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“To which part?”

“Well, both parts, actually. How can you eat like that? You had sausage and bacon for breakfast.”

“I had vegetables for breakfast.”

“I can’t let you take on Lazarus Lorenzo alone. That would be a very poor command decision on my part. You’re going to need a second pair of eyes and a second pair of hands.”

“Command decision implies I work for you.”

“Pretend you do.”

“You can’t send me someone. Who could you pick? They might be the bad apple. You have no way of knowing.”

“I know I’m not the bad apple.”

Reacher said nothing.

“You’ll get there three hours before me,” Turner said. “Meet me in the SFO baggage claim area. Liaise by phone if necessary. Wait in a coffee shop, not a hamburger restaurant. Please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and clicked off the call. His burger arrived. The cafe had old-fashioned newspapers all around, mounted on long wooden wands for easy reading, like retro decor items, but they were real. They were that day’s editions. Two were nationals. One said times were bad, one said times were good. The third paper was local. Northern Colorado. It had an article about how much water and electricity was being used to cool all the new server farms and data centers that were springing up all across the region. One massive new project was going to use enough resources to power a city with a million inhabitants, which was one-sixth of the state’s population, right there. A single project. Something to do with artificial intelligence, whatever that was.

On the next page was a big color ad for Aurora Stone and Gravel. It featured a photograph of a bunch of smiling women in hard hats arrayed in a semicircle in front of a matching semicircle of yellow bucket loaders and bulldozers. Behind the machines were house-high piles of rock and stone. In front of everything were two women standing together, side by side, waving at the camera, one with her right hand, one with her left, symmetrical. The two sisters, presumably. The slogan printed across the width of the picture just below their feet said You Can Trust Us.

—

Once again the Chief of Staff of the Army bought Reacher a first-class ticket. Once again the flight was a pleasant experience. After touchdown at San Francisco International he lingered in the gate area, studying the arrivals boards, working out the frequency of the incoming planes from D.C., and the intervals between them, trying to figure out what flight Turner might get, and therefore what her ETA might be. About three hours from then, he thought. That was his best guess. Exactly like she had said. He left his phones switched off. He would find her by visual surveillance, the old-fashioned way.

He followed signs to baggage claim and stepped through a door beyond the carousels to the sidewalk outside. The air was cool and damp. He could smell sea fog. He walked up to departures and found a tourist shop between the check-in counters and the security lines. It had all kinds of San Francisco T-shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies, but he disliked clothing with writing on, so his choices were limited. In the end all the Chief of Staff could get him was a long-sleeve plaid flannel shirt. It was mostly bright red. He shrugged it on in a men’s room and dumped the bag and the tag in the trash. He went back out to the open air looking like someone from Maine on vacation, but feeling much warmer.

The city lay more than ten miles to the north, so there was no obvious place to go. He loitered, alternating the tang of salt and jet fuel outside with the bland air inside. Outside he watched passengers coming through the doors to the sidewalk, some of them hustling, some of them dazed. He watched limo drivers looking for their clients, and their clients looking for them. He watched furtive unlicensed guys touting for rides, half price and smoke if you want. Inside he saw people wrestling bags off the carousels and wheeling them away. He saw business people with neat carry-ons bypassing the carousels altogether and heading straight out. The world in motion.

Eventually the clock in his head gave him a range of ten to thirty more minutes remaining, depending on which flight she had taken, and its on-time performance, and taxiway congestion, and so on and so forth. The average would be twenty minutes, but she would be faster than average. She always was. He remembered that about her. He figured about fifteen minutes at worst, maybe twelve at best.

—

It was nine minutes. A new pulse of people came out through the one-way airside doors, evidently from a new flight just arrived, with the brisk carry-on road warriors leading the way. Turner was second among them. She was walking fast, wheeling a small black suitcase on a long handle, carrying a neat black bag on a strap on her shoulder. She was wearing black boots, black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. Looking good. He stepped up to meet her.

“Hello, Reacher,” she said, like she had at breakfast the day before, same voice, low and intimate.

“Good flight?” he asked.

“Good enough,” she said.

They stepped out to the gray damp air and headed for the taxi line. A crowd of people were lined up ahead of them, with bags and cases and strollers and children. It looked like they were in for a few minutes’ wait.

“Gives us time to figure out where we’re going,” Turner said. “Lazarus Lorenzo has two offices, a big one in San Francisco, and a small boutique operation in Palo Alto. We need to decide which one first.”

“I’m out of date,” Reacher said. “Is calling in contract kills on behalf of bad guys likely to be a company-wide service now, or just a couple of their lawyers going rogue on their own, like in the old days?”

“My honest guess is somewhere in between. I doubt they discuss such matters at the Monday morning partners’ meeting, but I bet they know plenty about it. Certainly they must know about the revenue it brings in. But most likely they keep it walled off and well compartmentalized. So it’s deniable. Just some random guys acting alone. Nothing to see here. Like you.”

“So it’s probably happening at the smaller office. Out of sight, out of mind. Plus Bisley was working cybercrime, and Palo Alto is the heart of cyber everything. Silicon Valley was invented there. A whole new culture. Different rules. In which case maybe it’s not just a couple of guys. The whole office could be bent. We need to think about that. It would be more efficient that way. No prying eyes and ears. No need for caution in front of an innocent party. All the bad stuff in one place. Walled off from the mothership by definition, because it’s in a totally separate building more than thirty miles down the road. Already semi-detached, for when it needs to be cast adrift or thrown under the bus. So I say we go to Palo Alto, find the office, assume everyone in it is as bent as a nine-dollar bill, and proceed accordingly.”

“Works for me,” she said.

They stayed in the taxi line, because the airport was already ten miles south of the city, which meant Palo Alto was only twenty more, which meant a regular cab would be reasonable. No need to go hijack a limo up on departures. Eventually the family in front crammed themselves into a faded Camry, which gave Reacher and Turner the next car to show up, which was another faded Camry. They climbed in and Reacher said, “Palo Alto, please, on Route 82 from Menlo Park.”

“You sound like you know the area,” Turner said.