by Lee Child
He was using the special procedure. Shower, shave, shower. It felt good. Jodie’s guest bathroom was big and tall, and the showerhead was set high enough for him to stand upright under it, which was unusual. There were bottles of shampoo, neatly lined up. He suspected they were brands she had tried and hadn’t liked, relegated to the guest room. But he didn’t care. He found one that claimed to be aimed at dry, sun-damaged hair. He figured that was exactly what he needed. He ladled it on and lathered up. Scrubbed his body all over with some kind of yellow soap and rinsed. Dripped all over the floor as he shaved at the sink. He did it carefully, right up from his collarbones, around the bottom of his nose, sideways, backward, forward. Then back into the shower all over again.
He spent five minutes on his teeth with the new toothbrush. The bristles were hard, and it felt like they were doing some good in there. Then he dried off and shook the creases out of his new clothes. Put the pants on without the shirt and wandered through to the kitchen for something to eat.
Jodie was in there. She was fresh from the shower, too. Her hair was dark with water and hanging straight down. She was wearing an oversize white T-shirt that finished an inch above her knees. The material was thin. Her legs were long and smooth. Her feet were bare. She was very slender, except where she shouldn’t be. He caught his breath.
“Morning, Reacher,” she said.
“Morning, Jodie,” he said back.
She was looking at him. Her eyes were all over him. Something in her face.
“That blister,” she said. ”Looks worse.”
He squinted down. It was still red and angry. Spreading slightly, and puffy.
“You put the ointment on?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Forgot,” he said.
“Get it,” she said.
He went back to his bathroom and found it in the brown bag. Brought it back to the kitchen. She took it from him and unscrewed the cap. Pierced the metal seal with the plastic spike and squeezed a dot of the salve onto the pad of her index finger. She was concentrating on it, tongue between her teeth. She stepped in front of him and raised her hand. Touched the blister gently and rubbed with her fingertip. He stared rigidly over her head. She was a foot away from him. Naked under her shirt. Rubbing his bare chest with her fingertip. He wanted to take her in his arms. He wanted to lift her off her feet and crush her close. Kiss her gently, starting with her neck. He wanted to turn her face up to his and kiss her mouth. She was rubbing small gentle circles on his chest. He could smell her hair, damp and glossy. He could smell her skin. She was tracing her finger the length of the burn. A foot away from him, naked under her shirt. He gasped and clenched his hands. She stepped away.
“Hurting?” she asked.
“What?”
“Was I hurting you?”
He saw her fingertip, shiny from the grease.
“A little,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you needed it.”
He nodded back.
“I guess,” he said.
Then the crisis was past. She screwed the cap back on the tube and he moved away, just to be moving. He pulled the refrigerator door and took a bottle of water. Found a banana in a bowl on the counter. She put the tube of ointment on the table.
“I’ll go get dressed,” she said. “We should get moving.”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll be ready.”
She disappeared back into her bedroom and he drank the water and ate the fruit. Wandered back to his bedroom and shrugged the shirt on and tucked it in. Found his socks and shoes and jacket. Strolled through to the living room to wait. He pulled the blind all the way up and unlocked the window and pushed it up. Leaned right out and scanned the street four floors below.
Very different in the early daylight. The shiny neon wash was gone, and the sun was coming over the buildings opposite and bouncing around in the street. The lazy nighttime knots of people were gone, too, replaced by purposeful striding workers heading north and south with paper cups of coffee and muffins clutched in napkins. Cabs were grinding down through the traffic and honking at the lights to make them change. There was a gentle breeze and he could smell the river.
The building was on the west side of lower Broadway. Traffic was one-way, to the south, running left to right under the window. Jodie’s normal walk to work would give her a right turn out of her lobby, walking with the traffic. She would keep to the right-hand sidewalk, to stay in the sun. She would cross Broadway at a light maybe six or seven blocks down. Walk the last couple of blocks on the left-hand sidewalk and then make the left turn, east down Wall Street to her office.
So how would they aim to grab her up? Think like the enemy. Think like the two guys. Physical, unsubtle, favoring a direct approach, willing and dangerous, but not really schooled beyond the point of amateur enthusiasm. It was pretty clear what they would do. They would have a four-door vehicle waiting in a side street maybe three blocks south, parked in the right lane, facing east, ready to swoop out and hang the right on Broadway. They would be waiting together in the front seats, silent. They would be scanning left to right through the windshield, watching the crosswalk in front of them. They would expect to see her hurrying across, or pausing and waiting for the signal. They would wait a beat and ease out and make the right turn. Driving slow. They would fall in behind her. Pull level. Pull ahead. Then the guy in the passenger seat would be out, grabbing her, opening the rear door, forcing her inside, cramming himself in after her. One smooth, brutal movement. A crude tactic, but not difficult. Not difficult at all. More or less guaranteed to succeed, depending on the target and the level of awareness. Reacher had done the same thing, many times, with targets bigger and stronger and more aware than Jodie. Once, he had done it with Leon himself at the wheel.
He bent forward from the waist and put his whole upper body out through the window. Craned his head around to the right and gazed down the street. Looked hard at the corners, two and three and four blocks south. It would be one of those.
“Ready,” Jodie called to him.
THEY RODE DOWN ninety floors together to the underground garage. Walked through to the right zone and over to the bays leased along with Hobie’s office suite.
“We should take the Suburban,” the enforcer said. “Bigger.”
“OK,” Tony said. He unlocked it and slid into the driver’s seat. The enforcer hoisted himself into the passenger seat. Glanced back at the empty load bed. Tony fired it up and eased out toward the ramp to the street.
“So how do we do this?” Tony asked.
The guy smiled confidently. “Easy enough. She’ll be walking south on Broadway. We’ll wait around a corner until we see her. Couple of blocks south of her building. We see her pass by on the crosswalk, we pull around the corner, get alongside her, and that’s that, right?”
“Wrong,” Tony said. “We’ll do it different.”
The guy looked across at him. “Why?”
Tony squealed the big car up and out into the sunlight.
“Because you’re not very smart,” he said. “If that’s how you’d do it, there’s got to be a better way, right? You screwed up in Garrison. You’ll screw up here. She’s probably got this Reacher guy with her. He beat you there, he’ll beat you here. So whatever you figure is the best way to do it, that’s the last thing we’re going to do.”
“So how are we going to do it?”
“I’ll explain it to you real careful,” Tony said. “I’ll try to keep it real simple.”
REACHER SLID THE window back down. Clicked the lock and rattled the blind down into position. She was standing just inside the doorway, hair still darkened by the shower, dressed in a simple sleeveless linen dress, bare legs, plain shoes. The dress was the same color as her wet hair, but would end up darker as her hair dried. She was carrying a purse and a large leather briefcase, the size he had seen commercial pilots using. It was clearly heavy. She put it down and ducked away
to her garment bag, which was on the floor against a wall, where he had dumped it the previous night. She slid the envelope containing Leon’s will out of the pocket and unclicked the lid of the briefcase and stowed it inside.
“Want me to carry that?” he asked.
She smiled and shook her head.
“Union town,” she said. “Bodyguarding doesn’t include drayage around here.”
“It looks pretty heavy,” he said.
“I’m a big girl now,” she replied, looking at him.
He nodded. Lifted the old iron bar out of its brackets and left it upright. She leaned past him and turned the locks. The same perfume, subtle and feminine. Her shoulders in the dress were slim, almost thin. Small muscles in her left arm were bunching to balance the heavy case.
“What sort of law you got in there?” he asked.
“Financial,” she said.
He eased the door open. Glanced out. The hallway was empty. The elevator indicator was showing somebody heading down to the street from three.
“What sort of financial?”
They stepped across and called the elevator.
“Debt rescheduling, mostly,” she said. “I’m more of a negotiator than a lawyer, really. More like a counselor or a mediator, you know?”
He didn’t know. He had never been in debt. Not out of any innate virtue, but simply because he had never had the opportunity. All the basics had been provided for him by the Army. A roof over his head, food on his plate. He had never gotten into the habit of wanting much more. But he’d known guys who had run into trouble. They bought houses with mortgages and cars on time payment plans. Sometimes they got behind. The company clerk would sort it out. Talk to the bank, deduct the necessary provision straight from the guy’s paycheck. But he guessed that was small-time, compared to what she must deal with.
“Millions of dollars?” he asked.
The elevator arrived. The doors slid open.
“At least,” she said. “Usually tens of millions, sometimes hundreds.”
The elevator was empty. They stepped inside.
“Enjoy it?” he asked.
The elevator whined downward.
“Sure,” she said. “A person needs a job, it’s as good as she’s going to get.”
The elevator settled with a bump.
“You good at it?”
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Best there is on Wall Street, no doubt about that.”
He smiled. She was Leon’s daughter, that was for damn sure.
The elevator doors slid open. An empty lobby, the street door sucking shut, a broad woman heading slowly down the steps to the sidewalk.
“Car keys?” he said.
She had them in her hand. A big bunch of keys on a brass ring.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll back it up to the stairs. One minute.”
The door from the lobby to the garage opened from the inside with a push bar. He went through and down the metal steps and scanned ahead into the gloom as he walked. Nobody there. At least, nobody visible. He walked confidently to the wrong car, a big dark Chrysler something, two spaces from Jodie’s jeep. He dropped flat to the floor and looked across, under the intervening vehicles. Nothing there. Nobody hiding on the floor. He got up again and squeezed around the Chrysler’s hood. Around the next car. He dropped to the floor again, jammed up in the space between the Oldsmobile’s tailgate and the wall. Craned his head down and looked for wires where there shouldn’t be wires. All clear. No booby traps.
He unlocked the door and slid in. Fired it up and eased into the aisle. Backed up level with the bottom of the stairs. Leaned across inside and sprang the passenger door as she came through from the lobby behind him. She skipped down the steps and climbed straight in the car, all one smooth fluid movement. She slammed the door and he took off forward and made the right up the ramp and the right on the street.
The morning sun in the east flashed once in his eyes, and then he was through it, heading south. The first corner was thirty yards ahead. Traffic was slow. Not stopped, just slow. The light caught him three cars back from the turn. He was in the right lane, and he had no angle to see into the mouth of the cross street. Traffic poured right to left out of it, ahead of him, three cars away. He could see the far stream was slowed, spilling around some kind of obstacle. Maybe a parked vehicle. Maybe a parked four-door, just waiting there for something. Then the sideways flow stopped, and the light on Broadway went green.
He drove across the intersection with his head turned, half an eye ahead, and the rest of his attention focused sideways. Nothing there. No parked four-door. The obstruction was a striped sawhorse placed against an open manhole. There was a power company truck ten yards farther down the street. A gaggle of workmen on the sidewalk, drinking soda from cans. The traffic ground on. Stopped again, for the next light. He was four cars back.
This was not the street. The traffic pattern was wrong. It was flowing west, left to right in front of him. He had a good view out to his left. He could see fifty yards down the street. Nothing there. Not this one. It was going to be the next one.
Ideally he would have liked to do more than just drive straight by the two guys. A better idea would be to track around the block and come up behind them. Ditch the jeep a hundred yards away and stroll up on them from the rear. They would be craning forward, watching the crosswalk through the windshield. He could take a good look at them, as long as he wanted. He could even get right in their car with them. The rear doors would be unlocked, for sure. The guys would be staring straight ahead. He could slip in behind them and plant a hand on the side of each head and bang them together like a bandsman letting rip with the cymbals. Then he could do it again, and again, and again, until they started answering some basic questions.
But he wasn’t going to do that. Concentrate on the job in hand was his rule. The job in hand was getting Jodie to her office, safe and secure. Bodyguarding was about defense. Start mixing offense in with it, and neither thing gets done properly. Like he had told her, he used to do this for a living. He was trained in it. Very well trained, and very experienced. So he was going to stay defensive, and he was going to count it a major victory to see her walking in through her office door, all safe and secure. And he was going to stay quiet about how much trouble she was in. He didn’t want her worrying about it. No reason why whatever Leon had started should end up giving her any kind of anguish. Leon would not have wanted that. Leon would have just wanted him to handle everything. So that was how he was going to do it. Deliver her to the office door, no long explanations, no gloomy warnings.
The light went green. The first car took off, then the second. Then the third. He eased forward. Checked the gap ahead of him and craned his head right. Were they there? The cross street was narrow. Two lanes of stopped traffic, waiting at the light. Nothing parked up in the right lane. Nothing waiting. They weren’t there. He moved slowly through the whole width of the intersection, scanning right. Nobody there. He breathed out and relaxed and faced forward. There was a huge metallic bang. A tremendous loud metallic punch in his back. Tearing sheet metal, instant violent acceleration. The jeep was hurled forward and smashed into the vehicle ahead and stopped dead. The airbags exploded. He saw Jodie bouncing off her seat and crashing against the tension of her belt, her body stopping abruptly, her head still cannoning forward. Then it was bouncing backward off the airbag and whipping and smashing into the headrest behind her. He noticed her face was fixed in space exactly alongside his, with the inside of the car blurring and whirling and spinning past it, because his head was doing exactly the same things as hers.
The twin impacts had torn his hands off the wheel. The airbag was collapsing in front of him. He dragged his eyes to the mirror and saw a giant black hood buried in the back of the jeep. The top of a shiny chrome grille, bent out of shape. Some huge four-wheel-drive truck. One guy in it, visible behind the tinted screen. Not a guy he knew. Cars were honking behind them an
d traffic was pulling left and steering around the obstruction. Faces were turning to stare. There was a loud hissing somewhere. Steam from his radiator, or maybe ringing from his ears after the enormous sudden sounds. The guy behind was getting out of the four-wheel-drive. Hands held up in apology, worry and fright in his face. He was folding himself around his door, out there in the slow traffic stream, walking up toward Reacher’s window, glancing sideways at the tangle of sheet metal as he passed. A woman was getting out of the sedan in front, looking dazed and angry. The traffic was snarling around them. The air was shimmering from overheated motors and loud with horns blasting. Jodie was upright in her seat, feeling the back of her neck with her fingers.
“You OK?” he asked her.
She thought about it for a long moment, and then she nodded.
“I’m OK,” she said. “You?”
“Fine,” he said.
She poked at the collapsed airbag with her finger, fascinated.
“These things really work, you know that?”
“First time I ever saw one deploy,” he said.
“Me too.”
Then there was rapping on the driver’s-side window. The guy from behind was standing there, knocking urgently with his knuckles. Reacher stared out at him. The guy was gesturing for him to open up, urgently, like he was anxious about something.
“Shit,” Reacher yelled.
He stamped on the gas. The jeep struggled forward, pushing against the woman’s wrecked sedan. It made a yard, slewing to the left, sheet metal screeching.
“Hell are you doing?” Jodie screamed.
The guy had his hand on the door handle. His other hand in his pocket.
“Get down,” Reacher shouted.
He found reverse and howled back the yard he’d made and smashed into the four-wheel-drive behind. The new impact won him another foot. He shoved the selector into drive and spun the wheel and barged left. Smashed into the rear quarter of the sedan in a new shower of glass. Traffic behind was swerving and slewing all over again. He glanced right and one of the guys he’d seen in Key West and Garrison was at the window with his hand on Jodie’s door. He stamped on the gas and hurled the jeep backward, spinning the wheel. The guy kept tight hold, jerked backward by his arm, flung off his feet by the violent motion. Reacher smashed all the way backward into the black truck and bounced off again forward, screaming the motor, spinning the wheel. The guy was up again, still gripping the door handle, jerking and hauling, spare arm and legs flailing, like he was a wrangler and the jeep was a wild young steer in a desperate fight out of a trap. Reacher mashed the pedal and angled out forward close to the rear corner of the woman’s wrecked sedan and scraped the guy off against the trunk. The fender took him at the knees and he somersaulted and his head came down on the rear glass. In the mirror Reacher saw a blur of flailing arms and legs as his momentum carried him up over the roof. Then he was gone, sprawling back to the sidewalk.