Nothing to Lose

rolled ahead and then braked hard and aimed for a spot where the shoulder was wide. Vaughan skipped past and tucked in again and the two vehicles came to a stop, nose-to-tail in the middle of nowhere, forty miles of empty road behind them and more than that ahead.
    She said, “A search would be illegal.”
    Reacher said, “I know. Just tell the guy to sit tight, five minutes. We’ll wave him on when we’re done.”
    “With what?”
    “We’re going to take a photograph.”
    Vaughan got out and cop-walked to the driver’s window. She spoke for a moment, then walked back. Reacher said, “Back up on the other shoulder, at right angles. We need to see the whole truck, side-on with the camera.”
    Vaughan checked ahead and behind and jockeyed forward and back and then reversed across the blacktop in a wide curve and came to rest sideways on the opposite shoulder, with the front of her car pointed dead-center at the side of the truck. It was a plain, simple vehicle. A stubby hood, a cab, twin rails running back from it with a box body bolted on. The box had alloy skin and was corrugated every foot for strength and rigidity. Tan paint, no writing.
    Reacher said, “Camera.”
    Vaughan hit laptop keys and the screen lit up with a picture of the truck.
    Reacher said, “We need to see the thermal image.”
    Vaughan said, “I don’t know if it works in the daytime.” She hit more keys and the screen blazed white. No detail, no definition. Everything was hot.
    Reacher said, “Turn down the sensitivity.”
    She toggled keys and the screen dimmed. Ahead through the windshield the real-time view stayed unchanged but the image on the laptop screen faded to nothing and then came back ghostly green. Vaughan played around until the road surface and the background scrub showed up as a baseline gray, barely visible. The truck itself glowed a hundred shades of green. The hood was warm, with a bright center where the engine was. The exhaust pipe was a vivid line, with green gases shimmering out the end in clouds. The rear differential was hot and the tires were warm. The cab was warm, a generalized green block with a slight highlight where the driver was sitting and waiting.
    The box body was cold at the rear. It stayed cold until it suddenly got warmer three-quarters of the way forward. A section five feet long directly behind the cab was glowing bright.
    Reacher said, “Take it down some more.”
    Vaughan tapped a key until the tires went gray and merged with the road. She kept on going until the grays went black and the picture simplified to just five disembodied elements in just two shades of green. The engine, hot. The exhaust system, hot. The differential case, warm. The cab, warm.
    The first five feet of the box body, warm.
    Vaughan said, “It reminds me of the wall around the metal plant. Hotter at one end than the other.”
    Reacher nodded. Stuck his arm out the window, waved the driver onward, and peeled the bubble light off the roof. The truck lurched as the gears caught and it pulled across the rumble strip and got straight in the traffic lane and lumbered slowly away, first gear, then second, then third. The laptop screen showed a vivid plume of hot exhaust that swelled and swirled into a lime-green cloud before cooling and dissipating and falling away into blackness.
    Vaughan asked, “What did we just see?”
    “A truck on its way to Canada.”
    “That’s all?”
    “You saw what I saw.”
    “Is this part of your theory?”
    “Pretty much all of it.”
    “Want to tell me about it?”
    “Later.”
    “Than what?”
    “When it’s safely across the border.”
    “Why then?”
    “Because I don’t want to put you in a difficult position.”
    “Why would it?”
    “Because you’re a cop.”
    “Now you’re trying to keep me out of trouble?”
    Reacher said, “I’m trying to keep everybody out of trouble.”

    They turned around and drove back to where the old road forked. They bumped down off the new blacktop and this time they kept on going, between the two ruined farms, all the way to Halfway township. First stop was the coffee shop, for a late breakfast. Second stop was a Holiday Inn, where they rented a bland beige room and showered and made love and went to sleep. They woke up at four, and did all the same things in reverse order, like a film run backward. They made love again, showered again, checked out of the hotel, and headed back to the coffee shop for an early dinner. By five-thirty they