Child, Lee. Running blind

“I guess,” he said.

l&iniiM (plim( 305

She stood up, unsteady. Bent forward and back and tossed her hair behind her shoulders.

“I’m out of here,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She opened the door. Stepped outside. He heard her wait in the corridor until the door swung shut again. Then he heard her walk away to the elevator. He lay back on the bed. Didn’t sleep. Just thought about obedience and acquiescence, and means and motives and opportunities. And truth and lies. He spent five solid hours thinking about all of those things.

(_}4tf came back at eight in the morning. She was showered and glowing and wearing a different suit and tie. She looked full of energy. He was tired, and crumpled and sweaty and hot and cold all at the same time. But he was standing just inside the door with his coat buttoned, waiting for her, his heart hammering with urgency.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Right now.”

Blake was in his office, at his desk, same as he had been before. Maybe he’d been there all night. The UPS fax was still at his elbow. The television was still playing silently. Same channel. Some Washington reporter was standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House behind his shoulder. The weather looked good. Bright blue sky, clear cold air. It would be an OK day for travel.

“Today you work the files again,” Blake said.

“No, I need to get to Portland,” Readier said. “Will you lend me the plane?”

“The plane?” Blake repeated. “What are you, crazy? Not in a million years.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

He moved to the door. Took a last look at the office and stepped into the corridor. Stood still and quiet in the center of the narrow space. Harper crowded past him.

“Why Portland?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Truth, and lies.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come with me and find out.”

y^Wtw^^/t/

/

\\j twA’ the hell’s going on?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I can’t say it out loud,” he said. “You’d think I was completely crazy. You’d just walk away from me.”

“What’s crazy? Tell me.”

“No, I can’t. Right now, it’s just a house of cards. You’d blow it down. Anybody would blow it down. So you need to see it for yourself. Hell, I need to see it for myself. But I want you there, for the arrest.”

“What arrest? Just tell me.”

He shook his head again. “Where’s your car?”

“In the lot.”

“So let’s go.”

fyt/eii-ie had been 0600 the whole of Rita Scimeca’s service career, and she stuck to the habit in her new civilian life. She slept six hours out of twenty-four, midnight until six in the morning, a quarter of her life. Then she got up to face the other three quarters.

An endless procession of empty days. Late fall, there was nothing to be done in the yard. The winter temperatures were too savage for any young vegetation to make it through. So planting was restricted to the spring, and pruning and cleanup was finished by the end of the summer. Late fall and winter, the doors stayed locked and she stayed inside.

I

futUUtl* ^j(tV<( 307 Today, she was scheduled to work on Bach. She was trying to perfect the three-part inventions. She loved them. She loved the way they moved forward, on and on, inescapably logical, until they ended up back where they started. Like Maurits Escher's drawings of staircases, which went up and up and up all the way back to the bottom. Wonderful. But they were very difficult pieces to play. She played them very slowly. Her idea was to get the notes right, then the articulation, then the meaning, and then last of all to get the speed right. Nothing worse than playing Bach fast and badly. She showered in the bathroom and dressed in the bedroom. She did it quickly, because she kept the house cold. Fall in the Northwest was a chilly season. But today there was brightness in the sky. She looked out of her window and saw streaks of dawn spearing east to west like rods of polished steel. It would be cloudy, she guessed, but with a halo of sun visible. It would be like a lot of her days. Not good, not bad. But livable.

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