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Instead of a steakhouse or a barbecue pit they ate in chilly fluorescent silence in a rest-stop facility run by a third-best national chain. Reacher got a cheeseburger in a paper wrapper and coffee in a foam cup. Chang got a salad, in a plastic container as big as a basketball, with a clear lid at the top, and a white bowl underneath.
Reacher was trying not to think. He was chasing an elusive memory, right in the twilight between conscious and subconscious. He was looking away from it, not thinking about it, leaving it well alone.
Reacher sat on the arm, slow and casual, wanting to look like less of a threat, wanting to anchor himself at that end of the room, knowing a standing guy will be told to sit, and often where, whereas a sitting guy was rarely moved.
The guy said, “I’ve been doing it since it was called the undernet. And the invisible web. It got harder, but I got better.” “The destination might be hard to crack.” “Cracking is easy. It’s finding that’s hard.”
The guy from Palo Alto had a thing on his phone that summoned cars to the curb within minutes. Riding four to a car was deemed unseemly, so he pressed twice and got two. He rode with Westwood, to catch up on old times, and Reacher and Chang followed, in a Town Car all their own. The guy’s house was a 1950s box remodeled in the 1970s to look like the 1930s. Reacher figured it had a triple layer of ironic authenticity all its own, and was therefore worth more than all the money he had made in his life. Inside it was clean and all silver and black.
the back it had a claw arm and a digging shovel, very narrow, with two aggressive teeth. An entrenching tool. On the front the bucket was broad and tall, but shallow. More like a bulldozer blade. It was clearly a versatile machine. All kinds of things could be bolted on. It was brand-new, brightly painted, and completely clean. It had a new-backhoe smell.
Fluid. The future of journalism. The internet had changed everything. Now news was personal. The reporter had to be in the story. A first-hand account. The reporter had to be the story. Blogs, features, platforms, book deals.
