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Reacher waited.

The guy stepped inside. He was wide but not tall. He took another step. He gave up on the bed. No one in it. His head moved an inch and he looked beyond to the closet, the dresser, the bathroom. He fumbled behind him, left-handed, and pushed the door nearly closed.

Reacher hit him from behind, a colossal overhand right, leading with his knuckles, aiming for the exact point where the base of the guy’s skull met the top of his neck. A rabbit punch, technically, so named because poachers invented it to kill rabbits fast and easy, without damaging their fur. Banned in every kind of combat sport, because of the risk of catastrophic outcomes, including severe brain injury, paralysis, or instant death. Which was exactly what Reacher was hoping for right then. His walnut knuckles slammed home and separated the guy’s skull from his first vertebra and sheared his spinal cord, all in one massive impact. The guy went down face first, like a felled tree, not yet brain-dead, but inert, because whatever furious signals his mind was still sending weren’t getting through. Reacher took the gun from the guy’s limp hand and checked for a pulse in his wrist. Nothing doing. Nothing there. No more heartbeat. Whatever patient repetitive cues his brain was still sending weren’t arriving in his chest. Same for breathing, same for everything. Tough shit, Reacher thought. Voluntary assumption of risk, an insurance company would call it. Break into a room, and you get what you get. Just because you got away with it a hundred times before didn’t mean the hundred-and-first was going to be the same. Should have taken greater care. Better still, should have stayed home and lived an honest life.

Reacher reopened the door and stepped outside. The car was right there, long, low, black, lights off, the front doors both open a foot. No sign of the second guy. Reacher crept past room eleven and arrived at room ten. Turner’s room. Her door was open an inch. No doubt the same maneuver. The click of the lock, the turn of the handle, the cautious forty-five degree sweep, the gun, the hand, the wrist, the arm.

Reacher did all the same things, but faster.

Then he stopped.

The second guy was already face down on the floor. Collapsed, deflated, not moving, inert, probably dead. He had the look. His gun was still in his hand. Another Glock, another suppressor. Beyond it was Turner, still fully dressed, standing straight and still, a hardcover book in her hand. Stephen King, Reacher noticed. A substantial volume. Titled Under the Dome. Reacher had read it. Probably Turner had brought it to read on the plane. But now it had served a different purpose. The angle the second guy was lying suggested she had done the same thing he had, with the first guy. She had waited in the forty-five degree wedge of space behind the door, but she had used the book instead of a fist. An upward angle, a savage both-hands jab, maximum force, the same result. A literary rabbit punch. Reacher liked Stephen King. He had read him for years. The only downside for a traveling man was the sheer heft of each new release. But right then for once he was sincerely glad the guy didn’t write shorter stories.

“You OK?” Turner asked him.

“Doing well,” he said. “You?”

She didn’t answer. The lights in her room were off. Her curtains were open the same six inches as his. There was a dent on the bed where she had been sitting and watching. She had gotten the same bad feeling he had. The front of her brain, the back of her brain. He bent down and took the gun from another limp hand. Checked for a pulse. Nothing there. The 110th versus the bad guys. A solid two–zip victory. Not a surprise, but reassuring all the same.

“This is a mess,” Turner said.

“It’s not too bad,” Reacher said. “We didn’t damage their fur. They’re not leaking yet. We have a car outside. The bay is right here, east of us. Forests to the west. Won’t be a huge problem.”

“We’re going to put two dead guys in a car? This place must have cameras. Summertown did.”

“They were switched off in Summertown. They must be switched off here. Erased to back before we arrived. These guys couldn’t have risked this otherwise. Plus they didn’t kick our doors down. They had key cards. They visited the lobby while we were eating dinner. Threats and violence. They got what they needed. So it’s all good. We were never here, they were never here, their car was never here.”

“It’s still a mess.”

“Why?”

“Have you asked yourself why they were here?”

“I don’t know why. I can’t see a mechanism. But hey, what do I know? This is the modern world. The Summertown motel was all hooked up to the cloud, whatever that is exactly. Maybe this place is too. You were Bisley’s boss. Maybe your photo is on a watch list. Maybe the cameras feed out to facial recognition software. Maybe when we checked in something flashed red on some bad guy’s phone.”

“No,” she said. “This is my fault. Something I did. I’m sorry.”

“Your fault how?”

“Before we left for dinner. Twenty minutes, freshening up. Actually I spent five minutes freshening up, after spending the first fifteen checking my messages. I had to do it. I have a section to run.”

“You looked pretty damn good for just five minutes’ freshening up. Checking your messages how?”

“On my work phone. I switched it on. It’s in our system. Someone was tracking it in real time. Someone wanted to know where I was. I didn’t expect that.”

“Who even knew you were gone? You’re the boss. You don’t ask permission.”

“My deputy commander knew. I had to tell him I was going to be out for a day. Standard procedure.”

“Anyone else?”

“We’re all spread out. Different offices. I come and go. Most of them don’t see me for days at a time. My deputy commander was the only one who knew for sure.”

“How did you pay for your flight?”

“Cash.”

“What ID did you use?”