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But she didn’t do any of that
She glanced over Didn’t nod Just looked at hi second and then looked away Carried on hat she was doing Which by that point wasn’t much She had all her eleven custo by tables and asking if everything was all right and refilling coffee cups that were less than an inch down frolass to see if he had n To see if the place was about to close up It wasn’t He checked his reflection, to see if he was coe with the way he was dressed He wasn’t He earing dark gray pants and a ht two days before in a janitorial surplus store in Kansas Janitorial supply stores were his latest discovery Plain, strong, well- at reasonable prices Perfect His hair was short and tidy He had shaved the previousHis fly was zipped
He turned back to wait
Customers turned to look at him, one after the other They appraised him quite openly and then looked away The waitresseverywhere except at hih ato understand it Then he lost patience with it and stepped past the sign and moved into the room and sat down alone at a table for four He scraped his chair in and made himself comfortable The waitress watched him do it, and then she headed for the kitchen
She didn’t coain
Reacher sat and waited The roo No sounds at all, except for the quiet metallic clash of silverware on plates and the s lowered carefully into saucers and the wooden creak of chair legs under shifting bodies Those tiny noises rose up and echoed around the vast tiled space until they seely loud
Nothing happened for close to ten minutes
Then an old crew-cab pick-up truck slid to a stop on the curb outside the door There was a second’s pause and four guys cliether on the sidewalk outside the restaurant’s door They grouped theht little forain and scanned the rooht for Reacher’s table Three of them sat down in the empty chairs and the fourth stood at the head of the table, blocking Reacher’s exit
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The four guys were each a useful size The shortest was probably an inch under six feet and the lightest was maybe an ounce over two hundred pounds They all had walnut knuckles and thick wrists and knotted forearms Two of them had broken noses and none of theuely unhealthy They were all grilittered and shone like metal They were all dressed in canvas work shirts
with their sleeves rolled to their elbows They were all somewhere between thirty and forty And they all looked like trouble
“I don’t want company,” Reacher said “I prefer to eat alone”
The guy standing at the head of the table was the biggest of the four, byto eat at all”
Reacher said, “I’m not?”
“Not here, anyway”
“I heard this was the only show in town”
“It is”
“Well, then”
“You need to get going”
“Going?”
“Out of here”
“Out of where?”
“Out of this restaurant”
“You want to tell me why?”
“We don’t like strangers”
“Me either,” Reacher said “But I need to eat soet all wasted and skinny like you four”
“Funny man”
“Just calling it like it is,” Reacher said He put his forearms on the table He had thirty pounds and three inches on the big guy, andto bet he had a little more experience and a little less inhibition than any one of theether But ulti to be his two hundred and fifty pounds against their cureat odds But Reacher hated turning back
The guy as standing said, “We don’t want you here”
Reacher said, “You’re confusing ives a shit what you want”
“You won’t get served in here”
“You could order for me”
“And then what?”
“Then I could eat your lunch”
“Funny ain “You need to leave now”
“Why?”
“Just leave now”
Reacher asked, “You guys got names?”
“Not for you to know And you need to leave”
“You want me to leave, I’ll need to hear it from the owner Not from you”