The Hard Way

"What trees are they shaking?" he asked.

"Hospitals," Kowalski said. "We figure whoever is back has got to be sick."

"Which hospitals?"

"I don’t know," Kowalski said. "All of them, presumably."

"Hospitals don’t tell anyone anything."

"You think? You know what an ER nurse makes?"

Silence for a moment.

"I’m going out again," Reacher said. "You stay here."

Three minutes later he was at the pay phone, dialing Pauling’s cell.

Chapter 45

PAULING ANSWERED ON the second ring. Or the second vibration, Reacher thought. She said her name and Reacher asked, "You got a car?"

She said, "No."

"Then jump in a cab and get over to Dee Marie’s place. Lane and his guys are out scouting hospitals, looking for either Knight or Hobart. They don’t know which one came back yet. But it’s only a matter of time before they hit Saint Vincent’s and get a match on Hobart’s name and buy his address. So I’ll meet you there. We’re going to have to move them."

Then he hung up and flagged a cab of his own on Ninth Avenue. The driver was fast but the traffic was slow. It got a little better after they crossed Broadway. But not much. Reacher sprawled sideways on the seat and rested his head on the window. Breathed slow and easy. He thought: No use fretting about what you can’t control. And he couldn’t control Manhattan’s traffic. Red lights controlled Manhattan’s traffic. Approximately seventy-two of them between the Dakota Building and Hobart’s current billet.

Hudson Street runs one way south to north below West 14th so the cab took Bleecker and Seventh Avenue and Varick. Then it made the right into Charlton. Reacher stopped it halfway down the block and made the final approach on foot. There were three parked cars near Dee Marie’s place. But none of them was an expensive sedan with OSC plates. He glanced south at the oncoming traffic and hit 4L’s button. Pauling answered and Reacher said his name and the street door buzzed.

Up on the fourth floor the apartment door still hung open. Burst hinges, splintered frame. Beyond it were voices in the living room. Dee Marie’s, and Pauling’s. Reacher stepped inside and they stopped talking. They just glanced beyond him at the door. He knew what they were thinking. It was no kind of a secure barrier against the outside world. Dee Marie was still in her cotton shift but Pauling had changed. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She looked good. Hobart himself was where Reacher had last seen him, propped up on the sofa. He looked bad. Pale and sick. But his eyes were blazing. He was angry.

"Lane’s coming here?" he asked.

"Maybe," Reacher said. "Can’t discount the possibility."

"So what are we going to do?"

"We’re going to be smart. We’re going to make sure he finds an empty apartment."

Hobart said nothing. Then he nodded, a little reluctantly.

"Where should you be?" Reacher asked him. "Medically?"

"Medically?" Hobart said. "I have no idea. I guess Dee Marie did some checking."

Dee Marie said, "Birmingham, Alabama, or Nashville, Tennessee. One of the big university hospitals down there. I got brochures. They’re good."

"Not Walter Reed?" Reacher said.

"Walter Reed is good when they get them fresh from the battlefield. But his left foot happened nearly five years ago. And even his right wrist is completely healed. Healed all wrong, but healed all the same. So he needs a whole lot of preliminary stuff first. Bone work, and reconstruction. And that’s after the malaria and the tuberculosis are taken care of. And the malnutrition and the parasites."

"We can’t get him to Birmingham or Nashville tonight."

"We can’t get him there ever. The surgery alone could be over two hundred thousand dollars. The prosthetics could be even more than that." She picked up two brochures from a small table and handed them over. There were expensive graphics and glossy photographs on the fronts. Blue skies, green lawns, warm brick buildings. Inside were details of surgical programs and prosthetics designers. There were more photographs. Kindly men with white hair and white coats cradled mechanical limbs like babies. One-legged people in athletic vests braced themselves on sleek titanium struts at marathon start lines. The captions under the pictures were full of optimism.

"Looks good," Reacher said. He handed the brochures back. Dee Marie put them exactly where they had been before, on the table.

"Pie in the sky," she said.

"A motel tonight," Pauling said. "Somewhere close. Maybe we could rent you a car. Can you drive?"

Dee Marie said nothing.

"Take the offer, Dee," Hobart said. "Easier on you."

"I have a license," Dee Marie said.

"Maybe we could even rent a wheelchair."

"That would be good," Hobart said. "A ground floor room, and a wheelchair. Easier for you, Dee."

"Maybe an efficiency," Pauling said. "With a little kitchen. For the cooking."

"I can’t afford it," Dee Marie said.

The room went quiet and Reacher stepped out the front door and checked the hallway. Checked the stairwell. Nothing was happening. He came back inside and pulled the door as far closed as it would go. Turned left in the entry and walked past the bathroom to the bedroom. It was a small space nearly filled by a queen bed. He guessed Hobart slept there, because the night table was piled with tubes of antiseptic creams and bottles of over-the-counter painkillers. The bed was high. He pictured Dee Marie hoisting her brother on her back, turning around, reversing toward the bed, dumping him down on the mattress. He pictured her straightening him out, tucking him in. Then he pictured her heading for another night on the sofa.

The bedroom window had a wood frame and the glass was streaked with soot. There were faded drapes, three-quarters open. Ornaments on the sill, and a color photograph of a Marine Lance Corporal. Vinnie, Reacher guessed. The dead husband. Blown to bits on a Fallujah roadside. Killed instantly, or not. He had the bill of his dress cap low on his brow and the colors in the picture were vivid and smoothed and airbrushed. An off-post photographer, Reacher guessed. Two prints for about a day’s pay, two cardboard mailers included, one for the mother and one for the wife or the girlfriend. There were similar pictures of Reacher somewhere in the world. For a spell every time he got promoted he would have a picture taken and send it to his mother. She never displayed them, because he wasn’t smiling. Reacher never smiled for the camera.

He stepped close to the window and glanced north. Traffic flowed away from him like a river. He glanced south. Watched the traffic coming toward him.

And saw a black Range Rover slowing and pulling in to the curb.

License plate: OSC 19.

Reacher spun around and was out of the bedroom in three long strides. Back in the living room after three more.

"They’re here," he said. "Now."

Silence for a split second.

Then Pauling said, "Shit."

"What do we do?" Dee Marie said.

"Bathroom," Reacher said. "All of you. Now."

He stepped over to the sofa and grabbed the front of Hobart’s denim shirt and lifted him into the air. Carried him to the bathroom and laid him gently in the tub. Dee Marie and Pauling crowded in after him. Reacher pushed his way past them and back out to the hallway.

"You can’t be out there," Pauling said.

"I have to be," Reacher said. "Or they’ll search the whole place."