Bad Luck and Trouble

impressionism looked like silly fakery by day. The Strip itself could have been any worn-out four-lane in America. This time they walked it in a quadrant of four, two ahead, two behind, a smaller collective target, alert and always aware of who was ahead and who was behind them.
    But there was nobody ahead and nobody behind. Traffic on the street was thin and the sidewalks were empty. Vegas in the morning was as close as it ever got to quiet.
    The construction zone halfway down the Strip was quiet, too.
    Deserted.
    No activity.
    “Is it Sunday today?” Reacher asked.
    “No,” O’Donnell said.
    “A holiday?”
    “No.”
    “So why aren’t they working?”
    There were no cops there. No crime-scene tape. No big investigation. Just nothing. Reacher could see where he had bent the fence panel the night before. Beyond it, the dirt and the sand were muddied where Neagley had hosed them off. The old sidewalk had a huge dry stain on it. The old roadbed’s gutter had the last of a thin damp slick running to a drain. A mess, for sure, but no construction zone was ever tidy. Not perfect, but reasonable. There was nothing overt that could have attracted anyone’s attention.
    “Weird,” Reacher said.
    “Maybe they ran out of money,” O’Donnell said.
    “Pity. That guy’s going to start to smell soon.”
    They walked on. This time they knew exactly where they were going, and in the daylight they found a shortcut through the mess of curved streets. They came up on the bar with the fire pit from a different direction. It wasn’t open yet. They sat on a low wall and waited and squinted in the sun. It was very warm, almost hot.
    “Two hundred eleven clear days a year in Vegas,” Dixon said.
    “Summer high of a hundred and six degrees,” O’Donnell said.
    “Winter low of thirty-six.”
    “Four inches of rain a year.”
    “One inch of snow, sometimes.”
    “I still didn’t get to my guide book,” Neagley said.
    By the time the clock in Reacher’s head hit twenty to twelve, people started showing up for work. They came down the street in loose knots, separated out into ones and twos, men and women moving slowly without visible enthusiasm. As they passed by, Reacher asked all the women if they were called Milena. They all said no.
    Then the sidewalk went quiet again.
    At nine minutes to twelve another bunch showed up. Reacher realized he was watching the bus timetable in action. Three women walked past. Young, tired, dressed down, with big white sneakers on their feet.
    None of them was called Milena.
    The clock in Reacher’s head ticked around. One minute to twelve. Neagley checked her watch.
    “Worried yet?” she asked.
    “No,” Reacher said, because beyond her shoulder he had seen a girl he knew had to be the one. She was fifty yards away, hurrying a little. She was short and slim and dark, dressed in faded low-rider blue jeans and a short white T-shirt. She had a winking jewel lodged in her navel. She was carrying a blue nylon backpack on one shoulder. She had long jet black hair that fell forward and framed a pretty face that looked about seventeen. But judging by the way she moved she was nearer to thirty. She looked tired and preoccupied.
    She looked unhappy.
    Reacher got up off the wall when she was ten feet away and said, “Milena?” She slowed with the kind of sudden wariness any woman should feel when randomly accosted in the street by a giant of a stranger. She glanced ahead at the bar’s door and then across at the opposite sidewalk as if assessing her options for a fast escape. She stumbled a little as if caught between the need to stop and the urge to run.
    Reacher said, “We’re friends of Jorge’s.”
    She looked at him, and then at the others, and then back at him. Some kind of slow realization dawned on her face, first puzzlement, then hope, then disbelief, and then acceptance, the same sequence Reacher imagined a poker player must experience when a fourth ace shows up in his hand.
    Then there was some kind of muted satisfaction in her eyes, as if contrary to all expectations a comforting myth had proved to be true.
    “You’re from the army,” she said. “He told me you’d come.”
    “When?”
    “All the time. He said if he ever had trouble, you’d show up sooner or later.”
    “And here we are. Where can we talk?”
    “Just let me tell them I’m going to be late today.” She smiled a little shyly and skirted around them all and headed inside the bar. Came out again