They would have to earn them.
He turned and walked back, keeping the guy in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t too worried about the first cold shot. It would miss. Snatched at, unaimed. The second shot might get complicated. And the third. And the rest. There were twenty rounds in an M14 magazine. He slowed down, to keep the guy in front of him. He intended to keep him there all the way. A shot low in the back would work just as well. The round would go through and through, and bury its smeared and bloody self deep in the grit ten feet away. It would never be found. How could it? The round that killed him would be a random singularity a quarter-inch wide in an uninhabited state bigger than some foreign nations.
No proof. That’s the whole beauty of it.
He slowed again, a wordless shepherding, a polite after you. The guy with the rifle walked on ahead. He could afford to. They were heading back to the first clearing they had seen. Where the young tree had been pushed down by the moose. It was a place like this. Their preferred location, presumably. Why else had they stopped there?
They walked a minute downhill, some places single file, as the trees thickened up again. Reacher stayed last in line. Where he wanted to be.
He scanned ahead, and picked a spot.
Just in case.
He said, ‘Let’s go back a different route. I already saw this view.’
Which was a tactical risk. They didn’t know he knew. Not yet. The time for making waves came later, not sooner. But it was a much smaller risk than arriving exactly where they wanted him. That was for damn sure. Open ground, that they knew, and he didn’t.
The guy with the rifle stopped and turned around.
He said, ‘I don’t think there is another route.’
‘Must be,’ Reacher said.
‘You wouldn’t want to get lost out here.’
‘I have a pretty good sense of direction. Most days I can tell which way is up.’
The guy took a step. Now he was maybe ten feet from Reacher, face to face on a narrow section of path, with the rifle held easy down by his side. The other two guys were closer, maybe five feet away, standing apart, so the guy with the rifle could see through the gap between. Underfoot were roots and rocks and gravel. Either side were trees.
As good a place as any.
Reacher took a step.
He said, ‘This land is not where Porterfield was found.’
‘You’re the big expert now?’ the guy with the rifle said.
‘Sheriff Connelly conducted a thorough investigation. At a minimum we can expect he searched every building on the land where the corpse was found. As it turns out the only building he searched was Porterfield’s. Therefore Porterfield was found on his own land. Which is about forty miles from here. With some kind of different ecology. They have bears there.’
The M14’s safety was a small manual catch tight in front of the trigger guard. Clicked back, it was set to safe. Flicked forward, it was set to fire.
Reacher watched it carefully.
So far it was set to safe.
But all four of the guy’s fingers were near it.
Reacher said, ‘Put the weapon down, and we’ll talk about it. It doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe we can all find a way out together.’
The guy said, ‘How?’
‘Put the weapon down, and we’ll talk about it.’
The guy didn’t.
Reacher said, ‘You need to look ahead. Stackley is your best friend today, but tomorrow he could be out of business. Rose’s sister is taking her to Chicago. A suburb, not the city. A nice place. She could make it a charitable foundation. You could go with her.’
‘We’re fine here.’
‘They have Billy in a cell,’ Reacher said. ‘They’re two steps from cutting you off.’
As soon as he said it he knew it was dumb. They reacted like Rose Sanderson had. Sudden breathing, and stiffened postures. The low hum of instant panic. Plus in their case some kind of instant urgency, about what to do next. As if the glittering payday they had been promised could be snatched away. Reacher saw in their faces his words cutting you off translate instantly into a howling voice in their heads screaming get more now now now.
The guy raised the rifle, right hand to left hand to right hand, a clumsy old thing, nearly twelve pounds in weight, nearly four feet long.
His trigger finger detoured ahead of the guard.
It flicked the safety catch forward.
Reacher crashed into the guy nearest him and used the bounce to hurl himself against a tree. Not really diving out of the way of a bullet, for such a thing was surely impossible, but it was easy enough to estimate a bullet’s likely future trajectory comparatively far ahead of time, and then avoid it, not forgetting that Newton’s Laws of Motion said the same bounce that helped him also helped the other guy, but in the opposite direction, towards the gun, action and reaction, which in his case got him killed. The rifle fired and the guy got hit and went down like he had walked into a clothesline. The roar of the shot died away to an immense cracking mountain echo, then a whisper, then nothing. The guy with the rifle stared. Reacher peeled off his tree and smacked him in the head and took his rifle away.
The guy staggered and dropped to his knees.
The third guy was frozen in place.
Reacher said, ‘Check your friend.’
But even from there he could see it was hopeless. The guy had fired high and the round had gone through his buddy’s throat. Just as good as a gut shot, from the point of view of the prevailing theory. Maybe even better. The bullet would fall to earth a hundred yards away. The soft tissue of the neck would be quickly consumed. Damaged vertebrae would be carried away and crushed, for the spinal cord inside. No proof at all.
The guy kneeling down looked up and shook his head. Reacher pointed the rifle at him, and then at where he wanted him to go. Which was next to the guy with the boots, who was struggling to his feet, steadying himself with a palm on the ground, then finally making it.
‘Lead on,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll go this way after all.’
They stumbled ahead of him, and he followed behind, carrying the rifle one-handed. They offered no resistance. They were completely passive, as if resigned to their fate. Maybe in shock. Maybe an addict thing. Maybe a cowboy thing.
They got back two minutes after Bramall and Mackenzie got back from checking out of the hotel. Rose Sanderson was out on the porch, greeting her sister. Bramall was over by his car, giving them space. The two guys and Reacher came out of the woods right in the middle. And stopped. Centre stage. No need to tell the story. It was all right there. Two guys, not three, both of them sheepish and beaten, driven from behind by Reacher with a rifle.
Rose Sanderson seemed to recognize the rifle. Her head turned. The cuff of her hood traversed like a periscope. She stared at the scene. At the two guys. At the rifle. At Reacher. He knew she was thinking. Like an infantry officer. She was running war games through her head, like a chess computer. Like a West Point graduate.
She found one that fit.