At the end of three hours Franklin figured he would never find out, because Reacher fell off the radar after 1997. Completely and totally. There was no trace of him anywhere. He was still alive, according to the Social Security Administration. He wasn’t in prison, according to the NCIC. But he had disappeared. He had no credit rating. He wasn’t listed as title holder to any real estate, or automobiles, or boats. He had no debts. No liens. No address. No phone number. No warrants outstanding, no judgments entered. He wasn’t a husband. Wasn’t a father. He was a ghost.

James Barr spent the same three hours in serious trouble. It started when he stepped out of his cell. He turned right to walk down to the pay phones. The corridor was narrow. He bumped into another guy, shoulder to shoulder. Then he made a bad mistake. He took his eyes off the floor and glanced at the other guy and apologized.

A bad mistake, because a fish can’t make eye contact with another prisoner. Not without implying disrespect. It was a prison thing. He didn’t understand.

The guy he made eye contact with was a Mexican. He had gang tattoos, but Barr didn’t recognize them. Another bad mistake. He should have put his gaze back on the floor and moved on and hoped for the best. But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Excuse me.”

Then he raised his eyebrows and half-smiled in a self-deprecating way, like he was saying, This is some place, right?

Bad mistake. Familiarity, and a presumption of intimacy.

“What are you looking at?” the Mexican said.

At that point, James Barr understood completely. What are you looking at? That was pretty much a standard opener. Barrack rooms, barrooms, street corners, dark alleys, it was not a phrase you wanted to hear.

“Nothing,” he said, and realized he had made the situation much worse.

“You calling me nothing?”

Barr put his eyes back on the floor and moved on, but it was way too late. He felt the Mexican’s stare on his back and gave up on the pay phone idea. The phones were in a dead-end lobby and he didn’t want to feel trapped. So he walked a long counterclockwise circuit and headed back to his cell. He got there OK. Didn’t look at anyone, didn’t speak. He lay down on his bunk. About two hours later, he felt OK. He guessed he could handle a little macho bluster. And he was bigger than the Mexican. He was bigger than two Mexicans.

He wanted to call his sister. He wanted to know she was OK.

He set off for the pay phones again.

He got there unmolested. It was a small space. There were four phones on the wall, four men talking, four lines of other men waiting behind them. Noise, shuffling feet, crazed laughter, impatience, frustration, sour air, the smell of sweat and dirty hair and stale urine. Just a normal prison scene, according to James Barr’s preconceptions.

Then it wasn’t a normal scene.

The men in front of him vanished. Just disappeared. They just melted out of sight. Those on the phone hung up mid-sentence and ducked back past him. Those waiting in line peeled away. In half a second the lobby went from being full and noisy to being deserted and silent.

James Barr turned around.

He saw the Mexican with the tattoos. The Mexican had a knife in his hand and twelve friends behind him. The knife was a plastic toothbrush handle wrapped with tape and sharpened to a point, like a stiletto. The friends were all stocky little guys, all with the same tattoos. They all had cropped hair with intricate patterns shaved across their skulls.

“Wait,” Barr said.

But the Mexicans didn’t wait, and eight minutes later Barr was in a coma. He was found sometime after that, on the floor, beaten pulpy, with multiple stab wounds and a cracked skull and severe subdural bleeding. Afterward, jail talk said he had had it coming. He had disrespected the Latinos. But jail talk said he hadn’t gone quietly. There was a hint of admiration. The Mexicans had suffered a little. But not nearly as much as James Barr. He was medevaced to the city hospital and sewn up and operated on to relieve pressure from a swollen brain. Then he was dumped in a secure intensive care unit, comatose. The doctors weren’t sure when he would wake up again. Maybe in a day. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a month. Maybe never. The doctors didn’t really know, and they didn’t really care. They were all local people.

The warden at the jail called late at night and told Emerson. Then Emerson called and told Rodin. Then Rodin called and told Chapman. Then Chapman called and told Franklin.

“So what happens now?” Franklin asked him.

“Nothing,” Chapman said. “It’s on ice. You can’t try a guy in a coma.”

“What about when he wakes up?”

“If he’s OK, then they’ll go ahead, I guess.”

“What if he isn’t?”

“Then they won’t. Can’t try a vegetable.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Nothing,” Chapman said. “We weren’t taking it very seriously anyhow. Barr’s guilty all to hell and gone, and there’s nothing much anyone can do for him.”

Franklin called and told Rosemary Barr, because he wasn’t sure if anyone else would have taken the trouble. He found out that nobody else had. So he broke the news himself. Rosemary Barr didn’t have much of an outward reaction. She just went very quiet. It was like she was on emotional overload.

“I guess I should go to the hospital,” she said.

“If you want,” Franklin said.

“He’s innocent, you know. This is so unfair.”

“Did you see him yesterday?”

“You mean, can I alibi him?”

“Can you?”

“No,” Rosemary Barr said. “I can’t. I don’t know where he was yesterday. Or what he was doing.”

“Are there places he goes regularly? Movies, bars, anything like that?”

“Not really.”

“Friends he hangs with?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Girlfriends?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Other family he visits?”

“There’s just the two of us. Him and me.”

Franklin said nothing. There was a long, distracted pause.

“What happens now?” Rosemary Barr asked.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Did you find that person he mentioned?”

“Jack Reacher? No, I’m afraid not. No trace.”

“Will you keep on looking?”

“There’s really nothing more I can do.”

“OK,” Rosemary Barr said. “Then we’ll have to manage without him.”

But even as they spoke, on the phone late at night on Saturday, Jack Reacher was on his way to them.

CHAPTER 2

Reacher was on his way to them because of a woman. He had spent Friday night in South Beach, Miami, in a salsa club, with a dancer from a cruise ship. The boat was Norwegian, and so was the girl. Reacher guessed she was too tall for ballet, but she was the right size for everything else. They met on the beach in the afternoon. Reacher was working on his tan. He felt better brown. He didn’t know what she was working on. But he felt her shadow fall across his face and opened his eyes to find her staring at him. Or maybe at his scars. The browner he got, the more they stood out, white and wicked and obvious. She was pale, in a black bikini. A small black bikini. He pegged her for a dancer long before she told him. It was in the way she held herself.

They ended up having a late dinner together and then going out to the club. South Beach salsa wouldn’t have been Reacher’s first choice, but her company made it worthwhile. She was fun to be with. And she was a great dancer, obviously. Full of energy. She wore him out. At four in the morning she took him back to her hotel, eager to wear him out some more. Her hotel was a small Art Deco place near the ocean. Clearly the cruise line treated its people well. Certainly it was a much more romantic destination than Reacher’s own motel. And much closer.