Lee Child - A Wanted Man

He watched as it braked hard and turned in under the porte cochère, counterclockwise, with the string of rooms behind it, like Alan King had done. He saw the reversing lights flash white as the transmission jammed into Park. He saw a woman get out.

FBI Special Agent Julia Sorenson, presumably. The Scandinavian. She looked the part. That was for sure. She was tall, with long blonde hair. She was wearing black shoes and black pants and a black jacket with a blue shirt under it. She stood for a second and eased her back. Then she leaned into the car and slung a black pear-shaped bag over her shoulder. She took a small wallet from her pocket. ID, presumably. She looped around the hood and headed for the office door.

She took a gun off her hip.

Reacher stared left into the darkness. He saw no following vehicles. A one-two punch would have been reasonable tactics. Obvious, even. Bait, and then back-up. But it wasn’t happening.

Yet.

The woman walked up the flagstone path. Fast, but not running. She pulled the lobby door. She went inside.

Sorenson saw a standard-issue rural motel lobby, with sheet vinyl on the floor and four awful wicker armchairs, and a breakfast buffet table with coffee flasks and paper cups. There was a waist-high reception counter with walk-around space on the left and none on the right. There was an office door behind the counter, with a fresh bullet hole in the wall high above it.

There was TV sound behind the office door, and a rim of light all around it. Sorenson stood in the middle of the floor and called, ‘Hello?’

Loud and clear and confident.

The office door opened and a short fat man came out. He had strands of thin hair plastered to his skull with product. He was wearing a red sweater vest. His eyes bounced between Sorenson’s ID and her gun, back and forth, back and forth.

She said, ‘Where’s the man with the broken nose?’

He said, ‘I need to know who’s going to pay for the damage to my wall.’

She said, ‘I don’t know who. Not me, anyway.’

‘Isn’t there a federal scheme? Like victim compensation or something?’

‘We’ll discuss that later,’ she said. ‘Where’s the man with the broken nose?’

‘Mr Skowron? He’s in room five. He’s very rude. He called me a socialist.’

‘I need to borrow your master key.’

‘I could have been killed.’

‘Did you see what happened?’

The guy shook his head. ‘I was in the back room, resting. I heard a gunshot and I called it in. It was all over by the time I opened the door.’

‘I need to borrow your master key,’ Sorenson said again.

The guy dug in a bulging pocket and came out with a brass item on an unmarked ring. Sorenson put her ID away and took it from him. She asked, ‘Who are your other guests?’

‘They’re here to fish. There are lakes nearby. But mostly they drink. They didn’t even wake up when the gun was fired.’

‘Go back in the office,’ Sorenson said. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come out.’

Still no activity to the left. No lights, no cars. No back-up. Reacher watched carefully, the lobby, then the road, the lobby, then the road, like a tennis umpire. He saw the woman come back out, through the door, on to the flagstone path. She still had her gun in her hand. She hadn’t shot the fat man. She was clearly a person of considerable patience. She walked between the lobby and her car, past the Coke machine, and she headed down the row of rooms, on the sidewalk lit up by the bulkhead lights. She glanced at the doors as she walked. One, two, three, four.

She stopped just before room five.

She looked in through the crack between the curtains, just briefly, a duck of her head out and back. Then again, much longer, a careful survey of the sliver of the room she could see. No feet on the end of the bed. He’s in the bathroom , she was thinking. Reacher checked left again. No lights in the north. No noise, no movement. He checked to his right too, just to be sure. The back-up could have looped around a square on the chequerboard. Which would have been smart tactics. But there were no lights in the south, either. No noise, no movement. The woman wasn’t using her phone. No communication. No coordination. They wouldn’t have left her exposed for so long.

She was alone.

No back-up, no SWAT team.

Reacher saw her knock on room five’s door. He saw her wait, and knock again, harder. He saw her put her ear against the crack.

He stood up and started walking towards her, across the frozen dirt. He saw her put a key in the lock and turn it. He saw her enter the room, her gun up and ready. Twenty seconds later she came back out again.

She stood on the sidewalk next to the lawn chairs, glancing left, glancing right, staring straight ahead. Her gun was still in her hand, but down by her side. Reacher crunched onward over the frozen stubble. He stepped out of the field and on to the road.

She heard him. Her face turned towards him, blindly locating the sound.

‘Hello,’ he said.

Her gun came up. A two-handed stance, feet braced. He saw her eyes lock on. He was looming up at her out of the dark. He said, ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m unarmed.’

The gun stayed where it was.

He crossed the road. He stepped into the motel’s front lot. The light from the dim bulkhead fixtures reached him.

The woman said, ‘Stop right there.’

He stopped right there.

The gun was a Glock 17. Black, boxy, with a dull polycarbonate sheen. Behind it her head was turned slightly to the side, as if quizzically. A strand of hair was across one eye. She was a lot better looking than Don McQueen. That was for damn sure.

She said, ‘Get down on the ground.’

He spread his fingers and held his hands out from his sides, his palms towards her. He said, ‘No need to get all excited. We’re on the same side here.’

‘I’ll shoot.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Reacher looked to his left. Her car was still all lit up under the porte cochère. She hadn’t killed the strobes. They were flashing red and blue from secret little mouse-fur mouldings on the rear parcel shelf. Further down the road there was nothing but darkness. In the other direction there was a new light on the horizon. Very far away. Not moving. Not a vehicle. Just a very faint orange glow, like a distant bonfire.

He said, ‘You won’t shoot because you don’t want to do the paperwork.’

She said nothing. ‘And it wouldn’t be righteous. I’m unarmed and I’m not offering an imminent threat. You’d lose your job. You’d go to jail.’

No response.

‘And you want to find Karen Delfuenso. You don’t have descriptions of the two guys. You don’t have the names they’re using. You don’t know the things they let slip. But I do. You need to keep me alive long enough to ask me questions, at least.’

The gun stayed where it was. But she stepped and shuffled to her left, turning all the way, keeping the front sight hard on him. She backed off twenty feet, until his path to room five’s door was covered but unobstructed. At first he thought she wanted him to go inside, but she said, ‘Sit down, in the lawn chair.’

He walked forward. The Glock’s muzzle tracked him all the way, from twenty feet. A confident markswoman. McQueen had missed from eight. He stopped next to the left-hand lawn chair. He turned around. He backed up, butt first. He sat down.

She said, ‘Lean back. Stick your legs out straight. Hang your arms over the sides.’

He complied, and ended up about as ready for instant action as his granddad’s granddad waking up from an afternoon nap. She was evidently a smart woman. A good improviser. The chair was cold against the backs of his thighs. White plastic, thoroughly chilled.