Child, Lee. Running blind

“I figured you were safe,” he said. “I figured you were hiding out someplace.”

“You figured,” she repeated. “But you didn’t know.”

“I assumed,” he said. “I was taking care of Petrosian, I assumed you were taking care of yourself. I figured we know each other well enough to trust assumptions like that.”

“Like we were comrades,” she said softly. “In the same unit, a major and a captain maybe, in the middle of some tight dangerous mission, absolutely relying on each other to do our separate jobs properly.”

He nodded. “Exactly.”

“But I’m not a captain. I’m not in some unit. I’m a lawyer. A lawyer, in New York, all alone and afraid, caught up in something I don’t want to be caught up in.”

He nodded again. “I’m sorry.”

“And you’re not a major,” she said, “Not anymore. You’re a civilian. You need to get that straight.”

He nodded. Said nothing.

“And that’s the big problem, right?” she said. “We’ve both got the same problem. You’re getting me caught up in something I don’t want to be caught up in, and I’m getting you caught up in something you don’t want to be caught

futUUtW filing 165

up in either. The civilized world. The house, the car, living somewhere, doing ordinary things.”

He said nothing.

“My fault, probably,” she said. “I wanted those things. God, did I want them. Makes it kind of hard for me to accept that maybe you don’twant them.”

“I want you,” he said.

She nodded. “I know that. And I want you. You know that too. But do we want each other’s lives?”

The hobo demon erupted in his head, cheering and screaming like a fan watching the winning run soar into the bleachers, bottom of the ninth. She said it! She said it! Now it’s right there, out in the open! So go for it!Jump on it!Just gobble it right up!

“I don’t know,” he said.

“We need to talk about it,” she said.

But there was no more talking to be done, not then, because the buzzer from the lobby started up an insistent squawk, like somebody was down there on the street leaning on the button. Jodie stood up and hit the door release and moved into the living room to wait. Reacher stayed on his stool at the granite counter, looking at the quartz sparkles showing between his fingers. Then he felt the elevator arrive and heard the apartment door open. He heard urgent conversation and fast light footsteps through the living room and then Jodie was back in the kitchen with Lisa Harper standing at her side.

(rffleetv

41

rla.’fajt’l was still in her second suit and her hair was still loose on her shoulders, but those were the only similarities with the last time he had seen her. Her long-limbed slowness was all wiped away by some kind of feverish tension, and her eyes were red and strained. He guessed she was as near to distraught as she was ever going to get.

“What?” he asked.

“Everything,” she said. “It’s all gone crazy.”

“Where?”

“Spokane,” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Alison Lamarr.”

There was silence.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Harper nodded. “Yeah, shit.”

“When?”

“Sometime yesterday. He’s speeding up. He didn’t stick to the interval. The next one should have been two weeks away.”

“How?”

“Same as all the others. The hospital was calling her because her father died, and there was no reply, so eventually they called the cops, and the cops went out there and found her. Dead in the tub, in the paint, like all the others.”

More silence.

“But how the hell did he get in?”

fufUuttA (£>(aik( 167

Harper shook her head. “Just walked right in the door.”

“Shit, I don’t believe it.”

“They’ve sealed the place off. They’re sending a crime scene unit direct from Quantico.”

“They won’t find anything.”

Silence again. Harper glanced around Jodie’s kitchen, nervously.

“Blake wants you back on board,” she said. “He’s signed up for your theory in a big way. He believes you now. Eleven women, not ninety-one.”

Reacher stared at her. “So what am I supposed to say to that? Better late than never?”

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