He moved his head like it weighed a ton. Said nothing.

“Your car is here, sir,” the corporal said.

THEY WAITED AN hour and a half, crowded inside the Suburban. The evening crept toward night, and it grew very cold. Dense night dew misted the outside of the windshield and the windows. Breathing fogged the inside. Nobody talked. The world around them grew quieter. There was an occasional animal noise in the far distance, howling down at them through the thin mountain air, but there was nothing else at all.

“Hell of a place to live,” Blake muttered.

“Or to die,” Harper said.

EVENTUALLY YOU RECOVER, and then you relax. You’ve got a lot of talent. Everything was backed up, double-safe, triple-safe. You put in layer upon layer upon layer of concealment. You know how investigators work. You know they won’t find anything beyond the obvious. They won’t find where the paint came from. Or who obtained it. Or who delivered it. You know they won’t. You know how these people work. And you’re too smart for them. Way, way too smart. So you relax.

But you’re disappointed. You made a mistake. And the paint was a lot of fun. And now you probably can’t use it anymore. But maybe you can think of something even better. Because one thing is for damn sure. You can’t stop now.

THE PHONE RANG inside the Suburban. It was a loud electronic blast in the silence. Blake fumbled it out of the cradle. Reacher heard the indistinct sound of a voice talking fast. A man’s voice, not a woman’s. Poulton, not Lamarr. Blake listened hard with his eyes focused nowhere. Then he hung up and stared at the windshield.

“What?” Harper asked.

“Local guys went back and checked the appliance cartons,” Blake said. “They were all sealed up tight, like new. But they opened them anyway. Ten paint cans in each of them. Ten empty cans. Used cans, exactly like we found.”

“But the boxes were sealed?” Reacher said.

“Resealed,” Blake said. “They could tell, when they looked closely. The guy resealed the boxes, afterward.”

“Smart guy,” Harper said. “He knew a sealed carton wouldn’t attract much attention.”

Blake nodded to her. “A very smart guy. He knows how we think.”

“But not totally smart anymore,” Reacher said. “Or he wouldn’t have forgotten to reseal this one, right? His first mistake.”

“He’s batting about nine hundred,” Blake said. “That makes him smart enough for me.”

“No shipping labels anywhere?” Harper asked.

Blake shook his head. “All torn off.”

“Figures,” she said.

“Does it?” Reacher asked her. “So here, why should he remember to tear off the label but forget to reseal the box?”

“Maybe he got interrupted here,” she said.

“How? This isn’t exactly Times Square.”

“So what are you saying? You’re downgrading how smart he is? How smart he is seemed awful important to you before. You were going to use how damn smart he is to prove us all wrong.”

Reacher looked at her and nodded. “Yes, you are all wrong.” Then he turned to Blake. “We really need to talk about this guy’s motive.”

“Later,” Blake said.

“No, now. It’s important.”

“Later,” Blake said again. “You haven’t heard the really good news yet.”

“Which is what?”

“The other little matter you came up with.”

Silence inside the vehicle.

“Shit,” Reacher said. “One of the other women got a delivery, right?”

Blake shook his head.

“Wrong,” he said. “All seven of them got a delivery.”

16

"SO YOU’RE GOING to Portland, Oregon,” Blake said. “You and Harper.”

“Why?” Reacher asked.

“So you can visit with your old friend Rita Scimeca. The lady lieutenant you told us about? Got raped down in Georgia? She lives near Portland. Small village, east of the city. She’s one of the eleven on your list. You can get down there and check out her basement. She says there’s a brand-new washing machine in there. In a box.”

“Did she open it?” Reacher asked.

Blake shook his head. “No, Portland agents checked with her on the telephone. They told her not to touch it. Somebody’s on the way over right now.”

“If the guy’s still in the area, Portland could be his next call. It’s close enough.”

“Correct,” Blake said. “That’s why there’s somebody on the way over.”

Reacher nodded. “So now you’re guarding them? What’s that thing about barn doors and horses bolting? ”

Blake shrugged. “Hey, only seven left alive, makes the manpower much more feasible.”

It was a cop’s sick humor in a car full of cops of one kind or another, but still it fell a little flat. Blake colored slightly and looked away.

“Losing Alison gets to me, much as anybody,” he said. “Like family, right?”

“Especially to her sister, I guess,” Reacher said.

“Tell me about it,” Blake said. “She was burned as hell when the news came in. Practically hyperventilating. Never seen her so agitated.”

“You should take her off the case.”

Blake shook his head. “I need her.”

“You need something, that’s for damn sure.”

“Tell me about it.”

SPOKANE TO THE small village east of Portland measured about three hundred and sixty miles on the map Blake showed them. They took the car the local agent had used to bring them in from the airport. It still had Alison Lamarr’s address handwritten on the top sheet of the pad attached to the windshield. Reacher stared at it for a second. Then he tore it off and balled it up and tossed it into the rear footwell. Found a pen in the glove box and wrote directions on the next sheet: 90W- 395S-84W-35S-26W. He wrote them big enough to see them in the dark when they were tired. Underneath the big figures, he could still see Alison Lamarr’s address, printed through by the pressure of the local guy’s ballpoint.

“Call it six hours,” Harper said. “You drive three and I’ll drive three.”

Reacher nodded. It was completely dark when he started the engine. He turned around in the road, shoulder to shoulder, spinning the wheel, exactly like he was sure the guy had done, but two days later and two hundred yards south. Rolled through the narrow downhill curves to Route 90 and turned right. Once the lights of the city were behind them the traffic density fell away and he settled to a fast cruise west. The car was a new Buick, smaller and plainer than Lamarr’s boat, but maybe a little faster because of it. That year must have been the Bureau’s GM year. The Army had done the same thing. Staff car purchasing rotated strictly between GM, Ford, and Chrysler, so none of the domestic manufacturers could get pissed at the government.

The road ran straight southwest through hilly terrain. He put the headlights on bright and eased the speed upward. Harper sprawled to his right, her seat reclined, her head tilted toward him. Her hair spilled down and glowed red and gold in the lights from the dash. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting down in his lap. He could see lights in his mirror. Halogen headlights, on bright, swinging and bouncing a mile behind him. They were closing, fast. He accelerated to more than seventy.

“The Army teach you to drive this fast?” Harper asked.

He made no reply. They passed a town called Sprague and the road straightened. Blake’s map had shown it dead straight all the way to a town called Ritzville, twenty-something miles ahead. Reacher eased up toward eighty miles an hour, but the headlights behind were still closing fast. A long moment later a car blasted past them, a long low sedan, a wide maneuver, turbulent slip-stream, a full quarter-mile in the opposite lane. Then it eased back right and pulled on ahead like the FBI’s Buick was crawling through a parking lot.

“That’s fast,” Reacher said.

“Maybe that’s the guy,” Harper said sleepily. “Maybe he’s heading down to Portland too. Maybe we’ll get him tonight.”