61 Hours

maximum ten minutes. Someone he could trust. Not Kapler or Lowell or Montgomery. He wanted one of the majority. He wanted the guy at home, off duty, asleep, then waking up, getting dressed, stumbling out into the cold, firing up his cruiser, heading west.
    He wanted to flag the guy down and demand a ride.
    He got part of what he wanted.
    When he was still seventy yards short of the turn he saw lights in the east. Pulsing red and blue strobes, a mile away, coming on fast. The reflectivity of the snow made it look like there was a whole lit-up acre on the move. Like a UFO gliding in to land. Ahuge bright dancing circle of horizontal light. He hustled hard to meet it. His feet slipped and skated. His arms thrashed and windmilled. His face was already frozen. It felt like it had been beaten with a bat and then anaesthetized by a dentist. The cop car was doing sixty miles an hour, on chains and winter tyres. He was doing three miles an hour, on legs that were stiff and slow and unresponsive. He was slipping and sliding, like running in place. Like a slapstick movie. The corner was still fifty yards away.
    He wasn’t going to make it.
    He didn’t need to make it.
    The cop saw him.
    The car slowed and turned into Peterson’s street and came north towards him. Bright headlights, electric blue flashers, deep red flashers, painful white strobes popping right in his eyes. He came to a stop and planted his feet and stood still and raised his arms and waved. The universal distress semaphore. Big overlapping half circles with each hand.
    The cop car slowed.
    At the last minute he sidestepped and the car slid to a stop alongside him. The driver’s window came down. A woman at the wheel. Her face was pale and swollen with sleep. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were red. He didn’t know her.
    He said, ‘I have to get to the Salter house.’ His words were unclear. His lips were numb. The upper part of his face was a frozen slab. The lower half was just as bad. The hinge in his jaw was hardly working at all.
    The cop said, ‘What?’
    ‘I need a ride.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Janet Salter’s house.’
    Five miles away the prison siren howled on. There was radio chatter in the car. A dispatcher’s voice, low and fast, trying not to sound urgent. Probably the old guy already back at the police station desk. There was alcohol on the woman’s breath. Maybe bourbon. A nightcap. Maybe two or three of them.
    She asked, ‘Who the hell are you?’
    Reacher said, ‘I’ve been working with Holland and Peterson.’
    ‘Peterson’s dead.’
    ‘I know that.’
    ‘Are you the MP?’
    ‘Yes. And I need a ride.’
    She said, ‘Can’t do it.’
    ‘So why did you turn in for me?’
    ‘I didn’t. I’m heading for my position.’
    ‘The prison isn’t this way.’
    ‘We make a perimeter a mile out. I get the northeast corner. This is how I’m supposed to get to it.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘The biker escaped. His cell is empty.’
    ‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘What do you mean, no?’
    ‘Not possible. It’s a fake. It’s a decoy.’
    ‘He’s either in there or not, pal. And they say not.’
    ‘He’s hiding out in there. In a broom closet or something. It’s a fake.’
    ‘Bullshit.’
    ‘I’ve seen it before. Two problems with escaping. Getting out, and then beating the manhunt. The smart ones hide first. Inside. Until the manhunt dies. Then they go. But this guy isn’t going anywhere. He’s doing the first part only. As a decoy.’
    The cop didn’t answer.
    ‘Think about it,’ Reacher said. ‘Escaping is harder than it looks. I promise you, he’s still in there. Tomorrow he’ll get hungry and come on out from wherever he holed up. Big smile on his face. Because it will be too late by then.’
    ‘You’re nuts.’
    ‘He’s still in there. Believe me. Take a chance. Be the one.’
    ‘You’re crazy.’
    ‘OK, suppose I am. Suppose the guy really is out. He was gone more than five hours ago. You know that. So what the hell is the point of a one-mile perimeter now?’
    The cop didn’t answer.
    The siren howled on.
    ‘Five minutes,’ Reacher said. ‘Please. That’s all I need from you.’
    The cop didn’t answer. Just hit the button and the gas and her window thumped back up and the car moved off. He leaned towards it and it accelerated and the rear three-quarter panel smacked him in the hip and spun him around and dumped him down hard on his back. He lay breathless in the frozen snow and watched the acre of