There was a long dust plume on the dirt road.
A hanging ochre cloud, long, spiralling and drifting. A vehicle, coming on fast. Still just a tiny dot in the distance. Too far away to see what it was.
Six minutes, maybe.
He went back in the closet. Checked the bottom pair of boxes.
One was full of money.
Tens and twenties and fifties, used and creased, sour and greasy, done up in inch-thick bricks with rubber bands. Maybe ten grand in total. Maybe more.
The other box was full of trinkets. Mostly gold. Gold crosses on thin tangled chains, gold earrings, gold bracelets, gold charms, gold chokers.
And gold rings.
Some were wedding rings.
Some were class rings.
Reacher stepped back to the window and watched. The dust plume was a mile long, hanging in the motionless air. At the head of it was a tiny dark dot, quivering, bobbing, bouncing. The pronghorn herd rippled, uneasy.
The tiny dot looked black.
It was hammering and juddering right to left in front of him. It was doing maybe forty miles an hour. Maybe more. Some kind of familiarity with the terrain, or some kind of urgency, or some kind of both.
He waited.
It slowed.
The dust cloud caught up with it.
It turned in at the driveway.
Billy’s ride would be a pick-up truck, Reacher figured. Snowploughs usually were. Winter tyres, chains, a hydraulic mechanism for the blade, extra spotlights mounted high. All detached in the summer, leaving a familiar silhouette. Hood, cab, bed.
Which Reacher didn’t see.
It wasn’t a pick-up truck.
It was big and square and boxy. An SUV. A black SUV. Travel-stained and dusty. It flashed in and out of sight through the trees. Then it pulled clear and drove the last hundred yards over the beaten red dirt.
It slowed and turned and came to a stop. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser.
It had Illinois plates.
SIXTEEN
REACHER WATCHED FROM the upstairs window. The black SUV parked a respectful distance from the house. The driver’s door opened. A man stepped down. A small guy, neat and compact, in a dark suit and a shirt and a tie. Terry Bramall. From Chicago. Retired FBI. The missing persons specialist. Last seen the day before, in Rapid City, in the breakfast place opposite Arthur Scorpio’s laundromat.
The guy stood still for a long moment, and then he set out walking towards the house, with a purposeful stride.
Reacher went down the stairs. He made it to the bottom and heard a knock on the door. He opened up. Bramall was standing on the porch. He had taken a polite step back. His hair was brushed. His suit was the same, but his shirt and his tie were different. He had the kind of look on his face that Reacher recognized. The kind of look he had used himself, many times. Open, inquisitive, inoffensive, faintly apologetic for the interruption, but no-nonsense all the same. An experienced investigator’s look. Which changed for a split second, first to surprise, then to puzzlement, and then finally it came back the same as before.
‘Mr Bramall,’ Reacher said.
‘Mr Reacher,’ Bramall said. ‘I saw you yesterday in the coffee shop in Rapid City. And the night before in the convenience store. You called me and left a message.’
‘Correct.’
‘I assume your first name isn’t Billy.’
‘You assume right.’
‘Then may I ask what you’re doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘May I come in?’
‘Not my house. Not for me to say.’
‘Yet you seem to be making yourself at home.’
Reacher looked beyond Bramall’s shoulder at the view. The dust cloud over the dirt road had settled. The pronghorn herd had gone back to placid grazing. Nothing was moving. No one was coming.
He said, ‘What do you want from Billy?’
‘Information,’ Bramall said.
‘He’s not here. Probably been gone about twenty-four hours. Or more. Scorpio left him a voice mail around this time yesterday and it was still showing on his phone as a new message. It hadn’t been picked up yet.’
‘He went out without his phone?’
‘It was charging. Maybe it’s not his main phone. It looks like a burner. Maybe it’s for special purposes only.’
‘Did you listen to the message?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Scorpio asked Billy to shoot me with a deer rifle from behind a tree.’
‘To shoot you?’
‘He included a description.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘I agree.’
Bramall said, ‘We should talk.’
‘On the porch,’ Reacher said. ‘In case Billy comes back.’
Four eyes were better than two. They sat side by side in Billy’s wooden chairs, with Bramall gazing west of dead ahead, and Reacher gazing east. They talked into the void in front of them, not looking at each other, which made the conversation easier in some respects, and harder in others.
Bramall said, ‘Tell me what you know.’
Reacher said, ‘You’re retired.’
‘That’s what you know? Hardly relevant. Or even true. I’m pursuing a second career.’
‘I mean you’re retired FBI. Which means you don’t get to use FBI bullshit any more. As in, you don’t get to ask all the questions and then walk away. You get to give as well as take.’
‘How do you know I was FBI?’
‘A police detective in Rapid City told me. Name of Nakamura.’
‘She must have done some research.’
‘That’s what detectives do.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘I’m afraid I’m bound by a certain degree of confidentiality.’
Reacher said nothing.
Bramall said, ‘I don’t even know who you are.’
‘Jack Reacher. No middle name. Retired military police. Some of your guys came to us for training.’
‘And some of yours came to us.’
‘So we’re on an equal footing. Give and take, Mr Bramall.’
‘Rank?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘You know it does.’
‘Terminal at major.’
‘Unit?’
‘Mostly the 110th MP.’
‘Which was?’
‘Like the FBI, but with better haircuts.’
‘Is the military connection why you’re here?’
‘Should it be?’
‘I’m serious,’ Bramall said. ‘Clients like discretion. Most of the time I make my living by keeping things quiet. For all I know, you work for a website now.’
‘I don’t. Whatever that means.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘I don’t work.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Tell me about your client, Mr Bramall. Broad strokes, if you like. No names at this point. No identifying details.’
‘You can call me Terry.’
‘And you can call me Reacher. And you can quit stalling.’
‘My client is someone in the Chicago area worried about a family member.’
‘Worried why?’
‘No contact for a year and a half.’
‘What took you to Rapid City?’
‘Landline calls in old phone records.’
‘What brought you here?’
‘The same.’
‘Was the family with the missing member originally a Wyoming family?’
Bramall said nothing.