Lee Child: The Hard Way

The phone rang right on time, at two o’clock in the morning exactly. Lane picked it up and listened. Reacher heard faint robot squawks from the earpiece. Lane said, “Put Kate on,” but his request must have been refused, because then he said, “Please don’t hurt her.” He listened for another minute and said, “OK.” Then he hung up.

“Five hours from now,” he said. “Seven o’clock in the morning. Same place, same routine. The blue BMW. One person only.”

“I’ll do it,” Gregory said.

The other men in the room stirred with frustration. “We should all be there,” one of them said. He was a small dark American who looked like an accountant, except for his eyes, which were as flat and dead as a hammerhead shark’s. “Ten minutes later we would know where she is. I can promise you that.”

“One man,” Lane said. “That was the instruction.”

“This is New York City,” the guy with the shark’s eyes said. “There are always people around. They can’t be expecting deserted streets.”

“Apparently they know us,” Lane said. “They would recognize you.”

“I could go,” Reacher said. “They wouldn’t recognize me.”

“You came in with Gregory. They might be watching the building.”

“Conceivable,” Reacher said. “But unlikely.”

Lane said nothing.

“Your call,” Reacher said.

“I’ll think about it,” Lane said.

“Think fast. Better if I leave here well in advance.”

“Decision in one hour,” Lane said. He moved away from the phone and headed back toward the office. Gone to count out the money , Reacher thought. He wondered briefly what five million dollars looked like. The same as one million , he guessed. But with hundreds instead of twenties .

“How much money has he got?” Reacher asked.

“A lot,” Gregory said.

“He’s down six million in two days.”

The guy with the shark’s eyes smiled.

“We’ll get it back,” he said. “You can count on that. As soon as Kate’s home safe we’ll make our move. Then we’ll see who’s down and who’s up. Someone poked a stick in the wrong hornets’ nest this time, that’s for damn sure. And they wasted Taylor. He was one of us. They’ll be sorry they were ever born.”

Reacher glanced into the guy’s empty eyes and believed every word he said. Then the guy stuck out his hand, abruptly. And a little warily. “I’m Carter Groom,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you. I think. I mean, as much as I can be, given the circumstances.”

The four other men introduced themselves with a quiet cascade of names and handshakes. Each man was polite, nothing more. Each was full of reserve in front of a stranger. Reacher tried to tie the names to faces. Gregory he already knew. A guy with a big scar over his eye was called Addison. The shortest guy among them was a Latino called Perez. The tallest was called Kowalski. There was a black guy called Burke.

“Lane told me you do bodyguarding and corporate security,” Reacher said.

Sudden silence. No reply.

“Don’t worry,” Reacher said. “I wasn’t convinced anyway. My guess is you guys were all operational noncoms. Fighting men. So I think your Mr. Lane is into something else entirely.”

“Like what?” Gregory asked.

“I think he’s pimping mercenaries,” Reacher said.

The guy called Groom shook his head. “Wrong choice of words, pal.”

“What would be the right choice?”

“We’re a private military corporation,” Groom said. “You got a problem with that?”

“I don’t really have an opinion.”

“Well, you better get one, and it better be a good one. We’re legal. We work for the Pentagon, just like we always did, and just like you did, back in the day.”

“Privatization,” Burke said. “The Pentagon loves it. It’s more efficient. The era of big government is over.”

“How many guys have you got?” Reacher asked. “Just what’s here?”

Groom shook his head again. “We’re the A-team. Like senior NCOs. Then there’s a Rolodex full of B-team squad members. We took a hundred guys to Iraq.”

“Is that where you’ve been? Iraq?”

“And Colombia and Panama and Afghanistan. We go anywhere Uncle Sam needs us.”

“What about where Uncle Sam doesn’t need you?”

Nobody spoke.

“My guess is the Pentagon pays by check,” Reacher said. “But there seems to be an awful lot of cash around here, too.”

No response.

“Africa?” Reacher said.

No response.

“Whatever,” Reacher said. “Not my business where you’ve been. All I need to know is where Mrs. Lane has been. For the last couple of weeks.”

“What difference does that make?” Kowalski asked.

“There was some surveillance,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think? I don’t suppose the bad guys were just hanging out at Bloomingdale’s every day on the off chance.”

“Mrs. Lane was in the Hamptons,” Gregory said. “With Jade, most of the summer. They only came back three days ago.”

“Who drove them back?”

“Taylor.”

“And then they were based here?”

“Correct.”

“Anything happen out in the Hamptons?”

“Like what?” Groom asked.

“Like anything unusual,” Reacher said. “Anything out of the ordinary.”

“Not really,” Groom said.

“A woman showed up at the door one day,” Gregory said.

“What kind of a woman?”

“Just a woman. She was fat.”

“Fat?”

“Kind of heavyset. About forty. Long hair, center part. Mrs. Lane took her walking on the beach. Then the woman left. I figured it was a friend on a visit.”

“Ever saw her before?”

Gregory shook his head. “Maybe an old friend. From the past.”

“What did Mrs. Lane and Jade do after they got back here to the city?”

“I don’t think they did anything yet.”

“No, she went out once,” Groom said. “Mrs. Lane, I mean. Not Jade. On her own, shopping. I drove her.”

“Where?” Reacher asked.

“Staples.”

“The office supply store?” Reacher had seen them all over. A big chain, red and white décor, huge places full of stuff he had no need of. “What did she buy?”

“Nothing,” Groom said. “I waited twenty minutes on the curb, and she didn’t bring anything out.”

“Maybe she arranged a delivery,” Gregory said.

“She could have done that on-line. No need to drag me out in the car.”

“So maybe she was just browsing,” Gregory said.

“Weird place to browse,” Reacher said. “Who does that?”

“School is back soon,” Groom said. “Maybe Jade needed stuff.”

“In which case she’d have gone along,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think? And she’d have bought something.”

“Did she take something in?” Gregory asked. “Maybe she was returning something.”

“She had her tote,” Groom said. “It’s possible.” Then he looked up, beyond Reacher’s shoulder. Edward Lane was back in the room. He was carrying a large leather duffel, and struggling with its bulk. Five million dollars , Reacher thought. So that’s what it looks like . Lane dropped the bag on the floor at the entrance to the foyer. It thumped down on the hardwood and settled like the carcass of a small fat animal.

“I need to see a picture of Jade,” Reacher said.

“Why?” Lane asked.

“Because you want me to pretend I’m a cop. And pictures are the first things cops want to see.”

“Bedroom,” Lane said.

So Reacher fell in behind him and followed him to a bedroom. It was another tall square space, painted a chalky off-white, as serene as a monastery and as quiet as a tomb. There was a cherrywood king-sized bed with pencil posts at the corners. Matching tables at each side. A matching armoire that might have held a television set. A matching desk, with a chair standing in front of it and a framed photograph sitting on it. The photograph was a ten-by-eight, rectangular, set horizontal, not vertical, on the axis that photographers call landscape, not portrait. But it was a portrait. That was for sure. It was a portrait of two people. On the right was Kate Lane. It was the same shot as in the living room print. The same pose, the same eyes, the same developing smile. But the living room print had been cropped to exclude the object of her affection, which was her daughter Jade. Jade was on the left of the bedroom picture. Her pose was a mirror-image of her mother’s. They were about to look at each other, love in their eyes, smiles about to break out on their faces like they were sharing a private joke. In the picture Jade was maybe seven years old. She had long dark hair, slightly wavy, as fine as silk. She had green eyes and porcelain skin. She was a beautiful kid. It was a beautiful photograph.