Page 122 of Chain Reaction

“I need two rooms,” Reacher said. “Far apart from each other. We’ll be there in an hour.”

He clicked off and gave the phone back to Turner. She tried Julia again. Still no answer. They got in the truck and Elwood did his max air thing, with all the windows down. Then he set his phone for Summertown and propped it in the cupholder. It told him to proceed to the route, which seemed to be the highway west, at least for a spell. Two minutes later they were cruising at seventy miles an hour.

Turner tried Julia again.

No answer.

Chapter 41

Elwood was already familiar with the two-lane leading west from the highway. He took it easy through the curves, but fluently, finding a rhythm of his own. He swept through the last bend and they saw the first solar field ahead. The sky was deep blue and the sun was high overhead. Tens of thousands of panels gleamed and glittered in the midday light.

“Wow,” Turner said.

“And that’s the smaller field,” Reacher and Elwood said, in unison.

“Slow down,” she said.

Elwood coasted down to walking speed and she watched out the window.

“That’s a lot of gravel,” she said.

Elwood sped up again and minutes later they drove out of the field and the road widened to add the turn lane. The motel to the left, the diner to the right. The main solar field up ahead.

“Wow,” Turner said again.

“Keep going,” Reacher said. “Let’s see if they fixed the damage yet.”

They had. A mile and a half later the scorch mark was still right there, half on the shoulder and half on the blacktop, but a semicircle of buckled panels had been replaced with brand-new units as straight and true as all the others. The engineers’ footprints had been raked out of the gravel. Like nothing had ever happened.

Elwood U-turned across both shoulders and headed back. He put his turn signal on, for the motel, now on his right.

“Go the other way,” Reacher said. “Let’s go take a look at the data centers.”

Elwood switched lanes and hung the left toward the diner. The road looped around behind it and led onward, to the five giant constructions beyond. They looked low and squat in the distance, but that was an illusion. Their height was overwhelmed by their immense depth and width. They could have been thirty or forty feet tall. Added to which was all the cooling equipment stacked on their roofs. They were laid out in a perfect straight line, maybe sixty feet apart, each one individually fenced with a black steel barrier maybe ten feet high, with vicious outward-leaning spikes at the top.

Running around all five together was a brushed concrete curb, perfectly straight and level on all four sides, with crisp right-angle corners, forming a huge rectangle bigger than a city block. Dirt on the outside, a smooth gravel bed on the inside. The buildings themselves and their fences were set well back from the curb. They rested neatly on the gravel, as if partly rooted, and partly floating. The sisters in Aurora had said Hugo’s client wanted them to look as good as the solar fields, for their corporate image. They had succeeded. What were basically just five giant metal sheds looked weighty and substantial and implacably permanent. Like monuments set on a generous golden plinth. Reacher’s sense of esthetics was as functional as the rest of his life, but even he was impressed. The curb and the gravel made a difference. Like how old-time banks in city centers were built like cathedrals. Trust us, they said.

“Do we know which one is EEF’s building?” Turner asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Reacher said. “We’ll be looking elsewhere. At least I think we will. You should try Julia again.”

Turner dialed.

And waited.

Still no answer.

“I’m getting worried now,” she said.

“Don’t you have people there?”

“Only for a couple hours at the start of her day. That’s when she needs practical help. Errands, and such.” She dialed a new number. Evidently a member of the team from that morning. She asked questions and got answers. She hung up and said, “They were both fine when my people left. No concerns at all.”

Reacher’s thousand lucky ancestors made him say, “Can you send them back for a welfare check?”

Turner called the last number back. She told her people what to do. Civilian attire, but equipped like a close protection team. At least four of them. To get there as soon as possible, and to report back as soon as practical.

She clicked off.