They stepped out. The guy was still there. All alone in the vastness. Jeans, hair, M16 rifle. Sixty feet away. Chang aimed her gun, one eye closed. Reacher stood still, arms held wide, looking up at the sky, his gun hanging upside down off his trigger finger. Take your best shot. The guy did. He raised his gun, held still, and aimed, and fired.

And missed.

Missed both of them.

Chang fired back. Single shot. The spent case spat through the air. The bullet missed. But the guy backed off. Five clumsy paces, backward. Then ten.

Chang fired again. Another case glittered through the air. Another miss. The wheat moved in waves, heavy, and slow, and silent.

The guy raised his rifle.

But he didn’t shoot.

Chang said, “Is he out of bullets?”

Reacher’s head hurt.

He said, “He doesn’t know. He lost count. So did I.”

Then he smiled.

He said, “Do we feel lucky?”

He raised his gun. Two grips, held easy, somewhere between firm and gentle. The front sight, and the blur beyond. He blinked. He had focus, but it was not molecular. Plus he had a microscopic thrill in his arms. Through his whole body. Difficulties with coordination, movement, memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.

He lowered his gun.

He said, “We should get closer.”

They made up the distance the guy had retreated. Slow and easy. Heart rate low, breathing normal. The guy added ten more paces. The jeans and the hair, moving backward, toward the hog pen.

Reacher and Chang got closer.

The smell was bad.

But better than the movie studio.

The guy backed off ten more paces.

And jammed up hard against the hog pen fence.

Reacher and Chang stopped.

The guy raised his rifle.

And then lowered it again. He stood against the fence, all alone, the rails at his back, small and absurd in the emptiness. The sun was high in the south. Far behind the guy his hogs moved out of their shelter. Fat and smooth, glistening with slime. Each one the size of a Volkswagen.

Reacher walked forward. Chang kept level.

The guy dropped his rifle and raised his hands.

Reacher walked forward. Chang kept level.

Fifty feet. Forty. Thirty.

Twenty feet.

The guy had his hands in the air.

In the tall tales told by firelight there was always a brief conversation. Because the bad guy had to be told why he had to die.

Reacher said nothing.

Tales were tales, and not the real world.

But the guy spoke first.

He said, “Their lives were forfeit. Surely you see that. They had given their lives away. Their decision was made. They were already gone. They were mine to use. And they got what they wanted anyway. In the end.”

Reacher said, “I don’t think they got what they wanted. That wasn’t the holy grail.”

“It was an hour or two. At the very end. After the end, as far as they were concerned. They had made their decision.”

“How many hours was the guy you starved to death? Or was it a woman?”

The guy didn’t answer.

Reacher said, “One practical question.”

The guy looked up.

“Where are the bodies?”

The guy said nothing. But he glanced back. Reflex. Involuntary.

He glanced at the hogs.

Reacher said, “Then why did you bury Keever?”

The guy said, “The hogs had already eaten that day.”

Reacher said nothing.

The guy said, “It was a custom order from Japan. An excellent match. All I’m doing is meeting a need. You can’t blame me for other people’s tastes.”

Reacher said nothing.

The guy’s hands came down an inch. He wanted his shoulders free to work the normal way, and his neck, and his head, for body language, for gestures, for cajoling, for explaining. For bargaining, and for offering. All the guys Reacher had ever known. Right up to the very end. They believed they would get away with it.

Chang raised her gun. Reacher watched her. Black hair, hanging loose. Dark lively eyes, one closed, one tight on her front sight. The needle post in the hooded ring.

She said, “This is for Keever.”

The bad guy had to be told.

She said, “It could have been me.”

She touched the trigger. Twenty feet. Instantaneous. She hit him in the throat. Full metal jacket, through and through. The bullet would fall to earth way out in the wheat, where it would never be found. It would be plowed under, lost and forgotten, and it would return to its constituent elements, lead and copper, part of the planet, the same way it started.

The guy gurgled, a lone tubercular cough, very loud, and blood foamed and sprayed from his wound. For a second he stayed upright, just a guy leaning on a rail, and then everything gave way all at once, and he went down like liquid, in a sprawled puddle, all arms and legs and jeans and hair.

Reacher said, “Where were you aiming?”

Chang said, “Center mass.”

Reacher smiled.

“Can’t beat center mass,” he said.

He walked twenty feet, and found the guy’s collar, and the back of his belt, and he hoisted him up, and he dumped him over the fence.

The hogs came running.

Chapter 59