by Child, Lee
He spun on the ball of his foot and punched Curry full in the face with the blunt outside curve of the hook. It was a hard punch thrown all the way from the shoulder, and Curry staggered back and gasped.
“I asked you if you were armed,” Hobie said quietly. “You should have told the truth. You should have said, ‘Yes, Mr. Hobie, I’ve got a revolver on each ankle.’ But you didn’t. You tried to deceive me. And like I told Marilyn, I don’t like to be deceived.”
The next punch was a jab to the body. Sudden and hard.
“Stop it,” Jodie screamed. She pushed back and sat upright. “Why are you doing this? What the hell happened to you?”
Curry was bent over and gasping. Hobie turned away from him to face her.
“What happened to me?” he repeated.
“You were a decent guy. We know all about you.”
He shook his head slowly.
“No, you don’t,” he said.
Then the buzzer sounded at the door out to the elevator lobby. Tony glanced at Hobie, and slipped his automatic into his pocket. He took Curry’s two small revolvers off his finger and stepped over and pressed one of them into Hobie’s left hand. Then he leaned in close and slipped the other into the pocket of Hobie’s jacket. It was a curiously intimate gesture. Then he walked out of the office. The guy with the shotgun stepped back and found an angle to cover all four prisoners. Hobie moved in the opposite direction and triangulated his aim.
“Be very quiet, everybody,” he whispered.
They heard the lobby door open. There was the low sound of conversation and then it closed again. A second later Tony walked back into the gloom with a package under his arm and a smile on his face.
“Messenger from Stone’s old bank. Three hundred stock certificates.”
He held up the package.
“Open it,” Hobie said.
Tony found the plastic thread and tore open the envelope. Jodie saw the rich engraving of equity holdings. Tony flicked through them. He nodded. Hobie stepped back to his chair and laid the small revolver on the desktop.
“Sit down, Mr. Curry,” he said. “Next to your legal colleague.”
Curry dropped heavily into the space next to Jodie. He slid his hands across the glass and leaned forward, like the others. Hobie used the hook in a circular gesture.
“Take a good look around, Chester,” he said. “Mr. Curry, Mrs. Jacob, and your dear wife, Marilyn. Good people all, I’m sure. Three lives, full of their own petty concerns and triumphs. Three lives, Chester, and now they’re entirely in your hands.”
Stone’s head was up, moving in a circle as he looked at the other three at the table. He ended up looking straight across the desk at Hobie.
“Go get the rest of the stock,” Hobie said to him. “Tony will accompany you. Straight there, straight back, no tricks, and these three people will live. Anything else, they’ll die. You understand that?”
Stone nodded, silently.
“Pick a number, Chester,” Hobie said to him.
“One,” Stone said back.
“Pick two more numbers, Chester.”
“Two and three,” Stone said.
“OK, Marilyn gets the three,” Hobie said, “if you decide to be a hero.”
“I’ll get the stock,” Stone said.
Hobie nodded.
“I think you will,” he said. “But you need to sign the transfer first.”
He rolled open a drawer and swept the small shiny revolver into it. Then he pulled out a single sheet of paper. Beckoned to Stone who slid himself upright and stood, shakily. He threaded around the desk and signed his name with the Mont Blanc pen from his pocket.
“Mrs. Jacob can be the witness,” Hobie said. “She’s a member of the New York State Bar, after all.”
Jodie sat still for a long moment. She stared left at the guy with the shotgun, and straight ahead at Tony, and then right at Hobie behind the desk. She pulled herself upright. Stepped to the desk and reversed the form and took Stone’s pen from him. Signed her name and wrote the date on the line next to it.
“Thank you,” Hobie said. “Now sit down again and keep completely still.”
She went back to the sofa and leaned forward over the table. Her shoulders were starting to hurt. Tony took Stone’s elbow and moved him toward the door.
“Five minutes there, five back,” Hobie called. “Don’t be a hero, Chester.”
Tony led Stone out of the office and the door closed gently behind them. There was the thump of the lobby door and the faraway whine of the elevator, and then there was silence. Jodie was in pain. The grip of the glass on her clammy palms was pulling the skin away from under her fingernails. Her shoulders were burning. Her neck was aching. She could see on their faces the others were suffering, too. There were sudden breaths and gasps. The beginnings of low moans.
Hobie gestured to the guy with the shotgun and they changed places. Hobie strolled nervously around the office and the shotgun guy sat at the desk with the weapon resting on its grips, swiveling randomly left and right like a prison searchlight. Hobie was checking his wristwatch, counting the minutes. Jodie saw the sun slipping southwest, lining up with the gaps in the window blinds and shooting steep angled beams into the room. She could hear the ragged breathing of the two others near her and she could feel the faint shudder of the building coming through the table under her hands.
Five minutes there and five back add up to ten, but at least twenty minutes passed. Hobie paced and checked his watch a dozen times. Then he walked through into reception and the guy with the shotgun followed him to the office door. He kept the weapon pointed into the room, but his head was turned, watching his boss.
“Is he planning to let us go?” Curry whispered.
Jodie shrugged and lifted up onto her fingertips, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head to ease the pain.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back.
Marilyn had her forearms pinched tight together, with her head resting on them. She looked up and shook her head.
“He killed two cops,” she whispered. “We were witnesses.”
“Stop talking,” the guy called from the door.
They heard the whine of the elevator again and the faint bump through the floor as it stopped. There was a moment’s quiet and then the lobby door opened and suddenly there was noise in reception, Tony’s voice, and then Hobie’s, loud and fueled with relief. Hobie came back into the office carrying a white package and smiling with the mobile half of his face. He clamped the package under his right elbow and tore it open as he walked and Jodie saw more engraving on thick parchment. He took the long way around to the desk and dumped the certificates on top of the three hundred he already had. Stone followed Tony like he had been forgotten and stood gazing at the life’s work of his ancestors piled casually on the scarred wood. Marilyn looked up and walked her fingers backward across the glass, jacking herself upright with her hands because she had no strength left in her shoulders.
“OK, you got them all,” she said quietly. “Now you can let us go.”
Hobie smiled. “Marilyn, what are you, a moron?”
Tony laughed. Jodie looked from him to Hobie. She saw they were very nearly at the end of some long process. Some goal had been in sight, and now it was very close. Tony’s laughter was about release after days of strain and tension.
“Reacher is still out there,” she said quietly, like a move in a game of chess.
Hobie stopped smiling. He touched the hook to his forehead and rubbed it across his scars and nodded.
“Reacher,” he said. “Yes, the last piece of the puzzle. We mustn’t forget about Reacher, must we? He’s still out there. But out where, exactly?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know, exactly,” she said.
Then her head came up, defiant.
“But he’s in the city,” she said. “And he’ll find you.”
Hobie met her gaze. Stared at her, contempt in his face.
“You think that’s some kind of threat?” he sneered. “Truth is I want him to find me. Because he has something I require. Something vital. So help me out, Mrs. Jacob. Call him and invite him right over.”
She was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know where he is,” she said.
“Try your place,” Hobie said back. “We know he’s been staying there. He’s probably there right now. You got off the plane at eleven-fifty, right?”
She stared at him. He nodded, complacently.
“We check these things. We own a boy called Simon, who I believe you’ve met. He put you on the seven o’clock flight from Honolulu, and we called JFK and they told us it landed at eleven-fifty exactly. Old Jack Reacher was all upset in Hawaii, according to our boy Simon, so he’s probably still upset. And tired. Like you are. You look tired, Mrs. Jacob, you know that? But your friend Jack Reacher is probably in bed at your place, sleeping it off, while you’re here having fun with the rest of us. So call him, tell him to come over and join you.”
She stared down at the table. Said nothing.
“Call him. Then you can see him one more time before you die.”
She was silent. She stared down at the glass. It was smeared with her handprints. She wanted to call him. She wanted to see him. She felt like she had felt a million times over fifteen long years. She wanted to see him again. His lazy, lopsided grin. His tousled hair. His arms, so long they gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house. His eyes, cold, icy blue like the Arctic. His hands, giant battered mitts that bunched into fists the size of footballs. She wanted to see those hands again. She wanted to see them around Hobie’s throat.
She glanced around the office. The sunbeams had crawled an inch across the desk. She saw Chester Stone, inert. Marilyn, trembling. Curry, white in the face and breathing hard next to her. The guy with the shotgun, relaxed. Reacher would break him in half without even thinking about it. She saw Tony, his eyes fixed on hers. And Hobie, caressing his hook with his manicured hand, smiling at her, waiting. She turned and looked at the closed door. She imagined it bursting open with a crash and Jack Reacher striding in through it. She wanted to see that happen. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything.
“OK,” she whispered. “I’ll call him.”
Hobie nodded. “Tell him I’ll be here a few more hours. But tell him if he wants to see you again, he better come quick. Because you and I have a little date in the bathroom, about thirty minutes from now.”
She shuddered and pushed off the glass table and stood upright. Her legs were weak and her shoulders were on fire. Hobie came around and took her elbow and led her to the door. Led her over behind the reception counter.
“This is the only telephone in the place,” he said. “I don’t like telephones.”
He sat down in the chair and pressed nine with the tip of his hook. Handed the phone across to her. “Come closer, so I can hear what he says to you. Marilyn deceived me with the phone, and I’m not going to let that happen to me again.”
He made her stoop down and put her face next to his. He smelled of soap. He put his hand in his pocket and came out with the tiny revolver Tony had slipped in there. He touched it to her side. She held the phone at an angle with the earpiece upward between them. She studied the console. There was a mass of buttons. A speed-dial facility for 911. She hesitated for a second and then dialed her own home number. It rang six times. Six long, soft purrs. With each one, she willed him: be there, be there. But it was her own voice that came back to her, from her machine.
“He’s not there,” she said blankly.
Hobie smiled.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
She was stooped over next to him, numb with shock.
“He’s got my mobile,” she said suddenly. “I just remembered.”
“OK, press nine for a line.”
She dabbed the cradle and dialed nine and then her mobile number. It rang four times. Four loud urgent electronic squawks. Each one, she prayed: answer, answer, answer, answer. Then there was a click in the earpiece.
“Hello?” he said.
She breathed out.
“Hi, Jack,” she said.
“Hey, Jodie,” he said. “What’s new?”
“Where are you?”
She realized there was urgency in her voice. It made him pause.
“I’m in St. Louis, Missouri,” he said. “Just flew down. I had to go to the NPRC again, where we were before.”
She gasped. St. Louis? Her mouth went dry.
“You OK?” he asked her.
Hobie leaned across and put his mouth next to her ear.
“Tell him to come right back to New York,” he whispered. “Straight here, soon as he can.”
She nodded nervously and he pressed the gun harder against her side.
“Can you come back?” she asked. “I sort of need you here, soon as possible.”
“I’m booked on the six o’clock,” he said. “Gets me in around eight-thirty, East Coast time. Will that do?”
She could sense Hobie grinning next to her.
“Can you make it anytime sooner? Like maybe right away?”
She could hear talking in the background. Major Conrad, she guessed. She remembered his office, dark wood, worn leather, the hot Missouri sun in the window.
“Sooner?” he said. “Well, I guess so. I could be there in a couple of hours, depending on the flights. Where are you?”
“Come to the World Trade Center, south tower, eighty-eighth floor, OK?”
“Traffic will be bad. Call it two and a half hours, I’ll be there.”
“Great,” she said.
“You OK?” he asked again.
Hobie brought the gun around into her view.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I love you.”
Hobie leaned over and hit the cradle with the tip of his hook. The earpiece clicked and filled with dial tone. She put the phone down, slowly and carefully onto the console. She was shattered with shock and disappointment, numb, still stooped over the counter, one hand laid flat on the wood propping her weight, the other hand shaking in the air an inch above the phone.
“Two and a half hours,” Hobie said to her, with exaggerated sympathy. “Well, it looks like the cavalry ain’t going to arrive in time for you, Mrs. Jacob.”
He laughed to himself and put the gun back in his pocket. Got out of the chair and caught the arm that was supporting her weight. She stumbled and he dragged her toward the of fice door. She caught the edge of the counter and held on tight. He hit her, backhanded with the hook. The curve caught her high on the temple and she lost her grip on the counter. Her knees gave way and she fell and he dragged her to the door by the arm. Her heels scuffed and kicked. He swung her around in front of him and straight-armed her back into the office. She sprawled on the carpet and he slammed the door.
“Back on the sofa,” he snarled.
The sunbeams were off the desk. They were inching around the floor and creeping across the table. Marilyn Stone’s splayed fingernails were vivid in their light. Jodie crawled to her hands and knees and pulled herself up on the furniture and staggered all the way back to her place alongside Curry. She put her hands back where they had been before. There was a narrow pain in her temple. It was an angry throb, hot and alien where the metal had thumped against bone. Her shoulder was twisted. The guy with the shotgun was watching her. Tony was watching her, the automatic pistol back in his hand. Reacher was far away from her, like he had been most of her life.
Hobie was back at the desk, squaring the stack of equity certificates into a pile. They made a brick four inches tall. He butted each side in turn with the hook. The heavy engraved papers slid neatly into place.
“UPS will be here soon,” he said happily. “Then the developers get their stock, and I get my money, and I’ve won again. About half an hour, probably, and then it’s all over, for me, and for you.”
Jodie realized
he was talking to her alone. He had selected her as a conduit for information. Curry and the Stone couple were staring at her, not him. She looked away and gazed down through the glass at the rug on the floor. It had the same pattern as the faded old item in DeWitt’s office in Texas, but it was much smaller and much newer. Hobie left the brick of paper where it was and walked around behind the square of furniture and took the shotgun away from the guy holding it.
“Go bring me some coffee,” he said to him.
The guy nodded and walked out to the lobby. Closed the door gently behind him. The office went silent. There was just tense breathing and the faint rumble of the building underneath it. The shotgun was in Hobie’s left hand. It was pointing at the floor. Swinging gently, back and forth through a tiny arc. A loose grip. Jodie could hear the rub of metal on the skin of his hand. She saw Curry glancing around. He was checking Tony’s position. Tony had stepped back a yard. He had put himself outside the shotgun’s field of fire and he was aiming directly across it at a right angle. His automatic was raised. Jodie felt Curry testing the strength in his shoulders. She felt him moving. She saw his arms bunching. She saw him glance ahead at Tony, maybe twelve feet in front of him. She saw him glance left at Hobie, maybe eight feet to the side. She saw the sunbeams, exactly parallel with the brass edges of the table. She saw Curry push up onto his fingertips.
“No,” she breathed.
Leon had always simplified his life with rules. He had a rule for every situation. As a kid, they had driven her crazy. His catchall rule for everything from her term papers to his missions to legislation in Congress was do it once and do it right. Curry had no chance of doing it right. No chance at all. He was triangulated by two powerful weapons. His options were nonexistent. If he jumped up and hurdled the table and headed for Tony, he would catch a bullet in the chest before he was even halfway there, and probably a shotgun blast in the side as well which would kill the Stone couple along with himself. And if he headed for Hobie first, then maybe Tony wouldn’t fire for fear of hitting his boss, but Hobie would fire for sure, and the shotgun blast would shred Curry into a hundred small pieces, and she was in a direct line right behind him. Another of Leon’s rules was hopeless is hopeless and don’t ever pretend it ain’t.