Reacher darted left, and two things happened. The left-hand guy reared up backward, because he was surprised, and the right-hand guy speeded up forward, to close the gap, because he was in full-on hunting mode, and his prey was getting away.
So Reacher spun back instantly, and the right-hand guy ran full speed straight into his scything elbow, whereupon Reacher turned once more, and found he had half a second to spare, because the left-hand guy was taking some major amount of time to get his rearing-up-backward momentum converted into forward motion again. Which gave Reacher space to pick his spot. He kicked the guy in the knee, which dropped him face down on the gravel, bang, and then Reacher kicked him in the head, but left-footed, which was his weaker side. Normal for right-handed people. And appropriate. No need to go too far. Being dumb wasn’t a capital crime. Wasn’t a crime at all, in fact. Merely a handicap.
He breathed out.
Undefeated.
From the sidewalk Jimmy Rat said, ‘Feel better now?’
Reacher said, ‘A little.’
‘You could work for me, if you want.’
‘I don’t want.’
‘Is it woman trouble?’
Reacher didn’t answer. Instead he squeezed between adjacent handlebars, and he swung his leg over, and he sat down on Jimmy Rat’s bike. He pushed back in the saddle and got comfortable and put his foot up on a peg.
‘Hey,’ Jimmy Rat said. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t sit on another rider’s motorcycle. It’s disrespectful. It’s a thing, man.’
‘How big of a thing?’
‘It’s rule one.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
Jimmy Rat said nothing.
Reacher said, ‘Answer my question and I’m out of here.’
‘What question?’
‘I want a place and a name in South Dakota, where you got that ring.’
No answer.
Reacher said, ‘I’m happy to sit here all night. Right now there are no witnesses. But sooner or later someone will come along. They’ll see me sitting on your bike. With you doing nothing about it. Like a pussy, not a rat. You’ll be finished.’
Jimmy Rat glanced all around.
He said, ‘This is not a guy you want to meet.’
‘Neither were you,’ Reacher said. ‘But here I am anyway.’
There was the sound of traffic, one block over. Maybe a pick-up truck, rolling slow. Jimmy Rat watched the corner. Would it turn in? It didn’t. It hissed away into the distance, and silence came back.
Reacher waited.
There was the sound of another car, a block the other way.
Jimmy Rat said, ‘He operates out of a laundromat in Rapid City. His name is Arthur Scorpio.’
The car on the parallel block was slowing. Preparing to turn towards them. It was thirty seconds from the corner. Reacher got off the bike, and squeezed back between the handlebars again, to the sidewalk. Jimmy Rat went the other way, around the bikes, into the shadows behind the building. Maybe in through the rear door.
The car showed up at the corner, right on time. It was the county cop. Back again.
FIVE
THE COP PAUSED a beat, with his foot on the brake, and then he hauled on the wheel and stopped on the same kerb he had used before. He buzzed his window down and surveyed the scene. Six men, all horizontal, some of them moving. Plus Reacher on the sidewalk, standing straight.
The cop said, ‘Sir, please approach the vehicle.’
Reacher stepped over.
The cop said, ‘Congratulations.’
‘On what?’
‘What you did here.’
‘No, this was all self-inflicted. I was just a spectator. They had some kind of a big falling out. I think someone sat on the wrong motorcycle.’
‘That’s your story?’
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘Just theoretically, would I be expected to?’
‘The pawnbroker’s lawyer says it would be better for us all if you did.’
‘I want you out of the county.’
‘Works for me. I’m planning on the first bus.’
‘Not fast enough.’
‘Want me to steal a motorbike?’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘You want me gone that bad?’
‘It would save a lot of paperwork. For both of us.’
‘Where would you drive me?’
‘I’m guessing they answered your question. So now you’re headed west. The county line out there is a straight shot to the I-90 on-ramp. Plenty of friendly folks. You’ll get a ride.’
So Reacher climbed in, and forty uneventful minutes later he climbed out again, in the middle of nowhere, on a dark two-lane road, next to a sign that said he was leaving one county and entering the next. He waved goodbye to the cop, and walked forward, a hundred yards, two hundred, and then he stopped and looked back. The cop flashed his lights and backed up and turned and drove away. Reacher watched his tail lights disappear, and then he moved on, to a spot where the shoulder widened a little. He waited there. Ahead of him was about sixty miles of two-lane, and then I-90. Which led west through Minnesota, into South Dakota, through Sioux Falls, and all the way to Rapid City.
And onward. All the way to Seattle, if he wanted.
At that moment, more than fifteen hundred miles away, Michelle Chang was eating a delivery pizza at her kitchen table. With a glass of water, not wine. Not a celebration. Just calories. She had been busy all afternoon, catching up on a week’s worth of missed chores. She was tired, and partly happy to be on her own, and partly not. She figured Reacher would have gone to Chicago next. Plenty of options from there. She missed him. But it wouldn’t have worked. She knew that. She knew it as clearly as she had ever known anything.
Also at that moment, nearly seven hundred miles away, a phone was ringing on a desk in the Rapid City Police Department’s Crimes Against Property unit. It was answered by a detective named Gloria Nakamura. She was small and dark and three years in. No longer a rookie, but not yet a veteran. She was an hour away from the end of her watch. She said, ‘Property, Nakamura.’
It was a tech from Computer Crimes, doing her a favour. He said, ‘My guy at the phone company called me. Someone named Jimmy on a Wisconsin number just left a voice mail for Arthur Scorpio. On his personal cell. Some kind of warning.’
Nakamura said, ‘What kind?’
‘I’ll email it to you.’