"The laser spot on your jacket was plain as day to us, but you didn't even look down at it. You just reacted. How'd you know?" Vic asked Reacher. Five of us, three representing the Absaroka County Sheriff's department, plus Reacher and Neagley, were all standing near the Riviera debriefing each other. Still sequestered in the Bullet, Dog was immobile, staring through the windshield at the bloodhound in the long, green Buick. The big hound was equally engaged, his eyes fixed on Dog. A steady stream of forensic techs came and went from the diner, processing the scene, and carting away the empty shells that up until thirty minutes ago had housed human souls.

Reacher shrugged. "The looks on your faces told me what I needed to know. It wasn't much of a leap in deduction to realize we were meant to be distracted by whatever you were looking at. The odds were nobody from our side was going to target me with your boss and Sheriff Louis both in here. Had to be somebody else. Who's left but Williamson or the Chinese? And why give away their position by using a laser scope? Any competent rifleman could make that shot with iron sights. So…diversion. And with all the activity out front, the rear exit made for the only tactical alternative for an infiltration."

I nodded knowingly. I like to do that. Makes me feel knowing. I asked Neagley, "Is he always this self-deprecating?"

"He's just being honest," she said. "Life is tactics when it comes down to it, right?"

Reacher looked at Vic, "That was some good shooting with the guy in the kitchen. Hostage scenario, shot like that, most responders would've at least hesitated."

She shrugged. "The longer any of us waited, the more control he gained. I don't like that." She nodded with her perfect chin at Neagley. "Like she said: tactics."

Boy howdy.

"So, what about Williamson?" I asked, already pretty sure I knew the answer. "He's back on that roof with a slit throat. What was his role?"

Neagley spoke up. "He was the wild card. We still weren't sure he'd gone completely rogue, but he's been erratic enough in his behavior over the last few days that we thought he might very well try to shoot someone from cover. We gave him a day to get here and then Reacher baited the snare by parking the Riviera out front and sitting big as life in the front window right where he sat before."

Reacher took up the narrative. "Sure enough, Williamson was among the first wave of responders here once the call went out that the car was here at the diner. The roof of that empty real estate office across the street was the best place from which to take a shot. Neagley just had to let him commit."

I turned to Neagley. "So, when you called me at my office, it wasn't because you had a network of resources keeping you up to date on Reacher-related developments."

She smiled. "That would be a waste of time, given Reacher's travel habits. I called you because he called me after getting your note."

"And you flew out from Chicago as, what, backup?"

Annoyance carved an almost invisible line between her brows; just a flicker, then it was gone. "Not backup. Another set of eyes on a problem. It's something we do for each other from time to time."

The Cheyenne Nation had been uncharacteristically quiet this whole time. "Henry, do you mind if I ask what you're doing here with Neagley?"

He dodged the question. "We are not together. We happen to be in the same place."

I just looked at him. He just looked back. The old staring sheriff trick never works on the Northern Cheyenne. A question popped into my head and out of my mouth. "Is that pool still running?" No response. I looked at Vic standing next to me. "Is the pool still running?" My staff had a pool to see who would be the irresponsible one that let me get reinjured now that my rehabilitation allowed me to go back to work after my Mexican sabbatical. Henry was an invited entry.

"Of course it's still running! And I'm not going to be the one that lets your ass get shot up when you're with me."

"And I am not going to let her let your ass get shot," Henry rumbled.

"Did you run into a door somewhere?" In reference to the scuff on his face.

"That's my fault," Neagley said, lifting a hand. "There was no place nearby to watch the back of the building to watch so I chose that bunch of scrub brush a little further back from the road." The brush she pointed to was some fifty yards from the real estate office. Cy Avenue at this point ran diagonally in a southwest to northeast direction, roughly paralleling the North Platte River, and had yet to fill in with businesses like the areas closer to Casper's downtown. The diner was further out at this point than the county fairgrounds. There was a scattering of fast food places, small industrial complexes, and smaller strip malls all up and down the wide thoroughfare, but there were also vacant lots and open fields of dry grass and sage, with gullies and low hills that were once river bluffs interspersed along the way as well. "Reacher and I figured if anything was going to happen it would happen from a distance. This was the best place based on where he planned to sit. I settled in before sunrise and was waiting to see if anything would come this way."

Vic looked back and forth between Henry and Neagley. "Wait, you got here before sunrise? When did you get here, Henry?"

"A few minutes after you and Walt. I followed you down from Durant. I drove past the diner twice as reinforcements gathered in the parking lot and decided I would be more useful if I stayed on the perimeter. I saw Williamson cross the street and climb onto the roof. Thinking he was part of the response at the time, I picked a place from which to watch and found it to be occupied."

"You should have made some noise," Neagley said.

"I did not want to startle you." Neagley raised an eyebrow. Vic couldn't have done it more effectively. "Even though I did startle you," he admitted. "In my defense, I have several hundred years of sneaking up on white people in my blood. I cannot just turn it off." Looking back at Vic, he continued his version of the encounter. "Anyway, when I startled her, she turned, very quickly I might add, and tried to jam the butt of her palm against my nose."

"And she missed?" Reacher asked, his own eyebrows going up as he looked at Neagley. "That's a first."

"Almost missed. He's fast too," she said, and based on the self-conscious expression on her face as she looked back at Reacher, a defensive tone was very rare, maybe almost as rare as the nearly imperceptible blush of her cheeks.

Henry went on. "We quickly realized we were on the same side and made a treaty. I would release her wrist and not touch her again, and she would stop trying to crush my ta'xevȯtse with her knee."

Vic glanced at me for a translation. I surreptitiously cupped my hands over my crotch. Her lips formed an "O" and her eyes widened a little before she winced in understanding.

"When did the Chinese sniper get there?" Reacher asked.

"Only a few minutes after we concealed ourselves again, fortunately. We watched him climb the ladder to the rooftop. At first we thought he was a second responder joining his teammate, but the way he paused at the top of the ladder to assess what he saw struck us as odd, so we decided to reconnoiter.

"When we gained the roof, Williamson was already dead, and the Chinese sniper was prone on the roof aiming his rifle over the top of the low parapet."

"So now we don't know if Williamson was actually planning to shoot anybody, or he was still playing both sides," Vic said.

"He was playing both sides," Reacher said. "That's why he's dead."

"I still would've liked to ask him why he passed along my note to you," I said.

"That makes two of us. My guess is he hoped it might lure me back here to Casper, which it did." He nodded at my side arm with his chin. "So is that the gun?"

"Yep." I drew the Colt from the pancake holster and thumbed the release to drop the magazine from the bottom of the grip, then I racked the slide. The fat .45 hollow point round that had been automatically chambered after I fired a second time into the rifleman in the diner popped out of the ejection port and into Vic's already waiting palm. I locked the slide back and after showing him the empty chamber, handed the harmless weapon to Reacher, grip first. He accepted it, thumbing the slide lock lever down. The slide slammed forward with a harsh metallic snap. He brought up his left hand and wrapped it around his right, both thumbs pointing forward along the left side of the slide. Lifting the weapon, he sighted it over our heads, pointing it at the real estate rooftop across the parking lot and Cy Avenue. A magnified intensity that hadn't been there a moment before, like nothing existed in the world except the gun in his hand and whatever he saw beyond the worn blade of the front sight, appeared on his face, and I almost hunched my shoulders in expectation of incoming rounds from an unseen enemy.

I had seen that look before, and my face tingled the way it did in the micro-second before I knew I was about to be punched. Instead of standing there in the cold, high plains morning, the intervening years stripped away drop me back in that hot, stinking alley outside the Saigon bar, surrounded by a hostile crowd pressing inward like hungry wolves.