SEVENTEEN

THE PHONE WAS A CLUNKY OLD NOKIA. IT WAS ON THE KITCHEN counter. It hopped and buzzed and trilled the old Nokia tune that Reacher had heard a thousand times before, in bars, on buses, on the street. Dorothy snatched it up and answered. She said hello and then she listened, to what sounded like a fast slurred message of some kind, maybe a warning, and then she clicked off and dropped the phone like it was scalding hot.

‘That was Mr Vincent,’ she said. ‘Over at the motel.’

Reacher said, ‘And?’

‘Two men were there. They’re coming here. Right now.’

‘Who?’

‘We don’t know. Men we’ve never seen before.’ She opened the kitchen door and glanced down a hallway towards the front of the house. There was silence for a second and then Reacher heard the distant hiss of tyres on blacktop, the moan of a slowing engine, the sound of brakes, and then the crunch of a wheel on gravel, then another, then two more together, as a car turned in and bumped on to the track.

The woman said, ‘Get out of here. Please. They can’t know you’re here.’

‘We don’t know who they are.’

‘They’re Duncan people. Who else would they be? I can’t let them find you here. It’s more than my life is worth.’

Reacher said, ‘I can’t get out of here. They’re already on the track.’

‘Hide out back. Please. I’m begging you. They can’t find you here. I mean it.’ She stepped out to the hallway, ready to meet them head on at the front door. They were close, and moving fast. The gravel was loud. She said, ‘They might search. If they find you, tell them you snuck in the yard. Over the fields. Please. Tell them I didn’t know. Make them believe you. Tell them you’re nothing to do with me.’ Then she closed the door on him and was gone.

Angelo Mancini folded the sheet of handwritten directions and put it in his pocket. They were on some lumpy, bumpy, piece-of-shit farm track, heading for some broken-down old woebegone piece-of-shit farmhouse that belonged in a museum or a history book. The navigation screen showed nothing at all. Just white space. Roberto Cassano was at the wheel, hitting every pothole. What did he care? They were Hertz’s tyres, not his. Up ahead the front door opened and an old woman appeared on the step, clutching the jamb, like she would fall over if she let go.

Mancini said, ‘That’s a woman with a guilty secret, right there. Count on it.’

‘Looks that way,’ Cassano said.

Reacher checked the view across the yard at the back. Maybe sixty feet to the parked pick-up, maybe sixty more to the line of barns and sheds and coops and sties. He eased the door open. He turned back and checked the door to the front hallway. It was closed, but he could hear the car. It was crunching to a stop. Its doors were opening. He sensed the woman out there, staring at it, fearful and panicking. He shrugged and turned again to leave. His gaze passed over the kitchen table.

Not good.

They might search.

Tell them I didn’t know.

The table held the remains of two breakfasts.

Two oatmeal bowls, two plates all smeared with egg, two plates all full of toast crumbs, two spoons, two knives, two forks, two coffee mugs.

He put his toast plate on his egg plate, and he put his oatmeal bowl on his toast plate, and he put his coffee mug in his oatmeal bowl, and he put his knife and fork and spoon in his pocket. He picked up the teetering stack of china and carried it with him, across the kitchen, out the door. He held the stack one-handed and pulled the door shut after him and set off across the yard. The ground was beaten dirt mixed with crushed stone and matted with winter weeds. It was reasonably quiet underfoot. But the shakes in his arm were rattling the mug in the bowl. He was making a tinkling noise with every step he took. It sounded as loud as a fire alarm. He passed the pick-up truck. Headed onward to a barn. It was an old swaybacked thing made from thin tarred boards. It was in poor condition. It had twin doors. Hinged in the conventional way, not sliders. The hinges were shot and the doors were warped. He hooked a heel behind one of them and forced his butt into the gap and pushed with his hip and scraped his way inside, back first, then his shoulders, then the stack of crockery.

It was dark inside. No light in there, except blinding sparkles from chinks between the boards. They threw thin lines and spots of illumination across the floor. The floor was earth, soaked in old oil, matted with flakes of rust. The air smelled of creosote. He put the stack of china down. All around him was old machinery, uniformly brown and scaly with decay. He didn’t know what any of it was. There were tines and blades and wheels and metal all bent and welded into fantastical shapes. Farm stuff. Not his area of expertise. Not even close.

He stepped back to the leaning doors and peered through a crack and looked and listened, and drew up rules of engagement in his head. He couldn’t touch these guys, not unless he was prepared to go all the way and make them disappear for ever, and their car, and then force Vincent at the motel to hold his tongue, also for ever. Anything less than that, and it would all come back to Dorothy sooner or later. So prudence dictated he should stay quiet and out of sight, which he was prepared to do, maybe, just possibly, depending on what he heard from the house. One scream might be nerves or fright. Two screams, and he was going in there, come what may.

He heard nothing.

And he saw nothing, for ten long minutes. Then a guy stepped out the back door, into the yard, and another came out behind him. They walked ten paces and stopped and stood there side by side like they owned the place. They gazed left, gazed ahead, gazed right. City boys. They had shined shoes and wool pants and wool overcoats. They were both on the short side of six feet, both heavy in the chest and shoulders, both dark. Both regular little tough guys, like something out of a television show.

They tracked left a little, towards the pick-up truck. They checked the load bed. They opened a door and checked the cab. They moved on, towards the line of barns and sheds and coops and sties.

Directly towards Reacher.

They came pretty close.

Reacher rolled his shoulders and snapped his elbows and flapped his wrists and tried to work some feeling into his arms. He made a fist with his right hand, and then his left.

The two guys walked on, closer still.

They looked left. They looked right. They sniffed the air.

They stopped.

Shiny shoes, wool coats. City boys. They didn’t want to be wading through pigshit and chicken feathers and turning over piles of old crap. They looked at each other and then the one on the right turned back to the house and called out, ‘Hey, old lady, get your fat ass out here right now.’

Forty yards away, Dorothy stepped out the door. She paused a beat and then walked towards the two guys, slow and hesitant. The two guys walked back towards her, just as slow. They all met near the pick-up truck. The guy on the left stood still. The guy on the right caught Dorothy by the upper arm with one hand and used the other to take a pistol out from under his coat. A shoulder holster. The gun was some kind of a nickel-plated semi-automatic. Or stainless steel. Reacher was too far away to make out the brand. Maybe a Colt. Or maybe a copy. The guy raised it across his body and laid its muzzle against Dorothy’s temple. He held the gun flat, like a punk in a movie. His thumb and three fingers were wrapped tight around the grip. The fourth finger was on the trigger. Dorothy flinched away. The guy hauled on her arm and pulled her back.

He called out, ‘Reacher? Is that your name? You there? You hiding somewhere? You listening to me? I’m going to count to three. Then you come on out. If you don’t, I’m going to shoot the old cow. I’ve got a gun to her head. Tell him, grandma.’

Dorothy said, ‘There’s no one here.’

The yard went quiet. Three people, all alone in a thousand acres.

Reacher stood still, right where he was, on his own in the dark.

He saw Dorothy close her eyes.

The guy with the gun said, ‘One.’

Reacher stood still.

The guy said, ‘Two.’

Reacher stood still.

The guy said, ‘Three.’