The general store was a classic rural building, a plain flat-roofed structure end-on to the street, with a fancy gabled frontage made of lap boards painted dull red. There was a sign, painted in circus letters colored gold: Mother’s Rest Dry Goods. There was a single door, and a single window, which was small, and purely for light, rather than for the display of tempting goods. The glass was covered with decals, all with names Reacher didn’t know. Brand names, he assumed, for arcane but vital country stuff.

Inside the door was a boxed-in vestibule, which had a pay phone mounted on the wall. No acoustic hood. Just the instrument itself, all metal, including the cord. Chang fed coins in the slot, and dialed. She listened for a spell, and then she hung up without speaking.

She said, “Voice mail. The phone company’s standard announcement. Not personalized. No name. Sounded like a cell phone.”

Reacher said, “You should have left a message.”

“No point. I can’t get calls here.”

“Try Keever again. Just in case.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to hear him not answer.”

“He’s either OK or he isn’t. Calling him or not calling him doesn’t change anything.”

She used her own cell to look up the number, but she dialed on the older technology. As before, she listened for a spell, and then she hung up without speaking. She tried a second number. Same result.

She shook her head.

She said, “No answer.”

Reacher said, “We should go to Oklahoma City.”

Chapter 13

The train would have been faster, but its departure was still eight hours away, so they drove, in Chang’s rental car. It was a compact Ford SUV, green in color. Inside it was bland and unmarked, and it smelled strongly of upholstery shampoo. They were out of town within a minute, on the old wagon train trail, and then they turned south and west and south again, through the immense checkerboard of endless golden fields, until they found a county road that promised a highway entrance two hundred miles ahead.

Chang was driving, in her T-shirt. Reacher had the passenger seat racked back, and he was watching her. She had one hand low on the wheel, and the other resting in her lap. Her eyes were always moving, to the road ahead, to the mirrors, back to the road ahead. Sometimes she half-smiled briefly, and then half-grimaced, as thoughts ran through her head. Her shoulders were rolled forward an inch, in a tiny hunch. Which Reacher took to mean she wanted to be a smaller person. Which ambition he could not endorse. She looked exactly the right size to him. She was long-limbed and solid, but not where she shouldn’t be.

I think I’m a nice person, but I know I’m not the reason.

He said nothing.

She looked in the mirror again, and she said, “There’s a pick-up truck behind us.”

He said, “How far back?”

“About a hundred yards.”

“How long has it been there?”

“A mile or so.”

“It’s a public road.”

“It came on real fast, but now it’s hanging back. Like it was looking for us, and now it’s found us.”

“Just one?”

“That’s all I can see.”

“Not much of a posse.”

“Two men, I think. A driver and a passenger.”

Reacher didn’t want to turn around to look. Didn’t want to show either guy the pale flash of a concerned face in the rear window. So he hunched down a little and moved sideways until he could see the image in Chang’s door mirror. A pick-up truck, about a hundred yards back. A Ford, he thought. A serious machine, big and obvious, keeping pace. It was dull red, like the general store. There were two guys in it, side by side, but far from each other, because of the vehicle’s extravagant width.

Reacher sat up again and looked through the windshield. Wheat to the right, wheat to the left, and the road running dead straight ahead until it fell below the far horizon. The shoulders were graveled for drainage, but there were no ditches. No turns, either. The fields were endless. Almost literally. Maybe the same field ran all the way to the highway ramp. Two hundred miles. It looked possible.

There were no other cars in sight.

He said, “Did you train for this stuff at Quantico?”

She said, “To a certain extent. But a long time ago. And in a different environment. Mostly urban. With traffic lights and four-way stops and one-way streets. We don’t have many options here. Did you train for it?”

“No, I was never any good at driving.”

“Should we let them make the first move?”

“First we need to figure out what they’ve been told to do. If it’s surveillance only, we can lead them all the way to Oklahoma City and lose them there. The only fights you truly win are the ones you don’t have.”

“What if it’s not surveillance only?”

“Then they’ll do it like the movies. They’ll bump us from behind.”

“To scare us? Or worse than that?”

“That would be a very big step for them to take.”

“They’ll make it look like an accident. Tourist lady fell asleep on the long straight road and crashed. I’m sure it happens all the time.”

Reacher said nothing.

“We can’t outrun them,” Chang said. “Not in this thing.”

“So let them get close and then switch to the other lane and hit the brakes. Send them on ahead.”

“When?”

“Don’t ask me,” Reacher said. “I failed defensive driving. I lasted less than a day. They made me go qualify on something else. When they get big in the mirror, I guess.”

Chang drove on. Two-handed now. One minute. Two. She said, “I want to see their moves. We need to force their hand.”

“You sure?”

“They’re the home team. We need to shake them up.”

“OK. Speed up a bit.”

She hit the gas and he turned around and stared out the back window. The pale flash of a concerned face. He said, “Faster.”

The little green Ford jumped ahead, almost two hundred yards, and then the pick-up reacted, and its grille rose up, and it came charging closer. Chang said, “Give me a real-time distance countdown. I can’t judge in the mirrors.”

“They’re at eighty yards now,” Reacher said. “Which gives us about eight seconds.”

“Less, because I’m going to slow down. This thing might tip over.”

“Sixty yards.”

“OK, I’m clear ahead.”

“And behind. It’s just the two of us on the road. Forty yards.”

“I’m slowing some more. We can’t do this over sixty.”

“Twenty yards.”

“I’m going to do it at ten yards.”

“OK, now, do it now.”

And she did. She swerved left and braked hard and the pick-up came within an inch of clipping her right back corner, but it missed, and it sped on ahead, braking hard but much later. Meanwhile the little green Ford did a lot of side-to-side rocking and tipping, but soon enough it was stopped dead, safe, back in the correct lane, a hundred yards behind the pick-up truck, their relative positions completely inverted after a noisy few seconds.

Chang said, “Of course, this begs the fairly obvious question, what now? We turn around, they turn around. And then they’re chasing us all over again.”

“Drive straight at them,” Reacher said.

“And crash?”

“That’s always an option.”

But the pick-up moved first. It turned around in the road and came back toward them, but very slowly, just creeping along, barely more than idle speed. Which Reacher took as a message. Like a white flag.

“They want to talk,” he said. “They want to do this face to face.”

The truck stopped ten yards ahead and both doors opened. Two men climbed out. Sturdy individuals, both about six feet and two hundred pounds, both somewhere in their middle thirties, both with mirrored sunglasses, both with thin cotton jackets over T-shirts. They looked cautious but confident. Like they knew what they were doing. Like they were the home team.

Chang said, “They must be armed. They wouldn’t be doing it this way otherwise.”