TWELVE

REACHER STOOD IN THE COLD BETWEEN THE TRUCK AND THE motel cabin and looked all around. There was nothing much to see. The blue glow of the neon reached only as far as the dead Subaru, and then it faded away. Overhead was a moon and a billion chilly stars.

Reacher said, 'You still got coffee in the pot?'

Vincent said, 'I can't serve you.'

'I won't rat you out.'

'They might be watching.'

'They're driving two guys sixty miles to the hospital.'

'Not all of them.'

'This is the last place they'll look. They told you to move me on. They'll assume you obeyed.'

'I don't know.'

'Let's make a deal,' Reacher said. 'I'll move on, to spare you the embarrassment. You can keep the thirty bucks, because this isn't your fault. In return I want a cup of coffee and some answers.'

* * *

The lounge was dark, except for a lone work light behind the bar. No more soft reds and pinks. Just a harsh fluorescent tube, with a pronounced flicker and a green colour cast and a noisy component. The music was off and the room was silent, apart from the buzz of the light and the rush of air in the heating system. Vincent filled the Bunn machine with water and spooned ground coffee from a can the size of a drum into a paper filter the size of a hat. He set it going and Reacher listened to the water gulping and hissing and watched the precious brown liquid streaming down into the flask.

Reacher said, 'Start at the beginning.'

Vincent said, 'The beginning is a long time ago.'

'It always is.'

'They're an old family.'

'They always are.'

'The first one I knew was old man Duncan. He was a farmer, from a long line of farmers. I guess the first one came here on a land grant. Maybe after the Civil War. They grew corn and beans and built up a big acreage. The old man inherited it all. He had three sons, Jacob, Jasper, and Jonas. It was an open secret that the boys hated farming. But they kept the place going until the old man died. So as not to break his heart. Then they sold up. They went into the trucking business. Much less work. They split up their place and sold it off to their neighbours. Which made sense all around. What was a big spread back in the days of horses and mules wasn't so big any more, with tractors and all, and economies of scale. Land prices were high back then, but the boys sweetened the deals. They gave discounts, if their neighbours signed up to use Duncan Transportation to haul away their harvests. Which again made sense all around. Everyone was getting what they wanted. Everyone was happy.'

'Until?'

'Things went sour kind of slowly. There was a dispute with one of the neighbours. Ancient history now. This was twenty-five years ago, probably. But it was an acrimonious situation. It festered all one summer, and then that guy didn't get his crop hauled away. The Duncans just wouldn't do it. It rotted on the ground. The guy didn't get paid that year.'

'He couldn't find someone else to haul it?'

'By then the Duncans had the county all sewn up. Not worth it for some other outfit to come all the way here just for one load.'

'The guy couldn't haul it himself?'

'They had all sold their trucks. No need for them, as far as they could see, because of the contracts, and they needed the money for mortgages anyway.'

'The guy could have rented. One time only.'

'He wouldn't have gotten out of his gate. The fine print said only a Duncan truck could haul anything off a farm. No way to contest it, not in court, and definitely not on the ground, because the football players were on the scene by then. The first generation. They must be old men themselves by now.'


'Total control,' Reacher said.

Vincent nodded.

'And very simple,' he said. 'You can work all year, but you need your harvest trucked away, or it's the same thing as sitting on your butt and growing nothing. Farmers live season to season. They can't afford to lose a whole crop. The Duncans found the perfect pinch-point. Whether by accident or design, I don't really know. But as soon as they realized what they had, they sure started enjoying it.'

'How?'

'Nothing real bad. People pay a little over the odds, and they mind their manners. That's about all, really.'

'You too, right?'

Vincent nodded again. 'This place needed some fixing, ten years ago. The Duncans loaned me the money, interest free, if I signed up with them for my deliveries.'

'And you're still paying.'

'We're all still paying.'

'Why sit still and take it?'

'You want a revolution? That's not going to happen. People have got to eat. And the Duncans are smart. No one thing is really that bad. You understand?'

'Like a frog in warm water,' Reacher said. 'That's how the doctor's wife described it to me.'

'That's how we all describe it.'

'You still get boiled to death in the end.'

'Long time coming.' Vincent turned away and filled a mug with coffee. Another NASA logo. He pushed it across the bar. He said, 'My mother was related to Neil Armstrong. The first man on the moon. Fifteenth cousin or something.'

Reacher sniffed the steam and tried the coffee. It was excellent. It was fresh, hot, and strong. Vincent said, 'President Nixon had a speech prepared, you know, just in case they got stuck up there. In case they couldn't lift off the surface. Can you imagine? Just sitting there, looking up at Earth in the sky, waiting for the air to run out?'

Reacher said, 'Aren't there laws? Monopolies, or restraint of trade or something?'

Vincent said, 'Going to a lawyer is the same thing as going bankrupt. A lawsuit takes what? Two, three years? Two or three years without your crop getting hauled is suicide. And have you ever worked on a farm? Or run a motel? Believe me, at the end of the day you don't feel like cracking the law books. You feel like getting some sleep.'

Reacher said, 'Wrecking the doctor's car wasn't a small thing.'

Vincent said, 'I agree. It was worse than usual. We're all a little unsettled by that.'

'All?'

'We all talk to each other. There's a phone tree. You know, for when something happens. We share information.'

'And what are people saying?'

'The feeling is maybe the doctor deserved it. He was way out of line.'

'For treating his patient?'

'She wasn't sick. It was an intervention.'

'I think you're all sick,' Reacher said. 'I think you're all a bunch of spineless cowards. How hard would it be to do something? One guy on his own, I agree, that's difficult. But if everyone banded together and called another trucker, they'd come. Why wouldn't they? If there's enough business here for the Duncans, there's enough for someone else.'

'The Duncans might sue.'

'Let them. Then they've got three years of legal bills and no income. The shoe would be on the other foot.'

'I don't think another trucker would take the business. They carve things up. They don't poach, in a place like this.'

'You could try.'

Vincent didn't answer.

'Whatever,' Reacher said. 'I really don't care who gets an ear of corn hauled away, or how, or if, or when. Or a bushel of beans. Or a peck or a quart or however the hell you measure beans. You can sort it out for yourselves. Or not. It's up to you. I'm on my way to Virginia.'

'It's not that easy,' Vincent said. 'Not here. People have been scared so long they can't even remember what it's like not to be scared any more.'

Reacher said nothing.

Vincent asked, 'What are you going to do?'

Reacher said, 'That depends on the Duncans. Plan A is to hitch a ride out of here. But if they want a war, then plan B is to win it. I'll keep on dumping football players on their driveway until they got none left. Then I'll walk on up and pay them a visit. Their choice.'

'Stick to plan A. Just go. That's my advice.'

'Show me some traffic and I might.'

'I need something from you.'

'Like what?'

'Your room key. I'm sorry.'

Reacher dug it out of his pocket and placed it on the bar. A big brass item, marked with a figure six.

Vincent said, 'Where are you going to sleep tonight?'

'Better that you don't know,' Reacher said. 'The Duncans might ask you. And you'd tell them, wouldn't you?'

'I'd have to,' Vincent said.

* * *

There was no more conversation. Reacher finished his coffee and walked out of the lounge, back to the truck. The winch cable had bent the light bar on the roof, so that from the front the whole thing looked a little cross-eyed. But the key turned and the engine started. Reacher drove out of the motel lot. If in doubt, turn left, was his motto. So he headed south, rolling slow, lights off, letting his eyes adjust to the night-time gloom, looking for a direction to follow.

THIRTEEN

THE ROAD WAS A NARROW STRAIGHT RIBBON, WITH DARK EMPTY fields to the right, and dark empty fields to the left. There was enough moonlight and enough starlight to make out shapes, but there weren't many shapes to make out. There was an occasional tree here and there, but mostly the land had been ploughed flat all the way to the horizon. Then three miles out Reacher saw two buildings far to the west, one large, one small, both standing alone in a field. Even at a distance and even in the dark he could tell both buildings were old and made of wood. They were no longer quite square, no longer quite upright, as if the earth was sucking them back down into itself, an inch a time, a corner at a time.

Reacher slowed and turned into a track that was nothing more than a pair of deep parallel ruts put there by the passage of tractor tyres. There was a raised hump of grass between them. The grass was frozen solid, like wire. The pick-up truck lurched and bounced and pattered. Small stones scrabbled under the wheels and skittered away. The track ran straight, then turned, then turned again, following the chequerboard pattern of the fields. The ground was bone hard. No dust came up. The two old buildings got nearer, and larger. One was a barn. The other was a smaller structure. They were about a hundred yards apart. Maybe a hundred and twenty. They were both fringed with dormant vegetation, where errant seeds had blown against their sides, and then fallen and taken root. In the winter the vegetation was nothing more than dry tangled sticks. In the summer it might be a riot of colourful vines.

Reacher looked at the barn first. It stood alone, surrounded by worn-out blacktop. It was built of timbers that looked as hard as iron, but it was rotting and leaning. The door was a slider big enough to admit some serious farm machinery. But the tilt of the building had jammed it in its tracks. The lower right-hand corner was wedged deep in the earth. The iron wheel on the rail above it had lifted off its seat.

There was a judas hole in the slider. A small regular door, inset. It was locked. There were no windows.

Reacher got back in the truck and headed for the smaller shed. It was three-sided, open at the narrow end that faced away from the barn. The tractor ruts ran all the way inside. It was for storage of some kind. Or it had been, once upon a time, long ago. It was about twice as long and a little wider than the truck.

Perfect.

Reacher drove in, all the way, and stopped with the hood of the truck under a kind of mezzanine half-loft built like a shelf under the peak of the roof. He shut the engine down and climbed out and walked back the way he had come, out of the shed, then twenty yards more. He turned and checked. The truck was completely hidden.

He smiled.

He thought: time for bed.

He set out walking.

He walked in the tractor ruts. The ground under his feet was uneven and hard, and progress was slower than it would have been on the grassy hump in the centre of the track, but even frozen grass can bruise and show footsteps, and Reacher always preferred to leave no trail. He made it back to the road and turned north and walked where the centre line would have been, if anyone had ever painted one. The night was still and quiet, the air frigid, the stars still bright overhead. Nothing else was moving. Up ahead there was no blue glow. The motel's lights had been turned off for the night.

He walked three fast road miles, less than an hour, and came up on the crossroads from the south. He stopped a hundred yards out and checked. On his left, the abandoned mall foundation. Beyond it, the abandoned gas station. On his right, nothing, and beyond that, the motel, dark and silent, just shapes and shadows.

No parked cars.

No parked trucks.

No watchers.

No ambush.

Reacher moved on. He came up on the motel from the rear, at the end of the curl of cabins, behind the smallest of them. All was quiet. He stayed off the gravel and minced along the silver timbers to his bathroom window. It was still open. The screen was still in the bathtub. He sat on the sill and ducked his head and swivelled his legs up and slid inside. He closed the window against the cold and turned and looked around.

His towels were where he had left them after his shower. Vincent hadn't made up the room. Reacher guessed that was tomorrow's task. No great urgency. No one was expecting a sudden demand for accommodation. Not in the wilds of Nebraska, not in the depths of winter.

Reacher stepped through to the main room and found an undisturbed situation. All was exactly as he had left it. He kept the lights off and the drapes open. He untucked the bed all around and slid in, fully dressed, boots and all. Not the first time he had slept that way. Sometimes it paid to be ready. Hence the boots, and the untucked bedding. He rolled left, rolled right, got as comfortable as he could, and a minute later he was fast asleep.

* * *

He woke up five hours later and found out he had been wrong. Vincent was not pulling quintuple duty. Only quadruple. He employed a maid. A housekeeper. Reacher was woken by the sound of her feet on the gravel. He saw her through the window. She was heading for his door, getting ready to make up his room. He threw aside the covers and sat up, feet on the floor, blinking. His arms felt a little better. Or maybe they were still numb from sleep. There was mist and cold grey light outside, a bitter winter morning, not long after dawn.

People see what they expect to see. The housekeeper used a pass key and pushed the door wide open and stepped into what she thought was a vacant room. Her eyes passed over Reacher's shape on the bed and moved on and it was a whole long second before they came back again. She didn't really react. She showed no big surprise. No yelp, no scream. She looked like a solid, capable woman. She was about sixty years old, maybe more, white, blunt and square, with blond hair fading slowly to yellow and grey. Plenty of old German genes in there, or Scandinavian.

'Excuse me,' she said. 'But Mr Vincent believed this room to be empty.'

'That was the plan,' Reacher said. 'Better for him that way. What you don't know can't hurt you.'

'You're the fellow the Duncans told him to turn out,' she said. Not a question. Just a statement, a conclusion derived from shared intelligence on the phone tree.

'I'll move on today,' Reacher said. 'I don't want to cause him any trouble.'

'I'm afraid it's you that will have the trouble. How do you plan to move on?'

'I'll hitch a ride. I'll set up south of the crossroads. I've done it before.'

'Will the first car you see stop?'

'It might.'

'What are the chances?'

'Low.'

'The first car you see won't stop. Because almost certainly the first car you see will be a local resident, and that person will get straight on the phone and tell the Duncans exactly where you are. We've had our instructions. The word is out. So the second car you see will be full of the Duncans' people. And the third, and the fourth. You're in trouble, sir. The land is flat here and it's wintertime. There's nowhere to hide.'

FOURTEEN

THE HOUSEKEEPER MOVED THROUGH THE ROOM IN AN ORDERLY, preprogrammed way, following a set routine, ignoring the anomaly represented by an illicit guest seated on the bed. She checked the bathroom, as if assessing the size of the task ahead of her, and then she butted the tub armchair with her thigh, moving it back an inch to the position decreed for it by the dents in the carpet.

Reacher asked, 'You got a cell phone?'

The woman said, 'Sure. Some minutes on it, too.'

'You going to rat me out?'

'Rat who out? This is an empty room.'

Reacher asked, 'What's to the east of here?'

'Nothing worth a lick to you,' the woman said. 'The road goes to gravel after a mile, and doesn't really take you anywhere.'

'West?'

'Same thing.'

'Why have a crossroads that doesn't lead anywhere, east or west?'

'Some crazy plan,' the woman said. 'About fifty years ago. There was supposed to be a strip right here, all commercial, a mile long, with houses east and west. A couple of farms were sold for the land, but that's about all that happened. Even the gas station went out of business, which is pretty much the kiss of death, wouldn't you say?'

'This motel is still here.'

'By the skin of its teeth. Most of what Mr Vincent earns comes from feeding whiskey to the doctor.'

'Big cash flow right there, from what I saw last night.'

'A bar needs more than one customer.'

'He's paying you.'

The woman nodded. 'Mr Vincent is a good man. He helps where he can. I'm a farmer, really. I work the winters here, because I need the money. To pay the Duncans, basically.'

'Haulage fees?'

'Mine are higher than most.'

'Why?'

'Ancient history. I wouldn't give up.'

'On what?'

'I can't talk about it,' the woman said. 'It's a forbidden subject. It was the start of everything bad. And I was wrong, anyway. It was a false allegation.'

Reacher got up off the bed. He headed for the bathroom and rinsed his face with cold water and brushed his teeth. Behind him the woman stripped the bed with fast practised movements of her wrists, sheets going one way, blankets the other. She said, 'You're heading for Virginia.'

Reacher said, 'You know my Social Security number too?'

'The doctor told his wife you were a military cop.'

'Were, as in used to be. Not any more.'

'So what are you now?'

'Hungry.'

'No breakfast here.'

'So where?'

'There's a diner an hour or so south. In town. Where the county cops get their morning coffee and doughnuts.'

'Terrific.'

The housekeeper stepped out to the path and took fresh linens from a cart. Bottom sheet, top sheet, pillowcases. Reacher asked her, 'What does Vincent pay you?'

'Minimum wage,' she said. 'That's all he can afford.'

'I could pay you more than that to cook me breakfast.'

'Where?'

'Your place.'

'Risky.'

'Why? You a terrible cook?'

She smiled, briefly. 'Do you tip well?'

'If the coffee's good.'

'I use my mother's percolator.'

'Was her coffee good?'

'The best.'

'So we're in business.'

'I don't know,' the woman said.

'They're not going to be conducting house-to-house searches. They expect to find me out in the open.'

'And when they don't?'

'Nothing for you to worry about. I'll be long gone. I like breakfast as much as the next guy, but I don't take hours to eat it.'

The woman stood there for a minute, unsure, a crisp white pillowcase held flat across her chest like a sign, or a flag, or a defence. Then she said, 'OK.'

Four hundred and fifty miles due north, because of the latitude, dawn came a little later. The grey panel truck sat astride the sandy path, hidden, inert, dewed over with cold. Its driver woke up in the dark and climbed down and took a leak against a tree, and then he drank some water and ate a candy bar and got back in his sleeping bag and watched the pale morning light filter down through the needles. He knew at best he would be there most of the day, or most of two days, and at worst most of three or four days. But then would come his share, of money and fun, and both things were worth waiting for.

He was patient by nature.

And obedient.

* * *

Reacher stood still in the middle of the room and the housekeeper finished up around him. She made the bed tight enough to bounce a dime, she changed the towels, she replaced a tiny vial of shampoo, she put out a new morsel of paper-wrapped soap, she folded an arrowhead into the toilet roll. Then she went to get her truck. It was a pick-up, a battered old item, very plain, with rust and skinny tyres and a sagging suspension. She looped around the wrecked Subaru and parked with the passenger door next to the cabin door. She checked front and rear, long and hard, and then she paused. Reacher could see she wanted to forget the whole thing and take off without him. It was right there in her face. But she didn't. She leaned across the width of the cab and opened the door and flapped her hand. Hurry up.

Reacher stepped out of the cabin and into the truck. The woman said, 'If we see anyone, you have to duck down and hide, OK?'

Reacher agreed, although it would be hard to do. It was a small truck. A Chevrolet, grimy and dusty inside, all worn plastic and vinyl, with the dash tight against his knees and the window into the load bed tight against the back of his seat.

'Got a bag?' he asked.

'Why?'

'I could put it on my head.'

'This isn't funny,' she said. She drove off, the worn old transmission taking a second to process her foot's command, something rattling under the hood, a holed muffler banging away like a motorcycle. She turned left out of the lot and drove through the crossroads and headed south. There was no other traffic. In the daylight the land all around looked flat and featureless and immense. It was all dusted white with frost. The sky was high and blank. After five minutes Reacher saw the two old buildings in the west, the sagging barn and the smaller shed with the captured pick-up in it. Then three minutes later they passed the Duncans' three houses standing alone at the end of their long shared driveway. The woman's hands went tight on the wheel and Reacher saw she had crossed her fingers. The truck rattled onward and she watched the mirror more than the road ahead and then a mile later she breathed out and relaxed.

Reacher said, 'They're only people. Three old guys and a skinny kid. They don't have magic powers.'

'They're evil,' the woman said.

They were in Jonas Duncan's kitchen, eating breakfast, biding their time, waiting for Jacob to come out with it. He had a pronouncement to make. A decision. They all knew the signs. Many times Jacob had sat quiet and distracted and contemplative, and then eventually he had delivered a nugget of wisdom, or an analysis that had cut to the heart of the matter, or a proposal that had killed three or four birds with one stone. So they waited for it, Jonas and Jasper patiently enjoying their meal, Seth struggling with it a little because chewing had become painful for him. Bruising was spreading out from under his aluminium mask. He had woken up with two black eyes the size and colour of rotting pears.

Jacob put down his knife and his fork. He dabbed his lips with his cuff. He folded his hands in front of him. He said, 'We have to ask ourselves something.'

Jonas was hosting, so he was entitled to the first response.

'What something?' he asked.

'We have to consider whether it might be worth trading a little dignity and self-respect for a useful outcome.'

'In what way?'

'We have a provocation and a threat. The provocation comes from the stranger in the motel throwing his weight around in matters that don't concern him. The threat comes from our friend to the south getting impatient. The first thing must be punished, and the second thing shouldn't have happened at all. No date should have been guaranteed. But it was, so we have to deal with it, and without judgement either. No doubt Seth was doing what he thought was best for all of us.'

Jonas asked, 'How do we deal with it?'

'Let's think about the other thing first. The stranger from the motel.'

Seth said, 'I want him hurt bad.'

'We all do, son. And we tried, didn't we? Didn't work out so well.'

'What, now we're afraid of him?'

'We are, a little bit, son. We lost three guys. We'd be stupid not to be at least a little concerned. And we're not stupid, are we? That's one thing a Duncan will never be accused of. Hence my question about self-respect.'

'You want to let him walk?'

'No, I want to tell our friend to the south that the stranger is the problem. That he's somehow the reason for the delay. Then we point out to our friend that he's already got two of his boys up here, and if he wants a bit of giddy-up in the shipment process, then maybe those two boys could be turned against the stranger. That's a win all around, isn't it? Three separate ways. First, those two boys are off Seth's back, as of right now, and second, the stranger gets hurt or killed, and third, some of the sting goes out of our friend's recent attitude, because he comes to see that the delay isn't really our fault at all. He comes to see that we're beleaguered, by outside forces, in ways that he'll readily understand, because no doubt he's beleaguered too, from time to time, in similar ways. In other words, we make common cause.'

Silence for a moment.

Then Jasper Duncan said, 'I like it.'

Jacob said, 'I like it too. Otherwise I wouldn't be proposing it. The only downside is a slight blow to our self-respect and dignity, in that it won't be our own hands on the man who transgressed against us, and we'll be admitting to our friend to the south that there are problems in this world that we can't solve all by ourselves.'

'No shame in that,' Jonas said. 'This is a very complicated business.'

Seth asked, 'You figure his boys are better than our boys?'

'Of course they are, son,' Jacob said. 'As good as our boys are, his are in a different league. There's no comparison. Which we need to bear in mind. Our friend to the south needs to remain our friend, because he would make a very unpleasant enemy.'

'But suppose the delay doesn't go away?' Jasper asked. 'Suppose nothing changes? Suppose the stranger gets nailed today and we still can't deliver for a week? Then our friend to the south knows we were lying to him.'

'I don't think the stranger will get nailed in one day,' Jacob said.

'Why not?'

'Because he seems to be a very capable person. All the evidence so far points in that direction. It could take a few days, by which time our truck could well be on its way. And even if it isn't, we could say that we thought it prudent to keep the merchandise out of the country until the matter was finally resolved. Our friend might believe that. Or, of course, he might not.'

'It's a gamble, then.'

'Indeed it is. But it's probably the best we can do. Are we in or out?'

'We should offer assistance,' Jasper said. 'And information. We should require compliance from the population.'

Jacob said, 'Naturally. Our friend would expect nothing less. Instructions will be issued, and sanctions will be advertised.'

'And our boys should be out there too. Ears and eyes open. We need to feel we made some contribution, at least.'

'Naturally,' Jacob said again. 'So are we in or out?'

No one spoke for a long moment. Then Jasper said, 'I'm in.'

'Me too,' Jonas said.

Jacob Duncan nodded and unfolded his hands.

'That's a majority, then,' he said. 'Which I'm mighty relieved to have, because I took the liberty of calling our friend to the south two hours ago. Our boys and his are already on the hunt.'

'I want to be there,' Seth said. 'When the stranger gets it.'