Page 62 of No Plan B

It was a pain in the ass. The calves. The thighs. The back. The shoulders. The neck. In pretty much every part of his body. Jed had never been so uncomfortable in his entire life. All he could think was,People do this for fun? What the hell is wrong with them?

Everything had been fine while Jed was in the city of Jackson. The streets were level. There was plenty of traffic so the vehicles had to move slowly. The drivers seemed used to bikes weaving around them. And Jed had to pay attention to finding his way. Heremembered that there was only one road to Winson. He didn’t have a map so he had to watch out extra carefully for signs. Twice he thought he was lost. But he kept on going and pretty soon the buildings grew smaller and farther apart. The trees became taller and closer together. The fields stretched out beyond them. Jed raised his head and looked around. He thought his new surroundings were nice.

At first.

More things changed than the view as Jed rode deeper into the countryside. There were fewer vehicles, but the ones that were around drove much faster. They passed closer to him. He nearly got knocked off the bike half a dozen times. The nervousness from his first lesson came flooding back. And he kept coming to uphill stretches of road. It felt like massive weights were attached to his wheels. Every push on the pedals was a hundred times harder than on the flat. The sun was dipping low but the air was still hot. Jed was sweating. He was thirsty. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten for more than twelve hours. His head was feeling light. His legs were soft and rubbery. He was praying for a nice long downward slope. For a few minutes when gravity could do the work. When he could rest. When he could pick up a little speed and the wind would rush by and cool his body.

Jed slogged his way around another bend. Looked up. And found himself at the foot of the tallest mountain he had ever seen.

—

The road intoWinson was long and straight and lined with trees. The soft afternoon sunshine filtered through the leaves and cast a web of dappled shadows all along the faded blacktop. It was the kind of image Reacher had seen in Sunday newspaper articles about places parents should take their kids for picnics on school vacations. It looked idyllic. There was nothing to indicate that a town lay ahead.

Or a prison.

Or the people who had murdered Angela St. Vrain and Sam Roth.

—

A couple ofmiles beyond the sign announcing the town boundary, the trees thinned and buildings began to appear. Mainly houses. Mainly single story ones, spread apart from one another but standing near to the street. Most of them had wooden sides with dirty white paint that was peeling in handfuls. Plenty had roofs that looked like they were one decent storm away from getting blown completely off.

“I read about this place last night in the hotel before I went to sleep,” Hannah said. “It has a crazy history. Originally it was a Native American settlement. The French drove them out in, like, 1720. The British took the place from the French. The Spanish moved in when the British quit after the Revolutionary War. They were supposed to be on our side but they didn’t want to hand the town over so we took it from them. It thrived while all the trade was centered on the river. There are rumors of a second town, like a shadow, at the bottom of the cliff. Stories of caves and liquor and whores and stolen gold and smuggled jewels. Even if any of that was true, it’s all gone now. Blown up, or flooded. Then the river trade faded and the railroads and industry took over. Paper mills, mainly, because of all the trees that grow here. Now the industry’s gone, too. Which is why there are so many old houses, I guess. And why so many of them are about to fall down.”

Hannah drove in silence for a while and as they came closer to the town they saw the standard of maintenance improved. The size of the homes increased. They grew closer together. The balance shifted to mainly two-story properties. Most were still white, but their paint was fresh and bright. Some were blue. Some were yellow. Many had shutters. Most had porches running their full width. Some hadverandas with solid columns and ornate wooden railings. The sidewalks that passed them were wide, and there were tall, mature trees forming a border with the road.

In the town itself wood construction gave way to brick. There were still plenty of balconies and verandas but with spindly supports and ornate iron railings painted gloss black. It felt like a small-scale copy of New Orleans, Reacher thought. The roofs were mainly flat. The windows were larger, some were square, some had curved tops. There were lots of alleyways. There was parking down both sides of all the streets. Half the spaces were empty. Reacher saw a couple of cafés. A few bars. A small church, built of brick with clumsy stained glass. It looked like it had recently been rebuilt, but on a budget. There was a range of businesses. A pawnshop with guns and guitars hanging two deep in the window. An insurance agent. A tire bay. A handful of small bed-and-breakfasts. A fishmonger. A cellphone store. A body shop.

Hannah and Reacher drove around for half an hour. They started at Main Street and quartered the blocks on either side until they had a good sense of the place. Finally they stopped outside a coffee shop. Hannah went in and grabbed two large cups to go. She climbed back into the truck, handed a cup to Reacher, and said, “Hotel?”

Reacher shook his head. “Prison first. Then food. Then the hotel.”

Chapter32

Jed Starmer was sitting atthe side of the road. The messenger’s bike was lying on the shoulder, to his left, where it had fallen after he jumped off.

Jed stared at the bike and sighed. He hadn’t really jumped off. He had intended to. He had tried to. But his legs weren’t working the way they usually did. So he had pretty much fallen off, if he was honest. Staggered, maybe, or stumbled, if he wanted to put a positive spin on it.

The thing he couldn’t put a positive spin on lay to his right. The mountain. Or really, the hill. Or the slope. He had used the minutes he’d been sitting there to rein in his imagination. He wasn’t facing Mount Everest. Or the Eiger. Or Kilimanjaro. The rise was probably no more than a hundred feet. But whether it was a hundred or thirty thousand it made no difference. There was no way Jed could ride up it. He wouldn’t even be able to push the bike to the top, the way his legs were shaking. He would just have to sit where he was. Probably for the rest of his life, since no one was going to come and help him.

—

Reacher figured thatthe prison was Winson’s equivalent of a portrait in the attic. It was ugly. Unattractive. Hidden away to the west of the town. If it was any farther away it would be in the river. But it was what kept the town alive. What made it vibrant. That was clear. There was no other industry to speak of. No other sources of employment. Nothing else to keep the local bakers and launderettes and plumbers and electricians busy on any kind of substantial scale.

The prison’s site was shaped like a D. The curved side was formed by the riverbank. Beyond it was a seventy-foot drop straight into deep, dirty, fast-flowing water. A fence ran ten feet back from the edge. It had two layers. They were twenty feet high with rolls of razor wire strung along the top. There were floodlights on stout metal poles. And cameras in protective cages. There was a fifteen-foot gap between layers, and another fence ran along the center line. It was ten feet high, and it had no wire.

The fences continued in the same way along the straight side of the site. The side facing the town. There were four watchtowers level with the outer layer of wire. And three entrances. One was in the center. It led into a building. It was a single story, built of brick, with double doors, which were closed, and a video intercom on the doorframe. That would be the visitors’ entrance, Reacher thought. The staff probably used it, too. The other entrances were at the far ends. They had full height gates rather than doors. And no signs. One was probably used for supplies. The other would be for shipping in fresh inmates.

Inside the fence, on the river side of the site, there were five buildings in a line. They were shaped like Xs. Reacher guessed they would be the cell blocks. The rest of the space was filled with twelve other buildings and three exercise areas. The buildings were all different sizes. They were plain and utilitarian. They could have been factories or warehouses if it wasn’t for the razor wire and watchtowers thatsurrounded them. The exercise areas were all the same size, but they were physically separate. Presumably to keep the different categories of prisoners isolated in their own allocated spaces.

The buildings and exercise areas were joined by walkways. The walls and roofs were made of wire mesh. Even from a distance Reacher could see it was thick. Substantial. Anyone would need serious tools to stand a chance of getting through it. Outside, around the buildings and between the walkways, there were some patches of grass. A surprising number, Reacher thought, for such a grim institution. There were squares. Rectangles. Ovals. And twenty feet from the base of each watchtower there was a brick-lined triangle.

The grass was well cared for. It was trimmed short. Edged neatly. And probably fed or fertilized, given the way its deep green stood out against the pale walls of the buildings and the gray blur of the wire mesh. The only other structure inside the fence was newer. It was V-shaped and shoehorned in behind the security building. It was styled like some kind of corporate headquarters and there was a three-dimensional Minerva logo on a plinth, rotating, out front. Reacher figured if any prisoners got loose that would be the first thing to get destroyed.

He said, “Did you read anything about riots happening here recently?”

Hannah said, “Nothing official. But on one of the message boards a woman was complaining about her husband getting hurt by a guard. It was during a brawl in the exercise yard. Thirty or forty guys were involved but her husband was the only one the guard laid into. She complained, and got told her husband had been trying to escape. They said they’d let it slide, but if she made trouble about his injuries he’d wind up getting his sentence extended.”

“Have there been any successful escapes?”

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