The cars came closer. Their lights got brighter. Reacher gave up on doorways. He figured he had misheard. Or misread her lips. At that point his brain started cycling through scenarios involving two guys from the south and two from the north, no doubt all four of them armed, although probably not with shotguns, so close to downtown, therefore handguns only, possibly suppressed, depending on their de facto arrangement with the local police department. As in, don’t frighten the voters. But against any instinct toward caution would be extreme reluctance to disappoint their bosses.
The cars slowed to a stop.
Reacher was pinned right in the middle.
Rule one, set in stone since he was a tiny kid, back when he first realized he could be either frightened or frightening, was to run toward danger, not away from it. Which right then gave him his pick of forward or backward. He chose forward. North, the way he was already going. No break in his stride. No reversal of momentum. Faster and harder. Glare ahead of him and glare behind him. He kept on going. Instinctive, but also sound tactics. As sound as they could be, under the dismal circumstances. In the sense of making the best of a very bad hand. He was distorting the picture, at least. What the pointy-heads would call altering the battle space. The guys ahead would feel mounting pressure the closer he got. The guys behind would have longer shots. Both conditions would impair efficiency. Ultimately below fifty percent, with a bit of luck. Because the guys behind would worry about friendly fire. Their buddies up ahead were right next to the target.
The guys behind might take themselves out of the fight voluntarily.
Making the best of a very bad hand.
Reacher hustled onward.
He heard car doors open.
On his left, as he hustled, he saw retail store doorways jumping in and out of the headlight shadows, one by one, all of them mean and closed tight. Until one of them wasn’t. Because it wasn’t a doorway. It was an alley. On his right the traffic curb was unbroken, but on his left there was a gloomy eight-foot gap between buildings, paved the same way as the municipal sidewalk. A pedestrian thoroughfare of some kind. Public. Leading where? He didn’t care. It was dark. It was guaranteed to let out somewhere a whole lot better than an empty street lit up bright by four headlight beams from two face to face automobiles.
He ducked into the alley.
He heard footsteps start behind him.
He hustled on. The depth of a building later, the alley widened out to a narrow street. Still dark. The footsteps behind him kept on coming. He stayed close to the buildings, where the shadows were deepest.
A door opened in the darkness ahead.
A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.
Chapter 14
The door closed again softly and three seconds later the footsteps clattered by outside, at a slow and wary jog. Then silence came back. The hand on Reacher’s arm pulled him deeper into darkness. Small fingers, but strong. They passed into a different space. A different acoustic. A different smell. A different room. He heard the scrabble of fingertips, searching for a light switch on a wall.
The light came on.
He blinked.
The waitress.
Watch where I go.
An alley, not a doorway. Or an alley leading to a doorway. An alley leading to a doorway with a door left open a tempting inch.
“You live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
She was still dressed for work. Black denim pants, black button-up shirt. Petite, gamine, short dark hair, eyes full of concern.
“Thank you,” Reacher said. “For inviting me in.”
“I tried to think what kind of tip I would like,” she said. “If I was a stranger the doorman was looking at sideways.”
“Was he?”
“You must have stirred something up.”
He didn’t answer. The room they were in was a cozy space with muted colors, full of worn and comfortable items, some of them maybe from the pawn shop, cleaned and fixed up, and some of them bolted together from the remains of old industrial components. The frame from some kind of an old machine held up the coffee table. Same kind of thing with a bookshelf. And so on. Repurposing, it was called. He had read about it in a magazine. He liked the style. He liked the result. It was a nice room. Then he heard a voice in his head: Be a shame if anything happened to it.
“You work for them,” he said. “You shouldn’t be offering me refuge.”
“I don’t work for them,” she said. “I work for the couple who own the bar. The guy on the door is the cost of doing business. It would be the same wherever I worked.”
“He seemed to think he could boss you around.”
“They all do. Part of inviting you in is paying them back.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m Jack Reacher,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Abigail Gibson,” she said. “People call me Abby.”
“People call me Reacher.”
She said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Reacher.”
They shook hands, quite formally. Small fingers, but strong.
He said, “I stirred it up on purpose. I wanted to see if and how fast and how hard they would react to something.”
“What something?”
“The name Maxim Trulenko. You ever heard of him?”
“Sure,” Abby said. “He just went bankrupt. Some kind of dot-com bust. He was famous here for a spell.”
“I want to find him.”
“Why?”
“He owes people money.”
“Are you a debt collector? You told me you were out of work.”
“Pro bono,” Reacher said. “Temporary. For an old couple I met. So far exploratory only. Just a toe in the water.”
“Doesn’t matter if he owes people money. He hasn’t got any. He’s bankrupt.”
“There’s a theory he hid some private cash under his mattress.”
“There’s always a theory like that.”
“I think in this case it might be right. Purely as a logical proposition. If he was broke, he would have been found by now. But he hasn’t been found by now, therefore he can’t be broke. Because the only way not to be found by now is to pay the Ukrainians to hide him. Which requires money. Therefore he still has some. If I find him soon, there might be some left.”
“For your old couple.”