by Lee Child
The three kidnappers had returned with the truck and backed it into the cow barn’s central concrete aisle. Then they had locked the barn door and disappeared. Holly guessed they had spent the night in the farmhouse. Reacher had slept quietly in his stall, chained to the railing, while she tossed and turned in the straw, sleepless, thinking urgently about him.
His safety was her responsibility. He was an innocent passerby, caught up in her business. Whatever else lay ahead for her, she had to take care of him. That was her duty. He was her burden. And he was lying. Holly was absolutely certain he was not a blues club doorman. And she was pretty certain what he was. The Johnson family was a military family. Because of her father, Holly had lived on Army bases her whole life, right up to Yale. She knew the Army. She knew the soldiers. She knew the types and she knew Reacher was one. To her practiced eye, he looked like one. Acted like one. Reacted like one. It was possible a doorman could pick locks and climb walls like an ape, but if a doorman did go ahead and do that, he would do it with an air of unfamiliarity and daring and breathlessness which would be quite distinctive. He wouldn’t do it like it came as naturally as blinking. Reacher was a quiet, contained man, relaxed, fit, clearly trained to the point of some kind of superhuman calm. He was probably ten years older than she was, but somewhere less than forty, about six feet five, huge, maybe two-twenty, blue eyes, thinning fair hair. Big enough to be a doorman, and old enough to have been around, that was for sure, but he was a soldier. A soldier, claiming to be a doorman. But why?
Holly had no idea. She just lay there, uncomfortable, listening to his quiet breathing, twenty feet away. Doorman or soldier, ten years older or not, it was her responsibility to get him to safety. She didn’t sleep. Too busy thinking, and her knee was too painful. At eight-thirty on her watch, she heard him wake up. Just a subtle change in the rhythm of his breathing.
“Good morning, Reacher,” she called out.
“Morning, Holly,” he said. “They’re coming back.”
It was silent, but after a long moment she heard footsteps outside. Climbs like an ape, hears like a bat, she thought. Some doorman.
“You OK?” Reacher called to her.
She didn’t answer. His welfare was her responsibility, not the other way around. She heard a rattle as the barn door was unlocked. It rolled open and daylight flooded in. She caught a glimpse of empty green country. Pennsylvania, maybe, she thought. The three kidnappers walked in and the door was pulled shut.
“Get up, bitch,” the leader said to her.
She didn’t move. She was seized by an overpowering desire not to be put back inside the truck. Too dark, too uncomfortable, too tedious. She didn’t know if she could take another day in there, swaying, jolting, above all totally unaware of where the hell she was being taken, or why, or by who. Instinctively, she grabbed the metal railing and held on, arm tensed, like she was going to put up a struggle. The leader stood still and pulled out his Glock. Looked down at her.
“Two ways of doing this,” he said. “The easy way, or the hard way.”
She didn’t reply. Just sat there in the straw and held on tight to the railing. The ugly driver took three steps nearer and started smiling, staring at her breasts again. She felt naked and revolted under his gaze.
“Your choice, bitch,” the leader said.
She heard Reacher moving in his stall.
“No, it’s your choice,” she heard him call to the guy. “We need to be a little mutual here. Cooperative, right? You want us to get back in your truck, you need to make it worth our while.”
His voice was calm and low. Holly stared across at him. Saw him sitting there, chained up, unarmed, facing a loaded automatic weapon, totally powerless by any reasonable definition of the word, three hostile men staring down at him.
“We need some breakfast,” Reacher said. “Toast, with grape jelly. And coffee, but make it a lot stronger than last night’s crap, OK? Good coffee is very important to me. You need to understand that. Then put a couple of mattresses in the truck. One queen-size, one twin. Make us a sofa in there. Then we’ll get in.”
There was total silence. Holly glanced between the two men. Reacher was fixing the leader with a calm, level gaze from the floor. His blue eyes never blinked. The leader was staring down at him. Tension visible in the air. The driver had torn his gaze away from her body and was looking at Reacher. Anger in his eyes. Then the leader snapped around and nodded the other two out of the barn with him. Holly heard the door locking behind them.
“You eat toast?” Reacher said to her.
She was too breathless to answer.
“When they bring it, send it back,” he said. “Make them do it over. Say it’s too pale or too burnt or something.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“Psychology,” Reacher said. “We need to start getting some dominance here. Situation like this, it’s very important.”
She stared at him.
“Just do it, OK?” he said, calmly.
SHE DID IT. The jumpy guy brought the toast. It was just about perfect, but she rejected it. She looked at it with the disdain she’d use on a sloppy balance sheet and said it was too well-done. She was standing with all her weight on one foot, looking like a mess, dung all over her peach Armani, but she managed enough haughty contempt to intimidate the guy. He went back to the farmhouse kitchen and made more.
It came with a pot of strong coffee and Holly and Reacher ate their separate breakfasts, chains clanking, twenty feet apart, while the other two guys hauled mattresses into the barn. One queen, one twin. They pulled them up into the back of the truck and laid the queen out on the floor and stood the twin at right angles to it, up against the back of the cab bulkhead. Holly watched them do it and felt a whole lot better about the day. Then she suddenly realized exactly where Reacher’s psychology had been aimed. Not just at the three kidnappers. At her, too. He didn’t want her to get into a fight. Because she’d lose. He’d risked doing what he’d done to defuse a hopeless confrontation. She was amazed. Totally amazed. She thought blankly: for Christ’s sake, this guy’s got it ass backward. He’s trying to take care of me.
“You want to tell us your names?” Reacher asked, calmly. “We’re spending some time together, we can be a little civilized about it, right?”
Holly saw the leader just looking at him. The guy made no reply.
“We’ve seen your faces,” Reacher said. “Telling us your names isn’t going to do you any harm. And we might as well try to get along.”
The guy thought about it and nodded.
“Loder,” he said.
The little jumpy guy shifted feet.
“Stevie,” he said.
Reacher nodded. Then the ugly driver realized all four were looking at him. He ducked his head.
“I’m not telling you my name,” he said. “Hell should I?”
“And let’s be real clear,” the guy called Loder said. “Civilized is not the same thing as friendly, right?”
Holly saw him aim his Glock at Reacher’s head and hold it there for a long moment. Nothing in his face. Not the same thing as friendly. Reacher nodded. A small cautious movement. They left their toast plates and their coffee mugs lying on the straw and the guy called Loder unlocked their chains. They met in the central aisle. Two Glocks and a shotgun aimed at them. The ugly driver leering. Reacher looked him in the eye and ducked down and picked Holly up like she weighed nothing at all. Carried her the ten paces to the truck. Put her down gently inside. They crawled forward together to the improvised sofa. Got themselves comfortable.
The truck’s rear doors slammed and locked. Holly heard the big barn door open up. The truck’s engine turned over and caught. They drove out of the barn and bounced a hundred and fifty yards over the rough track. Turned an invisible right angle and cruised straight and slow down a road for fifteen minutes.
“We aren’t in Pennsylvania,” Holly said. “Roads are too straight. Too flat.”
Reacher just shrugged at her in the dark.
“We aren’t in handcuffs anymore, either,” he said. “Psychology.”
12
“HELL IS THIS?”Agent-in-Charge McGrath said.
He thumbed the remote and rewound the tape. Then he pressed play and watched it again. But what he saw meant nothing at all. The video screens were filled with jerky speeding images and shashy white snow.
“Hell is going on here?” he asked again.
Brogan crowded in and shook his head. Milosevic pushed closer to look. He’d brought the tape in, so he felt personally responsible for it. McGrath hit rewind again and tried once more. Same result. Just a blur of disjointed flashing pictures.
“Get the damn tech guy back in here,” he shouted.
Milosevic used the phone on the credenza next to the coffeepot. Called upstairs to tech services. The head tech was in the room within a minute. The tone of Milosevic’s voice had told him to hurry more effectively than any words could have.
“Damn tape won’t run properly,” McGrath told him.
The technician took the remote in his hand with that blend of familiarity and unfamiliarity that tech guys use the world over. They’re all at home with complex equipment, but each individual piece has its own peculiarities. He peered at the buttons and pressed rewind, firmly, with a chewed thumb. The tape whirred back and he pressed play and watched the disjointed stream of flashing images and video snow.
“Can you fix that?” McGrath asked him.
The tech stopped the tape and hit rewind again. Shook his head.
“It’s not broken,” he said. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. Typical cheap surveillance video. What it does is record a freeze-frame, probably every ten seconds or so. Just one frame, every ten seconds. Like a sequence of snapshots.”
“Why?” McGrath asked him.
“Cheap and easy,” the guy said. “You can get a whole day on one tape that way. Low-cost, and you don’t have to remember to change the cassette every three hours. You just change it in the morning. And assuming a stickup takes longer than ten seconds to complete, you’ve got the perp’s face right there on tape, at least once.”
“OK,” McGrath said impatiently. “So how do we use it?”
The tech used two fingers together. Pressed play and freeze at the same time. Up on the screen came a perfect black-and-white still picture of an empty store. In the bottom left corner was Monday’s date and the time, seven thirty-five in the morning. The tech held the remote out to McGrath and pointed to a small button.
“See this?” he said. “Frame-advance button. Press this and the tape rolls on to the next still. Usually for sports, right? Hockey? You can see the puck go right in the net. Or for porn. You can see whatever you need to see. But on this type of a system, it jumps you ahead ten seconds. Like on to the next snapshot, right?”
McGrath calmed down and nodded.
“Why’s it in black and white?” he said.
“Cheap camera,” the tech guy said. “The whole thing is a cheap system. They only put them in because the insurance companies tell them they got to.”
He handed the remote to McGrath and headed back for the door.
“You want anything else, you let me know, OK?” he called.
He got no reply because everybody was staring at the screen as McGrath started inching his way through the tape. Every time he hit the frame-advance button, a broad band of white snow scrolled down the screen and unveiled a new picture, same aspect, same angle, same dim monochrome gray, but with the time code at the bottom jumped ahead ten seconds. The third frame showed a woman behind the counter. Milosevic touched the screen with his finger.
“That’s the woman I spoke to,” he said.
McGrath nodded.
“Wide field of view,” he said. “You can see all the way from behind the counter right out into the street.”
“Wide-angle lens on the camera,” Brogan said. “Like a fisheye sort of thing. The owner can see everything. He can see the customers coming in and out, and he can see if the help is fiddling the register.”
McGrath nodded again and trawled through Monday morning, ten seconds at a time. Customers jumped in and out of shot. The woman behind the counter jumped from side to side, fetching and carrying and ringing up the payments. Outside, cars flashed in and out of view.
“Fast-forward to twelve o’clock,” Milosevic said. “This is taking way too long.”
McGrath nodded and fiddled with the remote. The tape whirred forward. He pressed stop and play and freeze and came up with four o’clock in the afternoon.
“Shit,” he said.
He wound back and forward a couple of times and came up with eleven forty-three and fifty seconds.
“Close as we’re going to get,” he said.
He kept his finger hard on the frame-advance button and the white snow scrolled continuously down the screen. One hundred and fifty-seven frames later, he stopped.
“There she is,” he said.
Milosevic and Brogan shouldered together for a closer look. The still frame showed Holly Johnson on the far right of the picture. She was outside, on the sidewalk, crutch in one hand, clothes on hangers in the other. She was hauling the door open with a spare finger. The time in the bottom left of the frame was stopped at ten minutes and ten seconds past twelve noon.
“OK,” McGrath said quietly. “So let’s see.”
He hit the button and Holly jumped halfway over to the counter. Even frozen on the misty monochrome screen, her awkward posture was plain to see. McGrath hit the button again and the snow rolled over and Holly was at the counter. Ten seconds later the Korean woman was there with her. Ten seconds after that, Holly had folded back a hem on one of her suits and was showing the woman something. Probably the position of a particular stain. The two women stayed like that for a couple of minutes, heads together for twelve frames, jumping slightly from one shot to the next. Then the Korean woman was gone and the clothes were off the counter and Holly was standing alone for five frames. Fifty seconds. Behind her on the left, a car nosed into shot on the second frame and stayed there for the next three, parked at the curb.
Then the woman was back with an armful of clean clothes in bags. She was frozen in the act of laying them flat on the counter. Ten seconds later she had torn five tags off the hangers. Ten seconds after that, she had another four lined up next to the register.
“Nine outfits,” McGrath said.
“That’s about right,” Milosevic said. “Five for work, Monday to Friday, and I guess four for evening wear, right?”
“What about the weekend?” Brogan said. “Maybe it’s five for work, two for evening wear and two at the weekend?”
“Probably wears jeans at the weekend,” Milosevic said. “Jeans and a shirt. Just throws them in the machine, maybe.”
“God’s sake, does it matter?” McGrath said.
He pressed the button and the Korean woman’s fingers were caught dancing over the register keys. The next two stills showed Holly paying in cash and accepting a couple of dollars change.
“How much is all that costing her?” Brogan asked out loud.
“Nine garments?” Milosevic said. “Best part of fifty bucks a week, that’s for damn sure. I saw the price list in there. Specialized processes and gentle chemicals and all.”
The next frame showed Holly starting toward the exit door on the left of the picture. The top of the Korean woman’s head was visible, on her way through to the back of the store. The time was showing at twelve fifteen exactly. McGrath hitched his chair closer and stuck his face a foot from the glowing monochrome screen.
“OK,” he said. “So where did you go now, Holly?”
She had the nine cleaned garments in her left hand. She was holding them up, awkwardly, so they wouldn’t drag on the floor. Her right elbow was jammed into the curved metal clip of her crutch, but her hand wasn’t gripping the handle. The next frame showed it reaching out to push the doo
r open. McGrath hit the button again.
“Christ,” he shouted.
Milosevic gasped out loud and Brogan looked stunned. There was no doubt about what they were seeing. The next frame showed an unknown man attacking Holly Johnson. He was tall and heavy. He was seizing her crutch with one hand and her cleaning with the other. No doubt about it. Both his arms were extended and he was taking her crutch and her cleaning away from her. He was caught in a perfect snapshot through the glass door. The three agents stared at him. There was total silence in the conference room. Then McGrath hit the button again. The time code jumped ahead ten seconds. There was another gasp as they caught their breath simultaneously.
Holly Johnson was suddenly surrounded by a triangle of three men. The tall guy who had attacked her had been joined by two more. The tall guy had Holly’s cleaning slung up over his shoulder and he had seized Holly’s arm. He was staring straight up into the store window like he knew a camera was in there. The other two guys were facing Holly head-on.
“They pulled guns on her,” McGrath shouted. “Son of a bitch, look at that.”
He thumbed the button again until the bar of snow cleared away from the bottom of the frame and the whole picture stabilized into perfect sharpness. The two new guys had their right arms bent at ninety degrees, and there was tension showing in their shoulder muscles.
“The car,” Milosevic said. “They’re going to put her in the car.”
Beyond Holly and the triangle of men was the car which had parked up fourteen frames ago. It was just sitting there at the curb. McGrath hit the button again. The bar of white snow scrolled down. The small knot of people on the screen jumped sideways ten feet. The tall guy who had attacked Holly was leading the way into the back of the car. Holly was being pushed in after him by one of the new guys. The other new guy was opening the front passenger door. Inside the car, a fourth man was plainly visible through the side glass, sitting at the wheel.
McGrath hit the button again. The bar of snow scrolled down. The street was empty. The car was gone. Like it had never been there at all.