Without Fail

"What about the hotel reception?"

"Keep it short and take a lot of care."

Froelich nodded. "All I can do, I guess."

"Are you good at your job?" Neagley asked.

Froelich paused.

"Yes," she said. "I’m pretty good."

"No, you’re not," Reacher said. "You’re the best. The absolute best there has ever been. You’re so damn good it’s unbelievable."

"That’s how you’ve got to think," Neagley said. "Pump yourself up. Get to the point where it’s impossible to think that these jerky guys with their silly notes are going to get within a million miles of you."

Froelich smiled, briefly. "Is this military-style training?"

"For me it was," Neagley said. "Reacher was born thinking that way."

Froelich smiled again.

"OK," she said. "Home and sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Washington, D.C., is quiet and empty in the middle of the night and it took just two minutes to reach Neagley’s hotel and only another ten to get back to Froelich’s house. Her street was crowded with parked cars. They looked like they were asleep, dark and still and inert and heavily dewed with cold mist. The Suburban was more than eighteen feet long and they had to go two whole blocks before they found a space big enough for it. They locked it up and walked back together in the chill. Made it to the house and opened the door and stepped inside. The lights were still on. The heating was still running hard. Froelich paused in the hallway.

"Are we OK?" she asked. "About earlier?"

"We’re fine," he said.

"I just don’t want us to get our signals mixed."

"I don’t think they’re mixed."

"I’m sorry I disagreed with you," she said. "About the demonstration."

"It’s your call," he said. "Only you can make it."

"I had other boyfriends," she said. "You know, after."

He said nothing.

"And Joe had other girlfriends," she said. "He wasn’t all that shy, really."

"But he left his stuff here."

"Does that matter?"

"I don’t know," he said. "Got to mean something."

"He’s dead, Reacher. Nothing can affect him now."

"I know."

She was quiet for a second.

"I’m going to make tea," she said. "You want some?"

He shook his head. "I’m going to bed."

She stepped into the living room on her way to the kitchen and he walked upstairs. Closed the guest room door quietly behind him and opened up the closet. Stripped off Joe’s suit and put it back on the wire dry-cleaner’s hanger. Hung it on the rail. Took off the tie and rolled it and put it back on the shelf. Took off the shirt and dropped it on the closet floor. He didn’t need to save it. There were four more on the rail, and he didn’t expect to be around longer than four more days. He peeled off the socks and dropped them on top of the shirt. Walked into the bathroom wearing only his boxers.

He took his time in there and when he came out Froelich was standing in the guest room doorway. Wearing a nightgown. It was white cotton. Longer than a T-shirt, but not a whole lot longer. The hallway light behind her made it transparent. Her hair was tousled. Without shoes she looked smaller. Without makeup she looked younger. She had great legs. A wonderful shape. She looked soft and firm, all at the same time.

"He broke up with me," she said. "It was his choice, not mine."

"Why?"

"He met somebody he preferred."

"Who?"

"Doesn’t matter who. Nobody you ever heard of. Just somebody."

"Why didn’t you say so?"

"Denial, I guess," she said. "Trying to protect myself, maybe. And trying to protect his memory in front of his brother."

"He wasn’t nice about it?"

"Not very."

"How did it happen?"

"He just told me one day."

"And walked out?"

"We weren’t really living together. He spent time here, I spent time there, but we always kept separate places. His stuff is still here because I wouldn’t let him come back to get it. I wouldn’t let him in the door. I was hurt and angry with him."

"I guess you would be."

She shrugged. The hem of her nightgown rode up an inch on her thigh.

"No, it was silly of me," she said. "I mean, it’s not like things like that never happen, is it? It was just a relationship that started and then finished. Hardly unique in human history. Hardly unique in my history. And half the times it was me who did the walking away."

"Why are you telling me?"

"You know why," she said.

He nodded. Didn’t speak.

"So you can start with a blank slate," she said. "How you react to me can be about you and me, not about you and me and Joe. He took himself out of the picture. It was his choice. So it’s none of his business, even if he was still around."

He nodded again.

"But how blank is your slate?" he asked.

"He was a great guy," she said. "I loved him once. But you’re not him. You’re a separate person. I know that. I’m not looking to get him back. I don’t want a ghost."

She took one step into the room.

"That’s good," he said. "Because I’m not like him. Hardly at all. You need to be real clear about that from the start."

"I’m clear about it," she said. "The start of what?"

She took another step into the room and then stood still.

"The start of whatever," he said. "But the end will turn out the same, you know. You need to be real clear about that, too. I’ll leave, just like he did. I always do."

She came closer. They were a yard apart.

"Soon?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not."

"I’ll take my chances," she said. "Nothing lasts forever."

"Doesn’t feel right," he said.

She glanced at his face. "What doesn’t?"

"I’m standing here wearing your ex-lover’s clothes."

"Not many of them," she said. "And it’s a situation that can be easily remedied."

He paused.

"Is it?" he said. "Want to show me how?"

He stepped forward again and she put her hands on his waist. Slipped her fingers under the elastic waistband of his boxers and remedied the situation. Stepped back a little and raised her arms above her head. Her nightgown slipped off very easily. Fell to the floor. They barely made it to the bed.

They got three hours’ sleep and woke up at seven when her alarm started ringing in her own room. It sounded far away and faint through the guest room wall. He was on his back and she was curled under his arm. Her thigh was hooked over his. Her head was resting against his shoulder. Her hair touched his face. He felt comfortable in that position. And warm. Warm and comfortable. And tired. Warm and comfortable and tired enough that he wanted to ignore the noise and stay put. But she struggled free and sat up in the bed, dazed and sleepy.

"Good morning," he said.

There was gray light from the window. She smiled and yawned and pulled her elbows back and stretched. The clock in the next room kept on making noise. Then it went into a new mode and got louder. He slid his hand flat against her stomach. Moved it up to her breasts. She yawned again and smiled again and twisted around and ducked her head and nuzzled into his neck.

"Good morning to you too," she said.

The alarm blared on through the wall. It clearly had a feature that made it get more and more urgent if it was ignored. He pulled her down on top of him. Smoothed her hair away from her face and kissed her. The distant clock started chirping and howling like a cop car. He was glad he wasn’t in the same room with it.

"Got to get up," she said.

"We will," he said. "Soon."

He held her. She stopped struggling. They made love breathlessly, like the alarm clock was spurring them on. It sounded like they were in a nuclear bunker with missile sirens ticking off the last moments of their lives. They finished, panting, and she heaved herself out of bed and ran through to her own room and shut the noise off. The silence was deafening. He lay back on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. An oblique bar of gray light from the window showed some imperfections in the plaster. She came back, naked, walking slowly.

"Come back to bed," he said.

"Can’t," she said. "Got to go to work."

"He’ll be OK for a spell. And if he isn’t, they can always get another one. That Twentieth Amendment thing. They’ll be lining up around the block."

"And I’ll be lining up for a new job. Maybe flipping burgers."

"You ever done that?"

"What, flipped burgers?"

"Been out of work."

She shook her head. "Never."

He smiled. "I haven’t really worked for five years."

She smiled back. "I know. I checked the computers. But you’re working today. So get your ass out of bed."

She gave him a fine view of her own ass as she walked away to her own bathroom. He lay still for a second longer with Dawn Penn’s old song coming back at him: you don’t love me, yes I know now. He shook it out of his head and threw back the covers and stood up and stretched. One arm up to the ceiling, then the other. He arched his back. Pointed his toes and stretched his legs. That was the whole of his fitness routine. He walked to the guest bathroom and went for the full twenty-two minute ablution sequence. Teeth, shave, hair, shower. He dressed in another of Joe’s old suits. This one was pure black, same brand, same tailoring details. He paired it with another fresh shirt, same Somebody amp; Somebody label, same pure white cotton. Clean boxers, clean socks. A dark blue silk tie with tiny silver parachutes all over it. There was a British manufacturer’s label on it. Maybe it was from the Royal Air Force in England. He checked himself in the mirror and then ruined the look by putting his new Atlantic City coat over the suit. It was coarse and clumsy in comparison and the colors didn’t match, but he figured to be spending some time out in the cold today, and it didn’t seem that Joe had left any overcoats behind. He must have skipped out in summer.