by Child, Lee
By then Reacher was operating unconsciously and instinctively. He was nearly thirty-nine years old, and his memory stretched back through maybe thirty-five of those years to the dimmest early fragments of his childhood, and that memory was filled with absolutely nothing except military service, his father’s, his friends’ fathers’, his own, his friends’. He had never known stability, he had never completed a year in the same school, he had never worked nine to five, Monday to Friday, he had never counted on anything at all except surprise and unpredictability. There was a portion of his brain developed way out of all proportion, like a grotesquely over-trained muscle, which made it seem to him entirely reasonable that he should step out of a door in a quiet New York suburban town and glance down at two men he had last seen two thousand miles away in the Keys crouching and swinging nine-millimeter pistols up in his direction. No shock, no surprise, no gasping freezing fear or panic. No pausing, no hesitation, no inhibitions. Just instant reaction to a purely mechanical problem laid out in front of him like a geometric diagram involving time and space and angles and hard bullets and soft flesh.
The heavy suitcase was in his left hand, swinging forward as he labored with it over the threshold. He did two things at once. First he kept the swing going, using all the new strength in his left shoulder to kick the case onward and outward. Second he windmilled his right arm backward and shoved Jodie in the chest, smashing her back inside the hallway. She staggered back a step and the moving suitcase caught the first bullet. Reacher felt it kick in his hand. He jerked it right to the end of its swing, leaning out into the porch like a hesitant diver over a cold pool, and it hit the left-hand guy a glancing blow in the face. He was half up and half down, crouching, unstable, and the blow from the case rolled him over and backward and out of the picture.
But Reacher didn’t see him go down, because his eyes were already on the other guy looping around the screen with his gun about fifteen degrees away from ready. Reacher used the momentum of the swinging suitcase to hurl himself forward. He let the handle pull out through his hooked fingertips and flip him into a dive with his right arm accelerating back past him straight out across the porch. The gun swung around and smacked him flat on his chest. He heard it fire and felt the muzzle blast sear his skin. The bullet launched sideways under his raised left arm and hit the distant garage about the same time his right elbow hit the guy in the face.
An elbow moving fast ahead of 250 pounds of diving body weight does a lot of damage. It glanced off the frame of the screen and caught the guy in the chin. The shock wave went back and up through the hinge of the jaw, which is a sturdy enough joint that the force was carried undiminished up into the guy’s brain. Reacher could tell from the rubbery way he fell across his back that he was out for a spell. Then the screen door was creaking shut against its spring and the left-hand guy was scrabbling sideways across the porch floorboards for his gun, which was skittering away from him. Jodie was framed in the doorway, bent double, hands clasped to her chest, gasping for breath. The old suitcase was toppling end over end out onto the front lawn.
Jodie was the problem. He was separated from her by about eight feet, and the left-hand guy was between the two of them. If he grabbed the skittering gun and lined it up to his right, he would be lined up on her. Reacher heaved the unconscious guy out of the way and threw himself at the door. Batted the screen back and fell inside. Dragged Jodie a yard into the hallway and slammed the door shut. It kicked and banged three times as the guy fired after him and dust and wood splinters blasted out into the air. He clicked the lock and pulled Jodie across the floor to the kitchen.
“Can we get to the garage?”
“Through the breezeway,” she gasped.
It was June, so the storm windows were down and the breezeway was nothing but a wide passage with floor-to-ceiling screens on both sides. The left-hand guy was using an M9 Beretta, which would have started the day with fifteen rounds in the box. He’d fired four, one into the suitcase and three into the door. Eleven left, which was not a comforting thought when all that stood between you and them was a few square yards of nylon mesh.
“Car keys?”
She fumbled them out of her bag. He took them and closed them into his fist. The kitchen door had a glass panel with a view straight through the breezeway to an identical door exactly opposite, which led into the garage.
“Is that door locked?”
She nodded breathlessly. “The green one. Green for garage.”
He looked at the bunch of keys. There was an old Yale, dotted with a smear of green paint. He eased the kitchen door open and knelt and eased his head out, lower than would be expected. He craned around, both ways. No sign of the guy waiting outside. Then he selected the green key and held it pointed out in front of him like a tiny lance. Pushed to his feet and sprinted. Checked and slammed the key into the hole and turned it and yanked it back out. Pushed the door open and waved Jodie across after him. She fell into the garage and he slammed the door behind her. Locked it and listened. No sound.
The garage was a large, dark space, open rafters, open framing, smelling of old motor oil and creosote. It was full of garage things, mowers and hoses and lawn chairs, but they were all old things, the belongings of a man who stopped buying new gizmos twenty years ago. So the main doors were just manual rollers that ran upward in curving metal tracks. No mechanism. No electric opener. The floor was smooth poured concrete, aged and swept to a shine. Jodie’s car was a new Oldsmobile Bravada, dark green, gold accents. It was crouched there in the dark, nose-in to the back wall. Badges on the tailgate, boasting about four-wheel drive and a V-6 engine. The four-wheel drive would be useful, but how fast that V-6 started would be crucial.
“Get in the back,” he whispered. “Down on the floor, OK?”
She crawled in headfirst, and lay down across the transmission hump. He crossed the garage and found the key to the door out to the yard. Opened it up and peered out and listened. No movement, no sound. Then he came back to the car and slid the key in and switched on the ignition so he could rack the electric seat all the way back to the end of its runners.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he whispered.
Garber’s tool area was as tidy as his desk had been. There was an eight-by-four pegboard with a full set of household tools neatly arranged on it. Reacher selected a heavy carpenter’s hammer and lifted it down. Stepped out of the door to the yard and threw the hammer overarm, diagonally right over the house, to send it crashing into the undergrowth he had seen at the front. He counted to five to give the guy time to hear it and react to it and run toward it from wherever he was currently hiding. Then he ducked back inside to the car. Stood alongside the open door and turned the key, arm’s length. Fired it up. The engine started instantly. He dodged backward and flung the roller door up. It crashed along its metal track. He threw himself into the driver’s seat and smashed the selector into reverse and stamped on the pedal. All four tires howled and then bit on the smooth concrete and the vehicle shot backward out of the garage. Reacher glimpsed the guy with the Beretta, way off to his left on the front lawn, spinning to look at them. He accelerated all the way up the driveway and lurched backward into the road. Braked fiercely and spun the wheel and found drive and took off in a haze of blue tire smoke.
He accelerated hard for fifty yards and then lifted off the gas. Coasted to a gentle stop just beyond the neighbor’s driveway. Selected reverse again and idled backward into it and down into the plantings. Straightened up and killed the motor. Behind him, Jodie struggled up off the floor and stared.
“Hell are we doing here?” she said.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“For them to get out of there.”
She gasped, halfway between outrage and astonishment.
“We’re not waiting, Reacher, we’re going straight to the police with this.”
He turned the key again to give him power to operate the window. Buzzed it all the way do
wn, so he could listen to the sounds outside.
“I can’t go to the police with this,” he said, not looking at her.
“Why the hell can’t you?”
“Because they’ll start looking at me for Costello.”
“You didn’t kill Costello.”
“You think they’ll be ready and willing to believe that?”
“They’ll have to believe it, because it wasn’t you, simple as that.”
“Could take them time to find somebody looks better for it.”
She paused. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s all-around advantageous I stay away from the police.”
She shook her head. He saw it in the mirror.
“No, Reacher, we need the police for this.”
He kept his eyes on hers, in the mirror.
“Remember what Leon used to say? He used to say hell, I am the police.”
“Well, he was, and you were. But that was a long time ago.”
“Not so long ago, for either of us.”
She went quiet. Sat forward. Leaned toward him. “You don’t want to go to the police, right? That’s it, isn’t it? Not that you can’t, you just damn well don’t want to.”
He half turned in the driver’s seat so he could look straight at her. He saw her eyes drop to the burn on his shirt. There was a long teardrop shape there, a black sooty stain, gunpowder particles tattooed into the cotton. He undid the buttons and pulled the shirt open. Squinted down. The same teardrop shape was burned into his skin, the hairs frizzed and curled, a blister already puffing up, getting red and angry. He licked his thumb and pressed it on the blister and grimaced.
“They mess with me, they answer to me.”
She stared at him. “You’re totally unbelievable, you know that? You’re just as bad as my father was. We should go to the police, Reacher.”
“Can’t do it,” he said. “They’ll throw me in jail.”
“We should,” she said again.
But she said it weakly. He shook his head and said nothing back. Watched her closely. She was a lawyer, but she was also Leon’s daughter, and she knew how things worked outside in the real world. She was quiet for a long spell, and then she shrugged helplessly and put her hand on her breastbone, like it was tender.
“You OK?” he asked her.
“You hit me kind of hard,” she said.
I could rub it better, he thought.
“Who were those guys?” she asked.
“The two who killed Costello,” he said.
She nodded. Then she sighed. Her blue eyes glanced left and right.
“So where are we going?”
He relaxed. Then he smiled. “Where’s the last place they’ll look for us?”
She shrugged. Took her hand off her chest and used it to smooth her hair.
“Manhattan?” she said.
“The house,” he said. “They saw us run, they won’t expect us to double back.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“We need the suitcase. Leon might have made notes.”
She shook her head, dazed.
“And we need to close the place up again. We can’t leave the garage open. It’ll end up full of raccoons. Whole families of the bastards.”
Then he held up his hand. Put his finger to his lips. There was the sound of a motor starting up. Maybe a big V-8, maybe two hundred yards away. There was the rattle of big tires on a distant stony driveway. The burble of acceleration. Then a black shape flashed across their view. A big black jeep, aluminum wheels. A Yukon or a Tahoe, depending on whether it said GMC on the back, or Chevrolet. Two guys in it, dark suits, one of them driving and the other slumped back in his seat. Reacher stuck his head all the way out of the window and listened to the sound as it died to silence in the direction of town.
CHESTER STONE WAITED in his own office suite more than an hour, and then he called downstairs and had the finance director contact the bank and check on the operating account. It showed a one-point-one-million-dollar credit, wired in fifty minutes ago from the Cayman office of a Bahamas-owned trust company.
“It’s there,” the finance guy said. “You did the trick, chief.”
Stone gripped the phone and wondered exactly what trick he had done.
“I’m coming down,” he said. “I want to go over the figures.”
“The figures are good,” the finance guy said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m coming down anyway,” Stone said.
He rode the elevator two floors down and joined the finance guy in his plush inner office. Entered the password and called up the secret spreadsheet. Then the finance guy took over and typed in the new balance available in the operating account. The software ran the calculation and came up exactly level, six weeks into the future.
“See?” the guy said. “Bingo.”
“What about the interest payment?” Stone asked.
“Eleven grand a week, six weeks? Kind of steep, isn’t it?”
“Can we pay it?”
The guy nodded confidently. “Sure we can. We owe two suppliers seventy-three grand. We got it, ready to go. If we lose the invoices, get them to re-submit, we free that cash up for a spell.”
He tapped the screen and indicated a provision against received invoices.
“Seventy-three grand, minus eleven a week for six weeks, gives us seven grand to spare. We should go out to dinner a couple of times.”
“Run it again, OK?” Stone said. “Double-check.”
The guy gave him a look, but he ran it again. He took out the one-point-one, ended up in the red, put it back in again, and ended up balanced. He canceled the provision against the invoices, subtracted eleven thousand every seven days, and ended the six-week period with an operating surplus of seven thousand dollars.
“Close,” he said. “But the right side of close.”
“How do we repay the principal?” Stone asked. “We need one-point-one million available at the end of the six weeks.”
“No problem,” the guy said. “I’ve got it all figured. We’ll have it in time.”
“Show me, OK?”
“OK, see here?” He was tapping the screen on a different line, where payments due in from customers were listed. “These two wholesalers owe us exactly one-point-one-seven-three, which exactly matches the principal plus the lost invoices, and it’s due exactly six weeks from now.”
“Will they pay on time?”
The guy shrugged. “Well, they always have.”
Stone stared at the screen. His eyes moved up and down, left and right.
“Run it all again. Triple-check.”
“Don’t sweat it, chief. It adds up.”
“Just do it, OK?”
The guy nodded. It was Stone’s company, after all. He ran it again, the whole calculation, beginning to end, and it came out just the same. Hobie’s one-point-one disappeared as the blizzard of paychecks cleared, the two suppliers went hungry, the interest got paid, the payments came in from the wholesalers, Hobie got his one-point-one back, the suppliers got paid late, and the sheet ended up showing the same trivial seven-thousand-dollar surplus in their favor.
“Don’t sweat it,” the guy said again. “It works out.”
Stone was staring at the screen, wondering if that spare seven grand would buy Marilyn a trip to Europe. Probably not. Not a six-week trip, anyway. And it would alert her. It would worry her. She’d ask him why he was making her go. And he’d have to tell her. She was very smart. Smart enough to get it out of him, one way or another. And then she would refuse to go to Europe, and she would end up lying awake every night for six weeks, too.
THE SUITCASE WAS still there, lying on the front lawn. There was a bullet hole punched in one end. No exit hole. The bullet must have gone through the leather, through the sturdy plywood carcass, and burned to a stop against the packed paper inside. Reacher smiled and carried it back to join Jodie over at the garage.
They left
the jeep on the blacktop apron and went in the same way they had come out. Closed up the roller door and walked through to the breezeway. Locked the inside door behind them with the green key and walked through to the kitchen. Locked that door behind them and stepped past Jodie’s abandoned garment bag in the hallway. Reacher carried the suitcase into the living room. More space and more light there than in the den.
He opened the case and lifted the concertina files out onto the floor. The bullet fell out with them and bounced on the rug. It was a standard nine-millimeter Parabellum, full copper jacket. Slightly flattened on the nose from the impact with the old plywood, but otherwise unmarked. The paper had slowed it to a complete stop in the space of about eighteen inches. He could see the hole punched all the way through half the files. He weighed the bullet in his palm, and then he saw Jodie at the door, watching him. He tossed the bullet to her. She caught it, one-handed.
“Souvenir,” he said.
She juggled it like it was hot and dropped it in the fireplace. Joined him on the rug, kneeling hip to hip beside him in front of the mass of paper. He caught her perfume, something he did not recognize, but something subtle and intensely feminine. The sweatshirt was too big on her, large and shapeless, but somehow it emphasized her figure. The sleeves finished halfway down the backs of her hands, almost at her fingers. Her Levi’s were cinched in tight around her tiny waist with a belt, and her legs left them slightly empty. She looked fragile, but he could remember the strength in her arms. Thin, but wiry. She bent to look at the files, and her hair fell forward, and he caught the same soft smell he recalled from fifteen years previously.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.