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The waitress was overworked and slow, so I left Munro to receive the pies alone and I headed back to the dog-leg alley I came out between Brannan&039;s bar and the loan office and saw that a few cars had left and the crowd on the open ground had thinned considerably, ured people were inside at that point, drinking away their last precious ht

I found most of them inside Brannan&039;s bar itself The place was packed It was seriously overcrowded I wasn&039;t sure if Carter County had a firea panic attack There ers and fifty wo their drinks up neck-high to avoid the crush There was a roar of sound, a loud generalized ahter, and behind it all I could hear the cash drawer slaister The river of dollars was back in full flow

I spent fiveh the crowd, checking faces as I went, some up close, some from afar, but I didn&039;t see Reed Riley The Brannan brothers were hard at work, dealing beer in bottles, takingwet dollar bills into their tip jar, passing and repassing each other in their cramped space with moves like dancers One of the with his chin and his eyes and the angle of his head, and then he recognized me from our earlier conversation, and then he remembered I was an MP, and then he leaned in fast like he was prepared to give me a couple of seconds I couldn&039;t remember if he was Jonathan or Hunter

I asked hi about before?"

He said, "He was in here two hours ago By now he&039;ll be wherever the shots are cheapest"

"Which is where?"

"Can&039;t say for sure Not here, anyway"

Then he ducked away to continue his ht ot back to the diner sixteen minutes after I left it and found that the pies had been delivered inhis I picked up ht you were gone"

I said, "I often take a walk between courses It&039;s a Mississippi thing, apparently Always good to blend in with the local population"

He said nothing in reply to that He just looked a little be in Germany?"

"Generally?"

"No, specifically As in, when you get there first thing in thethe day after tomorrohat&039;s on your desk?"

"Not very ent?"

"Why?"

"Three wo around free as a bird"

"We have no jurisdiction"

"Remember that picture in E? He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good "

"I&039;ood man"

"He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die"

"That stuff is way above rade"

"He also said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to stay here," I said "One more day"

Then I finished ain

It was eleven thirty-one when I left the diner for the second tiht and walked up to the Sheriff&039;s Department It was locked up and dark No vehicles in the lot I kept on going and turned the corner onto the Kelha out from behind Main Street One car after another Soers and turning right, at least three and so holanced down to the acre of beaten dirt and saw every single car exceptout Others wereready to join the convoy

I kept on walking, on the left-hand shoulder, keepingfor Kelhanated driver concept was not big in 1997 Not in the arht headlight bea Two hundred yards ahead ofover the railroad track and then accelerating away into the darkness

Deveraux was right there, sitting in her car on the far side of the crossing She was facing me She was parked with her wheels on the shoulder of the road I walked toward her, with Bravo Co me all the way, maybe ninety of them in thirty cars in the ot there the strealers were passing me by, five and ten and twenty seconds between each one They were driving fast, chasing after their more punctual friends

I waited for a break in the traffic long enough to get ot out to ht by the oncohts She said, "Five one But I have to wait until Butler and Pellegrino get back I can&039;t go off duty before they do That wouldn&039;t be fair"

I asked, "When will they get back?"

"The train takes a whole iven point Which doesn&039;t sound likeall evening So they&039;ll try to ht?"

She sh, I&039;et home in time"

I said, "Pity"

She smiled wider

She said, "Get in the car, Reacher"

She started the motor and waited a lers sped by Then she eased off the shoulder, and maneuvered out to the huht that put us up on the crossing, sideways to the road, facing north up the railroad track, directly in line with it She put a light foot on the gas and steered carefully and got her right-hand wheels up on the right-hand rail Her left-hand wheels were down on the ties The whole car was tilted at a decent angle She drove on, not fast, not slow, but decisive and confident She went straight, one hand on the wheel, one hand in her lap, past the water tower, then onward Her left-hand wheels pattered over the ties Her right-hand wheels ran sently, one side up, one side down, and she came to a neat stop

On the track

Twenty yards north of the water tower

Right where Reed Riley&039;s car had waited for the train

Where the broken glass began

I said, "You&039;ve done this before"

She said, "Yes, I have"

74

She said, "This is the tricky part It&039;s all about momentum now" She turned the wheel hard to the left and just as the front right-hand tire caas and the pulse of acceleration popped the front left-hand tire up over the left-hand rail The whole car squirht on the pedal, and the other wheels followed suit, two, three, four, with separate squelching sounds, sidewall rubber against steel, and then she stopped again and parked in the dirt very close to and exactly parallel with the track The first of the ballast stones were about five feet from my

She said, "I love this spot No other way to get to it, because of the ditch But it&039;s worth the trouble I coht?" I asked

"Always," she said

I turned and looked out the backI could see the road More than forty yards away, less than fifty At first there was nothing happening No traffic Then a car flashed past east to west, left to right, away frohts on its roof and a shield on its door

"Pellegrino," she said She atching too now Right at my side She said, "He was probably holed up a hundred yards away, and as soon as that last straggler passed hihtailed it for hoht at Kelhaate"

"Yes, Butler is the one with a race on his hands And our fate in his hands As soon as he passes us, I guarantee we&039;re alone in the world This is a small town, Reacher, and I knohere everyone is"

The clock in ht involved a complex calculation He was three miles away and wouldn&039;t hesitate to drive at sixty, which meant he could be home in three minutes But he couldn&039;t start that three-ot at least within headlight range of Kelha pretty slow at that point, having had a skinful of beer and having seen Pellegrino parked uess was Butler would be through in eleven ht exactly, and I said so

"No, he&039;ll have juun," Deveraux said "The last ten minutes have been fairly quiet He&039;ll have uess He rino"

We watched the road

All quiet

I opened e of the rail bed The left-hand rail was no ured the train was ten ht at that ot out on her side and we met behind the Caprice&039;s trunk Eleven fifty-one Nine o We watched the road

All quiet

Deveraux stepped back around and opened a rear door She checked the back seat She said, "Just in case We ht as well be ready"

"Too cra it in cars?"

"They don&039;t h"

She checked her watch

She said, "We won&039;t make it back to Toussaint&039;s in tiht here On the ground"

She sood to me," she said "Like Janice Chapman"

"If she did," I said I took offand wide as it would go

We watched the road

All quiet

She took off her gun belt and stowed it on the rear seat of the car Eleven fifty-four Six minutes I knelt down and put my ear on the rail I heard a faint metallic whisper Almost not there at all The train, six miles south

We watched the road

We saw a hint of a glow in the east

Headlights

Deveraux said, "Good old Butler"

The glo brighter, and we heard rushing tires and a straining engine in the silence of the night Then the glow changed to delineated bearew louder and a second later Butler&039;s car flashed left-to-right in front of us and thwacked over the crossing without slowing down at all He went airborne on the lee side and crashed back to earth with a yelp of rubber and a cloud of dust Then he was gone

Four ant We wrenched our shoes off and pulled our pants down and abandoned all adult sophistication in favor of pure aniot coht on top of her and propped liht in the distance Not there yet Three s around , fast and hard froetic She was gasping and panting and rolling her head fro on it Then ere kissing and breathing both at the sa her head on the ground, straining her neck, opening her eyes, looking at the world behind her upside down

Then the ground began to shake

As before, just faintly at first, the sa of a distant earthquake The stones in the rail bed next to us started to scratch and click The rails the The ties jumped and shuddered The ballast stones crunched and hopped The ground underbass shudders I looked up and gasped and blinked and squinted and saw the distant headlight Twenty yards south of us the old water tower started to shake and its elephant&039;s trunk started to sway The ground beat on us from below The rails screa and loud and forlorn The warning bells at the crossing forty yards away started to ring The train kept on coht next to us, then right on top of us, just as insanely massive as before, and just as impossibly loud

Like the end of the world

The ground shook hard under us and we bounced and bucketed whole inches in the air A boave of air battered us Then the locoiant wheels five feet from our faces, followed by the endless sequence of cars, all of the together, the whole longround, scoured by dust from the slipstream Deveraux threw her head back under me and screamed soundlessly and jammed her head from side to side and beat on one