Lee Child - MatchUp

“Definitely. The hemorrhaging means the injury occurred at the time of death.”

“Looks like he was hit by something with a pair of long, thin edges. Or a pair of bars.”

“Or he hit something.”

“You think he fell?”

Matias shook her head. “I found no blunt trauma anywhere else on the body. No lacerations, no hematomas, no fractures. Nothing but this linear bruising and the abrasions on his throat.”

“No defensive wounds on his hands or arms?”

“A few broken nails. But I have no way to tell when or how that happened.”

“And there was no skin or tissue under his nails.” Brennan knew that from Matias’s notes. “No trace at all.”

“It makes no sense. If conscious, victims of strangulation claw at their attackers’ hands. Or at the ligature cutting off their air.”

“Yes.”

Brennan straightened and closed her eyes. Again played a mental holograph of the assault.

Yeow.

Warwick facing him with the plastic bag.

Or behind him.

Tall, skinny Warwick.

She pictured the two linear marks. Their position, spacing, and orientation.

The figure morphed. Grew shorter. More solid.

Sudden synapse.

Brennan’s eyes flew open.

Not Paul Warwick.

Samuel Rye!

“These bruises were made by a prosthetic hand.” Tone emphatically calm. “That’s why you found no skin under Yeow’s nails.”

“A device with two hooks?” Matias spoke while eyeballing the patterned injury on Yeow’s neck.

“Yes.”

“That tracks.” Nodding slowly.

Brennan stripped off and bunched her apron, mask, and gloves. “I know who did this.”

“Seriously?” Matias, unconvinced.

“I have to go.” Toe-slamming the pedal and tossing her gear into the biohazard bin.

“That’s it?”

“My paralegal is in grave danger.”

Brennan grabbed her shoulder bag and fired out the door. She thumbed her phone for an Uber as she hustled. The app seemed agonizingly slow. But eventually Fong promised to be there in a black Camry hybrid within eleven minutes. She pushed out to the street and ran, hoping her phone would bring Fong to her. She could be a mile away in eleven minutes. Maybe more. Then her phone buzzed in her hand. Caller ID displayed the same unfamiliar number she had seen before. Albert Thorsten. Yeow’s editor at the Washington Post . The Kalahari voice.

It said, “I apologize.”

“For what, dammit?”

No time for games.

“The Metro cops found Yeow’s notes. They returned them to me. You were right. Calder Massee killed himself. He was a spy. There was an execution order, but the rest of the file shows Massee was already dead when the assassin got there. He shot himself in his car. Ian Massee and Paul Warwick were cherry-picking the evidence. Yeow’s story was going to cut them off at the knees. They’re the suspects now.”

“No, it was Samuel Rye. Yeow’s story was going to kill his show. I should have known. He said it wasn’t about the money. When someone says that, it’s always about the money.”

She disconnected and dialed Veronica Luong.

Voice mail.

She said, “Tell Szewczk and Dupreau to get to Samuel Rye’s place in Crystal City right now. Cops, SWAT, everything. Rye is the killer.”

Then she saw a black Camry up ahead. She waved. It stopped. She got in.

SAMUEL RYE STOOD FRAMED IN the open doorway. Short, squat, powerful. All slabs and angles. In his good hand was a Colt Python, which was a stainless steel six-shot revolver about the size and weight of a sledgehammer. Clamped in his hook was an open switchblade. Six inches of fine glittering steel, faintly blue in the fluorescent light. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. Reacher didn’t like knives.

He should have known.

It’s not the money.

It’s always the money.

Rye said, “Sit down.”

Reacher said, “No.”

“I’ll shoot.”

“You won’t. That’s a very loud gun. The cops are coming.”

“Says you.”

“Brennan went to look at Yeow’s autopsy notes. She won’t find skin under the nails. She’ll put two and two together. She’s smart like that. And she has a cell phone.”

Rye took a step into the room.

He leveled the Colt. The barrel looked the size of a water main. It was pointing at Reacher’s center mass.

Stay alive and see what the next minute brings.

That was Reacher’s motto.

He said, “How did you get her prints on the bag?”

Rye smiled. Pleased with himself.

He said, “I guess you don’t watch much television.”

“The Yankees sometimes,” Reacher said. “When I can.”

“My last program. All about 3-D printing. Very useful. But I hinted it could be used for bad purposes too.”

“So how?”

“She arrived at the Marriott two days ago and had a room-service dinner. I bought her water glass from the waiter. Lifted her prints, scanned them, filled the printer cartridge with squalene, and printed them all over a brand-new bag, full size, about half a millimeter high.”

Reacher nodded. He had heard of squalene. A Russian watchmaker had once told him all about it. It was a natural organic compound, found in shark liver oil and olive oil. And on human noses. The watchmaker used it to lubricate delicate mechanisms.

Rye said, “Sit down.”

“No,” Reacher said again.

He heard footsteps out in the corridor. Quiet and hesitant.

Getting closer.

Ian Massee appeared in the doorway.

He looked in bad shape. Bent over, limping, breathing ragged.

He said, “The bastard hit me.”

Rye said, “We have worse problems than that.”

Massee shuffled in. Stopped between Rye and Warwick. If Rye was the twelve on a clock face, Massee was the one and Warwick was the two. Reacher was the six. Outnumbered. A classic three against one.

The gun was still steady on Reacher’s chest.

Rye said, “Is Brennan planning to meet you here?”

Reacher said, “No.”

Then he sensed more movement in the corridor. Almost nothing. Just a faint disturbance in the air.

He looked at Rye and said, “You should cut your losses and get the hell out. Or shoot Massee, not me. He got you into this mess. He’s as bad as his big brother.”

Rye said nothing.

Behind his left shoulder Reacher saw a third of a face, a green eye, a sweep of dark blond hair. Brennan, peering around the doorjamb. Exactly the same as at the chained door of her hotel room, back at the beginning.

He said, “Time is ticking away.”

Brennan moved soundlessly into the room. A yard behind Rye.

Reacher said, “I wish I was a woman.”

Rye said, “What?”

“I would have a purse. I could swing it like a bat. I could knock your gun hand out of the way.”

“What?” Rye said again.

And Brennan did exactly that. Reacher saw thirty-seven hours of anger and outrage and frustration in her face, channeling into some kind of deadly focus. She wound up like a discus thrower at the Olympics and swung her bag from behind and smashed it into Rye’s forearm with all the strength in her body. Which was evidently considerable. The gun was swept all the way from the six on the clock face to the three. It fired with a deafening crash and a television monitor exploded, and simultaneously Reacher smashed a giant fist into the exposed side of Rye’s head, jaw, ear, and cheekbone, and then he danced to his right and crashed an elbow into Warwick’s throat. Rye and Warwick went down backward, and Massee sank to his knees clutching his chest. Maybe a heart attack, all by himself.

Reacher looked at Brennan and said, “Thank you.”