by Lee Child
The guy in the front passenger seat turned around in a fairly friendly fashion and said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your face?”
Reacher said, “I walked into a door.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. I tripped and fell over. Not very exciting. Just one of those things.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Nothing an aspirin wouldn’t put right.”
The guy twisted farther around and looked at the woman. Then at the driver. “Do we have an aspirin available? To help this man out?”
Reacher smiled. A team, standing ready to solve problems big or small. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”
The woman said, “I’ve got one.” She ducked down and picked up her bag from the floor. She rooted around in it. The guy in the front passenger seat watched her do it, full of eager attention. He seemed excited. A goal had been set, and was about to be met. The woman came out with a packet of Bayer. She shook one pill loose.
“Give him two,” the guy in the front said. “He looks like he could use them. Hell, give him three.”
Which Reacher thought was a little too commanding. Might not play well in the postgame analysis. It placed the woman in a difficult situation. Maybe she needed her aspirins for herself. Maybe she had an internal condition. Maybe she would find it embarrassing to say so. Or perhaps the guy up front was into some kind of a double bluff. Maybe he was so stainless in every other way he could get away with making control look like innocent exuberance.
Reacher said, “One will do the trick, thanks.”
The woman tipped the small white pill from her palm to his. The guy up front passed back a bottle of water. Unopened, and still cold from a refrigerator. Reacher swallowed the pill and split the seal on the bottle and took a good long drink.
“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
He passed the bottle back. The guy in front took it and offered it to the driver. The driver shook his head, mute. He was focused on the road ahead, holding the car between seventy and eighty, just bowling along. He was close to six feet tall, Reacher figured, but narrow in the shoulders, and a little stooped. He had a thin neck, with no fuzz on it. A recent haircut, in a conservative style. No rings on his fingers. The cheap blue shirt had arms too short for him. He was wearing a watch full of small complicated dials.
The guy in the front passenger seat was shorter but wider. Not exactly fat, but hamburgers more than once a week might push him over the edge. His face was tight and pink. His hair was fairer than the driver’s, cut equally recently and equally short and brushed to the side like a schoolboy’s. His shirt was long in the arms, small in the waist, and loose in the shoulders. Its collar was still triangular from the packet, and the wings were resting tight against the flesh of his neck.
Up close the woman looked maybe a year or two younger than the men. Early forties, possibly, rather than mid. She had jet black hair piled up high on her head and tied in a bun. Or a chignon. Or something. Reacher didn’t know the correct hairdressing term. She looked to be medium height and lean. Her shirt was clearly a smaller size than the men’s, but it was still loose on her. She was pretty, in a rather severe and no-nonsense kind of a way. Pale face, large eyes, plenty of makeup. She looked tired and a little ill at ease. Possibly not entirely enchanted with the corporate bullshit. Which made her the best of the three, in Reacher’s opinion.
The guy in the front passenger seat twisted around again and offered his smooth round hand. He said, “I’m Alan King, by the way.”
Reacher shook his hand and said, “Jack Reacher.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Reacher.”
“Likewise, Mr. King.”
The driver said, “Don McQueen,” but he didn’t try to shake hands.
“What were the odds?” Reacher said. “King and McQueen.”
King said, “I know, right?”
The woman offered her hand, smaller and paler and bonier than King’s.
She said, “I’m Karen Delfuenso.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Karen,” Reacher said, and shook. She held on a split second longer than he had expected. Then McQueen got off the gas in a hurry and they all pitched forward a little. Up ahead brake lights were flaring red. Like a solid wall.
And way far in the distance there was rapid blue and red strobing from a gaggle of cop cars.
Chapter 4
Two steps forward, one step back. Check and re-check. Sheriff Victor Goodman was revisiting the issue of the alternate car he figured the two men had switched to. He tried to stay as current as a guy in his position could, way out there in the sticks, which wasn’t easy, but a year or so before he had read a sidebar in a Homeland Security bulletin, which said that at night a dark blue color was the hardest to pick out with surveillance cameras. Coats, hats, cars, whatever, dark blue showed up as little more than a hole in the nighttime air. Hard to see, hard to define. Not that Goodman’s county had any surveillance cameras. But he figured what was true for an electronic lens would be true for the human eye, too. And he figured the two men might be clued in about such stuff. They were professionals, apparently. Therefore the car they had stashed might be dark blue.
Or it might not.
So what should he do?
In the end, he did nothing. Which he figured was the wisest choice. If he was guessing wrong, then to ask the roadblocks to pay special attention to dark blue cars would be self defeating. So he let his revised APB stand as it was: he wanted any two men in any kind of vehicle.
* * *
At that point the Interstate was a six-lane road, and the three eastbound lanes were jammed solid with inching vehicles. Cars, trucks, SUVs, they were all creeping forward, braking, stopping, waiting, creeping forward again. McQueen was drumming his fingers on the wheel, frustrated. King was staring ahead through the windshield, patient and resigned. Delfuenso was staring ahead too, anxious, like she was late for something.
Reacher asked in the silence, “Where are you guys headed tonight?”
“Chicago,” King said.
Which Reacher was privately very pleased about. There were plenty of buses in Chicago. Plenty of morning departures. South through Illinois, east through Kentucky, and then Virginia was right there. Good news. But he didn’t say so out loud. It was late at night, and he felt a sympathetic tone was called for.
He said, “That’s a long way.”
“Six hundred miles,” King said.
“Where are you coming from?”
The car stopped, rolled forward, and stopped again.
“We were in Kansas,” King said. “We were doing real well, too. No traffic. No delays. Up till now. This thing here is the first time we’ve stopped in more than three hours.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“I know, right? Minimum of sixty all the way. I think this is literally the first time Don has touched the brake. Am I right, Don?”
McQueen said, “Apart from when we picked Mr. Reacher up.”
“Sure,” King said. “Maybe that broke the spell.”
Reacher asked, “Are you on business?”
“Always.”
“What kind of business?”
“We’re in software.”
“Really?” Reacher said, trying to be polite.
“We’re not programmers,” King said. “That’s all pizza and skateboards. We’re in corporate sales.”
“You guys work hard.”
“Always,” King said again.
“Successful trip so far?”
“Not so bad.”
“I thought you might be on some kind of a team-building thing. Like an exercise. Or a retreat.”
“No, just business as usual.”
“So what’s with the shirts?”
King smiled.
“I know, right?” he said. “New corporate style. Casual Fridays all week long. But clearly branded. Like
a sports uniform. Because that’s how software is these days. Very competitive.”
“Do you live here in Nebraska?”
King nodded. “Not so very far from right here, actually. There are plenty of tech firms in Omaha now. Way more than you would think. It’s a good business environment.”
The car rolled forward, braked, stopped, moved on again. It was McQueen’s own vehicle, Reacher guessed. Not a rental. Not a pool car. Too worn, too messy. The guy must have drawn the short straw. Designated driver for this particular trip. Or maybe he was the designated driver for every trip. Maybe he was low man on the totem pole. Or maybe he just liked driving. A road warrior. A road warrior who was taking time away from his family. Because he was a family man, clearly. Because it was a family car. But only just. There was kid stuff in it, but not a lot. There was a sparkly pink hair band on the floor. Not the kind of thing an adult woman would wear, in Reacher’s opinion. There was a small fur animal in a tray on the console. Most of its stuffing was compressed to flatness, and its fur was matted, as if it was regularly chewed. One daughter, Reacher figured. Somewhere between eight and twelve years old. He couldn’t be more precise than that. He knew very little about children.
But the kid had a mother or a stepmother. McQueen had a wife or a girlfriend. That was clear. There was feminine stuff everywhere in the car. There was a box of tissues with flowers all over it, and a dead lipstick in the recess in the console, right next to the fur animal. There was even a crystal pendant on the key. Reacher was pretty sure he would be smelling perfume on the upholstery, if he had been able to smell anything at all.
Reacher wondered if McQueen was missing his family. Or maybe the guy was perfectly happy. Maybe he didn’t like his family. Then from behind the wheel McQueen asked, “What about you, Mr. Reacher? What line of work are you in?”
“No line at all,” Reacher said.
“You mean casual labor? Whatever comes your way?”
“Not even that.”
“You mean you’re unemployed?”
“But purely by choice.”
“Since when?”
“Since I left the army.”
McQueen didn’t reply to that, because he got preoccupied. Up ahead traffic was all jockeying and squeezing into the right-hand lane. Those slow-motion maneuvers were what was causing most of the delay. A wreck, Reacher figured. Maybe someone had spun out and hit the barrier and clipped a couple of other cars on the rebound. Although there were no fire trucks present. No ambulances. No tow trucks. All the flashing lights were at the same height, on car roofs. There were so many of them and they were blinking so fast that they looked continuous, like a permanent wash of red-blue glare.
The car inched onward. Start, stop, start, stop. Fifty yards ahead of the lights McQueen put his turn signal on and bullied his way into the right-hand lane. Which gave Reacher a straight line of sight to the obstruction.
It wasn’t a wreck.
It was a roadblock.
The nearest cop car was parked at an angle across the left-hand lane, and the second was parked a little farther on, at the same angle, across the middle lane. Together they sat there like arrows, one, two, both pointing toward the right-hand lane, giving drivers no choice at all but to move over. Then there were two cars parked in the middle lane, in line with the traffic flow, opposite two parked in line on the shoulder, and then came two more, angled again, positioned in such a way as to force people through a tight and awkward turn, all the way across the width of the road, all the way into the left-hand lane, after which they could fan out and accelerate away and go about their business.
A well organized operation, Reacher thought. A slow approach was guaranteed by the congestion, and slow progress through the obstruction was guaranteed by the sharp left turn at the end of it. Careful and extended scrutiny was guaranteed by the long narrow gantlet between the two in-line cars in the middle lane and the parallel in-line pair on the shoulder. This was no one’s first rodeo.
But what was it for? Eight cars was a big deal. And Reacher could see shotguns out. This was no kind of a routine check. This was not about seat belts or license tags. He asked, “Have you had the radio on? Has something bad happened?”
“Relax,” King said. “We get this from time to time. Escaped prisoner, most likely. There are a couple of big facilities west of here. They’re always losing people. Which is crazy, right? I mean, it ain’t brain surgery. It’s not like their doors don’t have locks.”
McQueen made eye contact in the mirror and said, “It’s not you, I hope.”
“Not me what?” Reacher asked.
“Who just escaped from jail.”
A smile in his voice.
“No,” Reacher said. “It’s definitely not me.”
“That’s good,” McQueen said. “Because that would get us all in trouble.”
They inched onward, in the impatient queue. Through a long glassy tunnel of windshields and rear windows Reacher could see the troopers at work. They were wearing their hats. They had shotguns held low and big Maglites held overhand. They were shining their flashlight beams into one car after another, front, back, up, down, counting heads, checking floors, sometimes checking trunks. Then, satisfied, they were waving cars away and turning to the next in line.
“Don’t worry, Karen,” King said, without turning his head. “You’ll be home again soon.”
Delfuenso didn’t reply.
King glanced back at Reacher and said, “She hates being on the road,” by way of explanation.
Reacher said nothing.
They crept forward. Up ahead the routine never changed. Eventually Reacher sensed a pattern. The only circumstance under which the troopers were checking trunks was when there was a male driver alone in a car. Which ruled out King’s escaped prisoner theory. No reason why an escaped prisoner couldn’t hide in the trunk of a car occupied by two people, or three, or four. Or five, or six, or a whole busload. Much more likely the troopers had gotten a specific tip about a lone guy hauling something large and something bad. Drugs, guns, bombs, stolen goods, whatever.
They crept forward. Now they were third in line. Both cars ahead had lone men at the wheel. Both got their trunks checked. Both got waved onward. McQueen rolled forward and stopped where a trooper told him to. One guy stepped in front of the hood and flicked his flashlight beam across the license plate. Four more stepped up, two on each side, and shone their lights in through the windows, front, back, counting. Then the guy in front stepped aside and the guy nearest McQueen waved him onward, his hand gesturing low and urgent, right in McQueen’s line of vision.
McQueen eased forward and hauled on the wheel and made the tight left turn, and then the tight right turn, and then he was facing a thousand miles of free-flowing emptiness ahead of him. He breathed out and settled in his seat, and beside him King breathed out and settled in his seat, and McQueen hit the gas and the car accelerated hard and drove on east, fast, like there was no more time to waste.
A minute later and across the barrier Reacher saw a car coming on equally fast in the opposite direction. A dark Ford Crown Victoria, with flashing blue lights behind the grille. A government vehicle, clearly, rushing toward some kind of a big emergency.
Chapter 5
The dark Crown Victoria was an FBI squad car out of the Omaha field office. The duty agent there had taken Sheriff Goodman’s call and had reacted instantly. Goodman had said professionals, which in FBI terms meant organized crime, and organized crime was the FBI’s preferred diet, because reputations were made there, and glory and promotions were earned there. So an on-call Special Agent had been dispatched immediately, a decorated twenty-year Bureau veteran, highly qualified, highly experienced, and highly regarded.
Her name was Julia Sorenson, and she was just shy of forty-seven years old, and she had been in Omaha just shy of forty-seven very happy months. Omaha was not New York or D.C., but it was not a Bureau backwater, either. It was not Siberia. Not even close. For some unknown
historical reason crime followed the railroad tracks, and Nebraska had some of the planet’s biggest rail yards within its state lines. So Sorenson’s talents were not being wasted. She was not frustrated and she was not unfulfilled.
She dialed as she drove and called Sheriff Goodman’s cell and told him she was on her way. She arranged to meet him at the crime scene, in one hour’s time.
* * *
Goodman was in his car when he took that call. He had one deputy securing the crime scene and babysitting the eyewitness, and all the others were blocking the local roads out of the county. Which left himself as the only available mobile unit. He was out and about, looking for the bright red car.
His county was large but not geographically complicated. A century earlier someone had drawn a square on a map, and the shape had stuck. The square was transected twice, first by a two-lane road running all the way across it left to right, west to east, and again by a two-lane road running bottom to top, south to north. Those two roads met near the middle of the square and made a crossroads, around which a town of eight thousand people had grown up. Cross-county traffic east to west and west to east was light, because the Interstate fifty miles north ran parallel and took most of the load. But traffic north to south and south to north was markedly heavier, because in one direction the Interstate attracted traffic, and in the other direction it dumped it out. It had taken local businesspeople about five minutes to notice that pattern, and three miles out of town to the north they had developed a long ragged strip with gas and diesel and diners and motels and bars and convenience stores and cocktail lounges. Relaxed citizens thought of the place as merely another business district, and uptight citizens called it Sin City. It was subject to exactly the same laws, rules, and regulations as the rest of the county, but for fifty years in an unspoken way those laws and rules and regulations had been enforced with a very light touch. The result was keno and poker machines in the bars, and strippers in the cocktail lounges, and rumors of prostitution in the motels, and a river of tax revenue into the county’s coffers.
Two-way traffic, just like the two-lane road.