The Hard Way (Page 72)

"I didn’t mean that, either. I meant with the whole thing."

"I told you we wouldn’t be putting anybody on trial."

Pauling nodded.

"She’s cute," she said. "Isn’t she?"

"Who?"

"Kate. She makes me feel ancient."

"Older women," Reacher said. "Good for something."

"Thanks."

"I mean it. Give me a choice, I’d go home with you, not her."

"Why?"

"Because I’m weird like that."

"I’m supposed to put people on trial."

"So was I, once. But I’m not going to this time. And I’m OK with that."

"Me too. That’s what’s bothering me."

"You’ll get over it. The backhoe and a plane ticket will help."

"Distance? Six feet of earth and three thousand air miles?"

"Works every time."

"Does it? Really?"

"We splattered a thousand bugs on our windshield yesterday. A thousand more today. One extra won’t make any difference."

"Lane isn’t a bug."

"No, he’s worse."

"What about the others?"

"They’ve got a choice. The purest kind of choice there is. They can stay or they can go. Entirely up to them."

"Where do you think they are now?"

"Somewhere out there," Reacher said.

A half-hour later Kate Lane came downstairs again. The tails of her borrowed shirt were tied at her waist and the sleeves were rolled to her elbows.

"Jade’s asleep," she said. She turned sideways to squeeze past a displaced dining chair and Reacher figured it was possible to see that she was pregnant. Just. Now that he had been told.

He asked, "Is she doing OK?"

"Better than we could have hoped," Kate said. "She’s not sleeping great. The jet lag has screwed her up. And she’s a little nervous, I guess. And she doesn’t understand why there are no animals here. She doesn’t understand arable farming. She thinks we’re hiding a whole bunch of cute little creatures from her."

"Does she know about the new brother or sister or whatever it’s going to be?"

Kate nodded. "We waited until we were on the plane. We tried to make it all part of the adventure."

"How was it at the airport?"

"No problem. The passports were fine. They looked at the names more than the pictures. To make sure they matched the tickets."

Pauling said, "So much for Homeland Security."

Kate nodded again. "We got the idea from something we read in the newspaper. Some guy left on a short-notice business trip, grabbed his passport from the drawer, and he’d been through six separate countries before he realized it was his wife’s passport that he had grabbed."

Reacher said, "Tell me how the whole thing went down."

"It was pretty easy, really. We did stuff in advance. Bought the voice machine, rented the room, got the chair, took the car keys."

"Taylor did most of that, right?"

"He said people would remember me more than him."

"He was probably right."

"But I had to buy the voice machine. Too weird if a guy who couldn’t talk wanted one."

"I guess."

"Then I copied the photograph at Staples. That was tough. I had to let Groom drive me. It would have been too suspicious to insist on Graham all the time. But after that it was easy. We left for Bloomingdale’s that morning and went straight to Graham’s apartment instead. Just holed up there and waited. We kept really quiet in case anyone checked with the neighbors. We kept the lights off and covered the windows in case anyone passed by on the street. Then later we started the phone calls. Right from the apartment. I was very nervous at first."

"You forgot to say no cops."

"I know. I thought I’d blown it immediately. But Edward didn’t seem to notice. Then it got much easier later. With practice."

"I was in the car with Burke. You sounded great by then."

"I thought there was someone with him. There was something in his voice. And he kept narrating where he was. He was telling you, I guess. You must have been hidden."

"You asked for his name in case you slipped and used it anyway."

Kate nodded. "I knew who it was, obviously. And I thought it might sound dominating."

"You know Greenwich Village pretty well."

"I lived there before I married Edward."

"Why did you split the demands into three parts?"

"Because to ask for it all at once would have been too much of a clue. We thought we better let the stress build up a little. Then maybe Edward would miss the connection."

"I don’t think he missed it. But I think he misinterpreted it. He started thinking about Hobart and the Africa connection."

"How bad is Hobart, really?"

"About as bad as it gets."

"That’s unforgivable."

"No argument from me."

"Do you think I’m cold-blooded?"

"If I did it wouldn’t be a criticism."

"Edward wanted to own me. Like a chattel. And he said if I was ever unfaithful he would rupture Jade’s hymen with a potato peeler. He said he would tie me up and make me watch him do it. He said that when she was five years old."

Reacher said nothing.

Kate turned to Pauling and asked, "Do you have children?"

Pauling shook her head.

Kate said, "You blot a thing like that right out of your mind. You assume it was just the sick product of a temporary rage. Like he wasn’t quite right in the head. But then I heard the story about Anne and I knew he was capable of really doing it. So now I want him dead."

Reacher said, "He’s going to be. Very soon."

"They say you should never get between a lioness and her cub. I never really understood that before. Now I do. There are no limits."

The room went as quiet as only the countryside can. The flames in the fireplace flickered and danced. Strange shadows moved on the walls.

Reacher asked, "Are you planning on staying here forever?"

"I hope to," Kate said. "Organic farming is going to be a big thing. Better for people, better for the land. We can buy some more acres from the locals. Maybe expand a little."

"We?"

"I feel like a part of it."

"What are you growing?"

"Right now, just grass. We’re in the hay business for the next five years or so. We have to work the old chemicals out of the soil. And that takes time."

"Hard to picture you as a farmer."

"I think I’m going to enjoy it."

"Even when Lane is out of the picture permanently?"

"In that case I guess we would go back to New York occasionally. But downtown only. I won’t go back to the Dakota."

"Anne’s sister lives directly opposite. In the Majestic. She’s been watching Lane every day for four years."

Kate said, "I’d like to meet her. And I’d like to see Hobart’s sister again."

"Like a survivors’ club," Pauling said.

Reacher got out of his chair and walked to the window. Saw nothing but nighttime blackness. Heard nothing but silence.

"First we have to survive," he said.

They kept the fire going and dozed quietly in the armchairs. When the clock in Reacher’s head hit one-thirty in the morning he tapped Pauling on the knee and stood up and stretched. Then they headed outside together into the dead-of-night dark and cold. Called softly and met Taylor and Jackson in a huddle outside the front door. Reacher took Taylor’s weapon and headed for the south end of the house. The gun was warm from Taylor’s hands. The safety was above and behind the trigger. It had tritium markings, which made them faintly luminous. Reacher selected single fire and raised the rifle to his shoulder and checked the fit. It felt pretty good. It balanced pretty well. The carrying handle was like an exaggerated version of an M16’s, with a neat little oval aperture in the front slope to provide a line-of-sight back to the built-in scope, which was a plain 3x monocular, which according to the laws of optics pulled the target three times closer than the naked eye but also made it three stops darker, which rendered it functionally useless at night. Three stops darker than pitch black was no use to anyone. But overall the thing was a handsome weapon. It would be fine by dawn.