I should talk to had cousins in Ryantown. He used to visit on a regular basis. Maybe they all got up a game in the street. All the neighborhood kids. Stickball, or whatever. Maybe they played catch across the stream.”
“With all due respect, major, do you really care about that stuff?”
“I guess a little bit,” Reacher said. “Enough to stick around one more night, anyway.”
“We don’t want trouble here.”
“Always best avoided.”
“They have the rest of the day to plan. They’ll mobilize before midnight. They’ll be here by morning. The distances are not great. They’ll have your description with them. Therefore Shaw is going to dial it up to eleven before first light. He’s going to treat this place like a war zone. Where does this very old man live?”
“In a home somewhere out of town. A guy I met is going to pick me up.”
“What guy?”
“Eight years ago he thought the water was contaminated.”
“Was it?”
“Apparently not. It’s a sore point.”
“Where is he going to pick you up?”
“Where he let me out.”
“At an agreed-upon time?”
“Nine-thirty on the dot. Something about visiting hours.”
Amos paused a beat.
“OK,” she said. “You’re authorized to do that. But you’ll do it my way. You don’t leave your room at any point, no one ever sees you, and at nine-thirty in the morning exactly you run straight to the car with your head down. And you drive away. And you don’t come back. That’s the deal I’m offering. Or we run you out now.”
“I already paid for my room,” Reacher said. “Running me out now would be an injustice.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “This is not the O.K. Corral. This is collateral damage just waiting to happen. If they miss you, they’ll hit two other people instead. Watch my lips. We are not going to allow drive-by shootings in our town. No way. This is Laconia, not Los Angeles. And with respect, major, you should support our position. You should know better than to put innocent bystanders at risk.”
“Relax,” Reacher said. “I support your position. I support it big time. I’ll do everything your way. I promise. Starting tomorrow. Today I’m still legal.”
“Start when it gets dark tonight,” Amos said. “Play it safe. For my sake.”
She took out a business card and handed it to him.
She said, “Call me if you need me.”
Chapter 20
Patty took off her shoes, because she was Canadian, and stepped up on the bed, and stood upright on the bouncy surface. She shuffled sideways and tilted her face up toward the light.
She said, loudly, “Please raise the window blind. As a personal favor to me. I want to see daylight. What possible harm could it do? No one ever comes here.”
Then she climbed down, and sat on the edge of the mattress to put her shoes back on. Shorty watched the window, like he was watching a ball game on a television screen. The same kind of close attention.
The blind stayed down.
He shrugged.
“Good try,” he mouthed, silently.
“They’re discussing it,” she mouthed back.
They waited again.
And then the blind rolled up. The motor whirred and a blue bar of bright afternoon light came spilling in, narrow at first, but widening all the time, until it filled the room with sunshine.
Patty glanced up at the ceiling.
“Thank you,” she said.
She walked to the door, to kill the hot yellow bulb. Three steps. The first felt good, because she liked the daylight. The second felt better, because she had made them do something for her. She had established a line of communication. She had made them understand she was a person. But then the third step felt worse again, because she realized she had given them leverage. She had told them what she feared to lose.
She put her elbows on the sill and her forehead on the glass and stared out at the view. It was unchanged. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees. Nothing else.
* * *
—
In the back parlor over at the house Mark finished a phone call and put the receiver down. He checked the screens. Patty was happy. He turned to face the others.
“Listen up,” he said. “That was a neighbor on the phone. Some old apple farmer twenty miles south of here. They had a guy there today, making trouble. They want us to keep an eye out for him. In case he happens to come by, looking for a room. They’ll send folks up to get him. Apparently they need to teach him a lesson.”