Running Blind (The Visitor)

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.”
    She smiled, happily, mischievously. “Tempted?”
    “I’m only human.”
    “So am I,” she said. “If I can control myself, I’m sure you can.”
    He said nothing.
    “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
    “Christ,” he muttered.
    IT’S A STANDARD motel room, like a thousand you’ve seen coast to coast. Doorway, bathroom on the right, closet on the left, queen bed, dresser, table and two chairs. Old television, ice bucket, awful pictures on the wall. You hang your coat in the closet, but you keep your gloves on. No need to leave fingerprints all over the place. No real possibility of them ever finding the room, but you’ve built your whole life on being careful. The only time you take your gloves off is when you’re washing, and motel bathrooms are safe enough. You check out at eleven, and by twelve a maid is spraying cleaner all over every surface and wiping everything with a wet cloth. Nobody ever found a meaningful fingerprint in a motel bathroom.
    You walk through the room and you sit in the left-hand chair. You lean back, you close your eyes, and you start to think. Tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow. You plan the timing by working backward. You need dark before you can get out. That’s the fundamental consideration. That drives everything else. But you want the daytime cop to find her. You accept that’s just a whim on your part, but hey, if you can’t brighten things up with a little whimsy, what kind of life is that? So you need to be out after dark, but before the cop’s last bathroom break.