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“There’s a cop outside her door,” Reacher said.
“She told me that,” Ya
“What exactly are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I guess I need to understand where you’re coming from first,” Ya
Reacher watched her watching him. A woman, a journalist.
“Partly for Rosemary,” he said.
“But?”
“Mostly for the puppet master. He’s sitting there thinking he’s as smart as a whip. I don’t like that. Never have. Makes me want to show him what smart really is.”
“Like a challenge?”
“He had a girl killed, Ya
“You hardly knew her.”
“That doesn’t make her any less i
“OK.”
“OK what?”
“NBC will spring for Franklin. Then we’ll see where that takes us.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said. “I appreciate it.”
“You should.”
“I apologize again. For scaring you.”
“I nearly died of fright.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Reacher said. “I need to borrow your car.”
“My car?”
“Your car.”
“What for?”
“To sleep in and then to go to Kentucky in.”
“What’s in Kentucky?”
“Part of the puzzle.”
Ya
“I’m a careful driver.”
“I’d be aiding and abetting a fugitive criminal.”
“I’m not a criminal,” Reacher said. “A criminal is someone who has been convicted of a crime after a trial. Therefore I’m not a fugitive, either. I haven’t been arrested or charged. I’m a suspect, that’s all.”
“I can’t lend you my car after ru
“You could say you didn’t recognize me. It’s a sketch, not a photograph. Maybe it isn’t totally accurate.”
“Your hair is different.”
“There you go. I had it cut this morning.”
“But I would recognize your name. I wouldn’t lend my car to a stranger without at least knowing his name, would I?”
“Maybe I gave you a false name. You met a guy with a different name who didn’t look much like the sketch, that’s all.”
“What name?”
“Joe Gordon,” Reacher said.
“Who’s he?”
“Yankees’ second baseman in 1940. They finished third. Not Joe’s fault. He had a decent career. He played exactly one thousand games and got exactly one thousand hits.”
“You know a lot.”
“I’ll know more tomorrow if you lend me your car.”
“How would I get home tonight?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“Then you’ll know where I live.”
“I already know where you live. I checked your registration. To make sure it was your car.”
Ya
“Don’t worry,” Reacher said. “If I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be hurt, don’t you think?”
She said nothing.
“I’m a careful driver,” he said again. “I’ll get you home safe.”
“I’ll call a cab,” she said. “Better for you that way. The roads are quiet now and this is a distinctive car. The cops know it’s mine. They stop me all the time. They claim I’m speeding but really they want an autograph or they want to look down my shirt.”
She used her phone again and told a driver to meet her inside the garage. Then she climbed out of the car and left the motor ru
“Go park in a dark corner,” she said. “Safer for you if you don’t leave before the morning rush.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said.
“And do it now,” she said. “Your face has been all over the news and the cab driver will have been watching. At least I hope he was watching. I need the ratings.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said again.
A
Reacher stayed in A
He woke himself up five hours later, before dawn, and set out on the drive south to Kentucky. He saw three cop cars before he passed the city limits. But they didn’t pay him any attention. They were too busy hunting Jack Reacher to waste time harassing a cute news anchor.
CHAPTER 12
Dawn happened somewhere way over in the east about an hour into the drive. The sky changed from black to gray to purple and then low orange sunlight came up over the horizon. Reacher switched his headlights off. He didn’t like to run with lights after daybreak. Just a subliminal thing, for the State Troopers camped out on the shoulders. Lights after dawn suggested all kinds of things, like fast through-the-night escapes from trouble hundreds of miles behind. The Mustang was already provocative enough. It was loud and aggressive and it was the kind of car that gets stolen a lot.
But the troopers that Reacher saw stayed put on the shoulder. He kept the car at a nothing-to-hide seventy miles an hour and touched the CD button on the dash. Got a blast of mid-period Sheryl Crow in return, which he didn’t mind at all. He stayed with it. Every day is a winding road, Sheryl told him. I know, he thought. Tell me about it.
He crossed the Ohio River on a long iron trestle with the sun low on his left. For a moment it turned the slow water into molten gold. Light reflected up at him from below the horizontal and made the inside of the car u
He kept south on a county road and waited for the Blackford River. According to A
But it turned out that the firing range was the triangle. Three miles out Reacher saw a wire fence on the left shoulder of the road that started directly after he crossed the Blackford on a bridge. The fence ran all the way to the next intersection and had Keep Out Live Gunfire signs on every fourth post. Then it turned a sixty-degree angle and ran three more miles north and east. Reacher followed it and where it met the Blackford again he found a gate and a gravel clearing and a complex of low huts. The gate was chained. It was hung with a hand-painted sign that read: Open 8 A.M. Until Dark.
He checked his watch. He was a half hour too early. On the other side of the road was an aluminum coach diner fronted by a gravel lot. He pulled in and stopped the Mustang right by the diner’s door. He was hungry. The Marriott’s room-service steak seemed like a long time ago.