Nothing to Lose

pepper and the sugar back where they belonged. Then she slid out of the booth and walked away and pushed through the door and headed for her car.

    Reacher showered and was in bed by two o’clock in the morning. He slept dreamlessly and woke up at eight. He showered again and walked the length of the town to the hardware store. He spent five minutes looking at ladders on the sidewalk, and then he went inside and found the racks of pants and shirts and chose a new one of each. This time he went for darker colors and a different brand. Prewashed, and therefore softer. Less durable in the long term, but he wasn’t interested in the long term.
    He changed in his motel room and left his old stuff folded on the floor next to the trash can. Maybe the maid had a needy male relative his size. Maybe she would know how to launder things so they came out at least marginally flexible. He stepped out of his room and saw that Maria’s bathroom light was on. He walked to the office. The clerk was on her stool. Behind her shoulder, the hook for Maria’s room had no key on it. The clerk saw him looking and said, “She came back this morning.”
    He asked, “What time?”
    “Very early. About six.”
    “Did you see how she got here?”
    The woman looked both ways and lowered her voice and said, “In an armored car. With a soldier.”
    “An armored car?”
    “Like you see on the news.”
    Reacher said, “A Humvee.”
    The woman nodded. “Like a jeep. But with a roof. The soldier didn’t stay. Which I’m glad about. I’m no prude, but I couldn’t permit a thing like that. Not here.”
    “Don’t worry,” Reacher said. “She already has a boyfriend.”
    Or had, he thought.
    The woman said, “She’s too young to be fooling around with soldiers.”
    “Is there an age limit?”
    “There ought to be.”
    Reacher paid his bill and walked back down the row, doing the math. According to the old man’s telephone testimony, he had let Maria out at the MP base around eight-thirty the previous morning. She had arrived back in a Humvee at six. The Humvee wouldn’t have detoured around the Interstates. It would have come straight through Despair, which was a thirty-minute drive, max. Therefore she had been held for twenty-one hours. Therefore her problem was outside of the FOB’s local jurisdiction. She had been locked in a room and her story had been passed up the chain of command. Phone tag, voice mails, secure telexes. Maybe a conference call. Eventually, a decision taken elsewhere, release, the offer of a ride home.
    Sympathy, but no help.
    No help about what?
    He stopped outside her door and listened. The shower wasn’t running. He waited one minute in case she was toweling off and a second minute in case she was dressing. Then he knocked. A third minute later she opened the door. Her hair was slick with water. The weight gave it an extra inch of length. She was dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. No shoes. Her feet were tiny, like a child’s. Her toes were straight. She had been raised by conscientious parents, who had cared about appropriate footwear.
    “You OK?” he asked her, which was a dumb question. She didn’t look OK. She looked small and tired and lost and bewildered.
    She didn’t answer.
    He said, “You went to the MP base, asking about Raphael.”
    She nodded.
    He said, “You thought they could help you, but they didn’t.”
    She nodded.
    He said, “They told you it was Despair PD business.”
    She didn’t answer.
    He said, “Maybe I could help you. Or maybe the Hope PD could. You want to tell me what it’s all about?”
    She said nothing.
    He said, “I can’t help you unless I understand the problem.”
    She shook her head.
    “I can’t tell you,” she said. “I can’t tell anyone.”
    The way she said the word can’t was definitive. Not surly or angry or moody or plaintive, but calm, considered, mature, and ultimately just plain informative. As if she had looked at a whole bunch of options, and boiled them down to the only one that was viable. As if a world of trouble was surely inevitable if she opened her mouth.
    She couldn’t tell anyone.
    Simple as that.
    “OK,” Reacher said. “Hang in there.”
    He walked away, to the diner, and had breakfast.

    He guessed Vaughan planned to pick him up at the motel, so at five to ten he was sitting in the plastic lawn chair outside his door. She showed up three minutes past the hour, in a plain black Crown Vic. Dull paint, worn by time and