by Lee Child
The guy with the shotgun came out from behind the counter and pushed past Jodie. Went up behind the guy with the bad suit and rammed the shotgun barrel into the small of his back. There was a hard sound, metal on metal, muffled by cloth. The guy with the shotgun put his hand up under the jacket and came out with a big chromium revolver. He held it up, like an exhibit.
“Unusual accessory for a lawyer,” the man in the doorway said.
“He’s not a lawyer,” his partner said. “The woman says she knows David Forster very well and this ain’t him.”
The man in the doorway nodded.
“My name is Tony,” he said. “Come inside, both of you, please.”
He stepped to one side and covered Jodie with the automatic pistol while his partner pushed the guy claiming to be Forster in through the open door. Then he beckoned with the gun and Jodie found herself walking toward him. He stepped close and pushed her through the door with a hand flat on her back. She stumbled once and regained her balance. Inside was a big office, spacious and square. Dim light from shaded windows. There was living-room furniture arranged in front of a desk. Three identical sofas, with lamp tables. A huge brass-and-glass coffee table filled the space between the sofas. There were two people sitting on the left-hand sofa. A man and a woman. The man wore an immaculate suit and tie. The woman wore a wrinkled silk party dress. The man looked up, blankly. The woman looked up in terror.
There was a man at the desk. He was sitting in the gloom, in a leather chair. He was maybe fifty-five years old. Jodie stared at him. His face was divided roughly in two, like an arbitrary decision, like a map of the western states. On the right was lined skin and thinning gray hair. On the left was scar tissue, pink and thick and shiny like an unfinished plastic model of a monster’s head. The scars touched his eye, and the lid was a ball of pink tissue, like a mangled thumb.
He was wearing a neat suit, which fell over broad shoulders and a wide chest. His left arm was laid comfortably on the desk. There was the cuff of a white shirt, snowy in the gloom, and a manicured hand, palm down, the fingers tapping an imperceptible rhythm on the desktop. His right arm was laid exactly symmetrical with his left. There was the same fine summer-weight wool of the suit coat, and the same snowy white shirt cuff, but they were collapsed and empty. There was no hand. Just a simple steel hook protruding at a shallow angle, resting on the wood. It was curved and polished like a miniature version of a sculpture from a public garden.
“Hobie,” she said.
He nodded slowly, just once, and raised the hook like a greeting.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jacob. I’m just sorry it took so long.”
Then he smiled.
“And I’m sorry our acquaintance will be so brief.”
He nodded again, this time to the man called Tony, who maneuvered her alongside the guy claiming to be Forster. They stood side by side, waiting.
“Where’s your friend Jack Reacher?” Hobie asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Hobie looked at her for a long moment.
“OK,” he said. “We’ll get to Jack Reacher later. Now sit down.”
He was pointing with the hook to the sofa opposite the staring couple. She stepped over and sat down, dazed.
“This is Mr. and Mrs. Stone,” Hobie said to her. ”Chester and Marilyn, to be informal. Chester ran a corporation called Stone Optical. He owes me more than seventeen million dollars. He’s going to pay me in stock.”
Jodie glanced at the couple opposite. They both had panic in their eyes. Like something had just gone terribly wrong.
“Put your hands on the table,” Hobie called. “All three of you. Lean forward and spread your fingers. Let me see six little starfish.”
Jodie leaned forward and laid her palms on the low table. The couple opposite did the same thing, automatically.
“Lean forward more,” Hobie called.
They all slid their palms toward the center of the table until they were leaning at an angle. It put their weight on their hands and made them immobile. Hobie came out from behind the desk and stopped opposite the guy in the bad suit.
“Apparently you’re not David Forster,” he said.
The guy made no reply.
“I would have guessed, you know,” Hobie said. “In an instant. A suit like that? You’ve really got to be kidding. So who are you?”
Again the guy said nothing. Jodie watched him, with her head turned sideways. Tony raised his gun and pointed it at the guy’s head. He used both hands and did something with the slide that made a menacing metallic sound in the silence. He tightened his finger on the trigger. Jodie saw his knuckle turn white.
“Curry,” the guy said quickly. “William Curry. I’m a private detective, working for Forster.”
Hobie nodded, slowly. “OK, Mr. Curry.”
He walked back behind the Stones. Stopped directly behind the woman.
“I’ve been misled, Marilyn,” he said.
He balanced himself with his left hand on the back of the sofa and leaned all the way forward and snagged the tip of the hook into the neck of her dress. He pulled back against the strength of the fabric and hauled her slowly upright. Her palms slid off the glass and left damp shapes where they had rested. Her back touched the sofa and he slipped the hook around in front of her and nudged her lightly under the chin like a hairdresser adjusting the position of her head before starting work. He raised the hook and brought it back down gently and used the tip to comb through her hair, lightly, front to back. Her hair was thick and the hook plowed through it, slowly, front to back, front to back. Her eyes were screwed shut in terror.
“You deceived me,” he said. “I don’t like being deceived. Especially not by you. I protected you, Marilyn. I could have sold you with the cars. Now maybe I will. I had other plans for you, but I think Mrs. Jacob just usurped your position in my affections. Nobody told me how beautiful she was.”
The hook stopped moving and a thin thread of blood ran down out of Marilyn’s hair onto her forehead. Hobie’s gaze shifted across to Jodie. His good eye was steady and unblinking.
“Yes,” he said to her. “I think maybe you’re New York’s parting gift to me.”
He pushed the hook hard against the back of Marilyn’s head until she leaned forward again and put her hands back on the table. Then he turned around.
“You armed, Mr. Curry?”
Curry shrugged. “I was. You know that. You took it.”
The guy with the shotgun held up the shiny revolver. Hobie nodded.
“Tony?”
Tony started patting him down, across the tops of his shoulders, under his arms. Curry glanced left and right and the guy with the shotgun stepped close and jammed the barrel into his side.
“Stand still,” he said.
Tony leaned forward and smoothed his hands over the guy’s belt area and between his legs. Then he slid them briskly downward and Curry twisted violently sideways and tried to knock the shotgun away with his arm, but the guy holding it was firmly grounded with his feet well apart and he stopped Curry short. He used the muzzle like a fist and hit him in the stomach. Curry’s breath coughed out and he folded up and the guy hit him again, on the side of the head, hard with the stock of the shotgun. Curry went down on his knees and Tony rolled him over with his foot.
“Asshole,” he sneered.
The guy with the shotgun leaned down one-handed and rammed the muzzle into Curry’s gut with enough weight on it to hurt. Tony squatted and fiddled under the legs of the pants and came back up with two identical revolvers. His left forefinger was threaded through the trigger guards and he was swinging them around. The metal clicked and scratched and rattled. The revolvers were small. They were made from stainless steel. Like shiny toys. They had short barrels. Almost no barrels at all.
“Stand up, Mr. Curry,” Hobie said.
Curry rolled onto his hands and knees. He was clearly dazed from the blow to the head. Jodie could see him bli
nking, trying to focus. Shaking his head. He reached out for the back of the sofa and hauled himself upright. Hobie stepped a yard closer and turned his back on him. He looked at Jodie and Chester and Marilyn like they were an audience. He held his left palm flat and started butting the curve of the hook into it. He was butting with the right and slapping with the left, and the impacts were building.
“A simple question of mechanics,” he said. “The impact on the end of the hook transfers up to the stump. The shock waves travel. They dissipate against what’s left of the arm. Naturally the leatherwork was built by an expert, so the discomfort is minimized. But we can’t beat the laws of physics, can we? So in the end the question is: Who does the pain get to first? Him or me?”
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, an
d 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.