bought in her last year in the brokerage house. Some mysterious
Italian blend of silks. Cut and tailored by people whose ancestors had
been fingering fine materials for hundreds of years. They look at it
and consider it and cut it and it just falls into marvelous soft
shapes. Then they market it and a Wall Street broker buys it and loves
it and is still wearing it two years into the future when she’s a new
FBI agent and she gets snatched off a Chicago street. She’s still
wearing it eighteen hours later after a sleepless night on the filthy
straw in a cow barn. By that point, the thing is no longer something
that Armani would recognize.
The three kidnapers had returned with the truck and backed it into the
cow barn’s central concrete aisle. Then they had locked the barn door
and disappeared. Holly guessed they had spent the night in the
farmhouse. Reacher had slept quietly in his stall, chained to the
railing, while she tossed and turned in the straw, sleepless, thinking
urgently about him.
His safety was her responsibility. He was an innocent passerby, caught
up in her business. Whatever else lay ahead for her, she had to take
care of him. That was her duty. He was her burden. And he was lying.
Holly was absolutely certain he was not a blues club doorman. And she
was pretty certain what he was. The Johnson family was a military
family. Because of her father, Holly had lived on army bases her whole
life, right up to Yale. She knew the army. She knew soldiers. She
knew the types and she knew Reacher was one. To her practiced eye, he
looked like one. Acted like one. Reacted like one. It was possible a
doorman could pick locks and climb walls like an ape, but if a doorman
did go ahead and do that, he would do it with an air of unfamiliarity
and daring and breathlessness which would be quite distinctive. He
wouldn’t do it like it came as naturally as blinking. Reacher was a
quiet, contained man, relaxed, fit, clearly trained to the point of
some kind of superhuman calm. He was probably ten years older than she
was, but somewhere less than forty, about six feet five, huge, maybe
two-twenty, blue eyes, thinning fair hair. Big enough to be a doorman,
and old enough to have been around, that was for sure, but he was a
soldier. A soldier, claiming to be a doorman. But why?
Holly had no idea. She just lay there, uncomfortable, listening to his
quiet breathing, twenty feet away. Doorman or soldier, ten years older
or not, it was her responsibility to get him to safety. She didn’t
sleep. Too busy thinking, and her knee was too painful. At
eight-thirty on her watch, she heard him wake up. Just a subtle change
in the rhythm of his breathing.
“Good morning, Reacher,” she called out.
“Morning, Holly,” he said. They’re coming back.”
It was silent, but after a long moment she heard footsteps outside.
Climbs like an ape, hears like a bat, she thought. Some doorman.
“You OK?” Reacher called to her.
She didn’t answer. His welfare was her responsibility, not the other
way around. She heard a rattle as the barn door was unlocked. It
rolled open and daylight flooded in. She caught a glimpse of empty
green country. Pennsylvania, maybe, she thought. The three kidnapers
walked in and the door was pulled shut.
“Get up, bitch,” the leader said to her.
She didn’t move. She was seized by an overpowering desire not to be
put back inside the truck. Too dark, too uncomfortable, too tedious.
She didn’t know if she could take another day in there, swaying,
jolting, above all totally unaware of where the hell she was being
taken, or why, or by who. Instinctively she grabbed the metal railing
and held on, arm tensed, like she was going to put up a struggle. The
leader stood still and pulled out his Clock. Looked down at her.
Two ways of doing this,” he said. The easy way, or the hard way.”
She didn’t reply. Just sat there in the straw and held on tight to the