Chapter 43

Chang drops Reacher near Merchenko’s compound. Reacher advances openly with a suppressed pistol, bypasses the gate, and finds Merchenko berating a Hispanic employee. Without warning or speech, Reacher double-taps Merchenko in the head, leaves the weapon in a trash container, and departs as the grateful employee thanks him.

They meet Westwood at a Scottsdale bar. Westwood questions ethics and the day’s body count, but shares background: Merchenko ran boutique Deep Web protection for about ten high-paying clients. The scale of his club implies enormous revenues from those clients.

Discussing search capability, Westwood explains the government lacks the talent, and big tech lacks motive. Instead, a Palo Alto founder—now successful in payments—has long pursued a hobby project that can see parts of the Deep Web, but he fears retaliation. They resolve to contact him for direct insight.

Cutaway: a man with ironed jeans and blow-dried hair, twenty miles south of Mother’s Rest, anxiously calls and gets no answer, hinting at stalled coordination.

In a hotel room, Westwood shows satellite images: an isolated farm south of Mother’s Rest with independent power and multiple satellite dishes, suggesting robust, possibly redundant internet. Reacher recalls passing it by train at midnight with machinery running. Chang notes the white Cadillac’s twenty-mile trips match this location, implying arriving passengers were driven there. Concluding they need visibility from inside the network, they decide to go to San Francisco to meet the coder.