Jack and Joe: Hunt for Jack Reacher Series (The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Book 6) (6 page)

Those roadside hotels fortunate enough to have a strip bar across the street probably make quite a bit more profit. Real estate value is all about location.

The traffic light finally turned green. I pulled the SUV into the New Haven Grand Lodge driveway and parked as close as possible to the front entrance. When I stepped out of the warm cabin, the first thing I noticed was the cold. Temperatures had dropped since I’d left Fort Bird. The drizzle had thickened and chilled into slush that slicked the pavement to ice-rink thickness under my leather-soled shoes. I’d been a lousy ice-skater as a kid and I was no better now. Weak ankles or something, my mother said.

The second thing I noticed was the noise. Rumbling diesel engines from the truck stop underscored everything. Music pulsed from
The Lucky Bar
in a sound wave that might have knocked me over if I’d been standing even ten yards closer.

I shrugged. The next exit north might not have a hotel of any kind. I was cold and tired and hungry here and now. Nothing else to be done but collect my bag, lock the SUV and go inside. And try to do it all without falling on my butt.

A cavernous lobby that normally doubled as the breakfast room was more crowded than a sports bar during playoff season. The weather and the accident that had closed the highway had also stranded dozens of travelers. Those who weren’t in the bar or the truck stop had squatted here like tailgaters. Palpable cacophony throbbed and squeezed against me from all sides.

I hoped my room was far enough away from the boisterous lobby crowd. I planned to enjoy a peaceful night and regroup in the morning.

CHAPTER 8

At the registration desk, a well-groomed young man who might have been a student at the local community college majoring in hospitality, waved and flashed a blinding smile almost as big as the neon signs on the bar across the street. Probably an effort to communicate despite the deafening noise.

I pushed the telescoping handle down on my bag, lifted it, and elbowed my way through to the reception desk. At least the floor was carpeted. I could finally walk without sliding.

The smiling clerk didn’t bother with small talk that I couldn’t possibly have heard anyway. He simply held out his hand and I placed a credit card on his palm. He clicked a few keys on his computer, handed me a form to sign, then gave me back my card and two room keys and a map of the hotel. I nodded and elbowed my way through the lobby to the elevator bank.

Local news was playing on the television. I couldn’t hear the audio. The screen filled with photos and text banners, all about the storm at first, and then several vehicle crashes, including the one that closed the mountain highway between here and Fort Bird.

A news reporter with a handheld microphone was standing in the foreground. The video playing behind him carried a time stamp reflecting that the video was recorded hours earlier, not too long before I arrived at Fort Bird. The clip was pieced from footage from overhead cameras of some kind. Maybe drones or helicopters.

Bad weather had impacted the quality of the video and the images were hard to see from across the lobby. Flashing lights from five or six police and rescue vehicles were gathered around two tractor-trailer combos, one in front, and one behind what might have been a red subcompact once upon a time. Now the little red car was mangled beyond all recognition. It looked like a crumpled candy wrapper.

An involuntary shudder ran up my back. I’d almost taken that route on the way to Bird earlier in the day. It was a direct Interstate highway from DC to Miami. If I’d flown into Raleigh, I’d have been on that very highway shortly after that crash. But the Boss routed me to Charlotte and the drive north because the flight times were better.

There but for the Grace of God…

Next up on the television was the weather map, which showed the storm moving across the entire central East Coast, confirmed there was zero chance I’d be driving anywhere else tonight. Not that I’d planned to.

The elevator pinged. The doors slid open. A half-dozen revelers fell out. I entered and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors slid closed, but I heard the boisterous crowd through the elevator shaft all the way up.

When I reached the third-floor elevator lobby, the plate glass windows rumbled to the cadence of the diesel trucks and the booming music and rowdy crowd overflowing
The Lucky Bar.

My room wasn’t far down the corridor. From inside room 309, a single window provided a straight sightline to everything from the Grand Lodge to the highway on the west side of the truck stop directly across. The fog and sleet obscured my view but didn’t eliminate it entirely.

The Lucky Bar’s
door was propped open, even in this weather. I couldn’t see the crowd inside, but a steady stream of middle-aged road warriors strode in and staggered out. On ordinary nights, the place was probably a favorite social spot for locals and enlisted personnel from Fort Bird, too. If there were any Army in there tonight, their local bar was no longer theirs. Locals were outnumbered tonight by stranded civilians, for sure.

While I watched, three pairs of exotic dancers and their escorts crossed the road toward the Grand Lodge, while two lone women trudged back from the hotel toward
The Lucky Bar
, having evidently lost their customers to ESPN or perhaps unconsciousness now that their transactions had been completed. I rubbed my sore neck with my right hand and counted myself lucky to have a bed tonight that didn’t already have a hooker in it.

My room’s window glass vibrated to the heavy beat of country music, despite the distance. Soundproofing in this room was non-existent. I wondered how difficult it was to perform exotic dances accompanied by twangy voices, guitars, and fiddle music, whether the dancers were nude or otherwise. Was there such a thing as naked Texas Two-Step or country line dancing?

I turned up the heat in the room and pulled out my phone. Gaspar had left his message more than an hour ago, so I cranked up the volume and listened to that first.

“No baby yet. False alarm. Man, this kid is stubborn. I know what you’re thinking: Just like his old man. Well, maybe so. Either way, the doctors are sending Marie home. I can get away in a few hours. Give me a call when you get this and we’ll make a plan.”

He sounded exhausted. Baby business or no, he never slept well because of the pain in his right side and right leg. But his disability was a subject we never discussed. As long as he did the job, he was entitled to some privacy.

A new text from the Boss had come in an hour ago while I was white-knuckled on the road. One word: “Status?”

I texted back: “Grounded by NC weather.”

He immediately replied: “Drive up. Meet you at National.”

He wanted me to drive almost three hundred miles to DC tonight, in this weather? Not a chance. I typed “No,” and slipped the phone into my pocket. It was a word he didn’t hear often from anyone.

Half a second later my phone vibrated, which I ignored. It was late. I was tired. I’d accomplished nothing today worth reporting and the Boss already knew that because he knew everything. There was no reason to talk to him.

The hotel had no room service, but there was a menu on top of the television for delivery from the fast food joint inside the truck stop. I ordered a vegetarian sub with a two-liter bottle of water. They had beer on the menu and a few cheap domestic wines. I ordered a bottle of cabernet. She repeated my room number and said my delivery would arrive soon.

After that, I unpacked and fired up my laptop, then pressed redial on my phone.

“Took you long enough to call back.” Gaspar sounded more exhausted than before, but he was probably hamming it up. He had been at the hospital with Marie most of the day, which meant he’d already managed a dozen catnaps. He was a master at that particular skill. He’d told me one thing he’d learned in the Army was how to sleep anywhere.

“My life is a never-ending party,” I assured him. I glanced around the room. It was clean enough and not unreasonably worn. Utilitarian all the way. No mini-bar. Not even a coffee pot. Styrofoam cups wrapped in plastic. I just hoped there were no bed bugs. “Yeah, I’m living in the lap of luxury here. You don’t know what you’re missing, Zorro.”

“Tell me about it, then. Take my mind off everything that’s not happening here.”

“Still no baby?” I looked at my watch. “How long has Marie been in labor?”

“She wasn’t, I guess. The doctors don’t seem too worried. I think they went out for a round of golf or something.”

Gaspar was a dedicated family man. He was extremely proud of his four daughters, but totally over the moon about the arrival of his first boy. Not that he ever let on, of course. At least, not to me, and definitely not to the Boss.

I quickly filled him in on the non-results of my trip to Fort Bird. Anyone who was listening could hear me, too, but I hadn’t learned anything worth protecting.

“Joe Reacher was married once, huh?” he said. “That’s a bit of news. Possibly, we could get a lead of some sort from the ex-wife although it was a long time ago. She could know something helpful about Jack Reacher, I guess. Maybe a last known address or the name of a friend who did keep in touch?”

“Since I’m stuck in this hotel room, I’ll see if I can track her down. Maybe we can see her tomorrow, depending on where she’s living now.” I heard three quick raps on the door followed by a female voice announcing the arrival of my gourmet meal. “Be right back.”

I tossed the phone on the bed, unbolted the door, and collected the paper bags from a young woman who probably had a side job as a dancer at
The Lucky Bar
. She was about thirty, tall and thin, not particularly pretty. Her makeup had been shoveled on with a trowel. Perhaps her beauty was enhanced by the stage lights around the dancing poles. Her shiny orange raincoat barely reached mid-thigh and, based on the gaping spaces between the coat buttons, she wore nothing underneath but goosebumps.

We transferred paper bags and cash. She snorted, obviously unimpressed by my three-dollar tip on a four-dollar bottle of wine and three-dollar sandwich. She wrapped her fingers around the money, revealing long fingernails covered in thickly sparkling pink glitter. She shoved her hand into her coat pocket and left without saying a word.

When I returned to the phone, Gaspar said, “Hang on.”

He was talking to someone else. Something had happened with Marie a few days ago that worried him. But he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. It wasn’t relevant to our assignment and I didn’t like to pry.

The disembodied voices reminded me of the soldier at Fort Bird’s exit gate who had handed me the flat manila envelope. I’d set it aside to analyze later and forgotten about it during the harrowing drive. It took me a couple of seconds to find where I’d stuffed it.

Gaspar came back on the line. “Sorry, Boss Lady. I have to run. Anything else we need to deal with right now?”

“This whole area for two hundred miles in either direction is a giant ice slick. I’m in for the night.” I held the curious envelope up toward the light. “With any luck, I’ll find Joe Reacher’s ex-wife and text you an airport nearby wherever she lives for tomorrow. Tell Marie I’m thinking about her.”

“10-4,” he said, just to be cute. In the Army, 10-4 meant “wrecker requested.” For Civilians and police departments, it usually meant “understood” or “confirmed.” The FBI doesn’t use ten codes because nobody knows what they mean.

Instantly, my phone vibrated again before I had a chance to do anything. Which meant the Boss had been listening. He knew I held the phone in my hand and couldn’t very well ignore him again.
What the hell.
“This is FBI Special Agent Kim Otto.”

“Lovely room.” His voice was quiet, as always. “I can see why you’d rather stay at the luxurious Grand Lodge than follow orders.”

Could he actually see me? Right this moment? I thought not. As Gaspar often said, he was the Boss, not God. Nothing about this low-budget room suggested high-tech monitoring devices had been installed, although he’d had plenty of time to set up spy cams before I arrived and make sure I was placed in this room if he’d wanted to.

He also had access to equipment that would permit him to see and hear through the glass from a significant distance. I pulled the heavy drapes closed to block his sightline. I could do nothing about the listening devices if they existed.

“You’re right,” I said. “Any DC restaurant would be better than my stale sandwich from the truck stop.” I shrugged and ran my fingers through my hair. There was no point to fighting this particular battle. I was letting my stubborn nature get the best of my good judgment. Again. “The roads are closed here. Send a helicopter to pick me up and I can be there in an hour.”

A beat of silence followed. He’d won. So he capitulated.
Typical.
I pinched the bridge of my nose with two fingers.

Sounds of his even breathing traveled across the miles. “Since you’re already there, you might consider doing your job.”

My heart pounded and my nostrils flared.
Colonel Summer didn’t show up. She didn’t answer her phone, either. How’d you want me to interview her? Tarot cards?
I clamped my teeth together to keep my smart aleck retort to myself.

“This is not a secure line,” he said. He’d not been able to deliver another secure cell phone to me since mine was destroyed in Charlotte, which was a blessing of sorts. I didn’t trust him. He knew it. We both knew why. “Your lunch date should have details by now.”