She was slim under her bulky coat. There was a black jacket that matched the skirt, and a cream blouse loose over small breasts. The blouse looked like polyester that had been washed many times. It spiraled down into the waistband of the skirt. She was twisted sideways and the skirt was halfway up her thighs. Her legs were thin and hard under black nylon. Her knees were pressed together, but there was a gap between her thighs.
“Would you stop doing that, please?” she said.
Her voice had gone cold, and the gun moved.
“Doing what?” Readier asked.
“Looking at my legs.”
futuufu filing 17
He switched his gaze up to her face. “Somebody points a gun at me, I’m entitled to check them out head to toe, wouldn’t you say?”
“You like doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at women.”
He shrugged. “Better than I like looking at some things, I guess.”
The gun moved closer. “This isn’t funny, asshole. I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.”
He stared at her.
“What way am I looking at you?” he asked.
“You know what way.”
He shook his head.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“Like you’re making advances,” she said. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”
He listened to the contempt in her voice and stared at her thin hair, her frown, her crooked tooth, her hard dried-up body in its ludicrous cheap businesswoman’s uniform.
“You think I’m making advances to you?”
“Aren’t you? Wouldn’t you like to?”
He shook his head again.
“Not while there are dogs on the street,” he said.
1,
4^ sat in crackling hostile silence for the best part of twenty minutes. Then the sandy guy with the mustache came back to the car and slid into the front passenger seat. The driver’s door opened and a second man got in. He had keys in his hand. He watched the mirror until the woman nodded and then fired up the motor and eased past Reacher’s parked truck and headed out toward the road.
“Do I get to make a phone call?” Reacher asked. “Or doesn’t the FBI believe in stuff like that?”
The sandy guy was staring straight ahead, at the windshield.
“At some point within the first twenty-four hours,” he said. “We’ll make sure you’re not denied your constitutional rights.”
The woman kept the SIG-Sauer’s muzzle close to Reacher’s head all the way back to Manhattan, fifty-eight fast miles through the dark and the fog.