The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(6)

The adjustment process wasn’t made any easier by the response he received from the other patrons. Normally his was a pretty neutral presence. People weren’t pleased to see him. They weren’t displeased. They displayed no curiosity. No animosity. He could have been a store mannequin for all the effect he had on the social interactions that occurred in the place. That Monday, though, he felt like a magnet with the wrong polarity. He seemed to repel everyone around him. The surrounding customers left a bigger space than usual on either side. In the rare moments he was able to make eye contact the other person turned away before he could think of a way to start a conversation. By the time he reached the counter he still hadn’t exchanged a single word with a fellow human being. But he had seen how the barista interacted with the two men in front of him when they stepped up to order. She smiled at them. And asked if they wanted their regular. She didn’t smile at him. And she didn’t say a word.

‘My regular, please,’ Rusty said.

‘Which would be what?’ she asked.

Rusty heard someone sniggering behind him in the line. He felt the urge to run. But no, he was there on principle. To fight for his rights. A little ridicule was not going to break his resolve. ‘House blend, medium, no room for milk.’

‘Two dollars even.’ The barista turned, grabbed a to-go cup, and slammed it on the counter.

‘No.’ Rusty shook his head. ‘I want to drink it here.’

The barista shot him a look that said Really? I’d rather you didn’t.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ she said out loud. ‘I forgot. You lost your job. You don’t have any place to go.’ She tossed the to-go cup in the trash, took out a china one, poured, slopping coffee into the saucer, and slid it towards him, spilling even more.

The same time Rusty Rutherford was going into the coffee shop, a telephone was starting to ring. In a house a mile outside of town. In a room containing two people. A man and a woman. The woman recognized the ringtone the moment the phone began to chirp. She knew what it meant. Her boss was going to require privacy, so she stood up without waiting to be dismissed. Closed her notebook. Slid it into the pocket at the front of her apron. And made her way to the door.

The man checked that the secure icon on the phone’s screen was green, then hit the answer key. ‘This is Speranski.’

Speranski wasn’t his real name, of course, but it might as well have been. He’d been using it professionally for more than five decades.

The voice at the other end of the line said one word: ‘Contact.’

Speranski closed his eyes for a moment and ran the fingers of his free hand through his wild white hair. It was about time. He had made plenty of plans over the years. Been involved in plenty of operations. Survived plenty of crises. But never had the stakes been so high.

For him. Personally. And for the only person in the world he cared about.

The same time the telephone was being answered, Jack Reacher was getting into a car. He had solved his physics/biology conundrum to his satisfaction – and the bar owner’s extreme discomfort – and begun walking back to the bus station. He had been planning to follow his time-honoured principle of taking the first bus to leave, regardless of its destination, when he heard a vehicle approaching slowly from behind. He stuck out his thumb on the off chance and to his surprise the car stopped. It was new and shiny and bland. A rental. Probably picked up at the airport. The driver was a tidy-looking guy in his early twenties. He was wearing a plain dark suit and the speed of his breathing and the pallor of his face suggested he wasn’t far from a full-blown panic attack. A business guy, Reacher thought. Let out alone for the first time. Desperate not to screw anything up. And therefore screwing up everything he touched.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ The guy sounded even more nervous than he looked. ‘Do you know the way to I40? I need to go west.’ He gestured at a screen on his dashboard. ‘The GPS in this thing hates me. It keeps trying to send me down streets that don’t exist.’

‘Sure,’ Reacher said. ‘But it’s hard to explain. It would be easier to show you.’

The guy hesitated and looked Reacher up and down as if only just taking in his height. The breadth of his chest. His unwashed hair. His unshaved face. The web of scars around the knuckles of his enormous hands.

‘Unless you’d prefer to keep driving aimlessly around?’ Reacher attempted a concerned expression.

The guy swallowed. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Anywhere. I40 is as good a place to start as any.’

‘Well, OK.’ The guy paused. ‘I’ll take you to the highway. But I’m not going far after that. No place you’d want to go, I’m sure.’

‘How much further?’

‘Seventy-five miles, maybe. Some small town near a place named Pleasantville. Sounds inspiring, huh?’

‘Do they have a coffee shop in this town?’

The guy shrugged. ‘Probably. I can’t say for sure. I’ve never been there before.’

‘Probably’s good enough for me,’ Reacher said. ‘Let’s go.’

Rutherford picked up the cup and realized he had another unfamiliar dilemma to face. Where should he sit? Deciding wasn’t a problem, normally. He didn’t stay. And he didn’t have a dozen angry eyes probing him while he searched for an answer. He fought the urge to skulk at the back of the store. That would be the least uncomfortable option, for sure, but it would hardly serve his purpose. He didn’t want a window seat either – he wasn’t ready to put himself on display quite so prominently – so he opted for a small, square table in the centre. It had two chairs covered in red vinyl and its top had writing scrawled across every square inch of its surface. By previous customers, he guessed. There were song lyrics. Poems. Uplifting sayings. He scanned the words, found none he felt any connection to, then forced himself to look up. He attempted to make eye contact with the people at the other tables. And failed. Except with a toddler, whose parents got up and left when they realized what was going on. Rusty sipped at his coffee. He wanted to make it last at least an hour. He worked his way down to the dregs. And still achieved no interaction with anyone but the barista, who missed no opportunity to shoot him hostile glares. He refilled his cup and changed tables. Neither thing brought a change of luck. He stuck it out for another forty minutes, and then the barista approached and told him to either order some food or leave.