I let Vic drive again. It was a survival skill I'd learned to help distract her when she was annoyed at me. She wasn't fooled for a moment, but she liked to drive, especially with things being as slow in town as they were during the winter, so she was good with it. We took Main St. south. There wasn't much activity in downtown Durant, and even less in the residential blocks beyond. I knew a blue sky spread somewhere above us, but we wouldn't see it today. The forecast hadn't mentioned snow, but that never meant much this time of year. It's Wyoming.

We made the turn past the high school where a few kids, lightly bundled in sweats against the cold, were running the track around the football field. It reminded me that in a couple of months Henry would start his annual spring campaign to get me back in some semblance of shape by making me run with him. Thankfully, he usually slacked off during the winter months. I'm not sure if it was actual slacking or more of a cultural lessening of effort, hearkening back to the days when the Northern Cheyenne spent the better part of winter sequestered in their buffalo hide lodges, surviving on pemmican, and reinforcing ancient ancestral tales around the fire in the center of each lodge. I wasn't about to ask which it was for fear of arousing his native bent for torturing me by exercising me to death. Maybe he figured I was burning enough calories just trying to stay warm.

Vic steered the Bullet onto the southbound highway entrance ramp and gunned the big Triton V10. The speed limit was 80 miles per hour and she made it her duty to use every bit of it and then some. The ice had mostly melted away in the two days since our last trip south and the highway was clear. She waited until we passed the KAYCEE 43 CASPER 110 sign before she began her interrogation. "So tell me about the redactions."

"Jack Reacher was a major in the U.S. Army. He headed up an elite team of investigators who were together for several years, and word is they were among the best there was, at the time at least. So some of what I learned is understandable."

"'Understandable'? What does that mean?"

"Reacher's been out of the Army for a while now. Longer than he was ever in, in fact. But in that time he's been involved in a number of federal investigations, some of them fairly high profile in a clandestine sort of way."

"Yeah, T. J. told us all that two days ago."

"She told us about Reacher working with the FBI running mock assassination scenarios. She was wrong, or maybe she was telling me more without really telling me, like pointing me in a direction."

"I don't understand."

"Reacher worked with the Secret Service on the scenarios, not the FBI. I thought maybe she made that slip on purpose so I would look a little farther afield, so that's what I did. Reacher has 'consulted' in cases, yes, with the Secret Service and the FBI, but also with the Treasury Department, the DEA, the DOJ and the CIA."

"Redactions make sense then."

"He's also worked with law enforcement departments, big and small, from the Los Angeles and New York PDs down to little bitty police departments in rural areas all over the country."

"So he must charge a hefty consulting fee if he's in such high demand, right? Must be stinking rich. I hate him already."

"Here's something you'll appreciate. He won the Wimbledon Cup some years ago."

"You mean the 1,000 yard shooting trophy Wimbledon Cup, right? Not the tennis one."

"Would you appreciate it if he'd won the tennis trophy?"

"Hell, no." She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the highway ahead of us.

"He set a match record of some sort. Omar confirmed it when I called him to see if he knew anything about it. Get this, Omar was even there to see Reacher win the match. He begged me to bring him to meet Reacher if he ever surfaces again. Best of all, Omar had a contact number for somebody who had helped Reacher take down a Russian gang."

"Wait, 'ever surfaces again'? What does that mean?"

"Reacher is a drifter."

"He's not rich?"

"Nope. No address, no driver's license, no phone number, no family ties, no consulting or private investigative business, no connections to black ops groups that anybody is aware of. In fact, just finding him is half of any investigation he's ever involved in. The only person who is able to get in contact with him with any kind of certainty is the CEO of a very successful security consulting firm in Chicago, a woman named Frances Neagley."

"So did you try calling her to get her take on things?"

"I didn't get a chance. She called me first."


I wasn't having much luck trying to learn more about Jack Reacher. A certain amount of information was available. His father, Captain Stan Reacher, died in 1988. His mother, who was French, passed away two years later from cancer. He had one brother who worked for the Treasury Department and was killed in the line of duty nine or ten years after that. Finding anything beyond that was turning out to be something of a stone wall. Part of that was because it was Sunday. I had a number of contact sources, but most of them were through official phone numbers. I wouldn't expect to reach them on Sunday. If I had a computer I could email people, or Gargle or Google them or whatever it's called, but that wasn't going to help me now.

Omar had given me the number of an ex-Marine Gunnery Sergeant named Samuel Cash, who ran a shooting range in Kentucky. The shooting world is a small one, after all, and after thinking about it, the connection between Reacher, Cash, and Omar wasn't surprising. Omar and Cash had stood side by side and watched Reacher outshoot a field of Marine snipers at the invitational Wimbledon's Cup match, and Omar somehow knew that Gunny Cash had had further contact with Reacher at some point in the following years after Reacher's discharge from the Army.

Sunday is a busy day at any range, so I knew I'd get an answer of some sort when I called, and I did. Cash answered the phone himself, but was evasive on the subject of Jack Reacher at first. It helped that I had been a Marine Investigator myself.

As it was, he took my number and promised he would make a couple of calls, but told me not to get my hopes up. "I've tried once or twice myself to get in touch with Jack Reacher, but they were just spur-of-the-moment attempts and I was never motivated enough to follow through. The man is always moving. He leaves about as much behind him as a leaf does blowing across the ground. Hey, tell Omar 'hello' for me when you see him and that I'm still waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Oh, he'll know."

I hung up. Omar knew the oddest people. I leaned back in my chair and looked at the clock on the wall. It was close to noon. Dog was sprawled on the sofa, the rumble of a snore making an occasional foray into the otherwise still office. He hadn't so much as flinched in the last hour. I whispered, "Lunch." He still didn't flinch but his one visible eye popped open and rolled to look at me where I sat behind my desk. I pushed up out of the chair and reached for my sheepskin jacket. Dog was off the sofa and into the middle of the outer office before I even pushed an arm into a sleeve.

We went down to the Busy Bee, where I got the usual for me and one for Dog. Today it was a Reuben sandwich. Dog wanted fries with his, so I got some for each of us. Henry was going to have his work cut out for him come spring.

When we got back to the jail, my phone was ringing. My direct line, not the main line. I picked it up. "Absaroka County Sheriff Department, Walt Longmire speaking."

A woman's voice, cool and direct: "Sheriff Longmire, I understand you're asking questions about Jack Reacher."

"To whom am I speaking?"

"My name is Frances Neagley. I served with Reacher in the 110th SIU. Now I run a security consulting firm in Chicago."

Interesting.

"Okay. How is it you found out about my interest in Reacher, Ms. Neagley?"

"That's not important. What's important is why you're asking about him."

Dog was sitting next to my chair, a long string of saliva extending from his muzzle and dripping onto the floor. I unwrapped his Reuben and gave it to him. He took it away with him to lay down in front of the sofa and dismantle it. He doesn't like sauerkraut. I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "Why did you even ask for it if you're just going to take it apart like that?"

"Excuse me?" said Neagley.

"Sorry, I was conferring with a colleague." I heard the fax machine out at Ruby's desk start to whir and churn. "Yesterday Reacher was identified as being in possession of a vehicle that is potential evidence in an international smuggling operation. A multi-state law enforcement and Federal task force investigation hinges on the delivery of that vehicle to individuals involved in the smuggling operation. A sting was set up to facilitate that delivery and Reacher stepped in unexpectedly. I'm just trying to understand his involvement, and that only because I met his father Stan Reacher in Vietnam during the war. Now, I'll ask again, politely, how you got my number and how does my interest in Jack Reacher matter to you?"

The fax machine at Ruby's desk beeped, signaling it was done printing. Dog came back for his fries. I put his cardboard tray of the fried potato strips on the floor beside my chair. After a moment of snuffling indecision, he decided to eat them there rather than take them back to his spot in front of the sofa.

"So your own interest in Reacher is peripheral. Nothing to do with the investigation in an official capacity." She was making statements, not asking questions.

"Yep."

I heard a ding, then the tapping of a keyboard on her end of the phone line. "Sheriff, I just received an email that I'm forwarding to your Department inbox. You'll need to see it if you haven't already."

"I don't do email."

There was a pause. "You have an email address."

"Emails go to my receptionist and she leaves me a Post-it."

Another pause. "What about fax?"

It was my turn to pause as I connected the dots in my mind. It's what we investigators do. "Excuse me for a moment." I got up and nudged Dog aside with my foot so I could get out from behind my desk and go out to Ruby's desk. I came back with a few yellow fax pages in my hand. I looked them over very briefly. This was not good.

"Ms. Neagley, since you already have a copy of what I just received, I suspect you understand that my interest in Reacher has just become a little sharper."


"So this Neagley person got the same report we got at the same time we got it?" Vic asked. "Shit, she's got good connections. What else did she say? Does she know how to contact him?"

"No. She said he doesn't like to be on the grid anywhere. He pays cash for everything. The only time anybody knows where he is is when he cashes up at an ATM, or he's involved in an incident like the one down in Colorado two days ago. The only way she can contact him is by leaving cryptic deposits in his bank account that let him know to call her."

"What else did she say?"

"She said if he's involved, he'll do the right thing. Might not be the legal thing, but it will be the right thing. He's generally cooperative with law enforcement, as long as they don't 'mess with him.' It's some kind of personal code.'

"Sounds like some kind of loose cannon asshole thug to me."

"Appearances aside, she was very careful to emphasize that he's not anything of the kind. He's freakishly smart, freakishly strong, and there's nobody she would rather have on her side in any kind of conflict, period."

"Just don't mess with him."

"Well, yes, there's that."

We exited I-25 at Poplar and headed south, crossed over the frozen North Platte, made the right turn on Cy, and passed by the fairgrounds before arriving at the diner to talk to Angie. We turned into the diner parking lot and saw it, big as life and twice as green. A 1972 Buick Rivera, parked right out in front of the diner.

"Shit!" Vic breathed. "Would he really come back here?" She parked the Bullet nose-to-nose with the Riviera. The head of a big russet colored hound dog popped up in the back seat. "There's your stolen dog," she said.

"Yep."

We climbed out. The diner was quiet. Our two vehicles were the only ones in the lot. Looked like the breakfast rush was over. I came around the back of the Bullet and joined Vic to look over the Riviera. "Look," she pointed out a bullet hole in the rear quarter panel behind the long door on the passenger side. The sharp edges of the hole indicated the bullet had been fired from inside the car and exited through the sheet metal. "Looks like a .45," she said. I nodded and glanced back over at the diner. Still quiet. The hound inside the Riviera looked at us through the glass. The window was down an inch, so I put my fingers up to the opening and let him smell them. He lapped out his big pink tongue through the gap and licked me.

"Well…" I said, wiping my fingers on my jeans. I stepped over and kicked the front tire once with the toe of my boot and made up my mind. "Let's go see what Jack Reacher is having for breakfast."

We turned and were walking toward the diner when Vic said, "Walt" the way she does when she wants me to see something. I turned and a dark, government-issue sedan was just bouncing up the entrance driveway into the parking lot. I saw two men in dark suits behind the windshield as the car barreled down the lane toward us. I stepped in front of it and held up my hand, making sure my badge and gun were visible. The driver stopped hard a couple of feet from my knees. I went to his window as the glass lowered.

"What's the rush, gentlemen?"

"We've got a report of a dangerous suspect in the diner," he waved at the restaurant windows. "We need to keep him from fleeing again!"

"Are you DCI or FBI?"

"DCI! Who are you?"

"Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County, and Mr. Reacher is not going anywhere, so take a few deep breaths and let me talk to him."

"Longmire...are you related to Cady Longmire?

"Father."

The driver pointed at the diner in frustration. "He killed three men down in Colorado."

"I heard the same thing. I'll talk to him about that."

His mouth opened and closed a couple of times like a fish out of water. "You'll talk to him?"

"Yep."

We stared at each other for a few moments. I'm pretty good at staring. Finally the driver swore. I took it as a surrender and patted the door frame in dismissal. He buzzed the window up and turned into the next lane and parked a few spaces down. Vic and I resumed our walk to the diner. "They're just the first ones to get here," said Vic. "You know that, right?"

"I know."

And there was Reacher. In the last booth at the far end of the window, sitting where he could see the rest of the diner's interior and a good portion of the lot outside. A waitress sat across from him. They were both looking out the window at us. He was looking right at me, with eyes I'd seen long ago. The same eyes as the man I'd met on a night so many years ago in a hot, dark alley outside a bar in Saigon. A man who walked alone through a crazed mob with a gun in his hand, and saved my life.