17 A Wanted Man

Then left again, one tap. Then right, nine, his pale finger fast but clear in the low light, and then left, ten, and left, one, and left, three, and finally left, eleven.
    He looked in the mirror and raised his eyebrows, to supply the question mark.
    Carjack?
    Delfuenso nodded back at him, eagerly.
    A definite
yes
.
    Which explained a lot of things.
    But not the matching outfits.
    Reacher took his hand off the shifter and plucked at the shoulder of his coat, finger and thumb, and he looked quizzically in the mirror and mouthed, ‘Shirts?’
    Delfuenso glanced left, glanced right, frustrated, as if unable to find a quick way to explain. Then she looked hard to her left, as if checking on McQueen, and she started to unbutton her shirt. Reacher watched the road with one eye and the mirror with the other. Three buttons, four, five. Then Delfuenso pulled her shirt wide open and Reacher saw a tiny black and silver garment under it, like fancy underwear, like a bodice, laced tight against her stomach, her breasts resting high and proud on a fabric shelf made from two vestigial cups.
    Reacher nodded in the mirror. He had seen similar outfits. Most men had. Every soldier had. She was a roadhouse waitress, maybe a bartender. She had been coming off her shift, maybe getting into her car, maybe waiting at a light, and the two guys had pounced. They had stopped somewhere and bought her a shirt, to eliminate an APB’s inevitable headline description:
a dark-haired woman wearing practically nothing
.
    Delfuenso started buttoning up again. Reacher jabbed his finger in Alan King’s direction and his thumb in Don McQueen’s, and then he opened his hand and raised it uncertainly, questioningly, like a universal semaphore:
Why them too?
    Delfuenso opened her mouth and closed it, and then she started blinking again, a long and laborious sequence.
    Forward two, forward twelve, backward twelve, backward twelve, forward four.
    B-L-O-O-D,
blood
.
    Backward twelve, backward thirteen.
    O-N,
on
.
    Backward seven, forward eight, forward five, forward nine, backward nine.
    T-H-E-I-R,
their
.
    ‘Blood on their clothes?’ Reacher mouthed.
    Delfuenso nodded.
    Reacher drove on through the darkness, with the white Dodge’s tail lights still a mile ahead, past quiet lonely exits spaced miles apart, with questions in his head spinning like plates on sticks.

TWENTY-TWO
    SHERIFF GOODMAN HUNCHED deeper into his coat against the cold and turned a full circle in the convenience store’s back lot. He said, ‘I assume they parked here. Therefore they probably changed here too. Maybe they trashed their old jackets. The knife too, possibly. We should check the trash cans.’
    Sorenson said, ‘You volunteering?’
    ‘I have deputies with nothing better to do.’
    ‘OK,’ Sorenson said. ‘But it’s probably a waste of time. A buck gets ten they pitched the jackets in Delfuenso’s trunk. And they probably dropped the knife down one of the water pipes in the bunker.’
    ‘Are you going to try a third roadblock?’
    ‘Iowa doesn’t have the manpower.’
    ‘Illinois, then. If they’re staying on the Interstate, they’re most likely going all the way to Chicago. You could have the Illinois cops waiting for them, right on the state line.’
    ‘They have to know they’re pushing their luck. They’ve survived twice. They won’t risk a third time. They’re going to take back roads now. Or go to ground somewhere.’
    ‘So we’re done with roadblocks?’
    ‘I think there’s nothing more to be gained.’
    ‘Will their thinking match yours?’
    ‘I’m trying to make mine match theirs.’
    ‘Then that’s bad news for Karen Delfuenso,’ Goodman said. ‘They don’t need the smokescreen any more. They’ll dump her out in the middle of nowhere.’
    ‘They won’t,’ Sorenson said. ‘She’s seen their faces. They’ll kill her.’
    The first question in Reacher’s mind was: would they call out roadblocks in two separate states for a carjacking? And the answer was: yes, probably. Almost certainly, in fact. Because carjacking where the owner was forced to stay on board was kidnapping, and kidnapping was a big, big deal. A federal case, literally, handled by the FBI, which was the only agency capable of coordinating a multi-state response.
    And the local terrain was huge and empty. Blocking the roads was about the only option for any kind of law enforcement in that part of the country.
    That, and helicopters.
    And Reacher had seen a