Reacher moved closer. He got within twenty yards and then the guy bent again and threw up for a second time. Reacher heard him gasp. Not in pain, not in surprise, but in annoyance and resignation.

“You OK?” Reacher called, out of the gloom.

The guy straightened up.

“Who’s there?” he called.

Reacher said, “Me.”

“Who?”

Reacher moved closer. Stepped into a bar of light coming from a neighbor’s kitchen window.

The guy said, “You.”

Reacher nodded. “Me.”

“We threw you out.”

“Didn’t take.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“We could discuss that further, if you like. Right now. Right here.”

The guy shook his head. “I’m sick. Not fair.”

Reacher said, “It wouldn’t be fair if you weren’t sick.”

The guy shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m going inside now.”

“How’s your buddy? With the jaw?”

“You bust him up good.”

“Tough,” Reacher said.

“I’m sick,” the guy said again. “I’m going inside. I didn’t see you, OK?”

“Bad food?”

The guy paused. Then he nodded.

“Must have been,” he said. “Bad food.”

He headed for his house, slow and stumbling, holding his belt one-handed, like his pants were too big for him. Reacher watched him go, and then he turned and walked back to the distant shadows.

He moved fifty yards south and fifty yards east of where he had been before, in case the sick guy changed his mind and decided he had seen something after all. He wanted some latitude, if the cops started a search in the guy’s back yard. He wanted to begin the chase outside of a flashlight beam’s maximum range.

But no cops showed up. Clearly the guy never called. Reacher waited the best part of thirty minutes. Way to the west he heard the aero engine again, straining hard, climbing. The small plane, taking off once more. Seven o’clock in the evening. Then the noise died away and the sky went full dark and the houses closed up tight. Clouds drifted in and covered the moon and the stars. Apart from the glow from draped windows the world went pitch black. The temperature dropped like a stone. Nighttime, in open country.