He stepped out of the shadows and walked ahead through the evening gloom. His heels were loud on the concrete. Behind him Bramall and Mackenzie caught up and closed the gap. They stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street at an angle. They headed straight for the car.
The three guys moved, flowing outward to meet them, bunching up, one guy ahead and two behind, like a mirror image. Reacher was wrestling with the brawler’s eternal dilemma, which was why not just take out the point man immediately? A surprise head-butt. Don’t even stop walking.
Often the smart play.
But not always.
Reacher stopped and the cowboys stopped and they ended up about eight feet apart. That close Reacher thought they looked like three useful characters. Two could have been in their early forties, and the third could have been ten years younger. He was the point man. He had the lizard boots.
‘Let me guess,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re here to give us a message. That’s fine. Everyone has the right to be heard. We’ll give you thirty seconds. Start now, if you like. Speak clearly. Translate any local words or phrases.’
The guy with the lizard boots said, ‘The message is go back where you came from. Ain’t nothing for you here.’
Reacher shook his head.
‘That can’t be right,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you heard the message correctly? Generally speaking, folks out here like to welcome a stranger.’
The guy said, ‘I got the message right.’
Nothing more.
Reacher said, ‘Tell me when we get to the part where you say you’ll kick our ass if we don’t get going.’
The guy didn’t answer.
Reacher watched him. Watched all of them. They weren’t backing off. But they weren’t coming on forward either. They were static. They were like a rookie squad when the plan stops working. Something had derailed them. Not Mackenzie. They were looking at her way more than they should, in the middle of a tense get-out-of-town showdown, but the looking was pure animal biology. Not recognition. Mostly it showed in their mouths.
The guy with the boots said, ‘No one’s ass needs to get kicked.’
‘I agree,’ Reacher said. ‘Least of all mine.’
‘But you should give it up.’
‘Here’s a counter-offer,’ Reacher said. ‘You don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you.’
The guy nodded. Not like he agreed, but like he understood the sentence. Reacher said, ‘Look, kid,’ and beckoned the guy close, as if for a private word, like two world leaders sharing a confidence.
Reacher put his hand on the guy’s elbow. A friendly gesture, inclusive, intimate, maybe even conspiratorial.
He squeezed.
He whispered, ‘Tell whoever sent you this won’t be like the FBI or the DEA or the ATF. Tell whoever sent you this time it’s the U.S. Army.’
The guy reacted. Reacher felt it in his elbow. Then he let him go, and the eight-foot gap opened up again. Reacher stood square on and up straight. His old professional pose. Sooner or later everyone’s thoughts turned to violence. Better to deal with that upfront. Better to say, you have got to be kidding me. So he stood chin up, his full height, shoulders back, hands loose, not a circus freak, but a little bigger all around than a normal big guy, enough so they noticed. Plus the eyes, which he found most people liked, except he could blink and come back different, like changing the channel, from a happy show to some bleak documentary about prehistoric survival a million years ago.
Then suddenly he changed the channel again and smiled and nodded, in a shared, self-deprecating kind of a way, as if obviously two guys such as them could only be kidding around, and the other four would catch on eventually.
Always offer the other guy a graceful exit.
The guy in the boots took it. He smiled back, like they were just two old boys horsing around, which could happen any time, and especially in the presence of such a pretty lady. Then he turned around and led his guys away. Reacher crossed to the opposite sidewalk and watched them around the corner. They climbed in a huge crew-cab pick-up parked head-in by a fence. It backed out and took off. It turned left at the first four-way, and was lost to sight.
‘See?’ Mackenzie said. ‘It didn’t have to be a fight.’
Reacher said nothing. He stared at her. Then he stared at the corner, where the pick-up had turned.
Something wrong.
With the wrong thing.
He said to Bramall, ‘Did you take interrogation classes with us?’
Bramall said, ‘Only the semester with the rubber hoses.’
‘We were taught the art of interrogation is mostly about listening. His language was weird. His choice of phrase. At the end he said we should give it up. What did that mean? Give what up?’
‘Our quest,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Our search for Rose. Obviously. I mean, to give something up, you have to be doing it in the first place, and that’s about all we’ve been doing. There’s nothing else we could give up.’
‘What category of person would care either way about our search for Rose?’
‘All kinds. We could be treading on a lot of different toes.’
‘What category of person might care most of all?’
Mackenzie didn’t answer.
Tell whoever sent you.
In his mind Reacher heard General Simpson’s voice, on the phone from West Point: She might not want to be found.
Then he thought no, that can’t be right.
THIRTY
REACHER SAID, ‘AT the beginning the guy said there’s nothing for us here. Then at the end he said the thing about giving it up. It was a politely threatening opening statement, and a politely threatening closing statement. But in the middle he declined to fight. I think for one particular reason. He was unsettled. There was a new factor he hadn’t been briefed on. He was still getting used to it. He had been sent to kick ass, but all of a sudden he realized we were the kind of people who might kick back. He hadn’t been warned about that. Which is weird, because every question we ever asked in this town, we asked it standing up. We weren’t hiding. Who would send a guy with a message without giving him our descriptions?’
Mackenzie said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe someone who never saw us standing up. Maybe someone who never really saw us at all, except as vague shapes slumped down in a car, as she speeded past on the dirt road. Hypothetically. It would be the car she remembered, not us. A black Toyota Land Cruiser, with Illinois plates. Maybe she asked three loyal friends to track it down, and run off whoever was in it. Because she doesn’t want to be found.’
Mackenzie said, ‘Do you think that’s who they were?’
‘I did for a moment. I told him the U.S. Army was coming, and he reacted. At first I thought he was impressed. Then later I thought no, his reaction might be because the person who sent him was also U.S. Army. He might have been surprised about the weird connection. He might not have known what it meant. He might have wanted to get away and report back.’