by Lee Child
“Hey, Reacher,” Harper called.
She was behind him in the shadow of a pillar flanking the entrance. He turned and saw the gleam of her hair and a stripe of white where her shirt showed at the front of her jacket.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “You OK?”
She stepped across to him.
“I will be,” she said. “I’m going to ask for a transfer. Maybe over here. I like it.”
“Will they let you?”
She nodded. “Sure they will. They’re not going to rock any boats as long as the budget hearings are on. This is going to be the quietest thing that ever happened. ”
“It never happened at all,” he said. “That’s how we left it, upstairs.”
“So you’re OK with them?”
“As OK as I ever was.”
“I’d have stood up for you,” she said. “Whatever it took.”
He nodded. “I know you would. There should be more like you.”
“Take this,” she said.
She held out a slip of flimsy paper. It was a travel voucher, issued by the desk back at Quantico.
“It’ll get you to New York,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’ll say I lost it. They’ll wire me another one.”
She stepped close and kissed his cheek. Stepped away and started walking.
“Good luck,” she called.
“To you too,” he called back.
HE WALKED TO the airport, twelve miles on the shoulders of roads built for automobiles. It took him three hours. He exchanged the FBI voucher for a plane ticket and waited another hour for the first flight out. Slept through four hours in the air and three hours of time zones and touched down at La Guardia at one o’clock in the afternoon.
He used the last of his cash on a bus to the subway and the subway into Manhattan. Got out at Canal Street and walked south to Wall Street. He was in the lobby of Jodie’s office building a few minutes after two o’clock, borne along by sixty floors of workers returning from lunch. Her firm’s reception area was deserted. Nobody at the counter. He stepped through an open door and wandered down a corridor lined with law-books on oak shelves. Left and right of him were empty offices. There were papers on desks and jackets over the backs of chairs, but no people anywhere.
He came to a set of double doors and heard the heavy buzz of conversation on the other side. The chink of glass on glass. Laughter. He pulled the right-hand door and the noise burst out at him and he saw a conference room jammed full of people. They were in dark suits and snowy white shirts and suspenders and quiet ties, and severe dark dresses and black nylon. There was a wall of blinding windows and a long table under a heavy white cloth loaded with ranks of sparkling glasses and a hundred bottles of champagne. Two bartenders were pouring the foamy golden wine as fast as they could. People were drinking it and toasting with it and looking at Jodie.
She was rippling through the crowd like a magnet. Wherever she walked, people stepped up and formed a crowd around her. There was a constantly changing sequence of small excited circles with her at every center. She turned left and right, smiling, clinking glasses, and then moved on randomly like a pinball into new acclaim. She saw him at the door at the same moment he saw himself reflected in the glass over a Renoir drawing on the wall. He was unshaven and dressed in a crumpled khaki shirt dried stiff with random green stains. She was in a thousand-dollar dress fresh from the closet. A hundred faces turned with hers and the room fell silent. She hesitated for a beat, like she was making a decision. Then she fought forward through the crowd and flung her arms around his neck, champagne glass and all.
“The partnership party,” he said. “You got it.”
“I sure did,” she said.
“Well, congratulations, babe,” he said. “And I’m sorry I’m late.”
She drew him into the crowd and people closed around them. He shook hands with a hundred lawyers the way he used to with generals from foreign armies. Don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you. The top boy was an old red-and-gray-faced man of about sixty-five, the son of one of the names on the brass plaque in reception. His suit must have cost more than all the clothes Reacher had ever worn in his life. But the mood of the party meant there was no edge in the old guy’s attitude. He looked like he would have been delighted to shake hands with Jodie’s elevator man.
“She’s a big, big star,” he said. “And I’m gratified she accepted our offer.”
“Smartest lawyer I ever met,” Reacher said over the noise.
“Will you go with her?”
“Go with her where?”
“To London,” the old guy said. “Didn’t she explain? First tour of duty for a new partner is running the European operation for a couple of years.”
Then she was back at his side, smiling, drawing him away. The crowd was settling into small groups, and conversation was turning to work matters and quiet gossip. She led him to a space by the window. There was a yard-wide view of the harbor, framed by sheer buildings on either side.
“I called the FBI uptown,” she said. “I was worried about you, and technically I’m still your lawyer. I spoke with Alan Deerfield’s office.”
“When?”
“Two hours ago. They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Nothing to tell. They’re straight with me, I’m straight with them.”
She nodded. “So you delivered, finally.”
Then she paused.
“Will you be called as a witness?” she asked. “Is there going to be a trial?”
He shook his head. “No trial.”
She nodded. “Just a funeral, right?”
He shrugged. "There are no relatives left. That was the point.”
She paused again, like there was an important question coming up.
“How do you feel about it?” she asked. “One-word answer?”
“Calm,” he said.
“Would you do it again? Same circumstances?”
He paused in turn.
“Same circumstances?” he said. “In a heartbeat.”
“I have to go to work in London,” she said. “Two years.”
“I know,” he said. “The old guy told me. When do you go?”
“End of the month.”
“You don’t want me to come with you,” he said.
“It’ll be very busy. It’s a small staff with a big workload. ”
“And it’s a civilized city.”
She nodded. “Yes, it is. Would you want to come?”
“Two straight years?” he said. “No. But maybe I could visit, time to time.”
She smiled, vaguely. “That would be good.”
He said nothing.
“This is awful,” she said. “Fifteen years I couldn’t live without you, and now I find I can’t live with you.”
“I know,” he said. “Totally my fault.”
“Do you feel the same way?”
He looked at her.
“I guess I do,” he lied.
“We’ve got until the end of the month,” she said.
He nodded.
“More than most people get,” he said. “Can you take the afternoon off?”
“Sure I can. I’m a partner now. I can do what I want.”
“So let’s go.”
They left their empty glasses on the window ledge and threaded their way through the knots of people. Everybody watched them to the door, and then turned back to their quiet speculations.
If you enjoyed Running Blind you won’t want to miss Echo Burning, another thrilling Jack Reacher novel from Lee Child. Here’s a brief excerpt . . .
Look for ECHO BURNING
in bookstores now from Jove.
THERE WERE THREE watchers, two men and a boy. They were using telescopes, not field glasses. It was a question of distance. They were almost a mile from their target area, because of the terrain. There was no closer cover. It was low, undulating country, burned khaki by the sun, grass a
nd rock and sandy soil alike. The nearest safe concealment was the broad dip they were in, a bone-dry gulch scraped out a million years ago by a different climate, when there had been rain and ferns and rushing rivers.
The men lay prone in the dust with the early heat on their backs, their telescopes at their eyes. The boy scuttled around on his knees, fetching water from the cooler, watching for waking rattlesnakes, logging comments in a notebook. They had arrived before first light in a dusty pick-up truck, the long way around, across the empty land from the west. They had thrown a dirty tarpaulin over the truck and pegged it down with rocks. They had eased forward to the rim of the dip and settled in, raising their telescopes as the low morning sun dawned to the east behind the red house almost a mile away. This was Friday, their fifth consecutive morning, and they were low on conversation.
“Time?” one of the men asked. His voice was nasal, the effect of keeping one eye open and the other eye shut.
The boy checked his watch.
“Six-fifty,” he answered.
“Any moment now,” the man with the telescope said.
The boy opened his book and prepared to make the same notes he had made four times before.
“Kitchen light on,” the man said.
The boy wrote it down. Six-fifty, kitchen light on. The kitchen faced them, looking west away from the morning sun, so it stayed dark even after dawn.
“On her own?” the boy asked.
“Same as always,” the second man said, squinting.
Maid prepares breakfast, the boy wrote. Target still in bed. The sun rose, inch by inch. It jacked itself higher into the sky and pulled the shadows shorter and shorter. The red house had a tall chimney coming out of the kitchen wing like the finger on a sundial. The shadow it made swung and shortened and the heat on the watchers’ shoulders built higher. Seven o’clock in the morning, and it was already hot. By eight, it would be burning. By nine, it would be fearsome. And they were there all day, until dark, when they could slip away unseen.
“Bedroom drapes opening,” the second man said. “She’s up and about.”
The boy wrote it down. Seven oh-four, bedroom drapes open.
“Now listen,” the first man said.
They heard the well pump kick in, very faintly from almost a mile away. A quiet mechanical click, and then a steady low drone.
“She’s showering,” the man said.
The boy wrote it down. Seven oh-six, target starts to shower.
The men rested their eyes. Nothing was going to happen while she was in the shower. How could it? They lowered their telescopes and blinked against the brassy sun in their eyes. The well pump clicked off after six minutes. The silence sounded louder than the faint noise had. The boy wrote seven-twelve, target out of shower. The men raised their telescopes again.
“She’s dressing, I guess,” the first man said.
The boy giggled. “Can you see her naked?”
The second man was triangulated twenty feet to the south. He had the better view of the back of the house, where her bedroom window was.
“You’re disgusting,” he said. “You know that?”
The boy wrote seven-fifteen, probably dressing. Then: seven-twenty, probably downstairs, probably eating breakfast.
“She’ll go back up, clean her teeth,” he said.
The man on the left shifted on his elbows.
“For sure,” he said. “Prissy little thing like that.”
“She’s closing her drapes again,” the man on the right said.
It was standard practice in the west of Texas, in the summer, especially if your bedroom faced south, like this one did. Unless you wanted to sleep the next night in a room hotter than a pizza oven.
“Stand by,” the man said. “A buck gets ten she goes out to the barn now.”
It was a wager that nobody took, because so far four times out of four she had done exactly that, and watchers are paid to notice patterns.
“Kitchen door’s open.”
The boy wrote seven twenty-seven, kitchen door opens.
“Here she comes.”
She came out, dressed in a blue gingham dress which reached to her knees and left her shoulders bare. Her hair was tied back behind her head. It was still damp from the shower.
“What do you call that sort of a dress?” the boy asked.
“Halter,” the man on the left said.
Seven twenty-eight, comes out, blue halter dress, goes to barn, the boy wrote.
She walked across the yard, short hesitant steps against the uneven ruts in the baked earth, maybe seventy yards. She heaved the barn door open and disappeared in the gloom inside.
The boy wrote seven twenty-nine, target in barn.
“How hot is it?” the man on the left asked.
“Maybe a hundred degrees,” the boy said.
“There’ll be a storm soon. Heat like this, there has to be.”
“Here comes her ride,” the man on the right said.
Miles to the south, there was a dust cloud on the road. A vehicle, making slow and steady progress north.
“She’s coming back,” the man on the right said.
Seven thirty-two, target comes out of barn, the boy wrote.
“Maid’s at the door,” the man said.
The target stopped at the kitchen door and took her lunch box from the maid. It was bright blue plastic with a cartoon picture on the side. She paused for a second. Her skin was pink and damp from the heat. She leaned down to adjust her socks and then trotted out to the gate, through the gate, to the shoulder of the road. The school bus slowed and stopped and the door opened with a sound the watchers heard clearly over the faint rattle of the idling engine. The chrome handrails flashed once in the sun. The diesel exhaust hung and drifted in the hot still air. The target heaved her lunch box onto the step and grasped the bright rails and clambered up after it. The door closed again and the watchers saw her corn-colored head bobbing along level with the base of the windows. Then the engine noise deepened and the gears caught and the bus moved away with a new cone of dust kicking up behind it.
Seven thirty-six, target on bus to school, the boy wrote.
The road north was dead straight and he turned his head and watched the bus all the way until the heat on the horizon broke it up into a shimmering yellow mirage. Then he closed his notebook and secured it with a rubber band. Back at the red house, the maid stepped inside and closed the kitchen door. Nearly a mile away, the watchers lowered their telescopes and turned their collars up for protection from the sun.
Seven thirty-seven, Friday morning.
Seven thirty-eight.
SEVEN THIRTY-NINE, MORE than three hundred miles to the north and east, Jack Reacher climbed out of his motel room window. One minute earlier, he had been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. One minute before that, he had opened the door of his room to check the morning temperature. He had left it open, and the closet just inside the entrance passageway was faced with mirrored glass, and there was a shaving mirror in the bathroom on a cantilevered arm, and by a freak of optical chance he caught sight of four men getting out of a car and walking toward the motel office. Pure luck, but a guy as vigilant as Jack Reacher gets lucky more times than the average.
The car was a police cruiser. It had a shield on the door, and because of the bright sunlight and the double reflection he could read it clearly. At the top it said CITY POLICE, and then there was a fancy medallion in the middle with LUBBOCK, TEXAS written underneath. All four men who got out were in uniform. They had bulky belts with guns and radios and nightsticks and handcuffs. Three of the men he had never seen before, but the fourth guy was familiar. The fourth guy was a tall heavyweight with a gelled, blond brush cut above a meaty red face. This morning the meaty red face was partially obscured by a glinting aluminum splint carefully taped over a shattered nose. His right hand was similarly bound up with a splint and bandages protecting a broken forefinger.
The guy had neither injury the night b
efore. And Reacher had no idea the guy was a cop. He just looked like some idiot in a bar. Reacher had gone there because he heard the music was good, but it wasn’t, so he had backed away from the band and ended up on a bar stool watching ESPN on a muted television fixed high on a wall. The place was crowded and noisy and he was wedged in a space with a woman on his right and the heavyweight guy with the brush cut on his left. He got bored with the sports and turned around to watch the room. As he turned, he saw how the guy was eating.
The guy was wearing a white tank-top shirt and he was eating chicken wings. The wings were greasy and the guy was a slob. He was dripping chicken fat off his chin and off his fingers onto his shirt. There was a dark teardrop shape right between his pecs. It was growing and spreading into an impressive stain. But the best barroom etiquette doesn’t let you linger on such a sight, and the guy caught Reacher staring.
“Who you looking at?” he said.
It was said low and aggressively, but Reacher ignored it.
“Who you looking at?” the guy said again.
Reacher’s experience was, they say it once, maybe nothing’s going to happen. But they say it twice, then trouble’s on the way. Fundamental problem is, they take a lack of response as evidence that you’re worried. That they’re winning. But then, they won’t let you answer, anyway.
“You looking at me?” the guy said.
“No,” Reacher answered.
“Don’t you be looking at me, boy,” the guy said.
The way he said boy made Reacher think he was maybe a foreman in a lumber mill or a cotton operation. Whatever muscle work was done around Lubbock. Some kind of a traditional trade passed down through the generations. Certainly the word cop never came to his mind. But then, he was relatively new to Texas.
“Don’t you look at me,” the guy said.
Reacher turned his head and looked at him. Not really to antagonize the guy. Just to size him up. Life is endlessly capable of surprises, so he knew one day he would come face-to-face with his physical equal. With somebody who might worry him. But he looked and saw this wasn’t the day. So he just smiled and looked away again.
Then the guy jabbed him with his finger.