straight in her lane and accelerated back to a cruise.
"But you should call me senora," she said. "Not senorita. I'm a married woman."
"Yes," he said. "I guess you are."
She went quiet for a mile. Settled back in the seat and rested both hands lightly on the bottom curve of the wheel. Then she took a deep breath.
"O.K., here's the problem," she said. "I don't have a year."
"Why not?"
"Because a month ago his lawyer friend came out to the house. Told us there was some kind of deal on the table."
"What deal?"
"I don't know for sure. Nobody told me exactly. My guess is Sloop's going to rat out some business associates in exchange for early release. I think his other friend is brokering it through the DA's office."
"Shit," Reacher said.
Carmen nodded. "Yes, shit. They've all been working their asses off, getting it going. I've had to be all smiles, like oh great, Sloop's coming home early."
Reacher said nothing.
"But inside, I'm screaming," she said. "I left it too late, you see. A year and a half, I did nothing at all. I thought I was safe. I was wrong. I was stupid. I was sitting around in a trap without knowing it, and now it's sprung shut, and I'm still in it."
Reacher nodded slowly. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. That was his guiding principle.
"So what's the progress on the deal?" he asked. The car sped on south.
"It's done," she said, in a small voice.
"So when does he get out?"
"Today's Friday," she said. "I don't think they can do it on the weekend. So it'll be Monday, I expect. A couple of days, is all."
"I see," Reacher said.
"So I'm scared," she said. "He's coming home."
"I see," Reacher said again.
"Do you?" she asked.
He said nothing.
"Monday night," she said. "He's going to start it all up again. It's going to be worse than ever."
"Maybe he's changed," Reacher said. "Prison can change people."
It was a useless thing to say. He could see it in her face. And in his experience, prison didn't change people for the better.
"No, it's going to be worse than ever," she said. "I know it. I know it for sure. I'm in big trouble, Reacher. I can promise you that."
Something in her voice.
"Why?"
She moved her hands on the wheel. Closed her eyes tight, even though she was doing seventy miles an hour.
"Because it was me who told the IRS about him," she said.
* * *
The Crown Victoria drove south, and then west, and then looped back north in a giant sweeping curve. It detoured over near the highway so it could fill up with gas at a self-service pump in a busy station. The driver used a stolen Amex card in the slot and then wiped his prints off it and dropped it in the trash next to the pump, with the empty oil bottles and the soda cans and the used paper towels covered with windshield dirt. The woman busied herself with a map and selected their next destination. Kept her finger on the spot until the driver got back in and squirmed around to take a look at it. "Now?" he asked.
"Just to check it out," she replied. "For later."
* * *
"It seemed like such a good plan," Carmen said. "It seemed foolproof. I knew how stubborn he was, and how greedy he was, so I knew he wouldn't cooperate with them, so I knew he would go to jail, at least for a little while. Even if by some chance he didn't, I thought it might preoccupy him for a spell. And I thought it might shake some money loose for me, you know, when he was hiding it all. And it worked real well, apart from the money. But that seemed like such a small thing at the time."
"How did you do it?"
"I just called them. They're in the book. They have a whole section to take information from spouses. It's one of their big ways to get people. Normally it happens during divorces, when you're mad at each other. But I was already mad at him."
"Why haven't you gone ahead and got a divorce?" he asked. "Husband in jail is grounds, right? Some kind of desertion?"
She glanced in the mirror, at the briefcase on the rear seat. "It doesn't solve the problem with Ellie," she said. "In fact, it makes it much worse. It alerts everybody to the possibility I'll leave the state. Legally, Sloop could require me to register her whereabouts, and I'm