by Lee Child
Afterward Hutton lay in Reacher’s arms and used her fingertips to trace a long slow inventory of the body she had known so well. It had changed in fourteen years. He had said You haven’t changed a bit and she had said You either, but she knew both of them had been generous. Nobody stays the same. The Reacher she had known in the desert had been younger and baked lean by the heat, as fluid and graceful as a greyhound. Now he was heavier, with knotted muscles as hard as old mahogany. The scars she remembered had smoothed out and faded and were replaced by newer marks. There were lines in his forehead. Lines around his eyes. But his nose was still straight and unbroken. His front teeth were still there, like trophies. She slid her hand down to his and felt his knuckles. They were large and hard, like walnut shells matted with scar tissue. Still a fighter, she thought. Still trading his hands for his nose and his teeth. She moved up to his chest. He had a hole there, left of center. Ruptured muscle, a crater big enough for the tip of her finger. A gunshot wound. Old, but new to her. Probably a .38.
“New York,” Reacher said. “Years ago. Everyone asks.”
“Everyone?”
“Who sees it.”
Hutton snuggled in closer. “How many people see it?”
He smiled. “You know, on beaches, stuff like that.”
“And in bed?”
“Locker rooms,” he said.
“And in bed,” she said again.
“I’m not a monk,” he said.
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t remember. I was out for three weeks.”
“It’s right over your heart.”
“It was a little revolver. Probably a weak load. He should have tried a head shot. That would have been better.”
“For him. Not for you.”
“I’m a lucky man. Always have been, always will be.”
“Maybe. But you should take better care.”
“I try my best.”
Chenko and Vladimir stayed together and took the north side of town. They kept well away from the motor court. The cops had that situation buttoned up, presumably. So their first stop was the sports bar. They went in and walked around. It was dark inside and not very busy. Maybe thirty guys. None of them matched the sketch. None of them was Reacher. Vladimir stayed near the door and Chenko checked the men’s room. One stall had a closed door. Chenko waited until the toilet flushed and the guy came out. It wasn’t Reacher. It was just a guy. So Chenko rejoined Vladimir and they got back in the car. Started quartering the streets, slowly, patiently, covering three sides of every block and pausing at the turns to scan the sidewalks on the fourth.
Hutton propped herself on an elbow and looked down at Reacher’s face. His eyes were still the same. Set a little deeper, maybe, and a little more hooded. But they still shone blue like ice chips under an Arctic sun. Like a color map of twin snowmelt lakes in a high mountain landscape. But their expression had changed. Fourteen years ago they had been rimmed red by the desert sandstorms and clouded with some kind of bitter cynicism. They had been army eyes. Cop eyes. She remembered the way they would swing slow and lazy across a room like deadly tracers curling in toward a target. Now they were clearer. Younger. More innocent. He was fourteen years older, but his gaze was like a child’s again.
“You just had your hair cut,” she said.
“This morning,” he said. “For you.”
“For me?”
“Yesterday I looked like a wild man. They told me you were coming. I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of a bum.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Some kind, I guess.”
“What kind?”
“The voluntary kind.”
“We should eat,” she said.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“Whatever you get. We’ll share. Order big portions.”
“You can choose your own if you want.”
He shook his head. “A month from now some DoD clerk is going to go through your expenses. Better for you if he sees one meal rather than two.”
“Worried about my reputation?”
“I’m worried about your next promotion.”
“I won’t get one. I’m terminal at Brigadier General.”
“Not now that this Petersen guy owes you a big one.”
“Can’t deny two stars would be cool.”
“For me too,” Reacher said. “I got screwed by plenty of two-stars. To think I screwed one myself would be fun.”
She made a face.
“Food,” Reacher said.
“I like salads,” she said.
“Someone’s got to, I guess.”
“Don’t you?”
“Get a chicken Caesar to start and a steak to follow. You eat the rabbit food, I’ll eat the steak. Then get some kind of a big dessert. And a big pot of coffee.”
“I like tea.”
“Can’t do it,” Reacher said. “There are some compromises I just can’t make. Not even for the DoD.”
“But I’m thirsty.”
“They’ll send ice water. They always do.”
“I outrank you.”
“You always did. You ever see me drink tea because of it?”
She shook her head and got out of bed. Padded naked across to the desk. Checked the menu and dialed the phone. Ordered chicken Caesar, a sixteen-ounce sirloin, and a big pie with ice cream. And a six-cup pot of coffee. Reacher smiled at her.
“Twenty minutes,” she said. “Let’s take a shower.”
Raskin took the heart of downtown. He was on foot with the sketch in his hand and a list in his head: restaurants, bars, diners, sandwich shops, groceries, hotels. He started at the Metropole Palace. The lobby, the bar. No luck. He moved on to a Chinese restaurant two blocks away. In and out, fast and discreet. He figured he was pretty good for this kind of work. He wasn’t a very noticeable guy. Not memorable. Average height, average weight, unremarkable face. Just a hole in the air, which in some ways was a frustration, but in others was a major advantage. People looked at him, but they didn’t really see him. Their eyes slid right on by.
Reacher wasn’t in the Chinese place. Or the sub shop, or the Irish bar. So Raskin stopped on the sidewalk and decided to dodge north. He could check the lawyer’s office and then head toward the Marriott. Because according to Linsky those places were where the women were. And in Raskin’s experience guys who weren’t just holes in the air got to hang out with women more than the average.
Reacher got out of the shower and borrowed Hutton’s toothbrush and toothpaste and comb. Then he toweled off and walked around and collected his clothes. Put them on and tucked his shirt in. He was dressed and sitting on the bed when he heard the knock at the door.
“Room service,” a foreign voice called.
Hutton put her head out the bathroom door. She was dressed but halfway through drying her hair.
“You go,” Reacher said.
“Me?”
“You have to sign for it.”
“You can write my name.”
“Two hours from now the cops won’t have found me and they’ll come back here. Better that we don’t have a guy downstairs who knows you’re not alone.”
“You never relax, do you?”
“The less I relax, the luckier I get.”
Hutton patted her hair into shape and headed for the door. Reacher heard the rattle of a cart and the clink of plates and the scratch of a pen. Then he heard the door close and he stepped through to the living room and found a wheeled table set up in the middle of the floor. The waiter had placed one chair behind it.
“One knife,” Hutton said. “One fork. One spoon. We didn’t think of that.”
“We’ll take turns,” Reacher said. “Kind of romantic.”
“I’ll cut your steak up and you can use your fingers.”
“You could feed it to me. We should have ordered grapes.”
She smiled.
“Do you remember James Barr?” h
e asked.
“Too much water over the dam,” she said. “But I reread his file yesterday.”
“How good a shooter was he?”
“Not the best we ever had, not the worst.”
“That’s what I remember. I was just in the garage, taking a look. It was impressive shooting. Very impressive. I don’t remember him being that good.”
“There’s a lot of evidence there.”
He nodded. Said nothing.
“Maybe he’s been practicing hard,” she said. “He was in six years but he’s been out nearly three times as long. Maybe he was a late developer.”
“Maybe,” he said.
She looked at him. “You’re not staying, are you? You’re planning on leaving right after dinner. Because of this thing with the cops. You think they’ll come back to the room.”
“They will,” Reacher said. “Count on it.”
“I don’t have to let them in.”
“A place like this, the cops will do pretty much what they want. And if they find me here, you’re in trouble.”
“Not if you’re innocent.”
“You’ve got no legitimate way of telling what I am. That’s what they’ll say.”
“I’m the lawyer here,” Hutton said.
“And I was a cop,” Reacher said. “I know what they’re like. They hate fugitives. Fugitives drive them nuts. They’ll arrest you along with me and sort it all out next month. By which time your second star will be in the toilet.”
“So where are you going?”
“No idea. But I’ll think of something.”
The street door at the bottom of the black glass tower was locked for the night. Raskin knocked on it, twice. The security guard at the lobby desk looked up. Raskin waved the sketch at him.
“Delivery,” he mouthed.
The guard got up and walked over and used a key from a bunch on a chain to unlock the door. Raskin stepped inside.
“Rodin,” he said. “Fourth floor.”
The guard nodded. The law offices of Helen Rodin had received plenty of deliveries that day. Boxes, cartons, guys with hand trucks. One more was to be expected. No big surprise. He walked back to his desk without comment and Raskin walked over to the elevator. Got in and pressed 4.
First thing he saw on the fourth floor was a city cop standing outside the lawyer’s door. Raskin knew what that meant, immediately. It meant the lawyer’s office was still a live possibility. Which meant Reacher wasn’t in there at the present time and hadn’t tried to get in there anytime recently. So Raskin wheeled around like he was confused by the corridor layout and headed around a corner. Waited a moment and then headed back to the elevator. He folded the sketch and put it in his pocket. In the lobby he gave the guard a job-done type of wave and headed back out into the night. Turned left and headed north and east toward the Marriott Suites.
The six-cup pot of coffee was more than even Reacher could manage. He quit after five. Hutton didn’t seem to mind. He guessed she thought five out of six justified his insistence.
“Come see me in Washington,” she said.
“I will,” he said. “For sure. Next time I’m there.”
“Don’t get caught.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Not by these guys.”
Then he just looked at her for a minute. Storing away the memory. Adding another fragment to his mosaic. He kissed her once on the lips and walked to the door. Let himself out into the corridor and headed for the stairs. On the ground floor he turned away from the lobby and used the fire door again. It swung shut and locked behind him and he took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows and headed for the sidewalk.
Raskin saw him immediately. He was thirty yards away, walking fast, coming up on the Marriott from the rear. He saw a flash of glass in the streetlight. A fire door, opening. He saw a tall man stepping out. Standing still. Then the door jerked shut on a hydraulic closer and the tall man turned to watch it latch behind him and a stray beam of light was reflected off the moving glass and played briefly across his face. Just for a split second, like a handheld flashlight swinging through a fast arc. Like a camera strobe. Not much. But enough for Raskin to be certain. The man who had come through the fire door was the man in the sketch. Jack Reacher, for sure, no question. Right height, right weight, right face. Raskin had studied the details long and hard.
So he stopped dead and stepped backward into the shadows. Watched, and waited. Saw Reacher glance right, glance left, and set out walking straight ahead, due west, fast and easy. Raskin stayed where he was and counted one, two, three in his head. Then he came out of the shadows and crossed the parking lot and stopped again and peered around the corner to the west. Reacher was twenty yards ahead. Still walking, still relaxed. Still unaware. Center of the sidewalk, long strides, his arms swinging loose at his sides. He was a big guy. That was for sure. As big as Vladimir, easily.
Raskin counted to three again and let Reacher get forty yards ahead. Then he set out following. He kept his eyes fixed on the target and fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket. Dialed Grigor Linsky’s number. Reacher walked on, forty yards in the distance. Raskin put the phone to his ear.
“Yes?” Linsky said.
“I found him,” Raskin whispered.
“Where?”
“He’s walking. West from the Marriott. He’s about level with the courthouse now, two blocks to the north.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Wait,” Raskin whispered. “Hold on.”
Reacher stopped on a corner. Glanced left and turned right, toward the shadows under the raised highway. Still relaxed. Raskin watched him across waist-high trash in an empty lot.
“He’s turned north,” he whispered.
“Toward?”
“I don’t know. The sports bar, maybe.”
“OK,” Linsky said. “We’ll come north. We’ll wait fifty yards up the street from the sports bar. Call me back in three minutes exactly. Meanwhile, don’t let him out of your sight.”
“OK,” Raskin said. He clicked his phone off but kept it up at his ear and took a shortcut across the empty lot. Paused against a blank brick wall and peered around its corner. Reacher was still forty yards ahead, still in the center of the sidewalk, arms swinging, still moving fast. A confident man, Raskin thought. Perhaps overconfident.
Linsky clicked off with Raskin and immediately dialed Chenko and Vladimir. Told them to rendezvous fifty yards north of the sports bar as fast as possible. Then he dialed the Zec.
“We found him,” he said.
“Where?”
“North part of downtown.”
“Who’s on him?”
“Raskin. They’re on the street, walking.”
The Zec was quiet for a moment.
“Wait until he settles somewhere,” he said. “And then get Chenko to call the cops. He’s got the accent. He can say he’s a bartender or a desk clerk or whatever.”
Raskin stayed forty yards back. He called Linsky again and kept the connection open. Reacher kept on walking, same stride, same pace. His clothes were dull and hard to see in the darkness. His neck and his hands were tan, but a little more visible. And he had a narrow stripe of pale skin around a fresh haircut, ghostly in the gloom. Raskin fixed his eyes on it. It was a white U-shaped glow, six feet off the ground, alternately rising and falling an inch with every step Reacher took. Idiot, Raskin thought. He should have used boot polish. That’s what we’d have done in Afghanistan. Then he thought: Not that we ever had boot polish. Or haircuts.
Then he stopped because Reacher stopped forty yards ahead. Raskin stepped back into a shadow and Reacher glanced right and turned left, into the mouth of a cross-street, out of sight behind a building.
“He’s gone west again,” Raskin whispered into the phone.
“Still good for the sports bar?” Linsky asked.
“Or the motor court.”
“Either one works for us. Move up a little. Don’t lose him now.”
&nb
sp; Raskin sprinted ten paces and slowed at the turn. Pressed himself up against the corner of the building and peered around. And stared. Problem. Not with the view. The cross-street was long and wide and straight and lit at the far end by bright lights on the four-lane that ran north to the highway. So he had an excellent view. The problem was that Reacher was no longer part of it. He had disappeared. Completely.
CHAPTER 11
Reacher had once read that boat shoes had been invented by a yachtsman looking for better grip on slippery decks. The guy had taken a regular smooth-soled athletic shoe and cut tiny stripes into the rubber with a straight razor. He had experimented and ended up with the cuts lateral and wavy and close together. They had done the trick, like a miniature tire tread. A whole new industry had grown up. The style had migrated by association from yachts to slips to marinas to boardwalks to summer sidewalks. Now boat shoes were everywhere. Reacher didn’t like them much. They were thin and light and insubstantial.
But they were quiet.
He had seen the guy in the leather coat as soon as he stepped out of the Marriott’s fire door. It would have been hard not to. Thirty yards distant, shallow angle, decent illumination from vapor lights on poles all over the place. His glance had flicked left and he had seen him quite clearly. Seen him react. Seen him stop. Seen him thereby identify himself as an opponent. Reacher had set out walking straight ahead and had scrutinized the afterimage his night vision had retained. What kind of an opponent was this guy? Reacher had closed his eyes and concentrated, two or three paces.
Generic Caucasian, medium height, medium weight, red face and fair hair tinted orange and yellow by the streetlights.
Cop or not?
Not. Because of the jacket. It was a boxy square-shouldered double-breasted style made of chestnut-colored leather. By day it would be a definite shade of red-brown. And it had a glossy patina. It was definitely shiny. Not American. Not even from the kind of fire-sale store that sells leather garments for forty-nine bucks. It was a foreign style. Eastern European, just like the suit the twisted old guy had worn in the plaza. Not cheap. Just different. Russian, Bulgarian, Estonian, somewhere in there.