"I know, I know," she said. "But I can't. I just can't. I know I'm being irrational, but I can't stay here, Reacher. It's a beautiful state, and there are nice people here, and it's very big, so I could get a long way away, but it's a symbol. Things have happened to me here that I have to get away from. Not just with Sloop."
He shrugged.
"Your call," he said.
She went quiet and concentrated on driving. The road reeled in. It was dropping down off of a wide flat mesa that looked the size of Rhode Island.
"The caprock," she said. "It's limestone, or something. All the water evaporated about a million years ago and left the rock behind. Geological deposits, or something."
She sounded vague. Her tour-guide explanation was less definitive than usual.
"So what do you want me to do?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, although he was certain that she did.
"Help you run? I could do that, probably."
She said nothing.
"You picked me out," he said. "You must have had something in mind."
She said nothing. He fell to thinking about the potential target group she had outlined to him. Out-of-work rodeo riders and roughnecks. Men of various talents, but he wasn't sure if beating a federal manhunt would be among them. So she had chosen well. Or lucked out.
"You need to move fast," he said. "Two days, you need to get started right now. We should pick Ellie up and turn the car around and get going. Vegas, maybe, for the first stop."
"And do what there?"
"Pick up some ID," he said. "Place like Vegas, we could find something, even if it's only temporary. I've got some money. I can get more, if you need it."
"I can't take your money," she said. "That wouldn't be fair."
"Fair or not, you're going to need money. You can pay me back later. Then maybe you should go back to L.A. You could start building some new paperwork there."
She was quiet again, another mile.
"No, I can't run," she said. "I can't be a fugitive. I can't be an illegal. Whatever else I am, I've never been an illegal. I'm not going to start being one now. And neither is Ellie. She deserves better than that."
"You both deserve better than that," he said. "But you've got to do something."
"I'm a citizen," she said. "Think about what that means to a person like me. I'm not going to give it up. I'm not going to pretend to be somebody else."
"So what's your plan?"
"You're my plan," she said.
Bull riders, roughnecks, a six-foot-five two-hundred-fifty-pound ex-military cop.
"You want me to be your bodyguard?'' he asked.
She made no reply.
"Carmen, I'm sorry about your situation," he said. "Believe me, I really am."
No response.
"But I can't be your bodyguard."
No reply.
"I can't be," he said again. "It's ridiculous. What do you think is going to happen? You think I'm going to be with you twenty-four hours a day? Seven days a week? Making sure he doesn't hit you?"
No reply. A huge highway interchange sprawled across the empty landscape, miles away in the haze.
"It's ridiculous," he said again. "I could warn him off, I guess. I could scare him. I could smack him around a little, to back up the message. But what happens when I'm gone? Because sooner or later, I'm going to be gone, Carmen. I'm not going to stay around. I don't like to stay anywhere. And it's not just me. Face it, nobody is going to stay around. Not long enough. Not ten years. Or twenty, or thirty or however long it is until he ups and dies of old age."
No reply. No effect, either. It wasn't like what he was saying was a big disappointment to her. She just listened and drove, fast and smooth, and silent, like she was biding her time. The highway cloverleaf grew larger and nearer and she swooped onto it and around it and headed due west, following a big green sign that said: PECOS 75 MILES.
"I don't want a bodyguard," she said. "I agree, that would be ridiculous."
"So what am I supposed to be for?"
She settled onto the highway, center lane, driving faster than before. He watched her face. It was completely blank.
"What am I supposed to be for?" he asked again.
She hesitated. "I can't say it."
"Say what?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Swallowed hard, and said nothing. He stared at her. Bull riders, roughnecks, an ex-MP. Clay Allison's grave, the fancy inscription,