There were also two flashlights in the box, standing on their ends, crammed in among the food.
“Weird,” Patty said.
“I think this place is for hikers,” Shorty said. “Like in the photograph they took with the model. Why else would they dress her up like that? I bet they give this stuff out as box lunches. Or sell it. It’s the kind of thing a hiker likes to carry.”
“Is it?”
“It’s compact and high energy. Easy to put in a pocket. Plus water.”
“What are the flashlights for?”
“I suppose in case you’re out late and have to eat in the dark.”
“A lantern would be better.”
“Maybe hikers prefer flashlights. I’m sure there’s consumer feedback. I think this is part of their stock of supplies.”
“He said ingredients.”
“It’s probably a balanced diet. Probably quite healthy. I bet hikers worry about that kind of thing.”
“He said they put some ingredients together. They didn’t put this together. It’s pre-packaged. Like you said, off their storeroom shelf.”
“We could still go eat at the house.”
“I told you, I don’t want to. They don’t want us there.”
“Then we got to eat this stuff.”
“Why does he make such grandiose statements? He could have said he brought the same iron rations he sells the hikers for lunch. I would have been happy with that. It’s not like we’re paying for it.”
“Exactly,” Shorty said. “They’re weird. But kind of helpful, too. Or the other way around.”
* * *
—
Reacher ate dinner alone in Laconia, at a greasy hole-in-the-wall with no tablecloths. He didn’t want to risk a fancier place, in case Carter Carrington and Elizabeth Castle picked the same spot. They would feel obliged to at least come over and say hello. He didn’t want to disturb their evening. Afterward he spent an hour walking random blocks, looking for a grocery store with an apartment window above it, that faced east down the length of a street. He found one plausible possibility. It was dead ahead as he walked away from the center of downtown. The apartment was now an attorney’s office. The store now sold pants and sweaters. He stood with his back to its window. He looked down the street. He saw a good-sized patch of night sky in the east, and below it the camber of the blacktop, humped between two gutters, flanked by two curbs and two sidewalks, lit up here and there by widely spaced street lamps.
He walked the same direction the twenty-year-old had walked. He stopped thirty yards out. Any closer than that, he felt the old lady wouldn’t have used the binoculars. She would have trusted the naked eye. He turned around and looked up at her window. Now he was the smaller boy. He imagined the big guy in front of them, demanding, and then threatening. Technically no big deal. For Reacher himself, anyway. At sixteen he had been bigger than most twenty-year-olds. He had been bigger at thirteen. Biology had been good to him. He was fast, and nasty. He knew all the tricks. He had invented some of them. He had grown up in the Marine Corps, not in Ryantown, New Hampshire. And Stan had been a normal-sized person by comparison. Compact, even, in some respects. Maybe six-one in dress shoes, maybe 190 after a four-course dinner.
Reacher looked down at the bricks in the sidewalk, and imagined his father’s footsteps there, inching backward, and then turning and running.
* * *
—
Patty and Shorty ate outside, under their window, in their lawn chairs. They took meal number one and meal number two, which left ten in the box, and they dutifully drank their bottles of water. Then it got cold and they moved inside. But Patty said, “Leave the door open.”
Shorty said, “Why?”
“I need the air. Last night I felt like I was choking.”
“Open the window.”
“It doesn’t open.”
“The door might blow.”
“Wedge it with your shoe.”
“Someone might get in.”
“Like who?” Patty said.
“A passerby.”
“Here?”
“Or one of them.”
“I would wake up. Then I would wake you up.”
“Promise?”
“Count on it.”
Shorty kicked off his shoes, and wedged one between the outer face of the door and the jamb, and he bent the other into a pliable shape, and propped it against the inner face, to push back against gentle nighttime breezes. Potato-farmer engineering, he knew, but it looked like it might work.
Chapter 12
Steven called to Robert, who called to Peter, who called to Mark. They were all in different rooms. They got together in the back parlor, and stared at the screens.
“It’s a pair of shoes,” Steven said. “In case you’re wondering.”
“Why did they do it?” Mark asked. “Did they say?”
“She wants air. It’s consistent behavior. She’s mentioned it before. I don’t think it’s a problem.”
Mark nodded. “I told her a story about a supermodel doing her makeup. I think she believed it. I told her a mechanic will be riding to the rescue in the morning. I even made up some technical stuff about the heater hoses. I think she believed all of it. I think she’s calm now. Doesn’t matter about the door.”
“We need to lock it pretty soon.”
“But not tonight. Let sleeping dogs lie. They’re relaxed now. They have nothing to worry about.”
* * *
—
Reacher preferred to move on whenever possible, so he found a new place to sleep, one street away from the previous night. It was a fancy bed and breakfast, in a narrow house built of brick, with its trim newly painted in faded colors. He got a top-floor room, through a low door at the head of a steep and dog-legged stair. He took a long hot shower, and fell asleep, still warm and damp.
Until one minute past three in the morning.
Once again he snapped awake, instantly, like flicking a switch. The same thing exactly. Not touch or taste or sight or smell. Therefore sound. This time he got out of bed immediately, and he pulled his pants out from under the mattress, and dressed fast, and tied his shoes. Then he headed out through the low door and down the winding stair to the street.
The night air was cool, and the silence was hard and brittle, all brick and glass and narrow spaces and humming electricity in the wires. He stood still. A minute later he heard a brief scrape of feet on the sidewalk. Ahead and half left. Maybe thirty yards away. Not going anywhere. Just shuffling in place. Maybe two people. Nothing visible.