Lee Child: The Hard Way

The room went very quiet. Reacher glanced at the phone, and the photograph.

“How much money did they want?” he asked.

“One million dollars in cash,” Lane answered.

“And that was in the car? A million bucks?”

“In the trunk. In a leather bag.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Let’s all sit down.”

“I don’t feel like sitting down.”

“Relax,” Reacher said. “They’re going to call back. Probably very soon. I can pretty much guarantee that.”

“How?”

“Sit down. Start at the beginning. Tell me about yesterday.”

So Lane sat down, in the armchair next to the telephone table, and started to talk about the previous day. Reacher sat at one end of a sofa. Gregory sat next to him. The other five guys distributed themselves around the room, two sitting, two squatting on chair arms, one leaning against the wall.

“Kate went out at ten o’clock in the morning,” Lane said. “She was heading for Bloomingdale’s, I think.”

“You think?”

“I allow her some freedom of action. She doesn’t necessarily supply me with a detailed itinerary. Not every day.”

“Was she alone?”

“Her daughter was with her.”

“ Her daughter?”

“She has an eight-year-old by her first marriage. Her name is Jade.”

“She lives with you here?”

Lane nodded.

“So where is Jade now?”

“Missing, obviously,” Lane said.

“So this is a double kidnapping?” Reacher said.

Lane nodded again. “Triple, in a way. Their driver didn’t come back, either.”

“You didn’t think to mention this before?”

“Does it make a difference? One person or three?”

“Who was the driver?”

“A guy called Taylor. British, ex-SAS. A good man. One of us.”

“What happened to the car?”

“It’s missing.”

“Does Kate go to Bloomingdale’s often?”

Lane shook his head. “Only occasionally. And never on a predictable pattern. We do nothing regular or predictable. I vary her drivers, vary her routes, sometimes we stay out of the city altogether.”

“Because? You got a lot of enemies?”

“My fair share. My line of work attracts enemies.”

“You’re going to have to explain your line of work to me. You’re going to have to tell me who your enemies are.”

“Why are you sure they’re going to call?”

“I’ll get to that,” Reacher said. “Tell me about the first conversation. Word for word.”

“They called at four o’clock in the afternoon. It went pretty much how you would expect. You know, we have your wife, we have your daughter.”

“Voice?”

“Altered. One of those electronic squawk boxes. Very metallic, like a robot in a movie. Loud and deep, but that doesn’t mean anything. They can alter the pitch and the volume.”

“What did you say to them?”

“I asked them what they wanted. They said a million bucks. I asked them to put Kate on the line. They did, after a short pause.” Lane closed his eyes. “She said, you know, help me, help me.” He opened his eyes. “Then the guy with the squawk box came back on and I agreed to the money. No hesitation. The guy said he would call back in an hour with instructions.”

“And did he?”

Lane nodded. “At five o’clock. I was told to wait six hours and put the money in the trunk of the Mercedes you saw and have it driven down to the Village and parked in that spot at eleven-forty exactly. The driver was to lock it up and walk away and put the keys through a mail slot in the front door of a certain building on the southwest corner of Spring Street and West Broadway. Then he was to walk away and keep on walking away, south on West Broadway. Someone would move in behind him and enter the building and collect the keys. If my driver stopped or turned around or even looked back, Kate would die. Likewise if there was a tracking device on the car.”

“That was it, word for word?”

Lane nodded.

“Nothing else?”

Lane shook his head.

“Who drove the car down?” Reacher asked.

“Gregory,” Lane said.

“I followed the instructions,” Gregory said. “To the letter. I couldn’t risk anything else.”

“How far of a walk was it?” Reacher asked him.

“Six blocks.”

“What was the building with the mail slot?”

“Abandoned,” Gregory said. “Or awaiting renovations. One or the other. It was empty, anyway. I went back there tonight, before I came to the café. No sign of habitation.”

“How good was this guy Taylor? Did you know him in Britain?”

Gregory nodded. “SAS is a big family. And Taylor was very good indeed.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“OK what?” Lane said.

“There are some obvious early conclusions,” Reacher said.

REACHER SAID,“The first conclusion is that Taylor is already dead. These guys clearly know you to some extent, and therefore we should assume they knew who and what Taylor was. Therefore they wouldn’t keep him alive. No reason for it. Too dangerous.”

Lane asked, “Why do you think they know me?”

“They asked for a specific car,” Reacher said. “And they suspected you might have a million dollars in cash lying around. They asked for it after the banks were closed and told you to deliver it before the banks reopened. Not everyone could comply with those conditions. Usually even very rich people take a little time to get a million bucks in cash together. They get temporary loans, wire transfers, they use stock as collateral, stuff like that. But these guys seemed to know that you could just cough it up instantly.”

“How do they know me?”

“You tell me.”

Nobody spoke.

“And there are three of them,” Reacher said. “One to guard Kate and Jade wherever they took them. One to watch Gregory’s back while he walked south on West Broadway, on a cell phone to a third who was waiting to move in and pick up the keys as soon as it was safe.”

Nobody spoke.

“And they’re based a minimum two hundred miles upstate,” Reacher said. “Let’s assume the initial action went down before about eleven o’clock yesterday morning. But they didn’t call for more than five hours. Because they were driving. Then they issued instructions at five o’clock for a ransom drop more than six hours later. Because they needed the six hours because two of them had to drive all the way back. Five, six hours, that’s two hundred miles, maybe two fifty, maybe more.”

“Why upstate?” Lane said. “They could be anywhere.”

“Not south or west,” Reacher said. “Or they would have asked for the ransom car south of Canal, so they could head straight for the Holland Tunnel. Not east on Long Island, or they would have wanted to be near the Midtown Tunnel. No, north on Sixth was what they wanted. That implies they were happy to head up toward the George Washington Bridge, or the Henry Hudson and the Saw Mill, or the Triboro and the Major Deegan. Eventually they hit the Thruway, probably. They could be in the Catskills or anywhere. A farm, probably. Certainly somewhere with a big garage block or a barn.”

“Why?”

“They just inherited your Mercedes Benz. Right after hijacking whatever Taylor drove to Bloomingdale’s yesterday. They need a place to hide them.”

“Taylor was driving a Jaguar.”

“There you go. Their place must look like a luxury car lot by now.”

“Why are you so sure they’re going to call back?”

“Because of human nature. Right now they’re mad as hell. They’re kicking themselves. They know you, but maybe not all that well. They took a chance and asked for a million dollars in cash, and you bagged it up without a moment’s hesitation. You shouldn’t have done that. You should have gambled and stalled. Because now they’re saying, damn it, we should have asked for more. They’re saying, we should have tested the limits. So they’re going to get back on the phone and hit you up for another chunk. They’re going to feel out exactly how much cash you’ve got lying around. They’re going to bleed you dry.”