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Not good, he thought.

A phone buzzed in Turner’s pocket.

Not her work phone. Not her personal cell. Not her burner. It was the phone Reacher had taken from the guy in the San Francisco airport. He had given it to her for safe keeping. At her house, the morning after.

The screen said Hennessy.

They backed away, further out of sight, further out of earshot. Turner accepted the call. She put it on speaker and held the phone flat on her palm.

“What?” she said.

“General Turner?” Hennessy said. “What a pleasure. I was expecting the big man. Where are you?”

“We’re in the diner. We expected you to come by car. We thought we had another hour. Score one for you.”

“Your truck is here.”

“We walked.”

“Well, now you can walk right back again. Come around to the rear of the data centers, unarmed, with your hands in the air.”

“Or what?”

“I have a couple of bargaining chips.”

“Says you.”

“I have Mrs. Bisley and her baby. Do what I tell you, and I’ll let one of them live.”

Turner didn’t answer.

“Do we have an understanding?” Hennessy asked.

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Turner said.

She clicked off the call.

“Nice work,” Reacher said. “You bought us the time we need.”

“What now?”

Reacher pointed down the length of the building, toward the road, away from the helicopter. “We need to be way down there,” he said. “Bring the MPX with the suppressor on it. Hennessy will send a lookout. He wants to be sure we don’t get up to any funny business on the way back from the diner. Human nature. He doesn’t want surprises. He wants control. Fifty-fifty whether the lookout comes down this side of the building or the other side.”

“If he goes down the other side he could bump into Elwood.”

“Elwood can look after himself. But this side is more likely. It feels closer to the diner. We need to let him get out of sight before we take him down. They mustn’t see it happen.”

They hustled away, walking backward, as fast and as quietly as they could. The channel between the side fences was about forty feet wide, but it was so long that proportionately it felt claustrophobic, like a narrow dangerous corridor. It was deep in shadow. The sun was low in the west. They made it about thirty yards and stopped. Turner lay down on her front and jammed herself hard against the base of the left-hand fence. She aimed the MPX back the way they had come. Head on from a distance she would look OK. Not instantly recognizable as a threat. Boots, jeans, shirt, jacket, all in shades of tan and sand. At a faraway glance she could have been a rock, poking up through the gravel. Only the brown hair and the black gun could give her away. Reacher lay down against the right-hand fence. His top half was OK. Sandy hair, tanned face, tan shirt. His pants were the problem. Denim blue, not a natural color in the Colorado landscape. He aimed the shotgun. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. It was the opposite of suppressed. They would hear it in Denver.

They waited.

A minute later a figure stepped into view and set out walking down the center of the channel. Reacher knew who it was right away, by the gait and the posture. By the silhouette. It was the guy who had borrowed the chair at the coffee shop in Palo Alto. Can I take this? Sure, help yourself. Five-nine, wiry, maybe forty-five years old. Not a care in the world. No awareness. Probably not a product of the 75th Ranger Regiment. No doubt the low man in the squad, to be given lookout duty. Deserving of his status. Reacher figured he would be out of sight from the helicopter about fifty feet in. Where the angled shadow started.

He had ten more feet to go.

Then five.

Then he saw them.