your daughter standing together in front of a headstone, this asshole’s
name on it.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
FOUR MEN WERE DRAGGING LODER’S BODY AWAY AND THE CROWD was dispersing
quietly. Reacher was left standing on the courthouse steps with his
six guards and Fowler. Fowler had finally unlocked the handcuffs.
Reacher was rolling his shoulders and stretching. He had been cuffed
all night and all morning and he was stiff and sore. His wrists were
marked with red weals where the hard metal had bitten down.
“Cigarette?” Fowler asked.
He was holding his pack out. A friendly gesture. Reacher shook his
head.
“I want to see Holly,” he said.
Fowler was about to refuse, but then he thought some more and nodded.
“OK,” he said. “Good idea. Take her out for some exercise. Talk to
her. Ask her how we’re treating her. That’s something you’re sure to
be asked later. It’ll be very important to them. We don’t want you
giving them any false impressions.”
Reacher waited at the bottom of the steps. The sun had gone pale and
watery. Wisps of mist were gathering in the north. But some of the
sky was still blue and clear. After five minutes Fowler brought Holly
down. She was walking slowy, with a little staccato
9m rhythm as her good leg alternated with the thump of her crutch. She
walked through the door and stood at the top of the steps.
“Question for you, Readier,” Fowler called down. “How far can you run
in a half-hour with a hundred and twenty pounds on your back?”
Reacher shrugged.
“Not far enough, I guess,” he said.
Fowler nodded.
“Right,” he said. “Not far enough. If she’s not standing right here
in thirty minutes, we’ll come looking for you. We’ll give it a
two-mile radius.”
Reacher thought about it and nodded. A half-hour with a hundred and
twenty pounds on his back might get him more than two miles. Two miles
was probably pessimistic. But he thought back to the map on Borken’s
wall. Thought about the savage terrain. Where the hell would he run?
He made a show of checking his watch. Fowler walked away, up behind
the ruined office building. The guards slung their weapons over their
shoulders and stood easy. Holly smoothed her hair back. Stood face up
to the pale sun.
“Can you walk for a while?” Reacher asked her.
“Slowly,” she said.
She set off north along the middle of the deserted street. Reacher
strolled beside her. They waited until they were out of sight. They
glanced at each other. Then they turned and flung themselves together.
Her crutch toppled to the ground and he lifted her a foot in the air.
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
“I’m going crazy in there,” she said.
“I’ve got bad news,” he said.
“What?” she said.
They had a helper in Chicago,” he said.
She stared up at him.
They were only gone five days,” he said. That’s what Fowler said at
the trial. He said Loder had been gone just five days.”
“So?” she said.
“So they didn’t have time for surveillance,” he said. They hadn’t been
watching you. Somebody told them where you were going to be, and when.
They had help, Holly.”
The color in her face drained away. It was replaced by shock.
orw;
“Five days?” she said. “You sure?”
Reacher nodded. Holly went quiet. She was thinking hard.
“So who knew?” he asked her. “Who knew where you’d be, twelve o’clock
Monday? A roommate? A friend?”
Her eyes were darting left and right. She was racing through the
possibilities.
“Nobody knew,” she said.
“Were you ever tailed?” he asked.
She shrugged helplessly. Reacher could see she desperately wanted to
say yes, I was tailed. Because he knew to say no was too awful for her
to contemplate.
“Were you?” he asked again.
“No,” she said quietly. “By a bozo like one of these? Forget it. I’d
have spotted them. And they’d have had to hang around all day outside
the Federal Building, just waiting. We’d have picked them up in a
heartbeat.”
“So?” he asked.
“My lunch break was flexible,” she said. “It varied, sometimes by a