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"Want a ride?" the driver called.
Pe
"I don't know," he said.
"Get in out of the rain," the driver said. "A vet like you knows better than to be walking in the rain."
Pe
"How do you know I'm a vet?" he asked.
"The way you walk," the driver said. "And your age, and the way you look. Guy your age looking like you look and walking in the rain didn't beat the draft for college, that's for damn sure."
Pe
"No, I didn't," he said. "I did a jungle tour."
"So let me give you a ride," the driver said. "A favor, one soldier to another. Consider it a veteran's benefit."
"Okay," Pe
"Where you headed?" the driver asked.
"I don't know," Pe
"Okay, north it is," the driver said. "I'm Jack Reacher. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
Pe
"You got a name?" the guy called Reacher asked.
Pe
"I don't know," he said.
Reacher put the car in drive and glanced over his shoulder. Eased back into the traffic stream. Clicked the switch and locked the doors.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"Do?" Pe
"You're ru
"You going to turn me in?"
"I'm a military cop," Reacher said. "You done anything to hurt the army?"
"The army?" Pe
"What did you do to the civilians?" Reacher asked. "You're going to turn me in," Pe
Pe
"I burned my house," he said. "Near Mojave. I worked seventeen years and got ca
"Near Mojave?" Reacher said. "They would. They don't like fires down there."
Pe
"There are roadblocks all around here," Reacher said. "I came through one south of the city."
"For me?" Pe
"Could be," Reacher said. "They don't like fires down there." "You going to turn me in?"
Reacher looked at him again, hard and silent. "Is that all you did?"
Pe
There was silence for a beat. Just the sound of the wet pavement under the tires.
"I don't have a problem with it," Reacher said. "A guy does a jungle tour, works seventeen years and gets ca
"So what should I do?"
"Start over, someplace else."
"They'll find me," Pe
"You're already thinking about changing your name," Reacher said.
Pe
"How?"
Reacher was quiet another beat, thinking hard. "Classic way is find some cemetery, find a kid who died as a child, get a copy of the birth certificate, start from there. Get a social security number, a passport, credit cards, and you're a new person."
Pe
"There are other ways," Reacher said.
"Like what?"
"Find some guy who's already created false ID for himself, and take it away from him."
Pe
"Maybe you don't need to do that. Maybe I already did it for you."
"You got false ID?"
"Not me," Reacher said. "Guy I was looking for."
"What guy?"
Reacher drove one-handed and pulled a sheaf of official paper from his inside jacket pocket.
"Arrest warrant," he said. "Army liaison officer at a weapons plant outside of Fresno, peddling blueprints. Turns out to have three separate sets of ID, all perfect, all completely backed up with everything from elementary school onward. Which makes it likely they're Soviet, which means they can't be beat. I'm on my way back from talking to him right now. He was ru
Traffic was slowing ahead. There was red glare visible through the streaming windshield. Flashing blue lights. Yellow flashlight beams waving, side to side.
"Roadblock," Reacher said.
"So can I use this guy's ID?" Pe
"Sure you can," Reacher said. "Hop out and get it. Bring the wallet from the jacket in the trunk."
He slowed and stopped on the shoulder. Pe
"It's all in there," Reacher said. "Everything anybody needs."
Pe
"So put it in your pocket," Reacher said.
Pe
"Now sit still," he said quietly.
He leaned over and snapped the cuffs on Pe
They were two cars away from the checkpoint. Three highway patrolmen in rain capes were directing traffic into a corral formed by parked cruisers. Their light bars were flashing bright in the shiny dark.
"What?" Pe
Reacher said nothing. Just stopped where the cop told him and wound his window down. The night air blew in, cold and wet. The cop bent down. Reacher handed him his military ID. The cop played his flashlight over it and handed it back.
"Who's your passenger?" he asked.
"My prisoner," Reacher said. He handed over the arrest warrant. "He got ID?" the cop asked.
Reacher leaned over and slipped the wallet out from inside Pe
"Captain Reacher of the military police," the first cop said.
The second cop wrote it down.
"With a prisoner name of Edward Hendricks," the first cop said. The second cop wrote it down.
"Thank you, sir," the first cop said. "You drive safe, now."
Reacher eased out from between the cruisers. Accelerated away into the rain. A mile later, he stopped again on the shoulder. Leaned over and unlocked Pe
"I thought you were going to turn me in," he said.
Reacher shook his head. "Looked better for me that way. I wanted a prisoner in the car for everybody to see."
Reacher handed the wallet back.
"Keep it," he said.
"Really?"
"Edward Hendricks," Reacher said. "That's who you are now. It's clean ID, and it'll work. Think of it like a veteran's benefit. One soldier to another."