There was something written on it.
It was written in the grime on the front passenger’s window. Someone had used a broad fingertip and traced three words, a total of thirteen letters, all of them block capitals, neatly, with the punctuation all present and correct: WHERE’S THE GIRL?
FIFTY-NINE
SAMANTHA DAYTON WOKE early, like she often did, and she came down the narrow attic stair and checked the view from the living-room window. The Hummer was gone. In the middle of the night, probably, due on station at the law office. In its place was the purple Dodge Charger, looking way too cool for a cop car. But a cop car it was, nevertheless. Generically speaking, at least. Technically it was a federal agent’s car, she supposed. DEA, or ATF, or FBI. She recognized the driver. She was getting a handle on the rotation. Further on down the street the small white compact was where it always was. And it was the real mystery. Because it was not a cop car. It was a rental, most likely. Hertz or Avis, from LAX, she thought. But the DEA and the ATF and the FBI all had field offices in Los Angeles, with big staffs and cars of their own. Therefore the guy in the small white compact was from an organization important enough to participate, but too small and too specialized to have its own local office. Therefore the guy had flown in, from somewhere else. From D.C., probably, where all the secrets were.
She took her shower, and dressed in her favourite black pants and her favourite jean jacket, but with a fresh blue T-shirt, and therefore blue shoes. She combed her hair out, and checked the view again. It was coming up to what she called zero hour. Twice a day the small white compact moved – for meals, she guessed, or bathroom breaks – and about four times a day the Hummer and the Charger swapped positions, but there was apparently no coordination between the agencies, because once a day in the early morning everyone was missing at the same time, for about twenty minutes. Zero agents, zero hour. The street went back to its normal self. Some kind of logic issue, she supposed, or simple math, like in class, with
She looked out and saw that the small white compact was already gone, and then the Charger moved out as she watched. It started up, and eased away from the kerb, and drove away. The street went quiet. Back to its normal self. Zero hour.
Reacher ran through his earlier reasoning one more time: the 75th MP and the FBI were watching her house, and they were specifically on the alert for an intruder.
He said, ‘It’s a bluff. He’s trying to get in our heads. He’s trying to draw us out. That’s all. He can’t get anywhere near the girl.’
Turner said, ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’
‘No.’
‘We can’t go there. You’re still on the shit list, until Sullivan makes it official. And I’m still on the shit list, probably for ever.’
‘We can go there once.’
‘We can’t. They already saw the car once yesterday. Maybe twice. And getting arrested won’t help her or us.’
‘We can get another car. At the Burbank airport. Shrago will know about it inside an hour, but we can use that hour.’
Breakfast was always a problem. There was never anything in the house, and anyway her mother slept late in the morning, all tired and stressed, and she wouldn’t appreciate a lot of crashing and banging in the kitchen. So breakfast was an expedition, which was a word she really liked, in her opinion based on old Latin,
She was looking forward to driving. Driving would be a big advantage, because it would widen her scope. In a car she could go to Burbank or Glendale or Pasadena for breakfast, or even Beverly Hills. Whereas out on foot her choice was limited to the coach diner, south on Vineland, or alternatively the coffee shop near the law office, north on Vineland, and that was about it, because everything else was tacos or quesadillas or Vietnamese, and none of those places was open for breakfast. Which was frustrating.
Normally.
But not such a big deal on that particular morning, because the federal agents would face the same limited choice, which would make them easier to find. Fifty-fifty, basically, like tossing a coin, and she hoped she tossed it right, because the big one named Reacher seemed willing to talk, about stuff worth listening to, because he was obviously right in the middle of it all, some kind of a senior guy, rushing off after urgent phone calls, and spilling the beans on the man with the ears.
So, heads or tails?
She pulled the blue door shut behind her, and she started walking.
They put the old Range Rover on a kerb in a tow zone outside the rental lot, and they lined up at the desk behind a whitehaired couple just in from Phoenix. When their turn came they used Baldacci’s licence and credit card and picked out a midsize sedan, and after a whole lot of signing and initialling they were given a key. The car in question was a white Ford, dripping wet from washing, parked under a roof, and it was bland and anonymous and therefore adequate in every way, except that its window tints were green and subtle and modern, nothing like the opaque plastic sheets that had been stuck to the Range Rover’s glass. Driving the Ford was going to feel very different. Inward visibility was going to be restricted only by sunshine and reflections. Or not.
Turner had brought her book of maps, and she plotted a route that stayed away from Vineland Avenue until the last possible block. The day dawned bright and fresh in front of them, and traffic stayed quiet. It was still very early. They came out of Burbank on small streets, mostly through office parks, and they rolled through North Hollywood, and they crossed the freeway east of Vineland, and they headed for the neighbourhood at an angle, feeling exposed and naked behind the thin green glass.
‘One pass,’ Turner said. ‘Slow constant speed to the end of the street, no stopping under any circumstances, all the time anticipating normality and the presence of law enforcement vehicles, and if it turns out any different we’ll continue to the end of the street anyway, and we’ll work it out from there. We must not get trapped in front
