Page 48 of The Secret

Veronica screamed and stamped her foot. She said, “This can’t be happening! It ruins everything.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Do you think he did it to himself?”

Roberta said, “No way. No one escapes and then kills themselves. People kill themselves because theycan’tescape. No. The eighth man did it. To keep his ID secret. There’s no other explanation.”

Veronica slumped against the side of the RV then slid down until she was sitting on the ground. “It was all for nothing. Pritchard’s dead and our only chance of learning the eighth name died with him. Shoot me now.”

Roberta gave Veronica’s leg a gentle kick. “It’s not for nothing. Not even close. Seven of the assholes are dead. That’s all but one of them. We swore we’d make them pay for keeping quiet and letting Dad take the blame. We’ve done that. In style. And aside from Buck with his cancer, their deaths stink of suicide. Reek of it. So it’s their families’ turn to live with that, now. How different would our lives have been if we hadn’t had to? If Mom hadn’t felt like she had to flee the country? Richard would be alive. Ryan wouldn’t be in jail. We wouldn’t have had to join the army to escape the madness. We could have done anything we wanted. Plus, I’m not giving up on getting the eighth name. Or the money the asshole made out of Dad’s misfortune. I have an idea. Maybe there is another person who can help us figure it out.”

“Who?”

“We’ll talk about it when we’re back on the road. We need to find a phone. Call 911. There’s no point Pritchard being dead if no one knows about it.”

Chapter18

It took two hours andcost a dozen favors but Neilsen came through with the satellite photo. Or a faxed copy, at least. Which was the best anyone could hope for under the circumstances. He collected Smith, who had already fetched her map from her car, and together they went back to Reacher’s room.

Neilsen placed the picture on Reacher’s desk and said, “I have to duck out for a while. I heard from a buddy. He has information about 192. Something important going back to the sixties. He wouldn’t discuss it on the phone. If I’m not back before you wrap up here, I’ll see you in the bar.”

Smith stood by Reacher’s shoulder and tapped the center of the photograph with her finger. She said, “That’s Pritchard’s house. Does it tell you anything?”

Reacher studied the image for a minute, then said, “If you want to find someone, you have to think like they do. So imagine you live here. You’re a little paranoid. Worried that hostile agents could come for you in the night. What would you do? You know the houseis vulnerable from two directions. The front and the back. There’s nothing you can do about that. Attackers could hit the front and watch the back. Or they could hit the back and watch the front. Or they could hit both simultaneously. So you would create an escape route out of one of the sides. Not the east. It’s too exposed, and you’d have nowhere to go from there. So you’d use the west. Construct some kind of concealed exit leading out of the garage.”

“How?”

“Doesn’t matter. Lots of ways you could do it. The important point is that it would bring you out, here.” Reacher’s fingers were too thick so he pointed at the picture with the tip of his pen. “You’d be invisible. You’d be screened by the vegetation, here and here. And from there you’d have clear access to the fence. It would be easy to rig an unobtrusive way through. Then you’d be in the neighbor’s yard. The hard part would be done. And then, what’s this?” He pointed to a small rectangular structure.

“Looks like a shed? No. It has a driveway. It’s a garage.”

“All the houses in the subdivision have attached garages. What’s an extra one doing there? It’s nowhere near the house. Not very convenient. If the neighbors needed more space, why didn’t they build an addition? My bet is that Pritchard leased the space and had the garage built. No. I bet he bought the whole property and rented the rest back to the occupants. And uses the extra garage to store a getaway vehicle. See how the driveway sweeps away from his own house? It’s way longer than it needs to be. Why pay for that? So that he could coast down to the road, almost in silence. No wonder those agents missed him.”

“The getaway vehicle will be registered in a false name. You can be sure of that. But what kind will it be? How do we find it?”

“Depends on what his goal is. If he was looking to flee the country, it’ll be a car. Something comfortable. Nondescript. Dependable.With a gas tank big enough to get to an airport, or a seaport, or even over the border. If that was his plan, he’s long gone. We’ll never find him. He’ll be holed up on a beach someplace in a country with no extradition treaty.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

“On the other hand, fleeing the jurisdiction is a young man’s game. It’s stressful. Physically demanding. You have to move fast, and carry lots of stuff, and airports are natural pinch points. They have security. Cops. A limited number of exits. And Pritchard’s old. He’s retired. The kind of guy who’s more likely to use his experience than his muscles. Let his brain do the heavy lifting. I can see him tucked away by a quiet lake somewhere pleasant, fishing, waiting for the fuss to blow over. Or for his buddies to pull enough strings to nix whatever caused the danger. In which case he’d pick an RV. The garage looks big enough for one.”

“The RV gets my vote. So where would he go in it? Could be anywhere in the country. Canada, even. Or Mexico. RVs are mobile. That’s the whole point of them.”

Reacher thought for a moment. He had no experience with RVs but he figured they would be similar in principle to army infantry fighting vehicles. Designed to provide shelter and mobility. So maybe like a Bradley but with more home comforts and fewer guns. Able to carry a certain quantity of supplies. Water. Fuel. And food, in a civilian context. But there would be a limit. Pritchard would need the ability to resupply. Reacher assumed specialist facilities existed to meet that kind of need. He took the map from Smith and spread it out next to the photograph.

He said, “How fast can an RV go?”

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know. Sixty?”

“I figure Pritchard would want to be on the road for less than an hour. So here’s what we need to do. Find every place that couldsupply a vehicle with fresh water within a forty-mile radius of his house. Contact the local cops. Fax them the most up-to-date picture of Pritchard you can get your hands on. Have them send an officer to each potential location and find out if anyone there has seen him. Tell them to be discreet. If they get a confirmed sighting, to report it. Not to make an approach. Pritchard’s paranoid. He’s in flight mode right now. But that could easily change.”

—

“The businesswoman, scientistperson? Why her?” Veronica Sanson settled back in her seat.

“Because she was there.” Roberta shifted into Drive and lifted her foot off the brake.

“In India? How do you know?”

Roberta eased out into a gap in the traffic. “I guess you’re too young to remember the press conferences on TV. Her picture was all over the newspapers at the time, too. She was the spokesperson for the chemical company.”

“That was her? I didn’t realize. Didn’t make the connection. But she was a civilian. Not CIA. Not army. How can she help?”

---