He woke at first light, a dull gray through the motel room’s thin curtains. The parking lot outside his door was empty, ditto the highway beyond. The rain was still falling, a chill, endless trickle that somehow seemed colder and less inviting than a blizzard back home.

Mason slid the curtain back. Made the bed. At the foot of the bed, he did push-ups and sit-ups, one hundred of each. He’d been lax on the bus ride; no way to exercise. He could feel it now; even a lapse of three days was like a major setback. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

He showered, and dressed again in yesterday’s jeans and his only spare shirt, then locked up his room and walked across to the lobby. He’d woken the owner last night, an older man who’d come out of the back room rubbing his eyes and yawning, handed Mason a key and told him to come back in the morning, settle up then.

The man was at the front desk when Mason walked into the lobby. He looked up and smiled, and Mason reminded himself to meet the man’s gaze.

“Morning,” the man said. “Sleep okay?”

“I did,” Mason said. “Thank you. I’m going to stick around a couple of days, if that’s okay.”

“That’d be just fine. Forty dollars a night, or two hundred a week.” The man flipped open a black binder. “You have a driver’s license?”

“No, sir.”

“Credit card?”

“No, sir. But I’d be glad to give you a deposit up front, if you need one.”

The man looked him over. He was probably fifty or so, Native American, shorter than Mason, but thick, muscles gone to fat. On the wall behind him was a framed picture, a man in desert fatigues, sun-bleached earth and sand in the background. It was an older shot, and Mason realized it was the same guy.

“Heck,” the man said, “you’re not going to trash my room, are you?”

“No, sir,” Mason said.

“So give me the three nights up front, and if you wind up staying longer, we’ll throw it into the weekly. What’s your name, son?”

“Burke,” Mason said. “Mason Burke.”

The man wrote Mason’s name in his binder. “Where you from, Mr. Burke?”

“Michigan,” Mason said. From his back pocket he removed Glen’s envelope. Removed a hundred-dollar bill and a twenty, and slid them across the counter.

“Here on vacation?”

“Come to see a friend,” Mason said as the man tucked the money into the cash register. “You wouldn’t know where I could find the sheriff in these parts?”