Lee Child - Running Blind

“Life’s a bitch, right?” he said. “You get a hook into me, and suddenly the hook isn’t there anymore. Fate’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”

“Fate,” Blake repeated.

“So let me get this straight,” Reacher said. “Harper wouldn’t play ball with the femme fatale thing, and now old Petrosian is dead, so you got no more cards to play. And you’re not listening to a word I say anyway, so is there a reason why I shouldn’t walk right out of here?”

“Lots of reasons,” Blake said.

There was silence.

“None of them good enough,” Reacher said.

He stood up and stepped away from the table again. Nobody tried to stop him. He walked out of the cafeteria and out through the glass doors into the chill of dawn. Started walking.

HE WALKED ALL the way out to the guardhouse on the perimeter. Ducked under the barrier and dropped his visitor’s pass on the road. Walked on and turned the corner and entered Marine territory. He kept to the middle of the pavement and reached the first clearing after a half-mile. There was a cluster of vehicles and a number of quiet, watchful men. They let him go on. Walking was unusual, but not illegal. He reached the second clearing thirty minutes after leaving the cafeteria. He walked through it and kept on going.

He heard the car behind him five minutes later. He stopped and turned and waited for it. It came near enough for him to see past the dazzle of its running lights. It was Harper, which is what he had expected. She was alone. She drew level with him and buzzed her window down.

“Hello, Reacher,” she said.

He nodded. Said nothing.

“Want a ride?” she asked.

“Out or back?”

“Wherever you decide.”

“I-95 on-ramp will do it. Going north.”

“Hitchhiking?”

He nodded. “I’ve got no money for a plane.”

He slid in next to her and she accelerated gently away, heading out. She was in her second suit and her hair was loose. It spilled all over her shoulders.

“They tell you to bring me back?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They decided you’re useless. Nothing to contribute, is what they said.”

He smiled. “So now I’m supposed to get all boiled up with indignation and storm back in there and prove them wrong?”

She smiled back. “Something like that. They spent ten minutes discussing the best approach. Lamarr decided they should appeal to your ego.”

“That’s what happens when you’re a psychologist who studied landscape gardening in school.”

“I guess so.”

They drove on, through the wooded curves, past the last Marine clearing.

“But she’s right,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to contribute. Nobody’s going to catch this guy. He’s too smart. Too smart for me, that’s for damn sure.”

She smiled again. “A little psychology of your own? Trying to leave with a clear conscience?”

He shook his head. “My conscience is always clear.”

“Is it clear about Petrosian?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? They threaten you with Petrosian, and he’s dead within three days.”

“Just dumb luck.”

“Yeah, luck. You know I didn’t tell them I was outside Trent’s office all day?”

“Why not?”

“I was covering my ass.”

He looked at her. "And what’s Trent’s office got to do with anything?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t like coincidences. ”

“They happen, time to time. Obviously.”

“Nobody in the Bureau likes coincidences.”

“So?”

She shrugged again. “So they could, you know, dig around. Might make it hard for you, later.”

He smiled again. “This is phase two of the approach, right?”

She smiled back, and then the smile exploded into a laugh. “Yeah, phase two. There are about a dozen still to go. Some of them are real good. You want to hear them all?”

“Not really. I’m not going back. They’re not listening. ”

She nodded and drove on. Paused before the junction with the interstate, and then swooped north up the ramp.

“I’ll take you to the next one,” she said. “Nobody uses this one except Bureau people. And none of them is going to give you a ride.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Harper.”

“Jodie’s home,” she said. “I called Cozo’s office. Apparently they had a little surveillance going. She’s been away. She got back this morning, in a taxi. Looked like she’d come from the airport. Looks like she’s working from home today.”

He smiled. “OK, so now I’m definitely out of here.”

“We need your input, you know.”

“They’re not listening.”

“You need to make them listen,” she said.

“This is phase three?”

“No, this is me. I mean it.”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded.

“So why won’t they listen?”

“Pride, maybe?” she said.

“They need somebody’s input,” he said. “That’s for sure. But not mine. I don’t have the resources. And I don’t have the authority.”

“To do what?”

“To take it out of their hands. They’re wasting their time with this profiling shit. It won’t get them anywhere. They need to work the clues.”

“There aren’t any clues.”

“Yes, there are. How smart the guy is. And the paint, and the geography, and how quiet the scenes are. They’re all clues. They should work them. They’ve got to mean something. Starting with the motive is starting at the wrong end.”

“I’ll pass that on.”

She pulled off the highway and stopped at the cross street.

“You going to get into trouble?” he asked.

“For failing to bring you back?” she said. “Probably. ”

He was silent. She smiled.

“That was phase ten,” she said. “I’ll be perfectly OK.”

“I hope so,” he said, and got out of the car. He walked north across the street to the ramp and stood all alone and watched her car slide under the bridge and turn back south.

A MALE HITCHHIKER standing six feet five and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds is on the cusp of acceptability for easy rides. Generally, women won’t stop for him, because they see a threat. Men can be just as nervous. But Reacher was showered and shaved and clean, and dressed quietly. That shortened the odds, and there were enough trucks on the road with big confident owner-drivers that he was back in New York City within seven hours of starting out.

He was quiet most of the seven hours, partly because the trucks were too noisy for conversation, and partly because he wasn’t in the mood for talking. The old hobo demon was whispering to him again. Where are you going? Back to Jodie, of course. OK, smart guy, but what else? What the hell else? Yardwork behind your house? Painting the damn walls? He sat next to a succession of kindly drivers and felt his brief unsatisfactory excursion into freedom ebb away. He worked on forgetting about it, and felt he succeeded. His final ride was from a New Jersey vegetable truck delivering to Greenwich Village. It rumbled in through the Holland Tunnel. He got out and walked the last mile on Canal and Broadway, all the way down to Jodie’s apartment house, concentrating hard on his desire to see her.

He had his own key to her lobby, and he went up in the elevator and knocked on her door. The peephole went dark and light again and the door opened and she was standing there, in jeans and a shirt, tall and slim and vital. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. But she wasn’t smiling at him.

“Hey, Jodie,” he said.

“There’s an FBI agent in my kitchen.” she replied.

“Why?”

“Why?” she repeated. “You tell me.”