“Scimeca,” he said back. “How are you?”
She used her free hand to push her hair off her brow.
“Reasonable,” she said. “Considering it’s three o’clock in the morning and the FBI has only just gotten around to telling me I’m on some kind of hit list with ten of my sisters, four of whom are already dead.”
“Your tax dollars at work,” Reacher said.
“So why the hell are you hanging with them?”
He shrugged. “Circumstances didn’t leave me a whole lot of choice.”
She gazed at him, deciding. It was cold on the porch. The night dew was beading on the painted boards. There was a thin low fog in the air. Behind Scimeca’s shoulder the lights inside her house burned warm and yellow. She looked at him a moment longer.
“Circumstances?” she repeated.
He nodded. “Didn’t leave me a whole lot of choice.”
She nodded back. “Well, whatever, its kind of good to see you, I guess.”
“Good to see you, too.”
196
l”&d*
She was a tall woman. Shorter than Harper, but then most women were. She was muscular, not the compact way Alison Lamarr had been, but the lean, marathon-runner kind of way. She was dressed in clean jeans and a shapeless sweater. Substantial shoes on her feet. She had medium-length brown hair, worn in long bangs above bright brown eyes. She had heavy frown lines all around her mouth. It was nearly four years since he had last seen her, and she looked the whole four years older.
“This is Special Agent Lisa Harper,” he said.
Scimeca nodded once, warily. Readier watched her eyes. A male agent, she’d have thrown him off the porch.
“Hi,” Harper said.
“Well, come on in, I guess,” Scimeca said.
She still had hold of the doorknob. She was standing on the threshold, leaning forward, unwilling to step out. Harper stepped in and Reacher filed after her. The door closed behind them. They were in the hallway of a decent little house, newly painted, nicely furnished. Very clean, obsessively tidy. It looked like a home. Warm, and cozy. A personal space. There were wool rugs on the floor. Polished antique furniture in gleaming mahogany. Paintings on the walls. Vases of flowers everywhere.
“Chrysanthemums,” Scimeca said. “I grow them myself. You like them?”
Reacher nodded.
“I like them,” he said. “Although I couldn’t spell them.”
“Gardening’s my new hobby,” Scimeca said. “I’ve gotten into it in a big way.”
Then she pointed toward a front parlor.
“And music,” she said. “Come see.”
The room had quiet wallpaper and a polished wood floor. There was a grand piano in the back corner. Shiny black lacquer. A German name inlaid in brass. A big stool was placed in front of it, handsome buttoned leather in black. The lid of the piano was up, and there was music on the stand above the keyboard, a dense mass of black notes on heavy cream paper.
“Want to hear something?” she asked.
“Sure,” Reacher said.
She slid between the keyboard and the stool and sat down. Laid her hands on the keys and paused for a second and then a mournful minor-key chord filled the room. It was a warm sound, and low, and she modulated it into the start of a funeral march.
I
fyltlifiA filing 197
“Got anything more cheerful?” Reacher asked.
“I don’t feel cheerful,” she said.
But she changed it anyway, into the start of the Moonlight Sonata.
“Beethoven,” she said.
The silvery arpeggios filled the air. She had her foot on the damper and the sound was dulled and quiet. Reacher gazed out of the window at the plantings, gray in the moonlight. There was an ocean ninety miles to the west, vast and silent.
“That’s better,” he said.
She played it through to the end of the first movement, apparently from memory, because the music open on the stand was labeled Chopin. She kept her hands on the keys until the last chord died away to silence.
“Nice,” Reacher said. “So, you’re doing OK?”
She turned away from the keyboard and looked him in the eye. “You mean have I recovered from being gang-raped by three guys I was supposed to trust with my life?”