's badly lit now, but you're thinking about daylight. So you drive around behind the arm of the C, and your smile comes back again. There's a single row of overspill parking back there, facing plain painted delivery doors in the back walls of the stores. No windows. You stop the car and look around. A complete circle. This is your place. No doubt about it. It's perfect.
Then you drive back into the main lot and you park up alongside a small group of other vehicles. You kill the motor and wait. You watch the through road. You wait and watch ten minutes, and then you see the Bureau Buick heading by, not fast, not slow, reporting for duty.
"Have a nice night," you whisper.
Then you start your car again and wind around the parking lot and drive off in the opposite direction.
LEIGHTON RECOMMENDED A motel a mile down Route 1 toward Trenton. He said it was where the prisoners' visitors stayed, it was cheap, it was clean, it was the only place for miles around and he knew the phone number. Harper drove, and they found it easily enough. It looked fine from the outside, and it had plenty of vacancies.
"Number twelve is a nice double," the desk clerk said.
Harper nodded.
"OK, we'll take it," she said.
"We will?" Reacher said. "A double?"
"Talk about it later," she said.
She paid cash and the desk guy handed over a key.
"Number twelve," he said again. "Down the row a piece."
Reacher walked through the rain, and Harper brought the car. She parked it in front of the cabin and found Reacher waiting at the door.
"What?" she said. "It's not like we're going to sleep, is it? We're just waiting for Leighton to call. May as well do that in here as in the car."
He just shrugged and waited for her to unlock the door. She opened up and went inside. He followed.
"I'm too excited to sleep, anyway," she said.
It was a standard motel room, familiar and comforting. It was overheated and the rain was loud on the roof. There were two chairs and a table at the far end of the room by a window. Reacher walked through and sat in the right-hand chair. Put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Kept very still. Harper moved around, restlessly.
"We've got him, you know that?" she said.
Reacher said nothing.
"I should call Blake, give him the good news," Harper said.
Reacher shook his head. "Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Let Leighton finish up. Quantico gets involved at this point, they'll pull him off. He's only a captain. They'll haul in some two-star asshole, and he'll never get near the facts for the bullshit. Leave it with Leighton, let him get the glory."
She was in the bathroom, looking at the rack of towels and the bottles of shampoo and the packets of soap. She came out and took her jacket off. Reacher looked away.
"It's perfectly safe," she said. "I'm wearing a bra."
Reacher said nothing.
"What?" she asked. "Something's on your mind."
"It is?"
She nodded. "Sure it is. I can tell. I'm a woman. I'm intuitive."
He looked straight at her. "Truth is I don't especially want to be alone in a room with you and a bed."