I started walking again. I said, “I’m going to find this quarantine squad that everyone claims doesn’t exist.”

“Suppose you do?” Deveraux said. “It will be your word against theirs. Your word against the Pentagon’s, basically. You’ll say the squad existed, they’ll say it didn’t. And the Pentagon has the bigger microphone.”

“They can’t argue with physical evidence. I’ll bring back enough body parts to convince anyone.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“They shouldn’t have shot the kid, Elizabeth. That was way out of line, whoever they are. They opened the wrong door there. That’s for damn sure. What lies on the other side is their problem, not ours.”

“You don’t even know where they are.”

“They’re in the woods.”

“In camouflage with binoculars. How would you even get near them?”

“They have a blind spot.”

“Where?”

“Close to Kelham’s gate. They’re looking for the kind of intruder who already knows he can’t get through the gate. So they’re not looking there. They’re looking farther afield.”

“The guardhouse watches the gate.”

“No, the guardhouse watches what approaches the gate. I’m not going to approach the gate. I’m going to find the gap. Too far in the rear of the mobile force, too far in advance of the guardhouse.”

“They’re shooting people, Reacher.”

“They’re shooting the people they see. They won’t see me.”

“I’ll give you a ride back to town.”

“I’m not going back to town. I want a ride in the other direction. And a firearm.”

She didn’t answer.

I said, “I’m prepared to do it without either thing if necessary. Slower and harder, but I’ll get it done.”

She said, “Get in the car, Reacher.”

No indication where she planned to take me.

We got in the car and Deveraux backed it away from Butler’s cruiser and then she took off forward, east, toward Kelham. The right direction, as far as I was concerned. We covered most of the last mile and I said, “Now head off across the grass. To the edge of the woods. Like you just saw something.”

She said, “Straight at them?”

“They’re not here. They’re north and west of here. And they wouldn’t shoot at a police vehicle anyway.”

“You sure about that?”

“Only one way to find out.”

She slowed and turned the wheel and thumped down off the road onto hard-packed dirt. The road was in a gap shaped like an hourglass. Two hundred yards north of it Kelham’s new trees ran away from us in a gentle curve, and two hundred yards south of it the old woods ran away from us in a symmetrical pattern. Deveraux headed north and east, at an angle of forty-five degrees relative to the pavement, bucking and bouncing, and then she steered through a wide turn across the dirt and came to a stop with the flank of the car right next to the woods. My door was six feet from the nearest tree.

I said, “Gun?”

“Jesus,” she said. “This whole thing is illegal on so many different levels.”

“But like you told me, it’s their word against mine. If there’s anyone to shoot, they’ll say there wasn’t. The more shooting, the more denying.”

She took a breath and let it out and pulled the shotgun from its scabbard between our seats. It was an old Winchester Model 12, forty inches long, seven pounds in weight. It was nicked and worn but dewy with oil and polish. It could have been fifty years old, but it seemed well looked after. Even so, I worry about guns I have never fired. Nothing worse than pulling a trigger and having nothing happen. Or missing.

I asked her, “Does it work?”

She said, “It works perfectly.”

“When did you last fire it?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“At what?”

“At a target. I make the whole department requalify every year. And I need to be able to kick their butts, so I practice.”

“Did you hit the target?”

“I destroyed the target.”

I asked, “Did you reload?”

She smiled and said, “There are six in the magazine and one in the breech. I have spares in the trunk. I’ll give you as many as you can carry.”

“Thank you.”

“It was my father’s gun. Take care of it.”

“I will.”

“Take care of yourself, too.”

“Always.”

We got out of the car and she stepped around to the trunk and opened the lid. It was a messy trunk. There was dirt in it. Some kind of earth. But I spent no time worrying about tidiness, because there was a metal box bolted to the floor behind the seat-back bulkhead. For a woman built like Deveraux, it was a long way forward. She went up on tiptoes and bent at the waist and leaned in. Which maneuver looked fabulous from behind. Absolutely, truly spectacular. She flipped up the lid of the box and scrabbled with her fingernails and came back out with a carton of twelve-gauge shells. She straightened up and handed it to me. Fifteen rounds remaining. I put five in each pants pocket and five in my shirt pocket. She watched me do it. Then her eyes went wide and she said, “You washed your shirt.”

I said, “No, I bought a new one.”

“Why?”

“It seemed polite.”

“No, why did you buy a new one instead of washing the old one?”

“I went through this already. With the guy in the store. It seemed logical to me.”

“OK,” she said.

“You have a great ass, by the way.”

“OK,” she said again.

“I just thought I’d mention it.”

“Thank you.”

“We good now? You and me?”

She smiled.

“We always were,” she said. “I was just yanking your chain, that’s all. If she’d said she was your girlfriend I might have taken it seriously. But fiancée? That’s ridiculous.”

“Why?”

“No woman would agree to marry you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not marriage material.”

“Why not?”

“How long have you got? The laundry issue alone could take an hour.”

“How do you do yours?”

“There’s a pay launderette in the next alley past the hardware store.”

“With detergent and stuff?”

“It’s not rocket science.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Make sure you do, OK? We have a train to catch tonight.”

I smiled and nodded once and took a last look around, and then I stepped into the trees.

Chapter

49

At forty inches the Winchester was too long for easy transport through a forest. I had to carry it two-handed, upright in front of me. But I was glad to have it. It was a fine old piece. And fairly definitive. Twelve-gauge lead shot settles most disputes at the first time of asking.

It was March in Mississippi and there were enough new leaves on the trees to deny me a clear view of the sky. So I navigated by guesswork. Or dead reckoning, as some people prefer to call it. Which is hard to do, in a forest. Most right-handed people end up walking wide counterclockwise circles, because most right-handed people have left legs fractionally shorter than their right legs. Basic biology and geometry. I avoided that particular peril by stepping to the right of every tenth tree I came to, whether I thought I needed to or not.

The vegetation was dense, but not impossible. There was some underbrush and a lot of leaf litter. The trees were deciduous. I have no idea what kind they were. I don’t know much about trees. The trunks were of various thicknesses and mostly three or four feet apart. Most of their lower limbs had died back in the gloom. There wasn’t much light down there. There were no paths. No sign of recent disturbance.

I had one circumstance working in my favor and two against. The negatives were that I was making a lot of noise, and I was wearing a bright white shirt. I was far from inconspicuous. No camouflage. No silent approach. The positive was that I had to be approaching them from their rear. They had to be hunkered down just inside the edge of the woods. They had to be looking outward. They were looking for journalists and busybodies and other unexplained strangers. Anyone walking purposefully toward them was fair game. But I would be coming up on them from behind.