He caught up to the old guy, and they walked the second fifty yards together, back to the ancient Subaru.
* * *
—
Eventually Patty got up off the bed. She walked to the door, where the light switch was. Three steps. Through the first she was certain the power would still be on. Through the second she was sure it would be off. If they could lock the door and shade the window by remote control, surely they could kill the electricity. Then she changed her mind again. Why would they? Through the third step she was once again convinced it would be on. Because of the meals. Why would they give them meals and then expect them to eat in the dark? Then she remembered the flashlights. What were they for? She remembered Shorty’s comment. In case you have to eat in the dark. Maybe not so dumb.
She tried the switch.
It worked. The lights came on. Hot and yellow. She hated electric light in the daytime. She tried the door. Still locked. She tried the buttons for the window blind. Nothing. Shorty sat still in the brassy glare, and watched her. She turned and looked all around the room. At the furniture. At their bags, still where they had dropped them, when the truck didn’t come back. At the walls, and the slim molding where they met the ceiling. At the ceiling itself. It was a snowy expanse of perfectly smooth old-fashioned New England white, containing nothing except a smoke alarm and a bulkhead light, both above the bed.
Shorty said, “What?”
Patty looked back at their bags.
She said, “How well were they hidden?”
“Where?”
“In the hedge, Shorty.”
“Pretty well,” he said. “The big one is heavy. It squashed right down. You saw.”
“And then Peter got lucky and got his truck started and took it down the track to warm it up. There and back, real quick. Yet he had time to spot our luggage.”
“Maybe it was his headlights as he turned. Maybe it was more visible from behind. It was on the right. He would have turned counterclockwise. Different view than you got with the flashlight. You checked from the road.”
“He had time to make a rope handle.”
Shorty said nothing.
“Using rope he just happened to have with him,” she said.
“What are you thinking?”
“There were other things, too,” she said. “We made fun of Karel for saying he might get lucky with a wreck, and then he said it right back to us, practically the first thing out of his mouth. In the back of the junkyard.”
“Maybe he says it a lot.”
“Why did they make a rope handle?”
“I thought they were maybe helping us.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I suppose. I didn’t understand it.”
“They were taunting us.”
“Were they?”
“We talked about getting a rope to make a handle, so that’s exactly what they did. They got a rope and made a handle. To demonstrate their power. And to show us how they’re secretly laughing up their sleeves at us.”
“How could they know what we talked about?”
“They’re listening to us,” Patty said. “There’s a microphone in this room.”
“That’s crazy.”
“You got another explanation?”
“Where is it?”
“Maybe in the light.”
They both squinted at it, hot and yellow.
Shorty said, “Mostly we talked outside. In the chairs.”
“Then there must be a microphone out there, too. That’s how Peter found our luggage. They heard us talking about where to put it. They heard the whole plan. Back and forth with the damn quad-bike. Which is why Mark said we must be tired. Which was a weird remark otherwise. But he knew what we had been doing. Because we told him ahead of time.”
“What else did we say?”
“Lots of things. You said maybe Canadian cars are different, and the next thing we hear is, hey, Canadian cars are different. They were listening all along.”
“What else?”
“Doesn’t matter what else. What else we said is not what matters. What matters is what we say next.”
“Which is what?”
“Nothing,” Patty said. “We can’t even plan what to do. Because they’ll hear us.”
Chapter 19
Reacher and the guy with the ponytail climbed the fence and walked to the Subaru. The guy said, “You were pretty rough back there.”
“Not really,” Reacher said. “I hit him once. There is no smaller number. It was the irreducible minimum. It was almost kindhearted. I assume he has a dental plan.”
“His father meant what he said. He won’t forget. That family has a reputation to keep up. They’ll have to do something.”
Reacher stared at him.
Déjà vu all over again.
The guy said, “They think they’re top dogs around here. They’ll worry that word will get out. They won’t want people laughing at them behind their backs. So they’ll have to come looking for you.”
“Who?” Reacher said. “The granddad?”
“They offer a lot of seasonal work. They get a lot of loyalty in exchange.”
“How much more do you know about Ryantown?”
The guy paused a beat.
He said, “There’s an old man you should talk to. I was debating whether to mention him at all. Because honestly I think you should get going instead.”
“Pursued by a large and hostile crowd of fruit pickers?”
“These are not pleasant people.”
“How bad can they be?”
“You should get going.”
“Where is the old man I should talk to?”
“You couldn’t see him before tomorrow. It would have to be arranged.”
“How old is he?”
“I guess more than ninety now.”
“From Ryantown originally?”
“His cousins were. He spent time there.”
“Does he remember people?”
“He claims to. I interviewed him about the tin. I asked him about kids who got sick. He came up with a list of names. But they were just regular childhood ailments. Nothing conclusive.”