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officers. Why?”
    “How many deputies does the Despair PD have?”
    “Four, I think.”
    “I met them.”
    “And?”
    “Theoretically, what would the Hope PD do if someone showed up and got in a dispute with one of your deputies and busted his jaw?”
    “We’d throw that someone’s sorry ass in jail, real quick.”
    “Why?”
    “You know why. Zero tolerance for assaults on peace officers, plus an obligation to look after our own, plus pride and self-respect.”
    “Suppose there was a self-defense issue?”
    “Civilian versus a peace officer, we’d need some kind of amazing reasonable doubt. You’d have felt the same in the MPs.”
    “That’s for damn sure.”
    “So why did you ask?”
    Reacher didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “I’m not a Stoic, really. Zeno preached the passive acceptance of fate. I’m not like that. I’m not very passive. I take challenges personally.”
    “So?”
    “I don’t like to be told where I can go and where I can’t.”
    “Stubborn?”
    “It annoys me.”
    Vaughan slowed some more and pulled in at the curb. Put the transmission in Park and turned in her seat.
    “My advice?” she said. “Get over it and move on. Despair isn’t worth it.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Go get a meal and a room for the night,” Vaughan said. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “And it was a pleasure to meet you.”
    He opened the door and slid out to the sidewalk. Hope’s version of Main Street was called First Street. He knew there was a diner a block away on Second Street. He had eaten breakfast there. He set out walking toward it and heard Vaughan’s Crown Vic move away behind him. He heard the civilized purr of its motor and the soft hiss of its tires on the asphalt. Then he turned a corner and didn’t hear it anymore.
     
    An hour later he was still in the diner. He had eaten soup, steak, fries, beans, apple pie, and ice cream. Now he was drinking coffee. It was a better brew than at the restaurant in Despair. And it had been served in a mug that was cylindrical in shape. Still too thick at the rim, but much closer to the ideal.
    He was thinking about Despair, and he was wondering why getting him out of town had been more important than keeping him there and busting him for the assault on the deputy.

 
    9
    The diner in Hope had a bottomless cup policy for its coffee and Reacher abused it mercilessly. He drank most of a Bunn flask all on his own. His waitress became fascinated by the spectacle. She didn’t need to be asked for refills. She came back every time he was ready, sometimes before he was ready, as if she was willing him to break some kind of a world record for consumption. He left her a double tip, just in case the owner fined her for her generosity.
    It was full dark when he left the diner. Nine o’clock in the evening. He figured it would stay dark for another ten hours. Sunrise was probably around seven, in that latitude at that time of year. He walked three blocks to where he had seen a small grocery. In a city it would have been called a bodega and in the suburbs it would have been franchised, but in Hope it was still what it had probably always been, a cramped and dusty family-run enterprise selling the things people needed when they needed them.
    Reacher needed water and protein and energy. He bought three one-liter bottles of Poland Spring and six chocolate chip PowerBars and a roll of black thirteen-gallon garbage bags. The clerk at the register packed them all carefully into a paper sack and Reacher took his change and carried the sack four blocks to the same motel he had used the night before. He got the same room, at the end of the row. He went inside and put the sack on the nightstand and lay down on the bed. He planned on a short rest. Until midnight. He didn’t want to walk seventeen miles twice on the same day.
     

     
    Reacher got off the bed at midnight and checked the window. No more