Without Fail

"I’m sorry," he said. "I tried on his suit."

She said nothing. Just cried.

"Stupid, I guess," he said.

She moved her head, but he couldn’t tell if she was saying yes, it was or no, it wasn’t. She locked her arms around his body and just held on. He put one hand low on her back and used the other to smooth her hair. He held her like that for minutes. She fought the tears and then gulped twice and pulled away. Swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Not your fault," she said.

He said nothing.

"You looked so real. I bought him that tie."

"I should have thought," Reacher said.

She ducked down to her purse and came back with a tissue. Blew her nose and smoothed her hair.

"Oh, God," she said.

"I’m sorry," he said again.

"Don’t worry," she said. "I’ll be OK."

He said nothing.

"You looked so good, is all," she said. "Just standing there."

She was staring at him quite openly. Then she reached out and straightened his tie. Touched a spot on his shirt where her tears had dampened it. Ran her fingers behind the lapels of his jacket. Stepped forward on tiptoe and locked her hands behind his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

"So good," she said, and kissed him again, hard.

He held still for a second and then kissed her back. Hard. Her mouth was cool. Her tongue was swift. She tasted faintly of lipstick. Her teeth were small and smooth. He could smell perfume on her skin and in her hair. He put one hand low on her side and the other behind her head. He could feel her breasts against his chest. Her ribs, yielding slightly under his hand. Her hair, between his fingers. Her hand was cold and urgent on the back of his neck. Her fingers were raking upward into the stubble from his haircut. He could feel her nails on his skin. He slid his hand up her back. Then she stopped moving. Held still. Pulled away. She was breathing heavily. Her eyes were closed. She touched the back of her hand to her mouth.

"We shouldn’t do this," she said.

He looked at her.

"Probably not," he said.

She opened her eyes. Said nothing.

"So what should we do?" he asked.

She moved sideways and stepped into her living room.

"I don’t know," she said. "Eat dinner, I guess. Did you wait?"

He followed her into the room.

"Yes," he said. "I waited."

"You’re very like him," she said.

"I know," he said.

"Do you understand what I mean?"

He nodded. "What you saw in him you see in me, a little bit."

"But are you like him?"

He knew exactly what she was asking. Did you see things the same? Did you share tastes? Were you attracted to the same women?

"Like I told you," he said. "There are similarities. And there are differences."

"That’s no answer."

"He’s dead," Reacher said. "That’s an answer."

"And if he wasn’t?"

"Then a lot of things would be different."

"Suppose I’d never known him. Suppose I’d gotten your name some other way."

"Then I might not be here at all."

"Suppose you were anyway."

He looked at her. Took a deep breath, and held it, and let it out.

"Then I doubt if we’d be standing here talking about dinner," he said.

"Maybe you wouldn’t be a substitute," she said. "Maybe you’d be the real thing and Joe was the substitute."

He said nothing.

"This is too weird," she said. "We can’t do this."

"No," he said. "We can’t."

"It was a long time ago," she said. "Six years."

"Is Armstrong OK?"

"Yes," she said. "He’s OK."

Reacher said nothing.

"We broke up, remember?" she said. "A year before he died. It’s not like I’m his tragic widow or something."

Reacher said nothing.

"And it’s not like you’re really his grieving brother either," she said. "You hardly knew him."

"Mad at me about that?"

She nodded. "He was a lonely man. He needed somebody. So I’m a little mad about it."

"Not half as much as I am."

She said nothing in reply. Just moved her wrist and checked her watch. It was a strange gesture, so he checked his, too. The second hand hit nine-thirty exactly. Her cell phone rang inside her open purse out in the hallway. It was loud in the silence.

"My people checking in," she said. "From Armstrong’s house."

She stepped back to the hallway and bent down and answered the call. Hung up without comment.

"All quiet," she said. "I told them to call every hour."

He nodded. She looked anywhere but straight at him. The moment was gone.

"Chinese again?" she asked.

"Suits me," he said. "Same order."

She called it in from the kitchen phone and disappeared upstairs to take a shower. He waited in the living room and took the food from the delivery guy when he eventually showed up with it. She came down again and they ate across from each other at the kitchen table. She brewed coffee and they drank two cups each slowly, not talking. Her cell phone rang again at exactly ten-thirty. She had it next to her at the table and answered it immediately. Just a short message.

"All quiet," she said. "So far, so good."

"Stop worrying," he said. "It would take an air strike to get him in his house."

She smiled suddenly. "Remember Harry Truman?"

"My favorite president," Reacher said. "From what I know about him."

"Ours, too," she said. "From what we know about him. One time around 1950 the White House residence was being renovated and he was living in Blair House across Pennsylvania Avenue. Two men came to kill him. One was taken out by the cops on the street, but the other made it to the door. Our people had to pull Truman off the assassin. He said he was going to take his gun away and stick it up his ass."

"Truman was like that."

"You bet he was. You should hear some of the old stories."

"Would Armstrong be like that?"

"Maybe. Depends how the moment struck him, I guess. He’s pretty gentle physically, but he’s not a coward. And I’ve seen him very angry."

"And he looks tough enough."

Froelich nodded. Checked her watch. "We should get back to the office now. See if anything’s happened anyplace else. You call Neagley while I clear up here. Tell her to be ready to roll in twenty minutes."

They were back in the office before eleven-fifteen. The message logs were blank. Nothing of significance from the D.C. police department. Nothing from North Dakota, nothing from the FBI. Updates were still streaming into the National Crime Information Center’s database. Froelich started combing through the day’s reports. She found nothing of interest. Her cell phone rang at eleven-thirty. All was quiet and peaceful in Georgetown. She turned back to the computer. Nothing doing. Time ticked around to midnight. Monday finished and Tuesday started. Stuyvesant showed up again. He just appeared in the doorway like he had before. Said nothing. The only chair in the room was Froelich’s own. Stuyvesant leaned against the door frame. Reacher sat on the floor. Neagley perched on a file cabinet.

Froelich waited ten minutes and called the D.C. cops. They had nothing to report. She called the Hoover Building and the FBI told her nothing significant had happened before midnight in the East. She turned back to the computer screen. Called out occasional incoming stories but neither Stuyvesant nor Reacher nor Neagley could twist them into any kind of a connection with a potential threat to Armstrong. The clock moved on to one in the morning. Midnight, Central time. She called the police department in Bismarck. They had nothing for her. She called the North Dakota State Police. Nothing at all. She tried the FBI again. Nothing reported from their field offices in the last sixty minutes. She put the phone down and scooted her chair back from her desk. Breathed out.

"Well, that’s it," she said. "Nothing happened."

"Excellent," Stuyvesant said.

"No," Reacher said. "Not excellent. Not excellent at all. It’s the worst possible news we could have gotten."

Chapter 8

Stuyvesant led them straight back toward the conference room. Neagley walked next to Reacher, close by his shoulder in the narrow corridors.

"Great suit," she whispered.

"First one I ever wore," he whispered back. "We on the same page with this?"

"On the same page and out of a job, probably," she said. "That is, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking."

They turned a corner. Walked on. Stuyvesant stopped and shepherded them into the conference room and came in after them and hit the lights and closed the door. Reacher and Neagley sat together on one side of the long table and Stuyvesant sat next to Froelich on the other, like he foresaw an adversarial element to the conversation.

"Explain," he said.

Silence for a second.

"This is definitely not an inside job," Neagley said.

Reacher nodded. "Although we were fooling ourselves by ever thinking it was entirely one thing or the other. It was always both. But it was useful shorthand. The real question was where the balance lay. Was it fundamentally an inside job with trivial help from the outside? Or was it basically an outside job with trivial help from the inside?"