of them. Cheap suits. The woman wore a skirt. Blue eyes, I think. The man was tall."
"What about their car?"
"I don't know about cars. It was a big sedan. But kind of ordinary. Not a Cadillac."
"Color?"
"Gray or blue, maybe. Not dark."
"You got any humble pie in the kitchen?"
"Why?"
"Because I should cram it down your throat until it chokes you. Those fair-haired white people with the blue eyes are the ones who killed Al Eugene. And you gave your own granddaughter to them."
She stared at him. "Killed? Al is dead?"
"Two minutes after they took him out of his car."
She went pale and her mouth started working. She said what about, and then stopped. And again, what about. She couldn't add the word Elite.
"Not yet," Reacher said. "That's my guess. And my hope. Ought to be your hope, too, because if they hurt her, you know what I'm going to do?"
She didn't answer. Just clamped her lips and shook her head from side to side.
"I'm going to come back down here and break your spine. I'm going to stand you up and snap it like a rotten twig."
* * *
They made her take a bath, which was awful, because one of the men watched her do it. He was quite short and had black hair on his head and his arms. He stood inside the bathroom door and watched her all the time she was in the tub. Her mommy had told her, never let anybody see you undressed, especially not a man. And he was right there watching her. And she had no pajamas to put on afterward. She hadn't brought any. She hadn't brought anything.
"You don't need pajamas," the man said. "It's too hot for pajamas."
He stood there by the door, watching her. She dried herself with a small white towel. She needed to pee, but she wasn't going to let him watch her do that. She had to squeeze very near him to get out of the room. Then the other two watched her all the way to the bed. The other man, and the woman. They were horrible. They were all horrible. She got into the bed and pulled the covers up over her head and tried hard not to cry.
* * *
"What now?" Alice asked.
"Back to Pecos," Reacher said. "I want to keep on the move. And we've got a lot of stuff to do tonight. But go slow, O.K.? I need time to think."
She drove out to the gate and turned north into the darkness. Switched the fan on high to blow the night heat away.
"Think about what?" Alice asked.
"About where Ellie is."
"Why do you think it was the same people as killed Eugene?"
"It's a deployment issue," he said. "I can't see anybody using a separate hit team and kidnap team. Not down here in the middle of nowhere. So I think it's one team. Either a hit team moonlighting on the kidnap, or a kidnap team moonlighting on the hits. Probably the former, because the way they did Eugene was pretty expert. If that was moonlighting, I'd hate to see them do what they're really good at."
"All they did was shoot him. Anybody could do that."
"No, they couldn't. They got him to stop the car, they talked him into theirs. They kept him quiet throughout. That's really good technique, Alice. Harder than you can imagine. Then they shot him through the eye. That means something, too."
"What?"
He shrugged. "It's a tiny target. And in a situation like that, it's a snap shot. You raise the gun, you fire. One, two. No rational reason to pick such a tiny target. It's a kind of exuberance. Not exactly showing off, as such. More like just celebrating your own skill and precision. Like reveling in it. It's a joy thing."
Silence in the car. Just the hum of the motor and the whine of the tires.
"And now they've got the kid," Alice said.
"And they're uneasy about it, because they're moonlighting. They're used to each other alone. They're accustomed to their normal procedures. Having a live kid around makes them worried about being static and visible."
"They'll look like a family. A man, a woman, a little girl."
"No, I think there's more than two of them."
"Why?"
"Because if it was me, I'd want three. In the service, we used three. Basically a driver, a shooter and a back-watcher."
"You shot people? The military police?"
He shrugged. "Sometimes. You know, things better not brought to trial."
She was quiet for a long moment. He saw her debating