And returning to the same place every night wouldn’t do it. So his decision was the right one. He said the words to himself. Sell the house. The house is on the market. The house is for sale. The house is sold. He said the words and a weight came up off of him. It wasn’t just the practical weight, although that was important. No more fretting about leaks in the pipes and bills in the mail and oil deliveries and insurance coverage. It was the release. Like he was back in the world, unburdened. He was free and ready to go. It was like a door opening and sunlight flooding in. He smiled to himself in the thrumming darkness of the tunnel, Harper at his side.

“You actually enjoying this?” she said.

“Best mile of my life,” he answered.

YOU WAIT ANDand you watch, hour after hour. Perfectionism like that, you don’t find everywhere. But you are perfect, and you have to stay perfect. You have to stay sure. And by now you’re sure the cop is a permanent fixture. He eats in his car, he uses her bathroom from time to time, and that’s it. So you think about hijacking the cop, maybe tomorrow morning, just before eight o’clock, and impersonating him. Replacing him on duty. You think about sitting in his car for a spell and then walking up to Scimeca’s door and knocking, like you were ready to relieve yourself. You think about that for around a second and a half, and then you reject it, of course. His uniform wouldn’t fit. And you’d be expected to chat with the Bureau guy at the eight o’clock handover. He’d know you were a fake, straight off the bat. It’s not like he’s dealing with a big anonymous police department like he’d get in New York or L.A.

So either the cop has to be moved, or you have to go in right past him. At first you toy with the idea of a diversion. What would it take to get him out of there? A major automobile accident at the crossroads, maybe. A fire in the school, perhaps. But as far as you know the village doesn’t have a school. You’ve seen yellow buses on the road, heading in and out toward Portland. The school is probably in another jurisdiction. And an automobile accident would be hard to stage. Certainly you’re not about to involve yourself in one. And how do you induce two other drivers to get in a crash?

Maybe a bomb threat. But where? At the station house? That would be no good. The cop would be told to stay where he was, safely out of the way, until it was checked out. So where else? Some spot where people are gathered, maybe. Somewhere the whole police department would be needed to handle the evacuation. But this is a tiny place. Where do people gather? The church, maybe. You can see a spire, down near the through road. But you can’t wait until next Sunday. The library? Probably nobody in there. Two old dears at most, sitting there doing their needlepoint, ignoring the books. Evacuation could be handled by the other cop on his own in about three and a half seconds.

And a bomb threat would mean a phone call. You start to think about that. Where from? Calls can be traced. You could head back to the airport in Portland and call from there. Tracing a call to an airport pay phone is the same thing as not tracing it at all. But then you’re miles out of position at the critical time. A safe call, but a useless call. Catch-22. And there are no pay phones within a million miles of where you’re crouched, not in the middle of the damn Rocky Mountains or whatever the hell they call them. And you can’t use your mobile, because eventually the call would appear on your bill, which ultimately is the same thing as a confession in open court. And who can you call? You can’t allow anybody to hear your voice. It’s too distinctive. Too dangerous.

But the more you think about it, the more your strategy centers around the phone. There’s one person you can safely let hear your voice. But it’s a geometric problem. Four dimensional. Time and space. You have to call from right here, in the open, within sight of the house, but you can’t use your mobile. Impasse.

THEY DROVE OUT of the tunnel and streamed west with the traffic. Route 3 angled slightly north toward the Turnpike. It was a shiny night in New Jersey, damp asphalt everywhere, sodium lights with evening fog haloes strung like necklaces. There were lit billboards and neon signs left and right. Establishments of every nature behind lumpy blacktop yards.

The roadhouse they were looking for was in the back of a leftover lot where three roads met. It was labeled with a beer company’s neon sign which said Mac-Stiophan’s, which as far as Reacher understood Gaelic meant Stevenson’s. It was a low building with a flat roof. Its walls were faced with brown boards and there was a green neon shamrock in every window. Its parking lot was badly lit and three-quarters empty. Reacher put the Maxima at a casual angle across two spaces near the door. Slid out and looked around. The air was cold. He turned a full circle in the dark, scanning the lot against the lights from the street.

"No Cadillac DeVille,” he said. "He’s not here yet.”

Harper looked at the door, cautiously.

“We’re a little early,” she said. “I guess we’ll wait.”

“You can wait out here,” he said. “If you prefer.”

She shook her head.

“I’ve been in worse places,” she said.

It was hard for Reacher to imagine where and when. The outer door led to a six-by-six lobby with a cigarette machine and a sisal mat worn smooth and greasy with use. The inner door led to a low dark space full of the stink of beer fumes and smoke. There was no ventilation running. The green shamrocks in the windows shone inward as well as outward and gave the place a pale ghostly glare. The walls were dark boards, dulled and sticky with fifty years of cigarettes. The bar was a long wooden structure with halved barrels stuck to the front. There were tall barstools with red vinyl seats and lower versions of the same thing scattered around the room near tables built of lacquered barrels with plywood circles nailed to their tops. The plywood was rubbed smooth and dirty from thousands of wrists and hands.

There was a bartender behind the bar and eight customers in the body of the room. All of them had glasses of beer set on the plywood in front of them. All of them were men. All of them were staring at the new-comers. None of them was a soldier. They were all wrong for the military. Some were too old, some were too soft, some had long dirty hair. Just ordinary workingmen. Or maybe unemployed. But they were all hostile. They were silent, like they had just stopped talking in the middle of low muttered sentences. They were staring, like they were trying to intimidate.

Reacher swept his gaze over all of them, pausing on each face, long enough to let them know he wasn’t impressed, and short enough to stop them thinking he was in any way interested. Then he stepped to the bar and rolled a stool out for Harper.

“What’s on draft?” he asked the bartender.

The guy was wearing an unwashed dress shirt with no collar. Pleats all the way down the front. He had a dish towel squared over his shoulder. He was maybe fifty, gray-faced, paunchy. He didn’t answer.

“What have you got?” Reacher asked again.

No reply.

“Hey, are you deaf?” Harper called to the guy.

She was half on and half off the stool, one foot on the floor, the other on the rung. Her jacket was draped open and she was twisting around from the waist. Her hair was loose down her back.

“Let’s make a deal,” she said. “You give us beer, we give you money, take it from there. Maybe you could turn it into a business, you know, call it running a saloon.”

The guy turned to her.

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” he said.

Harper smiled. “No, we’re new customers. That’s what it’s all about, expanding your customer base, right? Do it well enough, and you’ll be the barroom king of the Garden State, no time at all.”