Lee Child - The Midnight Line

“I agree,” Reacher said. “Least of all mine.”

“But you should give it up.”

“Here’s a counteroffer,” Reacher said. “You don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you.”

The guy nodded. Not like he agreed, but like he understood the sentence. Reacher said, “Look, kid,” and beckoned the guy close, as if for a private word, like two world leaders sharing a confidence.

Reacher put his hand on the guy’s elbow. A friendly gesture, inclusive, intimate, maybe even conspiratorial.

He squeezed.

He whispered, “Tell whoever sent you this won’t be like the FBI or the DEA or the ATF. Tell whoever sent you this time it’s the U.S. Army.”

The guy reacted. Reacher felt it in his elbow. Then he let him go, and the eight-foot gap opened up again. Reacher stood square on and up straight. His old professional pose. Sooner or later everyone’s thoughts turned to violence. Better to deal with that upfront. Better to say, you have got to be kidding me. So he stood chin up, his full height, shoulders back, hands loose, not a circus freak, but a little bigger all around than a normal big guy, enough so they noticed. Plus the eyes, which he found most people liked, except he could blink and come back different, like changing the channel, from a happy show to some bleak documentary about prehistoric survival a million years ago.

Then suddenly he changed the channel again and smiled and nodded, in a shared, self-deprecating kind of a way, as if obviously two guys such as them could only be kidding around, and the other four would catch on eventually.

Always offer the other guy a graceful exit.

The guy in the boots took it. He smiled back, like they were just two old boys horsing around, which could happen anytime, and especially in the presence of such a pretty lady. Then he turned around and led his guys away. Reacher crossed to the opposite sidewalk and watched them around the corner. They climbed in a huge crew-cab pick-up parked head-in by a fence. It backed out and took off. It turned left at the first four-way, and was lost to sight.

“See?” Mackenzie said. “It didn’t have to be a fight.”

Reacher said nothing. He stared at her. Then he stared at the corner, where the pick-up had turned.

Something wrong.

With the wrong thing.

He said to Bramall, “Did you take interrogation classes with us?”

Bramall said, “Only the semester with the rubber hoses.”

“We were taught the art of interrogation is mostly about listening. His language was weird. His choice of phrase. At the end he said we should give it up. What did that mean? Give what up?”

“Our quest,” Mackenzie said. “Our search for Rose. Obviously. I mean, to give something up, you have to be doing it in the first place, and that’s about all we’ve been doing. There’s nothing else we could give up.”

“What category of person would care either way about our search for Rose?”

“All kinds. We could be treading on a lot of different toes.”

“What category of person might care most of all?”

Mackenzie didn’t answer.

Tell whoever sent you .

In his mind Reacher heard General Simpson’s voice, on the phone from West Point: She might not want to be found .

Then he thought no, that can’t be right.

Chapter 30

Reacher said, “At the beginning the guy said there’s nothing for us here. Then at the end he said the thing about giving it up. It was a politely threatening opening statement, and a politely threatening closing statement. But in the middle he declined to fight. I think for one particular reason. He was unsettled. There was a new factor he hadn’t been briefed on. He was still getting used to it. He had been sent to kick ass, but all of a sudden he realized we were the kind of people who might kick back. He hadn’t been warned about that. Which is weird, because every question we ever asked in this town, we asked it standing up. We weren’t hiding. Who would send a guy with a message without giving him our descriptions?”

Mackenzie said, “I don’t know.”

“Maybe someone who never saw us standing up. Maybe someone who never really saw us at all, except as vague shapes slumped down in a car, as she sped past on the dirt road. Hypothetically. It would be the car she remembered, not us. A black Toyota Land Cruiser, with Illinois plates. Maybe she asked three loyal friends to track it down, and run off whoever was in it. Because she doesn’t want to be found.”

Mackenzie said, “Do you think that’s who they were?”

“I did for a moment. I told him the U.S. Army was coming, and he reacted. At first I thought he was impressed. Then later I thought no, his reaction might be because the person who sent him was also U.S. Army. He might have been surprised about the weird connection. He might not have known what it meant. He might have wanted to get away and report back.”

“To Rose,” Mackenzie said. “Those were her friends.”

“Except they weren’t,” Reacher said. “They were nothing to do with Rose. We know for sure they never even met her. We know that because they didn’t recognize you. How could they be friends with your twin without knowing who you were? That’s why I wanted you close enough to see their faces. So they could see yours. They would have been staring at you, full of confusion. But they weren’t.”

“So who were they?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said.

—

They drove back to the hotel. Bramall went straight upstairs. Reacher stayed out in the parking lot. He looked up at the night sky. It was black and huge and dusted with stars. They were very bright, and there were millions of them.

The American West.

Mackenzie came out and stood beside him.

She said, “We could be in the wrong place entirely.”

Reacher was still looking at the sky.

“In the universe?” he said.

“In this state. No one recognizes me, which means no one has seen her. All we know is six weeks ago she was in some part of Billy’s very large territory. When she traded her ring. Why conclude it was this part?”

“Porterfield’s house. She wasn’t there full-time. The roofer said so. Yet no one ever saw her heading for the turn. Which means she came and went from the other direction.”

“Two years ago.”

“Why would she move?”

“Her boyfriend died. People move, after a thing like that. It’s a shock.”

“She did five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s had worse shocks. She would have assessed the situation tactically. No one had ever seen her. There was no realistic threat vector against her current billet. Presumably it was a decent place. It had been good enough for Porterfield to come over. Why give it up? Replacing it would be tough.”

“I would move.”

“She would stay.”

“You know her better?”

“I know how a person lives through five tours.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow,” he said. “We know roughly where she is. She can’t hide forever.”

“I wanted to buy you a drink,” she said. “To thank you. Since you won’t let me pay you. But there’s no bar in this hotel.”

“No need to thank me either,” Reacher said.

“I would have enjoyed it.”

“Me, too, I guess.”

She moved away a couple of steps, and sat down on a concrete bench.

He sat down beside her.

She said, “Are you married?”

“No,” he said. “But you are.”

She laughed, short but soft.

She said, “It was an unconnected question. Just purely out of interest. It wasn’t a Freudian slip.”

“Tell me about Mr. Mackenzie.”

“He’s a nice man. We’re a good match.”

“Do you have children?”