Maximum acceleration.
Amos said, “What?”
“Chase him,” Reacher said. “Go, go, go.”
She glanced over her shoulder and stamped on the gas and took off in pursuit.
She said, “What just happened?”
“You scared him,” Reacher said. “Your red lights were still on. Like you were pulling him over.”
“He was stationary.”
“Maybe he thought you were busting him.”
“Why would I? Was he on a hydrant?”
“Maybe he’s got weed in the car. Or secret documents. Or something. Maybe he thinks you’re an agent of deep state oppression. We’re dealing with an old guy with a ponytail here.”
They followed him a hundred yards behind, then eighty, then fifty, then twenty. The Subaru was doing its valiant best, but it was no match for a modern-day police vehicle. With lights and a siren. Then up ahead the Subaru turned right. It was lost to sight for ten or twelve agonizing seconds, but they turned after it, and saw it turning again, at the end of the block.
“He’s heading home,” Reacher said. “Somewhere north and west of here.”
Amos took a shortcut on a block she knew better, and came out right on the Subaru’s bumper. A one way street. Up ahead was a red light, and another small jam. Two lanes of traffic, five cars on the left, and six on the right. The tail end of rush hour. The light went green, but nobody moved. Someone was blocking the box. Not a blue van. Not a black Chrysler. The Subaru braked hard and swerved into the shorter line. Now he was the sixth car on the left, one inch behind the fifth. Amos stopped one inch behind him. On his left was the sidewalk, and on his right was the right-hand queue of vehicles, just as long, just as stopped. He was parked tighter than Paris.
Amos said, “Technically he committed a number of offenses.”
“Let it go,” Reacher said. “And thanks for everything.”
He got out of the car and walked ahead. He tapped on the Subaru’s passenger window. The old guy stared ahead for a long moment, absolutely refusing to look, rigid with principle, but eventually, and reluctantly, he glanced to his right. At which point he looked very surprised. He glanced back at the flashing lights. He was confused. He didn’t understand.
Reacher opened the door and got in the car.
“She gave me a ride,” he said. “That’s all. She didn’t mean to startle you.”
Up ahead the light cycled back to green, and this time the traffic moved. The guy drove forward, with one eye on his mirror. Behind him Amos pulled a wide U turn around the light and headed back the way she had come. Reacher turned in his seat and watched her go.
The old guy said, “Why would a cop give you a ride?”
“Protective custody,” Reacher said. “The folks from the apple farm were in town last night.”
The explanation seemed to settle the guy. He nodded.
“I told you,” he said. “That family doesn’t let things go.”
“Back there,” Reacher said. “You shouldn’t have run. Not a smart tactic. The cops will always get you in the end.”
“Were you a cop?”
“In the army,” Reacher said. “Long ago.”
“I know I shouldn’t have run,” the guy said. “But it’s an old habit.”
He said nothing more. He just drove on. Reacher watched the traffic. No blue van. They made a left and a right. They seemed to be heading north and west. Toward the apple farm itself. And Ryantown. That general area.
Reacher said, “Did you make the arrangements?”
“They’re expecting us.”
“Thank you.”
“Visiting hours start at ten.”
“Great.”
“The old man’s name is Mr. Mortimer.”
“Good to know,” Reacher said.
They found the main drag out of town, and two miles later turned left, on the road Reacher had seen the day before. The road that led to the place with no water. They followed it west, through woods, past fields. Reacher watched out his window. In the far distance on his right lay Bruce Jones’s acres, with his twelve dogs, and then came the orchards, and Ryantown itself, overgrown and ghostly.
He said, “How much further?”
“Nearly there,” the guy said.
Two miles later on the left Reacher saw a shape. Way far in the distance. Some kind of a new development. Long low buildings, laid out in a virgin field. There were crisp blacktop roads with bright white markings. There were newly planted trees, looking pale and slender and delicate, next to their natural gnarly neighbors. The buildings were bland stucco, with metal windows, and white aluminum rainwater pipes that kinked at the bottom and ran away to spouts a yard into the grass. There was a sign at the main entrance. Something about assisted living.
“This is it,” the old guy said.
The clock in Reacher’s head hit ten exactly.
The third arrival was as stealthy and self contained as the first. The gentleman in question drove himself from a large house in a small town in a rural region of Pennsylvania. Initially he was in a car reported scrapped in western New York four months previously. He had prepared well ahead of time. He believed preparedness was everything. The whole journey had been rehearsed, over and over in his mind. He had looked for snags and problems. He wanted to be ready. He had two overarching aims. He didn’t want to be caught, and he didn’t want to be late.
The plan was about anonymity, of course, and cut outs, and untraceability. Had to be. Stage one was to drive non-stop in the paperless car to a friend’s place in back of a service station off the Mass Pike, just west of Boston. He knew the guy from a different community. A different shared interest. A tight, passionate group of guys. Secret and embattled. Loyal and helpful. They made a point of it. Like a fetish. What a fellow member wanted, a fellow member got. No questions asked.
The friend’s day job was trading commercial vehicles. He bought them at auction, after they came off lease. For resale. They came and went, clean and dirty, used and abused, banged up and not a scratch. On any given day he had a couple dozen around. On that particular day he had three clear favorites. All panel vans, all ordinary, all invisible. No one paid attention to a panel van. A panel van was a hole in the air.
The best example was tidy in appearance and dark blue in color. With gold signwriting. It had come in not long before, as a repo, from a bankrupt carpet cleaner in the city. Once a very upscale operation, by the look of it. Persian rugs. Hence the gold signwriting and the high standard of maintenance. The man from Pennsylvania loaded his stuff in it, and started it up. He set the GPS on his phone. He drove north. The route took him on the highway for a spell, then off near Manchester, New Hampshire, and onward to the back of beyond, through a small town named Laconia.
Where he got scared. Where he nearly quit. He saw two cop cars, clearly eyeballing everyone coming in from the south. Searching. Staring at him. As if they knew all about him ahead of time. As if someone had dropped a dime. He panicked and pulled over in an alley, and stopped in a loading bay behind a store. He checked his e-mail. His secret account, on his secret phone. The webmail page, with the translations in the foreign alphabets.
There was no cancelation message.
No warnings, no alerts.
He took a deep breath. He knew the scene. Any such community had a failsafe. An emergency one-click button, first thing to get to, guaranteed, no matter what else was going down. It would generate an automatic message. Maybe innocuous, to be on the safe side, but to be understood as a code. The children are under the weather today. Something like that.
There was no such message.
He checked again.
No message.