“So maybe tomorrow they’ll let her go,” Alice said.
“And maybe tomorrow they won’t. They’ll be worried she could make the ID. She’s a smart kid. She sits quiet, watching and thinking all the time.”
“So what do we do?”
“We try to figure out where she is.”
He opened the glove compartment and took out the maps again. Found a large-scale plan of Pecos County and spread it on his knee. Reached up and clicked on the dome light.
“How?” Alice asked. “I mean, where do you start?”
“I’ve done this before,” Reacher said. “Years and years, I hunted deserters and AWOLs. You train yourself to think like them, and you usually find them.”
“That easy?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
Silence in the speeding car.
“But they could be anywhere,” Alice said. “I mean, there must be a million hide-outs. Abandoned farmsteads, ruined buildings.”
“No, I think they’re using motels,” Reacher said.
“Why?”
“Because appearances are very important to them. Part of their technique. They suckered Al Eugene somehow, and they looked plausible to Rusty Greer, not that she cared too much. So they need running water and showers and closets and working electricity for hairdryers and shavers.”
“There are hundreds of motels here,” she said. “Thousands, probably.”
He nodded. “And they’re moving around, almost certainly. A different place every day. Basic security.”
“So how do we find the right one tonight?”
He held the map where it caught the light.
“We find it in our heads. Think like them, figure out what we’d do. Then that should be the same thing as what they’d do.”
“Hell of a gamble.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“So are we going to start now?”
“No, we’re going back to your office now.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like frontal assaults. Not against people this good, not with a kid in the crossfire.”
“So what do we do?”
“We divide and rule. We lure two of them out. Maybe we capture a tongue.”
“A tongue? What’s that?”
“An enemy prisoner who’ll talk.”
“How do we do that?”
“We decoy them. They’re already aware we know about them. So they’ll come for us, try a little damage control.”
“They know we know? But how?”
“Somebody just told them.”
“Who?”
Reacher didn’t reply. Just stared down at the map. Looked at the faint red lines that represented roads meandering across thousands of empty miles. Closed his eyes and tried hard to imagine what they looked like in reality.
Alice parked in the lot behind the law offices. She had a key to the rear door. There were a lot of shadows, and Reacher was very vigilant as they walked. But they made it inside O.K. The old store was deserted and dusty and silent and hot. The air conditioner had been turned off at the end of the day. Reacher stood still and listened for the inaudible quiver of people waiting. It’s a primeval sensation, received and understood far back in the brain. It wasn’t there.
“Call Walker and give him an update,” he said. “Tell him we’re here.”
He made her sit back-to-back with him at somebody else’s desk in the center of the room, so he could watch the front entrance while she watched the rear. He rested the pistol in his lap with the safety off. Then he dialed Sergeant Rodriguez’s number in Abilene. Rodrfguez was still on duty, and he sounded unhappy about it.
“We checked with the bar association,” he said. “There are no lawyers licensed in Texas called Chester A. Arthur.”
“I’m from Vermont,” Reacher said. “I’m volunteering down here, pro bono.”
“Like hell you are.”
The line went quiet.
“I’ll deal,” Reacher said. “Names, in exchange for conversation.”
“With who?”
“With you, maybe. How long have you been a Ranger?”
“Seventeen years.”
“How much do you know about the border patrol?”
“Enough, I guess.”
“You prepared to give me a straight yes-no answer? No comebacks?”
“What’s the question?”
“You recall the border patrol investigation twelve years ago?”
“Maybe.”
“Was it a whitewash?”
Rodriguez paused a long moment, and then he answered, with a single word.
“I’ll call you back,” Reacher said.
He hung up and turned and spoke over his shoulder to Alice.