Lee Child - The Hard Way

REACHER HAD Alate breakfast delivered from a gourmet deli on Edward Lane’s tab and he ate it alone in the kitchen. Then he lay down on a sofa and thought until he was too tired to think anymore. Then he closed his eyes and dozed, and waited for the phone to ring.

Kate and Jade were sleeping, too. It was nature’s way. They had been unable to sleep at night, so exhaustion had overtaken them midway through the day. They were on their narrow beds, close together, deep in slumber. The lone man opened their door quietly and saw them. Paused a moment, just looking. Then he backed out of the room and left them alone. No hurry , he thought. In a way he was enjoying this particular phase of the operation. He was addicted to risk. He always had been. No point in denying it. It made him who he was.

Reacher woke up and found himself all alone in the living room except for Carter Groom. The guy with the shark’s eyes. He was sitting in an armchair, doing nothing.

“You pulled guard duty?” Reacher asked.

“You’re not exactly a prisoner,” Groom said. “You’re in line to get a million bucks.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not really. You find her, you’ll have earned it. The workman is worthy of his hire. Says so in the Bible.”

“Did you drive her often?”

“My fair share.”

“When Jade was with her, how did they ride?”

“Mrs. Lane always rode in the front. She was basically embarrassed about the whole chauffeur thing. The kid in the back, obviously.”

“What were you, back in the day?”

“Recon Marine,” Groom said. “First Sergeant.”

“How would you have handled the takedown at Bloomingdale’s?”

“Good guy or bad guy?”

“Bad guy,” Reacher said.

“How many with me?”

“Does it matter?”

Groom thought for less than a second and shook his head. “Lead guy is the important guy. Lead guy could be the only guy.”

“So how would it have gone down?”

“Only one way to do it clean,” Groom said. “You’d have to keep all the action inside the car, before they even got out. Bloomie’s is on the east side of Lexington Avenue. Lex runs downtown. So Taylor would pull over on the left and stop opposite the main entrance. Double parked, just temporarily. Whereupon our guy would grab the rear door and slide in right next to the kid. She’s belted in behind her mother. Our guy puts a gun straight to the kid’s head and grabs her hair with his free hand and holds on tight. That’s game over right there. Nobody on the street is worried. For them, it’s a pickup, not a drop-off. And Taylor would do what he’s told from that point on. What choice does he have? He’s got Mrs. Lane screaming in the seat next to him. And what can he do anyway? He can’t flip the lever and shove the seat off its runners back on the guy, because the Jaguar’s got electric seats. He can’t turn around and fight, because the gun is to the kid’s head. He can’t use violent evasive driving maneuvers because he’s in slow traffic and the guy has hold of the kid’s hair and won’t get thrown loose anyway. Game over, right there.”

“And then what?”

“Then our guy makes Taylor drive somewhere quiet. Maybe in town, more likely out of town. Then he shoots him, spine shot through the seat, so he doesn’t bust the windshield. He makes Mrs. Lane dump him out. Then he makes her drive the rest of the way. He wants to stay in the back with the kid.”

Reacher nodded. “That’s how I see it.”

“Tough on Taylor,” Groom said. “You know, that final moment, the guy tells him to pull over, put the transmission in Park, sit tight. Taylor will have known what was coming.”

Reacher said nothing.

“They haven’t found his body yet,” Groom said.

“You optimistic?”

Groom shook his head. “It’s not somewhere populated, that’s all it means. It’s a balance. You want rid of the guy early, but you keep him alive until the location is safe. He’s most likely in the countryside somewhere with the coyotes gnawing on him. Race against time whether someone finds him before he’s all eaten up.”

“How long was he with you?”

“Three years.”

“Did you like him?”

“He was OK.”

“Was he good?”

“You already asked Gregory.”

“Gregory might be biased. They were from the same unit. They were Brits together overseas. What did you think?”

“He was good,” Groom said. “SAS is a good outfit. Better than Delta, maybe. Brits are usually more ruthless. It’s in their genes. They ruled the world for a long time, and they didn’t do it by being nice. An SAS veteran would be second only to a Recon Marine veteran, that would be my opinion. So yes, Gregory was right. Taylor was good.”

“What was he like as a person?”

“Off duty he was gentle. He was good with the kid. Mrs. Lane seemed to like him. There’s two types of people here. Like an inner circle and an outer circle. Taylor was inner circle. I’m outer circle. I’m all business. I’m kind of stunted, in a social situation. I can admit it. I’m nothing, away from the action. Some of the others can be both.”

“Were you here five years ago?”

“For Anne? No, I came just after. But there can’t be a connection.”

“So I heard,” Reacher said.

The clock in Reacher’s head ticked around to four-thirty in the afternoon. For Kate and Jade, the third day. Probably fifty-four hours since the snatch. Fifty-four hours was an incredibly long time for a kidnap to sustain itself. Most were over in less than twenty-four, one way or the other, good result or bad. Most law enforcement people gave up after thirty-six. Each passing minute made the likely outcome more and more dire.

Around a quarter to five in the afternoon Lane came back into the room and people started drifting in after him. Gregory, Addison, Burke, Kowalski. Perez came in. The vigil around the telephone started up again unannounced. Lane stood next to the table. The others grouped themselves around the room, all facing the same way, inward. There was no doubt about the center of their attention.

But the phone didn’t ring.

“Has that thing got a speaker?” Reacher asked.

“No,” Lane said.

“What about in the office?”

“I can’t do it,” Lane said. “It would be a change. It would unsettle them.”

The phone didn’t ring.

“Hang in there,” Reacher said.

In her apartment across the street the woman who had been watching the building picked up her phone and dialed.

THE WOMAN ACROSSthe street was called Patricia Joseph, Patti to her few remaining friends, and she was dialing an NYPD detective named Brewer. She had his home number. He answered on the second ring.

“I’ve got some activity to report,” Patti said.

Brewer didn’t ask who his caller was. He didn’t need to. He knew Patti Joseph’s voice about as well as he knew anybody’s.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“There’s a new character on the scene.”

“Who?”

“I don’t have a name for him yet.”

“Description?”

“Very tall, heavily built, like a real brawler. He’s in his late thirties or early forties. Short fair hair, blue eyes. He showed up late last night.”

“One of them?” Brewer asked.

“He doesn’t dress like them. And he’s much bigger than the rest. But he acts like them.”

“Acts? What have you seen him do?”

“The way he walks. The way he moves. The way he holds himself.”

“So you think he’s ex-military, too?”

“Almost certainly.”

“OK,” Brewer said. “Good work. Anything else?”