Tripwire

"Take a good look around, Chester," he said. "Mr. Curry, Mrs. Jacob, and your dear wife, Marilyn. Good people all, I’m sure. Three lives, full of their own petty concerns and triumphs. Three lives, Chester, and now they’re entirely in your hands."

Stone’s head was up, moving in a circle as he looked at the other three at the table. He ended up looking straight across the desk at Hobie.

"Go get the rest of the stock," Hobie said to him. "Tony will accompany you. Straight there, straight back, no tricks, and these three people will live. Anything else, they’ll die. You understand that?"

Stone nodded, silently.

"Pick a number, Chester," Hobie said to him.

"One," Stone said back.

"Pick two more numbers, Chester."

"Two and three," Stone said.

"OK, Marilyn gets the three," Hobie said, "if you decide to be a hero."

"I’ll get the stock," Stone said.

Hobie nodded.

"I think you will," he said. "But you need to sign the transfer first."

He rolled open a drawer and swept the small shiny revolver into it. Then he pulled out a single sheet of paper. Beckoned to Stone who slid himself upright and stood, shakily. He threaded around the desk and signed his name with the Mont Blanc pen from his pocket.

"Mrs. Jacob can be the witness," Hobie said. "She’s a member of the New York State Bar, after all."

Jodie sat still for a long moment. She stared left at the guy with the shotgun, and straight ahead at Tony, and then right at Hobie behind the desk. She pulled herself upright. Stepped to the desk and reversed the form and took Stone’s pen from him. Signed her name and wrote the date on the line next to it.

"Thank you," Hobie said. "Now sit down again and keep completely still."

She went back to the sofa and leaned forward over the table. Her shoulders were starting to hurt. Tony took Stone’s elbow and moved him toward the door.

"Five minutes there, five back," Hobie called. "Don’t be a hero, Chester."

Tony led Stone out of the office and the door closed gently behind them. There was the thump of the lobby door and the faraway whine of the elevator, and then there was silence. Jodie was in pain. The grip of the glass on her clammy palms was pulling the skin away from under her fingernails. Her shoulders were burning. Her neck was aching. She could see on their faces the others were suffering, too. There were sudden breaths and gasps. The beginnings of low moans.

Hobie gestured to the guy with the shotgun and they changed places. Hobie strolled nervously around the office and the shotgun guy sat at the desk with the weapon resting on its grips, swiveling randomly left and right like a prison searchlight. Hobie was checking his wristwatch, counting the minutes. Jodie saw the sun slipping southwest, lining up with the gaps in the window blinds and shooting steep angled beams into the room. She could hear the ragged breathing of the two others near her and she could feel the faint shudder of the building coming through the table under her hands.

Five minutes there and five back add up to ten, but at least twenty minutes passed. Hobie paced and checked his watch a dozen times. Then he walked through into reception and the guy with the shotgun followed him to the office door. He kept the weapon pointed into the room, but his head was turned, watching his boss.

"Is he planning to let us go?" Curry whispered.

Jodie shrugged and lifted up onto her fingertips, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head to ease the pain.

"I don’t know," she whispered back.

Marilyn had her forearms pinched tight together, with her head resting on them. She looked up and shook her head.

"He killed two cops," she whispered. "We were witnesses."

"Stop talking," the guy called from the door.

They heard the whine of the elevator again and the faint bump through the floor as it stopped. There was a moment’s quiet and then the lobby door opened and suddenly there was noise in reception, Tony’s voice, and then Hobie’s, loud and fueled with relief. Hobie came back into the office carrying a white package and smiling with the mobile half of his face. He clamped the package under his right elbow and tore it open as he walked and Jodie saw more engraving on thick parchment. He took the long way around to the desk and dumped the certificates on top of the three hundred he already had. Stone followed Tony like he had been forgotten and stood gazing at the life’s work of his ancestors piled casually on the scarred wood. Marilyn looked up and walked her fingers backward across the glass, jacking herself upright with her hands because she had no strength left in her shoulders.

"OK, you got them all," she said quietly. "Now you can let us go."

Hobie smiled. "Marilyn, what are you, a moron?"

Tony laughed. Jodie looked from him to Hobie. She saw they were very nearly at the end of some long process. Some goal had been in sight, and now it was very close. Tony’s laughter was about release after days of strain and tension.

"Reacher is still out there," she said quietly, like a move in a game of chess.

Hobie stopped smiling. He touched the hook to his forehead and rubbed it across his scars and nodded.

"Reacher," he said. "Yes, the last piece of the puzzle. We mustn’t forget about Reacher, must we? He’s still out there. But out where, exactly?"

She hesitated.

"I don’t know, exactly," she said.

Then her head came up, defiant.

"But he’s in the city," she said. "And he’ll find you."

Hobie met her gaze. Stared at her, contempt in his face.

"You think that’s some kind of threat?" he sneered. "Truth is I want him to find me. Because he has something I require. Something vital. So help me out, Mrs. Jacob. Call him and invite him right over."

She was silent for a moment.

"I don’t know where he is," she said.

"Try your place," Hobie said back. "We know he’s been staying there. He’s probably there right now. You got off the plane at eleven-fifty, right?"

She stared at him. He nodded, complacently.

"We check these things. We own a boy called Simon, who I believe you’ve met. He put you on the seven o’clock flight from Honolulu, and we called JFK and they told us it landed at eleven-fifty exactly. Old Jack Reacher was all upset in Hawaii, according to our boy Simon, so he’s probably still upset. And tired. Like you are. You look tired, Mrs. Jacob, you know that? But your friend Jack Reacher is probably in bed at your place, sleeping it off, while you’re here having fun with the rest of us. So call him, tell him to come over and join you."

She stared down at the table. Said nothing.

"Call him. Then you can see him one more time before you die."

She was silent. She stared down at the glass. It was smeared with her handprints. She wanted to call him. She wanted to see him. She felt like she had felt a million times over fifteen long years. She wanted to see him again. His lazy, lopsided grin. His tousled hair. His arms, so long they gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house. His eyes, cold, icy blue like the Arctic. His hands, giant battered mitts that bunched into fists the size of footballs. She wanted to see those hands again. She wanted to see them around Hobie’s throat.

She glanced around the office. The sunbeams had crawled an inch across the desk. She saw Chester Stone, inert. Marilyn, trembling. Curry, white in the face and breathing hard next to her. The guy with the shotgun, relaxed. Reacher would break him in half without even thinking about it. She saw Tony, his eyes fixed on hers. And Hobie, caressing his hook with his manicured hand, smiling at her, waiting. She turned and looked at the closed door. She imagined it bursting open with a crash and Jack Reacher striding in through it. She wanted to see that happen. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything.

"OK," she whispered. "I’ll call him."

Hobie nodded. "Tell him I’ll be here a few more hours. But tell him if he wants to see you again, he better come quick. Because you and I have a little date in the bathroom, about thirty minutes from now."

She shuddered and pushed off the glass table and stood upright. Her legs were weak and her shoulders were on fire. Hobie came around and took her elbow and led her to the door. Led her over behind the reception counter.

"This is the only telephone in the place," he said. "I don’t like telephones."

He sat down in the chair and pressed nine with the tip of his hook. Handed the phone across to her. "Come closer, so I can hear what he says to you. Marilyn deceived me with the phone, and I’m not going to let that happen to me again."

He made her stoop down and put her face next to his. He smelled of soap. He put his hand in his pocket and came out with the tiny revolver Tony had slipped in there. He touched it to her side. She held the phone at an angle with the earpiece upward between them. She studied the console. There was a mass of buttons. A speed-dial facility for 911. She hesitated for a second and then dialed her own home number. It rang six times. Six long, soft purrs. With each one, she willed him: be there, be there. But it was her own voice that came back to her, from her machine.

"He’s not there," she said blankly.

Hobie smiled.

"That’s too bad," he said.

She was stooped over next to him, numb with shock.

"He’s got my mobile," she said suddenly. "I just remembered."