Mackenzie got out of the Toyota.
Bramall moved to do the same, but Reacher put a hand on his shoulder.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘Your client. She’s got a tough day ahead.’
‘You know what’s going to happen?’
‘Unfortunately,’ Reacher said. ‘It’s the only thing that fits.’
But Mackenzie was already turned around, miming impatience, so Bramall slid out to join her, followed by Reacher, three steps behind. From the crew-cab came the guy with the lizard boots, and his two companions. Six people altogether, in two groups of three, all of them eyeing the no-man’s-land between their radiator grilles, their postures subject to ancient instincts. They met in the middle, five polite feet apart, safely longer than a dagger’s thrust, another ancient instinct.
The guy in the boots said, ‘The message hasn’t changed.’
‘I thought about that,’ Reacher said. ‘Seemed to me, if you boiled it right down, the main takeaway from the message was we should go back where we came from. Which makes it more of a suggestion, don’t you think? Call it a request, to assume good manners on your part. And hey, plenty of requests are perfectly reasonable. We all know that. I would like to request a million dollars and a dinner date with Miss Wyoming. But the point of a request is that it can be declined. Respectfully, with great regret, and so on. But declined none the less. Which is what is happening here.’
‘Unacceptable.’
‘Get used to it. We’re going to stick around, and if any of the actual landowners out here have a problem with it, I’m sure the state has laws that would allow them to seek a remedy.’
The guy said, ‘Right now we’re being nice about it.’
‘My advice, you should keep on being nice about it. Even if we lose, we’ll do some damage. Two of you will go to the hospital. Best case. But from what I’ve seen, I have to say, the best case looks unlikely. I don’t think we’ll lose. I think all three of you will go to the hospital.’
The guy paused a beat.
Then he said, ‘OK, it was a request.’
Reacher said, ‘I’m glad we got that cleared up.’
‘There’s nothing for you here.’
‘Who made the request?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. This whole thing is about privacy. You don’t get it, do you?’
Reacher said, ‘You got a phone?’
‘Who do you want to call?’
‘Take a picture. Video would be better. You got video on your phone?’
The guy said, ‘I guess.’
‘All we’ll do is say our names. Maybe add a line of background. On your phone. Then you can take it back and show it to whoever it was who made the request. That would be fair to all concerned.’
‘You might follow us there.’
‘We promise we won’t.’
‘Why would we trust you?’
‘You live in there somewhere. We know that. By now it’s a onein-five chance. We’ll find you sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.’
The guy didn’t answer.
‘But I’d rather do it this way,’ Reacher said. ‘This way is better.’
The guy didn’t answer. But eventually he nodded. One of the back-row guys stepped up with a phone. He held it horizontal between splayed fingers, and crossed his eyes, and said, ‘Go.’
Mackenzie said, ‘Jane Mackenzie.’
Bramall said, ‘Terry Bramall, private detective from Chicago.’
Reacher said, ‘Jack Reacher, ex-army, once upon a time CO of the 110th MP.’
The back-row guy lowered the phone.
Reacher said, ‘We’ll wait here.’
‘Could be a couple hours,’ the guy with the boots said. ‘You got water?’
The other back-row guy carried bottles of water from their truck to the Toyota. Then they backed up and turned around and drove away. The dust cloud picked up behind them, turning, rising, falling, hanging in the air like evidence, showing the way they had gone, like a whoosh in a cartoon strip.
Bramall said, ‘Do we follow?’
‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘A professional courtesy. Not required, but expected.’
Mackenzie said, ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘I know two things,’ Reacher said. ‘She lives here, and no one recognizes you.’
THIRTY-TWO
BRAMALL BACKED UP to where the rock ledge petered out and the ditch filled in. He parked on the shoulder, a little tilted, facing west. Reacher drank a bottle of donated water, and walked back to the ledge, and sat in the sun. The last of summer. No one talked. Mostly Bramall sat in the car, nothing on his face, a man life had taught to be patient. Mostly Mackenzie stood alone, as far from the car as Reacher, but in the other direction. High overhead ravens circled, and looked, and thought not yet, and soared away.
In the end it was less than two hours. It was ninety-three minutes, which was an hour and a half and change. Far in the distance a smudge of dust kicked up, with a black dot in front of it, which grew larger, until they could see who it was. It was the three guys in their crew-cab. Back again. Like before, they stopped fifty feet out, and they climbed down, and they walked forward.
Reacher and Bramall and Mackenzie went to meet them. They all stopped, six people, groups of three, five polite feet apart.
The guy in the boots said, ‘Just Mrs Mackenzie.’
Reacher waited.
Mackenzie said, ‘No, all three of us.’
The guy said nothing.
Reacher waited again. For their plan B. He knew they had one. Stupid to come without.
The guy said, ‘OK.’
He turned and walked back and the three of them climbed in their crew-cab again. Bramall and Mackenzie and Reacher climbed in the Toyota. The crew-cab backed up and turned, and drove away west. Bramall followed, hanging back, drifting left, drifting right, trying to miss the worst of the dust.
The crew-cab turned in on the second track on the right. Bramall followed. The track was wide, but the surface was bad. Roots, rocks, gravel. Up ahead the crew-cab bucked and bounced. Its tyres chirped and slid on stones worn smooth by time. There were trees left and right, mostly conifers, some gnarled by the wind, some stately. There were distant blazes of gold, mostly in the gulches and the gullies, where the aspen was happiest. The track went left and right, around trees, around rocks the size of cars, some of them piled high on top of each other, some of them overhanging.