Nothing to Lose

Nothing to see, nothing to hear, except the idling motor and the squelching tires and Vaughan’s tense breathing as she gripped the wheel and squinted sideways at the laptop screen.
    “We must be getting close,” she whispered.
    He nodded, on her shoulder. The screen showed buildings maybe a mile ahead. The gas station hut, slightly warmer than its surroundings. The dry goods store, with daytime heat trapped in its brick walls. A background glow from the downtown blocks. A pale blur in the air a little ways south and west, above where the police station had been.
    No little green specks.
    He said, “This is where they were yesterday.”
    She said, “So where are they now?”
    She slowed a little and drifted onward. The screen held steady. Geography and architecture, nothing more. Nothing moving.
    “Human nature,” Reacher said. “They got all pumped up yesterday and thought they’d gotten rid of us. They don’t have the stamina to do it all again.”
    “There could be one or two out and about.”
    “Possible.”
    “They’ll call ahead and warn the plant.”
    “That’s OK,” Reacher said. “We’re not going to the plant. Not yet anyway.”

    They drifted on, slow and dark and silent. The vacant lot and the abandoned motor court barely showed up on the screen. Thermally they were just parts of the landscape. The gas station and the household goods store shone brighter. Beyond them the other blocks glowed mid-green. There were window-sized patches of brighter color, and heat was leaking from roofs with imperfect insulation. But there were no pinpoints of light. No little green specks. No crowds, no small groups of shuffling people, no lone sentries.
    Not dead ahead anyway.
    The camera’s fixed angle was useless against the cross-streets. It showed their mouths to a depth of about five feet. That was all. Reacher stared sideways into the darkness as they rolled past each opening. Saw nothing. No flashlights, no match flares, no lighter sparks, no cigarette coals glowing red. The tire noise had dropped away to almost nothing. Main Street was worn down to the tar. No more pebbles. Vaughan was holding her breath. Her foot was feather light on the pedal. The car rolled onward, a little faster than walking, a lot slower than running.
    Two green specks stepped out ahead.
    They were maybe a quarter of a mile away, at the west end of Main Street. Two figures, emerging from a cross-street. A foot patrol. Vaughan braked gently and came to a stop, halfway through town. Six blocks behind her, six ahead.
    “Can they see us?” she whispered.
    “I think they’re facing away,” Reacher said.
    “Suppose they’re not?”
    “They can’t see us.”
    “There are probably more behind us.”
    Reacher turned and stared through the rear window. Saw nothing. Just pitch black night. He said, “We can’t see them, they can’t see us. Laws of physics.”
    The screen lit up with a white flare. Cone-shaped. Moving. Sweeping.
    “Flashlight,” Reacher said.
    “They’ll see us.”
    “We’re too far away. And I think they’re shining it west.”
    Then they weren’t. The screen showed the beam turning through a complete circle, flat and level, like a lighthouse. Its heat burned the screen dead white as it passed. Its light lit up the night mist like fog.
    Vaughan asked, “Did they see us?”
    Reacher watched the screen. Thought about the reflectors in the Crown Vic’s headlights. Polished metal, like cats’ eyes. He said, “Whoever they are, they’re not moving. I don’t think they have enough candlepower.”
    “What do we do?”
    “We wait.”
    They waited two minutes, then three, then five. The idling engine whispered. The flashlight beam snapped off. The image on the laptop screen collapsed back to two narrow vertical specks, distant, green, barely moving. There was nothing to see through the rear window. Just empty darkness.
    Vaughan said, “We can’t stay here.”
    Reacher said, “We have to.”
    The green specks moved, from the center of the screen to the left-hand edge. Slow, blurred, a ghost trail of luminescence following behind them. Then they disappeared, into a cross-street. The screen stabilized. Geography, and architecture.
    “Foot patrol,” Reacher said. “Heading downtown. Maybe worried about fires.”
    “Fires?” Vaughan said.
    “Their police station burned down last night.”
    “Did you have something to do with that?”
    “Everything,” Reacher said.
    “You’re a