Make Me

They moved on, past a room with padded walls and a giant screen and a forest of upright loudspeakers. And three separate chairs, each one of them with its own reclining mechanism, and its own cup holder. A home theater. Reacher had never seen one before, in a home.

No sound.

They came out in an arched antechamber ahead of the living room. Where the architecture changed from adobe to hunting lodge. The ceiling soared overhead, with knotty boards rising to an angled peak, in a shallow upside-down V. Black iron chandeliers hung down, with bulbs made to look like candles. There were sofas made of thick brown leather, deep and wide and sprawling, with plaid blankets folded over their backs, for color.

They heard a car on the driveway.

Metallic thumps, as doors opened and closed.

Footsteps on the rivers of stone.

The front door opened.

A heavy tread in the hallway.

Dr. Evan Lair walked into his living room. He saw Reacher, saw Chang, and stopped. He said, “Hey, guys,” in a way that was part welcome, part question, perfectly amiable, completely accepting, but with a tiny edge of impatience, as if what he really meant was I thought all the guests had gone.

Then his daughter came in behind him, still in the shirt and bikini, and she put her hand on his back and said, “It’s something to do with Cousin Michael. Mom has been talking to them.”

Then she maneuvered onward and stepped up close, and put out her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Emily,” and they all shook and introduced themselves, and said congratulations all around.

Then McCann’s sister came in, kind of dusting her hands, and she said, “I’m sorry, but we took a slice of cake and a glass of tea to the man at the gate. The least we could do. He had a busy afternoon on our behalf.”

Reacher said, “Did you give him a guest list beforehand?”

“We have to.”

“Then you should have given him only half a slice of cake. He let us in without checking it.”

Evan said, “Is Michael still missing?”

Emily said, “Dad, you know he is.”

“And Peter is finally looking for him now? Is that what this is?”

“Uncle Peter has been looking for him all along.”

“Well, he isn’t here. Neither one of them is here.”

Reacher said, “We apologize for the intrusion.”

“Sit down,” Emily said. “Please.”

They ended up two and three on opposite sofas, Reacher and Chang cradled in the corners of one, with ice tea in glasses, on coasters on coffee tables made to look like old steamship trunks, and across from them on the other sofa was the Lair family, all in a line, with Evan and Lydia at the ends, and Emily in the middle, long and lithe and golden tan.

Reacher said, “Peter did very well with the phone company. That kind of information is hard to get.”

Peter’s sister said, “It’s Chicago. It was a friend of a friend in the union.”

“And Peter being a thorough guy, he won’t have summarily dismissed the phone theft scenarios before or after the train ride. In Tulsa or OC or Chicago. Not completely out of hand. But he will have thought it at least equally likely something happened along the way.”

“On the train?” Emily said.

“Or not. We know that train, as it happens. It stops once before Chicago. At a little country place called Mother’s Rest.”

No reaction from McCann’s sister.

Reacher said, “Mother’s Rest is way out in the middle of nowhere. It’s also Keever’s last known location. I think Peter concluded Michael got out of the train there. Hence his phone never came out the other side of the dead zone. I think he sent Keever to check.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” Evan said. “If he’s there, Keever will find him.”

Reacher said nothing.

McCann’s sister said, “He’s had no luck yet. Peter hasn’t had a report in three days. Nothing doing. Unless he’s due to call me with the good news right about now.” Which seemed to make her conscious of the time, because she patted her wrist, looking for a watch, and then she squinted far into the kitchen to see the microwave clock.

She said, “It’s after suppertime in Chicago.”

She pointed near Reacher and said, “Hon, pass me the phone.”

The phone was on the steamer trunk, near his ice tea. It was bigger than some, and curvier, and heavier. Better plastic. Still cordless and modern, but first-generation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It had a transparent window for speed-dial labels, with a space at the top for its own number, which someone had filled out in elegant pencil, the 480 area code and seven more digits. He passed it across, and McCann’s sister took it, and checked it for dial tone.

She said, “The line is working.”

Evan asked, “How big of a place is Mother’s Rest?”

Reacher said, “Very small.”

“Why is it called that?”

“No one knows.”

“How can it take three days to search a very small place?”