“There are two keys on the ring,” Neagley said. “Although it’s possible the smaller one was for the desk.”

Reacher turned again and looked through the gloom at the drifts of trash and wreckage. The desk lock was in there somewhere, presumably. A small steel rectangle, torn out of the wood and dumped. He turned back and stepped to the curb. Looked left, looked right. Cupped his hand again and looked down at his empty palm.

First: What would I hide?

“It’s a computer file,” he said. “Got to be. Because they knew to look for it. Any kind of handwritten paperwork, Franz wouldn’t have told them anything about it. But probably they took his computers first and found some kind of traces that told them he’d been copying files. That happens, right? Computers leave traces of everything. But Franz wouldn’t tell them where the copies were. Maybe that’s why they broke his legs. But he kept quiet, which is why they had to come out here on this wild-assed search.”

“So where is it?”

Reacher looked down at his hand again.

Where would I hide something small and vital?

“Not under any old rock,” he said. “I would want somewhere structured. Maybe somewhere kind of custodial. I would want someone to be responsible.”

“A safe deposit box,” Neagley said again. “In a bank. The small key has no markings. Banks do that.”

“I don’t like banks,” Reacher said. “I don’t like the hours and I don’t like the detour. Once, maybe, but not often. Which is the issue. Because there’s some kind of regularity involved here. Isn’t there? Isn’t that what people do with computers? They back stuff up every night. So this wouldn’t be a one-time thing. It would be a matter of routine. Which changes things somewhat. A one-time thing, you might go to extraordinary lengths. Every night, you need something safe but easy. And permanently available.”

“I e-mail stuff to myself,” Neagley said.

Reacher paused a beat. Smiled.

“There you go,” he said.

“You think that’s what Franz did?”

“Not a chance,” Reacher said. “E-mail would have come straight back to his computer, which the bad guys had. They’d have spent their time trying to break down his password instead of busting up his building.”

“So what did he do?”

Reacher turned and glanced along the row of stores. The dry cleaner, the nail salon, the pharmacy.

The post office.

“Not e-mail,” he said. “Regular mail. That’s what he did. He backed up his stuff onto some kind of a disc and every night he put it in an envelope and dropped it in the mail. Addressed to himself. To his post office box. Because that’s where he got his mail. In the post office. There’s no slot in his door. Once the envelope was out of his hand it was safe. It was in the system. With a whole bunch of custodians looking after it all day and all night.”

“Slow,” Neagley said.

Reacher nodded. “He must have had three or four discs in rotation. Any particular day, two or three of them would be somewhere in the mail. But he went home every night knowing his latest stuff was safe. It’s not easy to rob a mail box or make a clerk give you something that doesn’t belong to you. USPS bureaucracy is about as safe as a Swiss bank.”

“The small key,” Neagley said. “Not his desk. Not a safe deposit box.”

Reacher nodded again.

“His post office box,” he said.

12

But United States Postal Service bureaucracy cut two ways. It was late in the afternoon. The dry cleaner’s was still open. The nail salon was open. The pharmacy was open. But the post office was closed. Lobby hours had ended at four o’clock.

“Tomorrow,” Neagley said. “We’re going to be in the car all day. We have to get to Swan’s place, too. Unless we separate.”

“It’s going to take two of us here,” Reacher said. “But maybe one of the others will show up and do some work.”

“I wish they would. And not because I’m lazy.” For form’s sake, like a little ritual, she pulled out her cell phone and checked the tiny screen.

No messages.

There were no messages at the hotel desk, either. No messages on the hotel voice mail. No e-mails on either one of Neagley’s laptop computers.

Nothing.

“They can’t just be ignoring us,” she said.

“No,” Reacher said. “They wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m getting a real bad feeling.”

“I’ve had a real bad feeling ever since I went to that ATM in Portland. I spent all my money taking someone to dinner. Twice. Now I wish we had stayed in and ordered pizza. She might have paid. I wouldn’t know about any of this yet.”

“She?”

“Someone I met.”

“Cute?”

“As a button.”

“Cuter than Karla Dixon?”

“Comparable.”

“Cuter than me?”

“Is that even possible?”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Who?”

“The woman in Portland.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

Neagley didn’t answer. She just shuffled the five sheets of contact information like a card player and dealt Reacher two and kept three for herself. Reacher got Tony Swan and Karla Dixon. He used the landline on the credenza and tried Swan first. Thirty, forty rings, no answer. He dabbed the cradle and tried Dixon’s number. A 212 area code, for New York City. No answer. Six rings, and straight to a machine. He listened to Dixon’s familiar voice and waited for the beep and left her the same message he had left earlier: “This is Jack Reacher with a ten-thirty from Frances Neagley at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Get off your ass and call her back.” Then he paused a beat and added: “Please, Karla. We really need to hear from you.” Then he hung up. Neagley was closing her cell phone and shaking her head.

“Not good,” she said.

“They could all be on vacation.”

“At the same time?”

“They could all be in jail. We were a pretty rough bunch.”

“First thing I checked. They’re not in jail.”

Reacher said nothing.

Neagley said, “You really liked Karla, didn’t you? You sounded positively tender there, on the phone.”

“I liked all of you.”

“But her especially. Did you ever sleep with her?”

Reacher said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“I recruited her. I was her CO. Wouldn’t have been right.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“Probably.”

“OK.”

Reacher asked, “What do you know about their businesses? Is there any good reason why they should all be out of contact for days at a time?”

“I guess O’Donnell could have to travel overseas,” Neagley said. “His practice is pretty general. Marital stuff could take him to hotels down in the islands, I guess. Or anyplace, if he’s chasing unpaid alimony. Child abductions or custody issues could take him anywhere. People looking to adopt sometimes send detectives to Eastern Europe or China or wherever to make sure things are kosher. There are lots of possible reasons.”

“But?”

“I’d have to talk myself into really believing one of them.”

“What about Karla?”

“She could be down in the Caymans looking for someone’s money, I guess. But I imagine she’d do that on-line from her office. It’s not like the money is actually there.”

“So where is it?”

“It’s notional. It’s electricity in a computer.”

“What about Sanchez and Orozco?”

“They’re in a closed world. I don’t see why they would ever have to leave Vegas. Not professionally.”

“What do we know about Swan’s company?”

“It exists. It does business. It files. It has an address. Apart from that, not much.”

“Presumably it has security issues, or Swan wouldn’t have gotten hired.”

“All defense contractors have security issues. Or they think they ought to have, because they want to think what they do is important.”