“Why was he tailing us?” Neagley said.

“We’ll work that out later,” Reacher said. “When we’re a long way from here.”

“Why did you hit him so hard?”

“I was upset about the dog.”

“This guy didn’t do that.”

“I know that now.”

Neagley dug through the guy’s pockets. Came out with a leather ID folder. There was a chrome-plated badge pinned inside it, opposite a laminated card behind a milky plastic window.

“His name is Thomas Brant,” she said. “He’s an LA County deputy.”

“This is Orange County,” O’Donnell said. “He’s outside of his jurisdiction. As he was on Sunset and in Santa Monica.”

“Think that will help us?”

“Not very much.”

Reacher said, “Let’s get him comfortable and get the hell out of here.”

O’Donnell took Brant’s feet and Reacher took his shoulders and they piled him into the rear seat of his car. They stretched him out and arranged him and left him in what medics call the recovery position, on his side, one leg drawn up, able to breathe, unlikely to choke. The Crown Vic was spacious. The engine was off and there was plenty of fresh air coming in through the broken window.

“He’ll be OK,” O’Donnell said.

“He’ll have to be,” Reacher said.

They closed the door on him and turned back to O’Donnell’s rental. It was still right there in the middle of the street, three doors open, engine still running. Reacher got in the back. O’Donnell drove. Neagley sat next to him. The polite voice inside the GPS set about guiding them back toward the freeway.

“We should return this car,” Neagley said. “Right now. And then my Mustang. He’ll have gotten both the plate numbers.”

“And then do what for transport?” Reacher asked.

“Your turn to rent something.”

“I don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Then we’ll have to take cabs. We have to break the link.”

“That means changing hotels, too.”

“So be it.”

The GPS wouldn’t allow adjustment on the fly. A liability issue. O’Donnell pulled over and stopped and altered the destination from the Beverly Wilshire to the Hertz lot at LAX. The unit took the change in its stride. There was a second’s delay while a Calculating Route bar spooled up and then the patient voice came back and told O’Donnell to turn around and head west instead of east, toward the 405 instead of the 5. Traffic was OK through the subdivisions and heavy on the freeway. Progress was slow.

“Tell me about yesterday,” Reacher said to Neagley.

“What about it?”

“What you did.”

“I flew into LAX and rented the car. Drove to the hotel on Wilshire. Checked in. Worked for an hour. Then I drove up to the Denny’s on Sunset. Waited for you.”

“You must have been tailed all the way from the airport.”

“Clearly. The question is, why?”

“No, that’s the second question. The first question is, how? Who knew when and where you were coming in?”

“The cop, obviously. He put a flag against my name and Homeland Security tipped him off as soon as I bought my ticket.”

“OK, why?”

“He’s working on Franz. LA County deputies. I’m a known associate.”

“We all are.”

“I was the first to arrive.”

“So are we suspects?”

“Maybe. In the absence of any others.”

“How stupid are they?”

“They’re about normal. Even we looked at known associates if we struck out everywhere else.”

Reacher said, “You do not mess with the special investigators.”

“Correct,” Neagley said. “But we just messed with the LA County deputies. Big time. I hope they don’t have a similar slogan.”

“You can bet your ass they do.”

LAX was a gigantic, sprawling mess. Like every airport Reacher had ever seen it was permanently half-finished. O’Donnell threaded through construction zones and perimeter roads and made it to the car rental returns. The different organizations were all lined up, the red one, the green one, the blue one, and finally the Hertz yellow. O’Donnell parked on the end of a long nose-to-tail line and a guy in a company jacket rushed up and scanned a barcode in the rear window with a handheld reader. That was it, vehicle returned, rental over. Chain broken.

“Now what?” O’Donnell said.

Neagley said, “Now we take the shuttle bus to the terminal and we find a cab. Then we check out of the hotel and the two of us come back here with my Mustang. Reacher can find a new hotel and start work on those numbers. OK?”

But Reacher didn’t reply. He was staring across the lot, through the rental office’s plate glass windows. At the line of people inside.

He was smiling. “What?” Neagley said. “Reacher, what?” “In there,” Reacher said. “Fourth in line. See her?” “Who?” “Small woman, dark hair? I’m pretty sure that’s Karla Dixon.”

Reacher and Neagley and O’Donnell hurried across the lot, getting surer with every step. By the time they were ten feet from the office windows they were absolutely certain. It was Karla Dixon. She was unmistakable. Dark and comparatively small, a happy woman who thought the worst of people. She was right there, now third in line. Her body language said she was simultaneously impatient with and resigned to the wait. As always she looked relaxed but never quite still, always burning energy, always giving the impression that twenty-four hours in the day were not enough for her. She was thinner than Reacher remembered. She was dressed in tight black jeans and a black leather jacket. Her thick black hair was cut short. She had a black leather Tumi roll-on next to her and a black leather briefcase slung across her shoulder.

Then as if she felt their gazes on her back she turned around and looked straight at them, nothing much in her face, as if she had last seen them minutes ago instead of years ago. She smiled a brief smile. The smile was a little sad, as if she already knew what was happening. Then she jerked her head at the clerks behind the counter as if to say, I’ll be right there but you know how it is with civilians. Reacher pointed at himself and Neagley and O’Donnell and held up four fingers and mouthed, Get a four-seat car. Dixon nodded again and turned back to wait.

Neagley said, “This is kind of biblical. People keep coming back to life.”

“Nothing biblical about it,” Reacher said. “Our assumptions were wrong, is all.”

A fourth clerk came out of a back office and took up station behind the counter. Dixon went from being third in line to being served within about thirty seconds. Reacher saw the pink flash of a New York driver’s license and the platinum flash of a credit card changing hands. The clerk typed and Dixon signed a bunch of stuff and then received a fat yellow packet and a key. She hoisted her briefcase and grabbed her roll-on and headed for the exit. She stepped out to the sidewalk. She stood in front of Reacher and Neagley and O’Donnell and looked at each of them in turn with a level, serious gaze. Said, “Sorry I’m late to the party. But then, it’s not really much of a party, is it?”

“What do you know so far?” Reacher asked her.

Dixon said, “I only just got your messages. I didn’t want to wait around in New York for a direct flight. I wanted to be on the move. First flight out was through Las Vegas. I had a two-hour layover there. So I made some calls and did some running around. Some checking. And I found out that Sanchez and Orozco are missing. It seems that about three weeks ago they just vanished off the face of the earth.”