17 A Wanted Man

we want. And the toiletries.’
    He asked, ‘What happened after you left that motel in Iowa?’
    She didn’t answer.
    He said, ‘You know what happened. They know what happened. How can it hurt if I know what happened too? I’m in here with you. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t talk to anyone else.’
    Delfuenso thought for a long moment. Her face went exactly like her daughter’s, serious and contemplative. Then she shrugged and said, ‘That part was pretty awful. After you went inside with McQueen, I mean. I couldn’t see much. He was in the way. But I saw the flash and heard the shot. He came running out and I couldn’t see you any more. I assumed you were dead. And then McQueen told us you were.’
    ‘Did he?’
    Delfuenso nodded. ‘King asked if he got you, and McQueen said yes, right between the eyes. They kind of laughed about it. I was terrified. I assumed they would do the same to me. I mean, why wouldn’t they? We were no use to them any more. I started screaming. King told me to shut up. So I did. It was pathetic. I thought if I did what he told me, he wouldn’t shoot me. I really learned something in that minute. People will do anything to stay alive, even if it’s just ten more seconds.’
    ‘Then what happened?’
    ‘We drove around some. Like figures of eight, around the fields. They were staying close for some reason. King was driving. He stopped about ten miles west. I assumed this was it. I assumed my time had come. But he said he wanted to have some fun first. He told me to take my shirt off. The blue one they bought for me. And I was going to. Like I said, people will do anything to stay alive. King got out of the car. He got in next to me in the back. He kind of chased me across the seat. Then McQueen got out and opened my door and pulled me out and King kind of started to follow after me and McQueen shot him. Just like that. Just pulled his gun and shot him.’
    ‘In the chest?’
    Delfuenso nodded. ‘Right in the heart.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘McQueen calmed me down and told me he was an FBI agent working undercover with the bad guys. Pretending to be one of them.’
    ‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Rather him than me. That’s a tough job.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I mean, I’ve seen it in the movies.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘McQueen told me he had fired over your head and you were still alive and perfectly OK. He said he was sorry I had to see what happened to King but he couldn’t figure out any other way to save me. Not right then. He said he had to act a part to a certain extent but couldn’t let things go too far.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘He made some calls on his cell and he belted King in where he was, which was where I had been sitting, and then we drove off. I was in the front. We parked up again about five miles east and two new guys came and picked us up in their own car. They set fire to mine. They said they had to do that, because the bad guys would expect McQueen to obscure the evidence, and they might check to make sure he had. They said they would get me a new car. Which is great, because that old one had a bad transmission.’
    ‘These new guys were FBI too?’
    ‘Yes. From Kansas City. They showed me ID. McQueen didn’t have ID, because he was undercover.’
    ‘And they brought you straight here?’
    She nodded again. ‘I said I wouldn’t stay without Lucy, so they went to get her too.’
    ‘Where did McQueen go?’
    ‘He came here with me and left again immediately. He said he had to get back in position. He said he had some explaining to do. I think he’s going to tell them you killed King.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘That’s what they were discussing. Like they picked up a stranger to change the numbers but the stranger tried to rob them. I think he’s going to say you killed King and escaped.’
    ‘Did they say what kind of bad guys these are?’
    Delfuenso shook her head.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘But they seem very worried about them.’
    Dinner came next, and it was a very strange meal. They walked over to the main building together like a little family, Reacher and Delfuenso side by side with Lucy skipping and tripping between them. The dining room was a large square space with twenty tables and eighty chairs, all of them serviceable pine items thickly varnished to a high syrup shine. The room was like many other rooms Reacher had seen, but it was completely empty apart from the eyewitness, who was sitting alone at a corner table behind a