Nothing to Lose

“In the vicinity of a restricted military installation I would say I’m entitled to pretty much any information I want.”

Reacher didn’t answer that.

Morgan said, “Do you have registration and insurance?”

“Glove box,” Reacher said, which was a pretty safe guess. Vaughan was a cop. Most cops kept their paperwork straight. Too embarrassing, if they didn’t.

Morgan asked, “Sir, may I see those documents?”

Reacher said, “No.”

“Sir, now it seems to me that you’re approaching a restricted military installation in a stolen load-bearing vehicle.”

“You already checked the back. It’s empty.”

Morgan said nothing.

“Relax, Corporal,” Reacher said. “This is Colorado, not Iraq. I’m not looking to blow anything up.”

“Sir, I wish you hadn’t used those words.”

“At ease, Morgan. I was speaking negatively. I was telling you what I wasn’t going to do.”

“No laughing matter.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I need to see those vehicle documents, sir.”

“You’re overstepping your authority.”

“Sir, I need to see them real quick.”

“You got a JAG lawyer on post?”

“Negative, sir.”

“You happy to make this decision on your own?”

Morgan didn’t answer. He stepped close to the fender again and a tanker truck blew by. It had an orange hazardous chemicals diamond on the back and a stainless-steel body polished so bright that Reacher saw himself reflected in it like a funhouse mirror. Then its slipstream died away and Morgan stepped back into position and said, “Sir, I need you to show me those documents. Just wave them at me, if you like. To prove to me you can put your hands on them.”

Reacher shrugged and leaned over and opened the glove box lid. Dug through ballpoint pens and envelopes of facial tissues and other miscellaneous junk and found a small plastic wallet. The wallet was black and was printed with a silver shape resembling a steering wheel. It was the kind of cheap thing found for sale at gas stations and car washes, alongside air fresheners shaped like conifer trees and ball compasses that attached to windshields with suction cups. The plastic was stiff and brittle with age and the black color had leached to a dusty gray.

Reacher opened the wallet, out of Morgan’s sight. On the left behind a plastic window was a current insurance certificate. On the right, a current registration.

Both were made out to David Robert Vaughan, of Hope, Colorado.

Reacher kept the wallet open with his thumb and waved it in Morgan’s direction, long enough for the documents to register, short enough for neither of them to be read.

Morgan said, “Sir, thank you.”

Reacher put the wallet back in the glove box and slammed the lid.

Morgan said, “Sir, now it’s time to be moving along.”

Which gave Reacher another problem. If he moved forward, he would be in Despair township. If he U-turned, Morgan would wonder why he had suddenly gotten cold feet and abandoned Hope as a destination, and would be tempted to call in the plate.

Which was the greater danger?

Morgan, easily. A contest between the Despair PD and a combat MP unit was no kind of a contest at all. So Reacher put the truck in gear and turned the wheel.

“Have a great day, Corporal,” he said, and hit the gas. A yard later he passed the little green sign and temporarily increased Despair’s population by one, all the way up to 2692.

22

The sturdy two-lane continued basically straight for five miles to the recycling plant’s vehicle gate. An unsignposted left fork speared off into the brush and formed the western end of Despair’s only through road. Reacher paused for an approaching semi loaded with bright steel bars and then waited again for a container truck heading for Canada. Then he made the left and bounced up onto the uneven surface and drove on and saw all the same stuff he had seen the day before, but in reverse order. The plant’s long end wall, welded metal, bright white paint, the sparks and the smoke coming from the activity inside, the moving cranes. He stretched a long arm across the cab and dropped the passenger window and heard the noise of clanging hammers and smelled the acrid odors of chemical compounds.

He got to the acres of parking near the personnel gate and saw the clockwise security Tahoe bouncing across the scrub in the distance far to his right. Its counterclockwise partner was right there in the lot, black tinted windows, coming on slow, looking to cross the road at a right angle. Reacher sped up and the Tahoe slowed down and crossed right behind him. Reacher saw it slide past, huge in his mirror. He drove on and then the plant was behind him and downtown Despair was looming up three miles ahead on the right. The low brick cubes, sullen in the afternoon light. The road was clear. It rose and fell and meandered gently left and right, avoiding any geological formation larger than a refrigerator. Cheap engineering, never graded or straightened since its origin as a cart track.

A mile ahead, a cop car pulled out of a side street.