“How did you hear about him?”
She didn’t answer. Just shook her head.
He said, “What happened to you?”
“Who says anything did?”
“You just saw two dead bodies. Now I’m talking about threatening people and stealing their money. I’m that kind of guy. We’re standing by a queen bed. Most women would be edging out the door by now. You’re not. You really, really don’t like these people. Must be a reason.”
“Maybe I really like you.”
“I live in hope,” Reacher said. “But I’m realistic.”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “Maybe.”
“OK.”
“What now?”
“We should go get your bag. And we should go move your car. I don’t want it parked right outside. They already saw it at the Shevick house. Someone else might have seen it driving in today. We should go put it somewhere random. Always safer that way.”
“How long will we have to live like this?”
“I live like this all the time. I would have been pushing up daisies long ago if I didn’t.”
“Frank said I can’t ever go home again.”
“And Hogan saw how you could.”
“If you get Trulenko.”
“Six chances before the week is over.”
They went downstairs again into the deep bass groove, and onward out to the car. Abby wrestled her bag off the rear seat and hauled it back to the hallway. They closed the door on it and got in the car. It started the second time and dragged its fender on the tight turn out of its boxed-in slot. They drove a random zigzag route, through different parts of the neighborhood, some of them shabbily residential, some of them commercial, including two full blocks dedicated to the construction trade, including an electrical warehouse, and a plumbing warehouse, and a lumber yard. Then came progressive stages of decay, all the way to abandoned blocks just like the place where the Lincoln had burned.
“Here?” Abby asked.
Reacher looked all around. Desolation everywhere. No owners, no occupants, no residents. No innocent doors to get busted down, if the car was spotted nearby. No risk of collateral damage.
“Works for me,” he said.
She parked and they got out and she locked up and they walked away. They went back more or less the same way they had come, cutting the corners off some of the widest zigs and zags of their earlier random route, but always keeping track of it. Their surroundings grew cleaner and better maintained. They came to the blocks dedicated to the construction trade. First up in the reverse direction came the lumber yard. There was a guy standing in the scoop between the sidewalk and the gate. Somewhat sentry-like. Maybe there to check loads in and out. Presumably lumber got scammed and stolen like anything else.
They passed the guy by and walked on, to the plumbing warehouse, the electrical warehouse, and onward, through a tangle of streets. They heard the bass and drums a hundred yards away.
* * *
—
The reports came in fast, but not fast enough. One after the other the members of the inner council got hurried calls on their cell phones. An old white Toyota Corolla with a half-off front fender had been seen driving one block, then another, then another. No rhyme or reason in terms of direction. No obvious destination. Generally it seemed to be headed toward the tumbledown neighborhoods where not even homeless people lived.
Then came the paydirt call. A reliable guy a hundred yards away saw the car slow, stop, and park. Two people got out. The driver was a small woman with short dark hair. In her twenties or thirties, and dressed all in black. Her passenger was a huge guy, about twice her size. He was older, easily six-five and two-fifty, built like a brick outhouse, and dressed like a refugee. They locked the car and walked away together, and were lost to sight very quickly, after the first corner they turned.
All that information was shared immediately, by calls and voicemails and texts. Fast, but not fast enough. The message got to the guy at the lumber yard gate about ninety seconds after a small dark-haired woman and a huge ugly guy had walked right past. Close enough to touch. More minutes were spent getting cars together, and then they streamed away in the direction the couple had been walking.
No result. The small woman and the big man were long gone. They had disappeared somewhere in a crowded residential neighborhood, maybe ten blocks by ten of shabby row houses packed tightly together. Maybe four hundred separate addresses. Plus basements and sublets. Full of deadbeats and weirdoes, who either came and went at all hours, or never went out at all. Hopeless.
The top boys put a new word out. All eyes open. A small dark-haired woman, younger, and a big ugly guy, older. Report back immediately.
Chapter 23
Neither Barton nor Hogan had a gig that night, so they closed down their jam when Reacher and Abby got back, and proposed a chill evening in, maybe with Chinese delivery, maybe a bottle of wine, maybe a little weed, some conversation, some stories, some catch-up. Maybe put some records on. All good, until Abby’s cell phone rang.
It was Maria Shevick, calling from Aaron Shevick’s phone. She and Abby had exchanged numbers. Just in case. And this felt like a just-in-case situation. Maria said a black Lincoln Town Car was parked outside her house. Two guys in it, watching. They had been there all afternoon. They looked like they were set to stay.
Abby passed her phone to Reacher.
He said, “They’re looking for me. Because I mentioned Trulenko. They got worried. Just ignore them.”
Maria asked, “Suppose they knock on the door?”
Seventy, stooped, and starving.
He said, “Let them search the house. Show them whatever they want to look at. They’ll see I’m not there, and they’ll go back to their car, and after that all they’ll need to do is watch the sidewalk. Should be relatively painless.”
“Very well.”
“Any news on Meg?”
“Good and bad,” Maria said.
“Start with the good,” Reacher said.
“I think for the first time the doctors truly believe she’s improving. I can hear it in their voices. Not what they say, but the way they say it. Their words are always circumspect. But now they’re excited. They think they’re winning. I can tell.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“They’ll want to confirm it with tests and scans. Which we’ll have to pay for first.”
“How much?”
“We don’t know yet. A lot, I’m sure. They have amazing machines now. There have been dramatic advances in soft tissue analysis. It’s all very expensive.”