Reacher said, ‘Your parents were very economical people, weren’t they?’

‘Family tradition.’

‘Anyway, Lester, I need to get going now.’

The guy made no move.

Reacher said, ‘Two choices, Lester. Roll forward or backward.’

The guy did neither thing. Reacher saw the wheels turning in his head. A slow process. But the guy got there in the end. He stared. A big man. A broken nose. He said very loudly, ‘You’re the person we’re looking for. Aren’t you?’

‘No point asking me. I have no idea who you’re looking for.’

‘Get in the car.’

‘Why?’

‘I need to take you into custody.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘You think the security of our nation is a joke?’

‘I think involving people like you in it is.’

Very loudly.

Reacher was suddenly aware of the phone, still in the guy’s hand.

Who was he on the phone to?

The diner?

Maybe the guy wasn’t so dumb after all.

FIFTY-TWO

REACHER WRENCHED THE car door open and tore the phone out of the guy’s hand and hurled it high in the air, right over the roof of the bar. Then he grabbed the guy by the scruff of his sweater and hauled him out of his seat and half dragged and half ran him back the way he had come, ten feet, twenty, and then he spun him around like a discus thrower and launched him towards the back wall of the cocktail lounge. Then he sprinted back and jammed himself into the guy’s seat and slammed the lever into gear and stamped on the gas. Gravel sprayed all over the place and the car shot forward and he stamped on the brake and more or less fell out the door and danced around the trunk of Goodman’s car to the driver’s door. He blipped the fob and tore the door open and started up and backed away from the back wall of the bar and swung the wheel hard.

The sand-coloured Crown Vic was still moving. He had left it in gear. He overtook it and turned tight around its hood and its slow roll caught him with a soft low-speed impact, its front end against his rear quarter. He fishtailed free and drove on through the gap between the bar and the next establishment in line. He glanced left and saw the sandy-haired guy limping as fast as he could after something, either Goodman’s car or his own, he wasn’t sure. After that last glimpse he looked away from the guy and focused forward and drove through the front lot and bounced over the camber of the main drag and squeezed through a gap into the back lots on the other side of the road.

Then he slowed down and took a breath and got straightened up and edged forward until he was lined up with the next gap south and had a distant view of the motel and the diner together.

No sign of Sorenson.

No action at the diner.

The blue Crown Vic was still parked. Still quiet. No one was rushing towards it. The diner door stayed resolutely closed. There was no commotion visible through the windows.

Reacher watched for a whole minute, until he was convinced.

The State Department guy had not been on the phone to the diner.

So then he watched the motel, and three minutes later Sorenson’s room door opened and she stepped out. She was in the same pant suit with the new shirt under it. She had her old shirt balled up in the new shirt’s wrapper. She was taking her laundry home. A different approach. Because she had a home.

She stood for a second on the walkway outside her room, glancing left and right, head high, like a woman looking for a taxicab from a city sidewalk. Then she set off north towards the bar where he had said the car was parked. He turned the wheel and eased out through the gap and crunched through the front lot and bumped over the road again and swooped around and braked to a stop right next to her. He leaned over and opened her door and she slid into her seat like it was a manoeuvre they had rehearsed every day of their lives.

He said, ‘I had to move. I had a little trouble with your Mr Lester from the State Department.’

She said, ‘Mr Lester isn’t mine.’

Then he realized he had more trouble than he had thought. Far back in the mirror he saw Dawson and Mitchell burst out the diner door and run out into the parking lot. Both had phones to their ears. Their free hands were pumping and their jackets were flapping open. So Lester had in fact called the diner. But not deliberately. Not directly. In a very circuitous way instead. Probably he had been on the line with his people in Foggy Bottom, and his shouted You’re the person we’re looking for and the abrupt termination of the call had gotten some bright guy thinking, and that bright guy had immediately called the Hoover Building, and the Hoover Building had called Kansas City, and Kansas City had called Dawson and Mitchell on their cells, and were in fact probably still in the process of telling them The guy you’re looking for is currently kicking Lester Lester’s ass about twenty yards from you.

They saw him. Or they saw Sorenson. They froze in place and pointed and then ran for their car.

Reacher hit the gas and the sudden acceleration dumped Sorenson back in the passenger seat and the car slewed and fishtailed over the gravel. Reacher fought the wheel and bumped down over the kerb at an angle and took off north up the road. He craned his neck and watched in the mirror and saw the blue Bureau car jam backward and turn and come after him.

‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’m a lousy driver.’

‘Now you tell me,’ Sorenson said. She scrabbled around and clipped her seat belt and pulled it tight around her. Reacher kept his foot down hard. A big V-8, police spec, plenty of power and torque. Not bad at all. Except that Dawson and Mitchell had the exact same car. Same V-8, same spec, same power and torque. And maybe less weight, without the light bar on the roof and the push bars front and rear. Better aerodynamics, certainly.

Reacher knew the Interstate was fifty miles ahead, and he knew there wasn’t much of anything else before that. There were some turns left and right, and there were some small stands of trees here and there, and there were occasional old wooden farm buildings standing all rotted and abandoned and unexplained in the fields. Apart from that there was just winter dirt, and it was all very flat. No dips, no valleys. No hills, no ridges.

Places to run.

No place to hide.

The road surface was bad, and the road bed had been heaved up and down by years of winter frosts and summer droughts. Acceptable at normal speeds, but dangerous going fast. Goodman’s cruiser was riding like a yacht on an ocean swell. The engine was howling and the wheel was writhing in Reacher’s hands. Dawson and Mitchell were maybe four hundred yards back, but they were gaining. Reacher jammed his foot down harder. Pedal to the metal. A hundred miles an hour.

Places to run.

No place to hide.

Puller, he thought.

He said, ‘Do you know how to work the radio?’

Sorenson said, ‘I could try.’

‘Find out where Puller is with his radar gun. Tell him he’s got a speeder heading north. A dark blue sedan.’

Reacher drove on. No steering involved. The road was dead straight. The car went weightless over dips and hollows. Never airborne, but not far from it. Sorenson took the microphone out of its clip and fiddled with switches. She cleared her throat and said, ‘Deputy Puller, what is your location?’

Puller’s voice came back over static: ‘Who is that?’

‘This is Agent Sorenson with the FBI. Where are you now?’

‘A mile shy of the county line, ma’am.’

‘North, south, east or west?’

‘North.’

‘OK, good. You have a speeder coming north towards you. A dark blue Ford Crown Victoria. Please stop the driver and caution him against his reckless and unsafe behaviour.’