61 Hours

sure.’
    ‘We could be waiting there for hours.’
    ‘I don’t think so. Plato needs to get in and get out. He can’t afford to get trapped in a storm. A big plane on the ground, no proper facilities, he could be stuck until the start of summer.’
    ‘What kind of help would he need, anyway?’
    ‘Got to be something.’
    ‘He’ll bring people with him. It’s just walking up and down a staircase.’
    ‘You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘They’re going to land a big plane in the middle of nowhere. Someone might hear it. Anything might happen. A local cop is always useful.’
    ‘We have to hide out up there? It’s very cold.’
    ‘Cold?’ Reacher said. ‘This is nothing.’
    Holland thought about it for a minute. Reacher watched him carefully. Holland’s mouth worked silently and his eyes danced left and right. He started out reluctant, and then he got right into it.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
    Five minutes to three in the morning.
    One hour to go.
    Holland drove. His unmarked car was still warm inside. The roads were still frozen and empty. The middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere. Nothing was moving, except the wind. They passed the end of Janet Salter’s street. It was deserted. Holland was sitting close to the wheel, belted in his seat, his parka still zipped, its material stiff and awkward against him. Reacher was sprawled in the passenger seat, no belt, his coat open, its tails hauled around into his lap, his gloves off, his hands in his pockets. The ruts on the road were worn and wizened by the cold. The front tyres hopped left and right, just a little. The chains on the back whirred and clattered. There was a moon high in the sky, close to full, pale and wan, behind thin tattered ribbons of frozen cloud.
    Reacher asked, ‘How long are you guys supposed to stay deployed on the perimeter?’
    Holland said, ‘There’s no set time. It will be a gut call by the warden.’
    ‘Best guess?’
    ‘Another hour.’
    ‘So any cop we see before then is our boy.’
    ‘If we see one at all.’
    ‘I think we will,’ Reacher said.
    They made the turn on the old county two-lane parallel with the highway and headed west. Five miles, not fast, not slow. Wind and ice in the air. Then they turned again, north, on the narrow wandering ribbon, eight long miles. Then the runway loomed up, spectacular as always, imposing, massive, wide, flat, infinitely long in the headlight beams, still clear and dry. Holland didn’t slow down. He just thumped straight up on the moonlit concrete and held his line and held his speed. There was nothing but grey darkness ahead. No lights. No activity. Nothing moving. No one there. The wooden huts looked black in the distance, and behind them loomed the stone building, larger and blacker still.
    Two hundred yards out Holland took his foot off the gas and coasted. He was still upright, still close to the wheel, still belted in, still trapped and mummified by the stiff nylon of his coat.
    ‘Where should I put the car?’ he asked.
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Reacher said. He was still sprawled out, no belt, his hands in his pockets.
    ‘We should hide it. The guy will see it. If he comes.’
    Reacher said, ‘He’s already here.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘He just arrived.’
    The car coasted and slowed. It rolled to a stop thirty yards from the first line of huts. Holland kept his foot on the floor. Not on the brake. The lever was still in gear. The engine’s idle speed was not enough to push through the resistance of the snow chains. The whole car just hung there, trembling a little, not quite moving, not quite inert, right on the cusp.
    Holland asked, ‘How long have you known?’
    Reacher said, ‘For sure, about three minutes. Beyond a reasonable doubt, about thirty minutes. Retrospectively, about thirty-one hours. But back then I didn’t know I knew.’
    ‘Something I said?’
    ‘Stuff you didn’t say. Stuff you didn’t do.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Most recently you didn’t slow down and kill your headlights when we hit the runway. The guy could have been here already. But you knew he wasn’t. Because you’re the guy.’
    Holland said, ‘You’re wrong.’
    Reacher said, ‘I’m afraid not. We spent an hour underground earlier tonight, and the first thing you should have done when we got back to the surface was call the Salter house. But you didn’t. I had to remind you. Turned out she was OK,