time to time was real.'
'Who were they all?'
'Asian girls, I think.'
'You can tell that from their bones?'
'The last one isn't bones yet.'
'Where were they all from?'
'From immigrant families, probably. Illegals, almost certainly, smuggled in, for the sex trade. That's what the Duncans were doing. That's how they were making their money.'
'Were they all young?'
'About eight years old.'
'Are they buried?'
Reacher said, 'No.'
'They're just dumped in there?'
'Not dumped,' Reacher said. 'They're displayed. It's like a shrine.'
There was a long, long pause.
Dorothy Coe said, 'I should look.'
'Don't.'
'Why not?'
'There are photographs. Like a record. Like mementos. In silver frames.'
'I should look.'
'You'll regret it. All your life. You'll wish you hadn't.'
'You looked.'
'And I regret it. I wish I hadn't.'
Dorothy Coe went quiet again. She breathed in, and breathed out, and watched the horizon. Then she asked, 'What should we do now?'
Reacher said, 'I'm going to head over to the Duncan houses. They're all in there, sitting around, thinking everything is going just fine. It's time they found out it isn't.'
Dorothy Coe said, 'I want to come with you.'
Reacher said, 'Not a good idea.'
'I need to.'
'Could be dangerous.'
'I hope it is. Some things are worth dying for.'
The doctor's wife said, 'We're coming too. Both of us. Let's go, right now.'
Chapter Twenty-Six
FIFTY-SEVEN
DOROTHY COE GOT BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HER TRUCK AGAIN AND the doctor and his wife slid in beside her. Reacher rode in the load bed, with the captured rifle, holding tight over the tractor ruts, a long slow mile, back to where he had left the white Tahoe he had taken from the football player who had broken his nose. It was still there, parked and untouched. Reacher got in and drove it and the other three followed behind. They went south on the two-lane and then coasted and stopped half a mile shy of the Duncan compound. The view from there was good. Reacher unscrewed the Leica scope from the rifle and used it like a miniature telescope. All three houses were clearly visible. There were five parked vehicles. Three old pick-up trucks, plus Seth Duncan's black Cadillac, and Eleanor Duncan's red Mazda. All of them were standing in a neat line on the dirt to the left of the southernmost house, which was Jacob's. All of them were cold and inert and dewed over, like they had been parked for a long time, which meant the Duncans were holed up and isolated, which was pretty much the way Reacher wanted it.
He climbed out of the Tahoe and walked back to meet the others. He took the sawn-off from his pocket and handed it to Dorothy Coe. He said, 'You all head back and get car keys from the football players. Then bring me two more vehicles. Choose the ones with the most gas in the tank. Get back here as fast as you can.'
Dorothy Coe backed up a yard and turned across the width of the road and took off north. Reacher got back in the Tahoe and waited.
Three isolated houses. Wintertime. Flat land all around. Nowhere to hide. A classic tactical problem. Standard infantry doctrine would be to sit back and call in an artillery strike, or a bombing run. The guerilla approach would be to split up and attack with rocket-propelled grenades from four sides simultaneously, with the main assault from the north, where there were fewest facing windows. But Reacher had no forces to divide, and no grenades or artillery or air support. He was on his own, with a middle-aged alcoholic man and two middle-aged women, one of whom was in shock. Together they were equipped with a bolt-action rifle with two rounds in it, and a Glock nine-millimetre pistol with sixteen rounds, and a sawn-off twelve-gauge shotgun with three rounds, and a switchblade, and an adjustable wrench, and two screwdrivers, and a book of matches. Not exactly overwhelming force.
But time was on their side. They had all day. And the terrain was on their side. They had forty thousand unobstructed acres. And the Duncans' fence was on their side. The fence, built a quarter of a century before, as an alibi, still strong and sturdy. The law of unintended consequences. The fence was about to come right back and bite the Duncans in the ass.
Reacher put the Leica to his eye again. Nothing was happening in the compound. It was still and quiet. Nothing was moving, except smoke coming from the chimneys on the first house and the last. The smoke was curling south. A breeze, not a