Nothing to Lose

“The plant opens up again at six tomorrow morning.”

Reacher said, “You don’t want me in your car all night.”

“I’ll do what it takes. Like I said. This is a decent place. I’m not going to let it get trashed, either literally or metaphorically.”

Reacher paused and said, “I could leave town.”

“Permanently?” Vaughan asked.

“Temporarily.”

“And go where?”

“Despair, obviously. I can’t get in trouble there, can I? Their cops are in the hospital and their deputies will be here all night.”

Vaughan made a right and a left and headed down Second Street toward the diner. She stayed quiet for a moment and then she said, “There’s another one in town today.”

“Another what?”

“Another girl. Just like Lucy Anderson. But dark, not blonde. She blew in this afternoon and now she’s sitting around and staring west like she’s waiting for word from Despair.”

“From a boyfriend or a husband?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly a dead boyfriend or husband, Caucasian, about twenty years old, five-eight and one-forty.”

“Possibly.”

“I should go there.”

Vaughan drove past the diner and kept on driving. She drove two blocks south and came back east on Fourth Street. No real reason. Just motion, for the sake of it. Fourth Street had trees and retail establishments behind the north sidewalk and trees and a long line of neat homes behind the south. Small yards, picket fences, foundation plantings, mailboxes on poles that had settled to every angle except the truly vertical.

“I should go there,” Reacher said again.

“Wait until the deputies get here. You don’t want to pass them on the road.”

“OK.”

“And don’t let them see you leave.”

“OK.”

“And don’t make trouble over there.”

“I’m not sure there’s anybody left to make trouble with. Unless I meet the judge.”

27

For the second time that day Vaughan gave up her pick-up truck and walked home to get her cruiser. Reacher drove the truck to a quiet side street and parked facing north in the shadow of a tree and watched the traffic on First Street directly ahead of him. He had a limited field of view. But there wasn’t much to see, anyway. Whole ten-minute periods passed without visible activity. Not surprising. Residents returning from the Kansas direction would have peeled off into town down earlier streets. And no one in their right mind was returning from Despair, or heading there. The daylight was fading fast. The world was going gray and still. The clock in Reacher’s head was ticking around, relentlessly.

When it hit six-thirty-two he saw an old crew-cab pick-up truck flash through his field of vision. Moving smartly, from the Despair direction. A driver, and three passengers inside. Big men, close together. They filled the cramped quarters, shoulder to shoulder.

Reacher recognized the truck.

He recognized the driver.

He recognized the passengers.

The Despair deputies, right on time.

He paused a beat and started the old Chevy’s engine and moved off the curb. He eased north to First Street and turned left. Checked his mirror. The old crew-cab was already a hundred yards behind him, moving away in the opposite direction, slowing down and getting ready to turn. The road ahead was empty. He passed the hardware store and hit the gas and forced the old truck up to sixty miles an hour. Five minutes later he thumped over the expansion joint and settled in to a noisy cruise west.

Twelve miles later he coasted past the vacant lot and the shuttered motor court and the gas station and the household goods store and then he turned left into Despair’s downtown maze. First port of call was the police station. He wanted to be sure that no miraculous recoveries had been made, and that no replacement personnel had been provided.

They hadn’t, and they hadn’t.

The place was dark inside and quiet outside. No lights, no activity. There were no cars at the curb. No stand-in State Police cruisers, no newly-deputized pick-up trucks, no plain sedans with temporaryPolice signs stickered on their doors.

Nothing.

Just silence.

Reacher smiled. Open season and lawless, he thought, like a bleak view of the future in a movie. The way he liked it. He U-turned through the empty diagonal parking slots and headed back toward the rooming house. He parked on the curb out front and killed the motor and wound the window down. Heard a single aero engine in the far distance, climbing hard. Seven o’clock in the evening. The Cessna or the Beech or the Piper, taking off again.You should ask yourself why that plane flies every night, the motel clerk had said.

Maybe I will,Reacher thought.One day.