The Affair: A Reacher Novel

was her mouth. And her eyes. Together they put a kind of wry, amused animation into her face, as if whatever happened to her she would stay cool and calm and collected through it all, and then she would find some quality in it to make her smile. There was still light in her eyes. Not just a reflection from the Caprice’s speedometer.
    She said, “Pellegrino told me you’ve been in the army.”
    I paused a beat. Undercover work is all about lying, and I hadn’t minded lying to Pellegrino. But for some unknown reason I found myself not wanting to lie to Deveraux. So I said, “Six weeks ago I was in the army,” which was technically true.
    “What branch?”
    “I was with an outfit called the 110th, mostly,” I said. Also true.
    “Infantry?”
    “It was a special unit. Combined operations, basically.” Which was true, technically.
    “Who’s your local friend?”
    “A guy called Hayder,” I said. An outright invention.
    Deveraux said, “He must have been infantry. Kelham is all infantry.”
    I nodded.
    “The 75th Ranger Regiment,” I said.
    “Was he an instructor?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    She nodded. “They’re the only ones who are here long enough to want to stick around afterward.”
    I said nothing.
    She said, “I’ve never heard of him.”
    “Then maybe he moved on again.”
    “When might he have done that?”
    “I’m not sure. How long have you been sheriff?”
    “Two years,” she said. “Long enough to get to know the locals, anyway.”
    “Pellegrino said you’d been here all your life. I mean, as far as getting to know the locals is concerned.”
    “Not true,” she said. “I haven’t been here all my life. I was here as a kid, and I’m here now. But there were years in between.”
    There was something wistful about her tone.
There were years in between
. I asked her, “How did you spend those years?”
    “I had a rich uncle,” she said. “I toured the world at his expense.”
    And at that point I suspected I was in trouble. At that point I suspected my mission was about to fail. Because I had heard that answer before.

Chapter
12
    The waitress brought out Elizabeth Deveraux’s main course and my dessert both together. Deveraux had ordered the same thing I had eaten, the fat cheeseburger and the squirrel’s nest of fries. My pie was peach and the slice I got was about half the size of a Major League home plate. It was bigger than the dish it was in. My coffee was in a tall stoneware mug. Deveraux had plain water in a chipped glass.
    It’s easier to let a pie go cold than a cheeseburger, so I figured I had a chance to talk while Deveraux had no choice but to eat and listen and comment briefly. So I said, “Pellegrino told me you guys are real busy.”
    Deveraux chewed and nodded.
    I said, “A wrecked car and a dead woman.”
    She nodded again and chased an errant pearl of mayonnaise back into her mouth with the tip of her little finger. An elegant gesture, for an inelegant act. She had short nails, nicely trimmed and polished. She had slender hands, a little tanned and sinewy. Good skin. No rings. None at all. Especially not on her left ring finger.
    I asked, “Any progress on any of that?”
    She swallowed and smiled and held her hand up like a traffic cop.
Stop. Wait
. She said, “Give me a minute, OK? No more talking.”
    So I ate my pie, which was good. The crust was sweet and thepeaches were soft. Probably local. Or maybe from Georgia. I didn’t know much about the cultivation of fruit. She ate, with the burger in her right hand, her left taking fries one by one from her plate, her eyes on mine most of the time. The grease from the meat made her lips glisten. She was a slim woman. She must have had a metabolism like a nuclear reactor. She took occasional long sips of water. I drained my mug. The coffee was OK, but not as good as the pie.
    She asked, “Doesn’t coffee keep you awake?”
    I nodded. “Until I want to go to sleep. That’s what it’s for.”
    She took a last sip of water and left a rind of bun and six or seven fries on her plate. She wiped her mouth and then her hands on her napkin. She folded her napkin and laid it down next to her plate. Dinner was over.
    I asked, “So are you making progress?”
    She smiled at some inner amusement and then leaned sideways away from the table, hands braced to increase her angle, and she looked me over again, slowly, a crooked path, all the way from my feet in the shadows to my head. She said,