picked it up and dialed his office.
“Holly Johnson call in?” he asked his secretary.
“No, Mack,” she said.
So he dabbed the cradle and dialed the reception counter, two floors
below.
“Any messages from Holly Johnson?” he asked the agent at the door.
“No, chief,” the agent said. “Haven’t seen her.”
He hit the button again and called the main switchboard.
“Holly Johnson call in?” he asked.
“No, sir,” the switchboard operator said.
He held the phone and gestured for pen and paper. Then he spoke to the
switchboard again.
“Give me her pager number,” he said. “And her cellphone, will you?”
The earpiece crackled and he scrawled down the numbers. Cut the
switchboard off and dialed Holly’s pager. Just got a long low tone
telling him the pager was switched off. Then he tried the cellphone
number. He got an electronic bleep and a recorded message of a woman
telling him the phone he was dialing was unreachable. He hung up and
looked around the room. It was ten after five, Monday afternoon.
SIX
SIX-THIRTY ON REACHER’S WATCH, THE MOTION INSIDE THE TRUCK changed. Six
hours and four minutes they’d cruised steadily, maybe fifty-five or
sixty miles an hour, while the heat peaked and fell away. He’d sat,
hot and rocking and bouncing in the dark with the wheel well between
him and Holly Johnson, ticking off the distance against a map inside
his head. He figured they’d been taken maybe three hundred and ninety
miles. But he didn’t know which direction they were headed. If they
were going east, they would be right through Indiana and just about out
of Ohio by now, maybe just entering Pennsylvania or West Virginia.
South, they would be out of Illinois, into Missouri or Kentucky, maybe
even into Tennessee if he’d underestimated their speed. West, they’d
be hauling their way across Iowa. They might have looped around the
bottom of the lake and headed north up through Michigan. Or straight
out northwest, in which case they could be up near Minneapolis.
But they’d gotten somewhere, because the truck was slowing. Then there
was a lurch to the right, like a pull off a highway. There was gear
noise and thumping over broken pavement. Cornering forces slammed them
around. Holly’s crutch slid and rattled side to side across the ridged
metal floor. The truck whined up grades and down slopes, paused at
invisible road junctions, accelerated,
braked hard, turned a tight left, and then drove slowly down a straight
lumpy surface for a quarter hour.
“Farming country somewhere,” Reacher said.
“Obviously,” Holly said. “But where?”
Reacher just shrugged at her in the gloom. The truck slowed almost to
a stop and turned a tight right. The road surface got worse. The
truck bounced forward maybe a hundred and fifty yards and stopped.
There was the sound of the passenger door opening up in front. The
engine was still running. The passenger door slammed shut. Reacher
heard a big door opening and the truck moved slowly forward. The
engine noise boomed against metal walls. Reacher heard the door noise
again and the engine noise echoed louder. Then it shut down and died
away into stillness.
“We’re in some sort of a barn,” Reacher said. “With the door
closed.”
Holly nodded impatiently.
“I know that,” she said. “A cow barn. I can smell it.”
Reacher could hear muffled conversation outside the truck. Footsteps
walking around to the rear doors. A key going into the lock. The
handle turning. A blinding flood of light as the door opened. Reacher
blinked against the sudden electric brightness and stared out across
Holly at three men, two Clocks and a shotgun.
“Out,” the leader said.
They struggled out, handcuffed together. Not easy. They were stiff
and sore and cramped from bracing themselves against the wheel well for
six solid hours. Holly’s knee had gone altogether. Reacher started
back for her crutch.
“Leave it there, asshole,” the leader said.
The guy sounded tired and irritable. Reacher gave him a steady look
and shrugged. Holly stiffened and tried her weight on her leg. Gasped
in pain and gave it up. Glanced impersonally at Reacher like he was
some kind of a tree and stretched around with her free left hand to