The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(7)
‘I won’t order any food,’ Rusty told her. ‘I’ll leave. But I’ll come back tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that until everyone believes I’m innocent.’
The barista gave him a blank look and retreated to the counter.
Rusty stood up. ‘Listen to me,’ he said.
No one paid any attention.
‘Listen to me!’ Rusty raised his voice. ‘What happened to the town totally sucks. I get that. But it was not my fault. None of it. The truth is I tried to stop it from happening. And I was the only one who did.’
No one paid any attention.
The barista leaned across the counter with a to-go cup in her hand. ‘Take this and leave, Mr Rutherford. No one believes you. And no one ever will.’
The same time Rusty Rutherford was leaving the coffee shop, Jack Reacher was arriving in his town. Getting out of Nashville hadn’t been a problem. Reacher had navigated using his instinct plus the landmarks he remembered from Saturday night’s bus ride and had found the highway without getting them lost. Not so lost that the driver noticed, anyway. Once they were out of the city Reacher persuaded him to tune the radio to a local blues channel, then reclined his seat and closed his eyes. The music was half decent but despite that the guy wouldn’t stop talking. About New York. The insurance company he worked for. How this was his first case after getting a promotion to Negotiator. Flying out that morning for a meeting at their field office. Getting lost on his way to whichever town had whatever kind of problem he was supposed to help solve. Something to do with computers. And foreign governments. And keys and portals and all kinds of other things Reacher had no interest in. He let the words wash over him and settled into a comfortable doze, only opening his eyes when he felt the car slow and they turned on to a state highway heading south. The half mile beyond the cloverleaf was teeming with restaurants and drive-throughs and car dealers and chain hotels. After that the terrain opened out. There were farmers’ fields where the land was flat, stretched and warped into all kinds of irregular shapes by the sweeping contours, and groves of tall mature trees where the land was steep. After ten minutes they swung west again and continued along a steeper, twistier road for the best part of an hour until they entered the outskirts of the town. The guy kept driving until they found what Reacher guessed was the main street, then pulled over.
Reacher climbed out and took stock of his new surroundings. The place was unobjectionable, he thought. A late nineteenth-century core supplemented by an influx of cash in the fifties, judging by the buildings. Some old ones weeded out. Some newer ones to fill the gaps, now showing their own age. The overall layout unchanged. A standard grid. Compact enough to require traffic signals at one intersection only. They were out that day, which was causing consternation among some of the passing drivers. But aside from that things were fine. Good enough for a pit stop, anyway. Reacher figured he could pass a half hour there. There was no ancestral connection. No intriguing name. No military significance. No interesting signs or structures. No link to any of his musical heroes. No reason to stay. No longer than it took to get coffee, anyway. Priorities were priorities.
Reacher was half a block from the intersection with the broken signals at the west end of what he figured was the town’s main drag. There was a coffee shop diagonally opposite. There may have been others elsewhere in the town but Reacher saw no reason to check. He wasn’t fussy. So he took advantage of the traffic chaos and started out across the street.
Reacher was heading for the coffee shop. Rutherford was leaving it. Reacher didn’t pay him much attention at first. He was just a guy, small and unremarkable, holding his to-go cup, going about his business. Whatever that may be. But a moment later Reacher’s interest ratcheted all the way up. He felt a chill at the base of his neck. A signal from some ancient warning system hardwired into the back of his brain. An instinctive recognition. Pattern and movement. Predators circling. Moving in on their prey. Two men and a woman. Spread out. Carefully positioned. Coordinated. Ready to spring their trap.
Three against one. Not the kind of odds to worry Reacher. But Reacher was not their target. That was clear.
The men were positioned at each end of the block. One was pretending to look in a store window at the west end, right before the intersection with the broken signals. The other was at the east end, where the block ended at an alleyway, pretending to do something with his phone. An envelope of maybe 130 feet. The woman was stationed on the other side of the alleyway, at the start of the next block. Another ten feet away. There was a solid row of buildings to the north of the sidewalk. The street to the south. Store entrances to bolt into, if the timing was right. Asphalt to run across, if no traffic was coming.
Rutherford was heading east. Not hurrying. Not dawdling. Just drifting along in his own little bubble. Not aimless, Reacher thought. More like preoccupied. Following a familiar route. Comfortable with his surroundings. Not paying attention. Not looking for store entrances. Not checking the traffic.
The west-end guy was around five feet ten. He was wearing a plain black T-shirt and cargo pants. His hair was buzzed short and he had an earpiece like the kind Reacher had seen business people use. The east-end guy was the same kind of size. He had the same clothes. The same hair. The same earpiece. The woman on the other side of the alley was also wearing black but her clothes were more fitted and her hair wasn’t buzzed. It was long and red and she had it tied back in a ponytail.