It took him twenty minutes. He covered it completely. Under the hood, the whole of the interior, under the carpets, in the seats, under the seats, in the trunk, under the fenders, everywhere. He found nothing at all, and he was absolutely prepared to bet his life no civilian could conceal anything from him in an automobile.
"O.K.," he called. "Get dressed now. Same routine."
He waited with his back turned until he heard her behind him. She was holding his shirt. He took it from her and put it back on.
"What was that about?" she asked.
"Now I'll help you," he said. "Because now I believe you."
"Why?"
"Because you really don't have any money," he said. "No credit cards, either. Not in your wallet, and not hidden anyplace else. And nobody travels three hundred miles from home, not overnight, with absolutely no money. Not unless they've got some real big problems. And a person with real big problems deserves some kind of help."
She said nothing. Just ducked her head slightly, like she was accepting a compliment. Or offering one. They climbed back in the car and shut the doors. Sat for a minute in the cool air, and then she maneuvered back onto the road again.
"So, you've got a year," he said. "That's plenty of time. A year from now, you could be a million miles away. New start, new life. Is that what you want me for? To help you get away?"
She said nothing for a couple of minutes. A couple of miles. The road rolled down a slight hill, and then up again. There were buildings in the far distance, on the next crest. Probably the gas station. Maybe a tow-truck operation next to it.
"Right now just agree with me," she said. "A year is enough. So it's O.K. to have waited."
"Sure," he said. "A year is enough. It's O.K. to have waited."
She said nothing more. Just drove straight ahead for the gas station, like her life depended on it.
The first establishment was a junkyard. There was a long low shed made out of corrugated tin, with the front wall all covered with old hubcaps. Behind it was an acre of wrecked cars. They were piled five or six deep, with the older models at the bottom, like geological strata. Beyond the low shed was the turn for the gas station. It was old enough to have pumps with pointers instead of figures, and four public rest rooms instead of two. Old enough that a taciturn guy came out into the heat and filled your car for you.
The Cadillac took more than twenty gallons, which cost Reacher the price of a motel room. He passed the bills through his window and waved away a dollar in change. He figured the guy should have it. The outside temperature reading on the dash showed one hundred and eleven degrees. No wonder the guy didn't talk. Then he found himself wondering whether it was because the guy didn't like to see a beaner driving a white man around in a Cadillac.
"Gracias, senor," Carmen said. "Thank you."
"Pleasure," he said. "De nada, senorita."
"You speak Spanish?"
"Not really," he said. "I served all over, so I can say a few words in a lot of languages. But that's all. Except French. I speak French pretty well. My mother was French."
"From Louisiana or Canada?"
"From Paris, France."
"So you're half-foreign," she said.
"Sometimes I feel a lot more than half."
She smiled like she didn't believe him and eased back to the road. The gas needle jumped up to F, which seemed to reassure her. She got the car straight in her lane and accelerated back to a cruise.
"But you should call me senora," she said. "Not senorita. I'm a married woman."
"Yes," he said. "I guess you are."
She went quiet for a mile. Settled back in the seat and rested both hands lightly on the bottom curve of the wheel. Then she took a deep breath.
"O.K., here's the problem," she said. "I don't have a year."
"Why not?"
"Because a month ago his lawyer friend came out to the house. Told us there was some kind of deal on the table."
"What deal?"
"I don't know for sure. Nobody told me exactly. My guess is Sloop's going to rat out some business associates in exchange for early release. I think his other friend is brokering it through the DA's office."
"Shit," Reacher said.
Carmen nodded. "Yes, shit. They've all been working their asses off, getting it going. I've had to be all smiles, like oh great, Sloop's coming home early."
Reacher said nothing.
"But inside, I'm screaming," she said. "I left it too late, you see. A year and a half, I did nothing at all. I thought I was safe. I was wrong. I was stupid. I was sitting around in a trap without knowing it, and now it's sprung shut, and I'm still in it."
Reacher nodded slowly. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. That was his guiding principle.
"So what's the progress on the deal?" he asked. The car sped on south.
"It's done," she said, in a small voice.
"So when does he get out?"
"Today's Friday," she said. "I don't think they can do it on the weekend. So it'll be Monday, I expect. A couple of days, is all."
"I see," Reacher said.
"So I'm scared," she said. "He's coming home."
"I see," Reacher said again.
"Do you?" she asked.
He said nothing.
"Monday night," she said. "He's going to start it all up again. It's going to be worse than ever."
"Maybe he's changed," Reacher said. "Prison can change people."
It was a useless thing to say. He could see it in her face. And in his experience, prison didn't change people for the better.
"No, it's going to be worse than ever," she said. "I know it. I know it for sure. I'm in big trouble, Reacher. I can promise you that."
Something in her voice.
"Why?"
She moved her hands on the wheel. Closed her eyes tight, even though she was doing seventy miles an hour.
"Because it was me who told the IRS about him," she said.
* * *
The Crown Victoria drove south, and then west, and then looped back north in a giant sweeping curve. It detoured over near the highway so it could fill up with gas at a self-service pump in a busy station. The driver used a stolen Amex card in the slot and then wiped his prints off it and dropped it in the trash next to the pump, with the empty oil bottles and the soda cans and the used paper towels covered with windshield dirt. The woman busied herself with a map and selected their next destination. Kept her finger on the spot until the driver got back in and squirmed around to take a look at it. "Now?" he asked.
"Just to check it out," she replied. "For later."
* * *
"It seemed like such a good plan," Carmen said. "It seemed foolproof. I knew how stubborn he was, and how greedy he was, so I knew he wouldn't cooperate with them, so I knew he would go to jail, at least for a little while. Even if by some chance he didn't, I thought it might preoccupy him for a spell. And I thought it might shake some money loose for me, you know, when he was hiding it all. And it worked real well, apart from the money. But that seemed like such a small thing at the time."
"How did you do it?"
"I just called them. They're in the book. They have a whole section to take information from spouses. It's one of their big ways to get people. Normally it happens during divorces, when you're mad at each other. But I was already mad at him."
"Why haven't you gone ahead and got a divorce?" he asked. "Husband in jail is grounds, right? Some kind of desertion?"
She glanced in the mirror, at the briefcase on the rear seat. "It doesn't solve the problem with Ellie," she said. "In fact, it makes it much worse. It alerts everybody to the possibility I'll leave the state. Legally, Sloop could require me to register her whereabouts, and I'm sure he would."
"You could stay in Texas," he said again.
She nodded.
"I know, I know," she said. "But I can't. I just can't. I know I'm being irrational, but I can't stay here, Reacher. It's a beautiful state, and there are nice people here, and it's very big, so I could get a long way away, but it's a symbol. Things have happened to me here that I have to get away from. Not just with Sloop."
He shrugged.
"Your call," he said.
She went quiet and concentrated on driving. The road reeled in. It was dropping down off of a wide flat mesa that looked the size of Rhode Island.
"The caprock," she said. "It's limestone, or something. All the water evaporated about a million years ago and left the rock behind. Geological deposits, or something."
She sounded vague. Her tour-guide explanation was less definitive than usual.
"So what do you want me to do?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, although he was certain that she did.
"Help you run? I could do that, probably."
She said nothing.
"You picked me out," he said. "You must have had something in mind."
She said nothing. He fell to thinking about the potential target group she had outlined to him. Out-of-work rodeo riders and roughnecks. Men of various talents, but he wasn't sure if beating a federal manhunt would be among them. So she had chosen well. Or lucked out.