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“We saw an opportunity.”
“How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. Between the servers and the solar there’s always something needs fixing. Or upgrading or replacing or improving. People come and go. Sometimes whole crews. There’s nowhere else for them to stay, not for miles around.”
“Engineers and software guys,” Reacher said. “I guess that’s all you see here.”
The kid glanced at the window again.
He said, “My dad told me you’re here for tourism.”
“I was pulling his leg. There’s nothing here. Good weather, though. I slept great.”
“So why are you really here?”
“Corporate security,” Reacher said. “The engineers and the software guys we send here are very valuable to us. They were very hard to recruit and would be very hard to replace. We need to know they’re safe.”
“I saw you checking the cameras,” the kid said. “Just now. You popped up on one screen after another.”
“The system looks pretty good,” Reacher said.
“It was top spec a couple years ago. Which means it’s middle of the pack now. But it does the job.”
“How long do you keep the recordings?”
“Forever, theoretically. In the cloud. Which means on a random server, somewhere in the world. Maybe right here in Summertown, for all we know.”
“How good is the replay quality?”
“High-def, 4K if you want it, sixty frames a second, heat sensitive at night.”
“Want to show me?”
“Show you what?”
“An example of the replay quality.”
“I’m not sure I should,” the kid said. “This feels weird. This stuff is supposed to be confidential. There are laws in Colorado.”
“Future business could depend on it. My report will go to a lot of corporations.”
“There’s nowhere else for miles around.”
“You think someone who built a solar farm bigger than Rhode Island couldn’t build their own motel?”
The kid paused a beat.
He said, “Do you want to see anything in particular?”
“Show me when I arrived last night. That’s hardly confidential. I already know I’m here.”
The kid pattered on his keyboard and turned the screen so both sides of the counter got a shared view. The screen was showing a twelve-tile montage. Twelve cameras, twelve pictures, some of them wide, some of them tight, some of them overlapping, some of them fish-eye, all of them luminous with the shimmering silver gray of night vision. The widest shot showed half left and half right and everything in between, including the diner dead ahead across the two-lane, closed up and dark. Probably the camera on the peak of the car portico. The picture sparkled with detail. As did the other eleven.
The old Tahoe’s high beams bounced into view, first in the wide shot, then in several others, and the car turned left and drove in and stopped. Reacher saw himself climb out and wave goodbye and turn toward the office. The wide night-vision shot lost him as he walked below the camera, but straightaway the office camera picked him up in blazing electric-light color as he stepped in through the door. The camera was in the top back corner of the room. Detail was impeccable. It was unmistakably him. Good enough for a court of law. He thought maybe he should get a new shirt.
“Excellent,” he said. “No reasonable person could be dissatisfied with that. Show me some daytime coverage, and I’ll be happy to check the box right now.”
The kid glanced at the window again.
