Lee Child - Tripwire

She loved him. She was in no doubt about that. No doubt at all. She always had, right from the start. But was that OK? Was it OK to love him the way she did? She had agonized over that question before. She had lain awake nights about it, many years ago. She had burned with shame about her feelings. The nine-year age gap was obscene. Shameful. She knew that. A fifteen-year-old should not feel that way about her own father’s fellow officer. Army protocol had made it practically incestuous. It was like feeling that way about an uncle. Almost like feeling that way about her father himself. But she loved him. There was no doubt about it.

She was with him whenever she could. Talking with him whenever she could, touching him whenever she could. She had her own print of the self-timer photograph from Manila, her arm around his waist. She had kept it pressed in a book for fifteen years. Looked at it countless times. For years, she had fed off the feeling of touching him, hugging him hard for the camera. She still remembered the exact feel of him, his broad hard frame, his smell.

The feelings had never really gone away. She had wanted them to. She had wanted it just to be an adolescent thing, a teenage crush. But it wasn’t. She knew that from the way the feelings endured. He had disappeared, she had grown up and moved on, but the feelings were always there. They had never receded, but they had eventually moved parallel to the main flow of her life. Always there, always real, always strong, but not necessarily connected with her day-to-day reality anymore. Like people she knew, lawyers or bankers, who had really wanted to be dancers or ballplayers. A dream from the past, unconnected with reality, but absolutely defining the identity of the person involved. A lawyer, who had wanted to be a dancer. A banker, who had wanted to be a ballplayer. A divorced thirty-year-old woman, who had wanted to be with Jack Reacher all along.

Yesterday should have been the worst day of her life. She had buried her father, her last relative on earth. She had been attacked by men with guns. People she knew were in therapy for much less. She should be prostrate with misery and shock. But she wasn’t. Yesterday had been the best day of her life. He had appeared like a vision on the steps, behind the garage, above the yard. The noon sun directly over his head, illuminating him. Her heart had thumped and the old feelings had swarmed back into the center of her life, fiercer and stronger than ever, like a drug howling through her veins, like claps of thunder.

But it was all a waste of time. She knew it. She had to face it. He looked at her like a niece or a kid sister. Like the nine-year gap still counted for something. Which it no longer did. A couple aged fifteen and twenty-four would certainly have been a problem. But thirty and thirty-nine was perfectly OK. There were thousands of couples with gaps bigger than that. Millions of couples. There were guys aged seventy with twenty-year-old wives. But it still counted for something with him. Or maybe he was just too used to seeing her as Leon’s kid. Like a niece. Like the CO’s daughter. The rules of society or the protocol of the Army had blinded him to the possibility of seeing her any other way. She had always burned with resentment about that. She still did. Leon’s affection for him, his claiming of him as his own, had taken him away from her. It had made it impossible from the start.

They had spent the day like brother and sister, like uncle and niece. Then he had turned all serious, like a bodyguard, like she was his professional responsibility. They had had fun, and he cared about her physical safety, but nothing more. There never would be anything more. And there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing. She had asked guys out. All women her age had. It was permissible. Accepted, even normal. But what could she say to him? What? What can a sister say to a brother or a niece to an uncle without causing outrage and shock and disgust? So it wasn’t going to happen, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

She stretched out in her bed and brought her hands up above her head. Laid her palms gently against the dividing wall and held them there. At least he was in her apartment, and at least she could dream.

THE GUY GOT less than three hours in the sack, by the time he sailed the boat single-handed back to the slip and closed it down and got back across town to bed. He was up again at six and back on the street by six-twenty, with a quick shower and no breakfast. The hand was wrapped in the plastic, parceled up in yesterday’s Post and carried in a Zabar’s bag he had from the last time he bought ingredients and made his own dinner at home.

He used the black Tahoe and made quick time past all the early-morning delivery people. He parked underground and rode up to the eighty-eighth floor. Tony the receptionist was already at the brass-and-oak counter. But he could tell from the stillness nobody else was in. He held up the Zabar’s bag, like a trophy.

“I’ve got this for the Hook,” he said.

“The Hook’s not here today,” Tony said.

“Great,” the guy said, sourly.

“Stick it in the refrigerator,” Tony said.

There was a small office kitchen off the reception lobby. It was cramped and messy, like office kitchens are. Coffee rings on the counters, mugs with stains on the inside. The refrigerator was a miniature item under the counter. The guy shoved milk and a six-pack aside and folded the bag into what space was left.

“Target for today is Mrs. Jacob,” Tony said. He was now in the kitchen doorway. “We know where she lives. Lower Broadway, north of City Hall. Eight blocks from here. Neighbors say she always leaves at seven-twenty, walks to work.”

“Which is where exactly?” the guy asked.

“Wall Street and Broadway,” Tony said. “I’ll drive, you grab her.”

CHESTER STONE HAD driven home at the normal time and said nothing to Marilyn. There was nothing he could say. The speed of the collapse had left him bewildered. His whole world had turned inside out in a single twenty-four-hour period. He just couldn’t get a handle on it. He planned to ignore it until the morning and then go see Hobie and try and talk some sense. In his heart he didn’t believe he couldn’t save himself. The corporation was ninety years old, for God’s sake. Three generations of Chester Stones. There was too much there for it all to disappear overnight. So he said nothing and got through the evening in a daze.

Marilyn Stone said nothing to Chester, either. Too early for him to know she had taken charge. The circumstances had to be right for that discussion. It was an ego thing. She just bustled about, doing her normal evening things, and then tried to sleep while he lay awake beside her, staring at the ceiling.

WHEN JODIE PLACED her palms flat on the dividing wall. Reacher was in the shower. He had three distinct routines worked out for showering, and every morning he made a choice about which one to use. The first was a straight shower, nothing more. It took eleven minutes. The second was a shave and a shower, twenty-two minutes. The third was a special procedure, rarely used. It involved showering once, then getting out and shaving, and then showering all over again. It took more than a half hour, but the advantage was moisturization. Some girl had explained the shave was better if the skin was already thoroughly moisturized. And she had said it can’t hurt any to shampoo twice.

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.