Now four feet away.
Show time.
Reacher stepped out and turned to face the guy. The H&K gleamed in the dark. He aimed it at the guy’s face. The guy went cross-eyed, trying to stare at it in the poor illumination.
Reacher said, “Don’t make a sound.”
The guy didn’t. Reacher listened beyond his shoulder. Did the guy have back-up behind him? Apparently not. Nothing to hear. Same as up ahead. City quiet, and old air.
Reacher said, “Do we have a problem?”
The guy was six feet and maybe two-twenty, maybe forty years old, lean and hard, all bone and muscle and dark suspicious eyes. His lips were clamped tight and pulled back in a rictus grin that could have been worried, or quizzical, or contemptuous.
“Do we have a problem?” Reacher asked again.
“You’re a dead man,” the guy said.
“Not so far,” Reacher said. “In fact right now you’re closer to that unhappy state than I am. Don’t you think?”
“Mess with me, and you’re messing with a lot of people.”
“Am I messing with you? Or are you messing with me?”
“We want to know who you are.”
“Why? What did I do to you?”
“Above my pay grade,” the guy said. “All I got to do is bring you in.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Reacher said.
“Easy to say, with a gun in my face.”
Reacher shook his head in the gloom.
“Easy to say anytime,” he said.
He stepped back a pace, and put the gun back in his pocket. He stood there, empty-handed, palms out, with his arms held away from his sides.
“There you go,” he said. “Now you can bring me in.”
The guy didn’t move. He was five inches down in height, maybe thirty pounds in weight, maybe a whole foot in reach. Evidently unarmed, because otherwise his weapon would have been out and in his hand already. Evidently unsettled, too, by Reacher’s gaze, which was steady, and calm, and slightly amused, but also undeniably predatory, and even a little unhinged.
Not a good situation for the guy to be in.
Reacher said, “Maybe we could get to the same place a different way.”
The guy said, “How?”
“Give me your phone. Tell your boss to call me. I’ll tell him who I am. The personal touch is always better.”
“I can’t give you my phone.”
“I’m going to take it anyway. Your choice when.”
The gaze. Steady, calm, amused, predatory, unhinged.
The guy said, “OK.”
Reacher said, “Take it out and set it down on the sidewalk.”
The guy did.
“Now turn around.”
The guy did.
“Now run away as far and as fast as you can.”
The guy did. He took off at a musclebound sprint and was immediately swallowed up by the urban darkness. His footsteps rang out long after he had disappeared from sight. This time he made no attempt at stealth. Reacher listened to the rapid slapping and crunching and sliding until the sound quieted down and faded away to nothing. Then he picked up the phone and walked on.
* * *
—
Three blocks from Barton’s house, Reacher took off his jacket, and folded it into a square, and rolled the square into a tube, and stuffed the tube inside a rusted mailbox outside a one-story office building with boarded-up windows and fire damage on the siding. He walked the rest of the way in his T-shirt only. The nighttime air was cool. It was still springtime. The full weight of summer was yet to come.
Hogan was waiting for him in Barton’s hallway. The drummer. Once a U.S. Marine. Now enjoying patterns he alone controlled.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Were you worried about me?” Reacher said.
“Professionally curious.”
“I wasn’t playing a gig with the Rolling Stones.”
“My previous profession.”
“Objective achieved,” Reacher said.
“Which was what exactly?”
“I wanted a Ukrainian phone. Apparently they text each other a lot. I figured I could look back and see where they’re up to with this. Maybe they mention Trulenko. Maybe I could make them panic, and make them move him. That would be the time of maximum opportunity.”
Abby came down the stairs. Still dressed.
She said, “Hey.”
Reacher said, “Hey back.”
“I heard all that. Good plan. Except won’t they just kill the phone remotely? You won’t hear from them, and they won’t hear from you.”
“I chose the guy I took it from pretty carefully. He was relatively competent. Therefore relatively trusted. Maybe relatively senior. Therefore relatively reluctant to fess up that I took his lunch money. I left him a little embarrassed. He won’t report anything in a hurry. It’s a pride thing. I think I have a few hours, at least.”
“OK, good plan, except nothing.”
“Except I’m not great with phones. There might be menus. All kinds of buttons to press. I might delete something by mistake.”
“OK, show me.”
“And even if I don’t delete them by mistake, the texts are probably in Ukrainian. Which I can’t read without the internet. And I’m really not great with computers.”
“That would be the second step. We would need to start with the phone. Show me.”
“I didn’t bring it here,” Reacher said. “The guy in the Lincoln claimed they could be traced. I don’t want someone knocking on the door five minutes from now.”
“So where is it?”
“I hid it three blocks from here. I figured that was safe enough. Pi times the radius squared. They would have to search nearly a thirty-block circle. They wouldn’t even try.”
Abby said, “OK, let’s go take a look.”
“I also got an Albanian phone. Kind of accidentally. But in the end the same kind of deal. I want to read it. Maybe I can figure out what they’re mad with me about.”
“Are they mad with you?”
“They sent a guy after me. They want to know who I am.”