He shook his head. Mixed feelings. We barrelled on down the road in the dark. The big old Bentley loped along, a hair over the legal limit.
`How are things in Margrave now?’ he asked me.
That was the big question. He asked it tentatively, like he was nervous about it. I was nervous
about answering it. I backed off the gas a little and slowed down. Just in case he got so upset that he grabbed at me. I didn’t want to wreck the car. Didn’t have time for that.
`We’re in deep shit,’ I told him. `We’ve got about seven hours to fix it.’
I saved the worst part for last. I told him Charlie and the kids had gone with an FBI agent back on Monday. Because of the danger. And then I told him the FBI agent had been Picard.
There was silence in the car. I drove on three, four miles in the silence. It was more than a silence. It was a crushing vacuum of stillness. Like all the atmosphere had been sucked off the planet. It was a silence that roared and buzzed in my ears.
He started clenching and unclenching his hands. Started rocking back and forth on the big leather chair beside me. But then he went quiet. His reaction never really got going. Never really took hold. His brain just shut down and refused to react any more. Like a circuit-breaker clicking open. It was too big and too awful to react to. He just looked at me.
`OK,’ he said. `Then you’ll have to get them back, won’t you?’
I sped up again. Charged on toward Atlanta.
`I’ll get them back,’ I said. `But I’ll need your help. That’s why I picked you up first.’
He nodded again. He had crashed through the barrier. He had stopped worrying and started relaxing. He was up on that plateau where you just did whatever needed doing. I knew that place. I lived there.
Twenty miles out from Augusta we saw flashing lights up ahead and guys waving danger flares.
There was an accident on the other side of the divider. A truck had ploughed into a parked sedan. A gaggle of other vehicles were slewed all over the place. There were drifts of what looked like litter lying around. A big crowd of people was milling about, collecting it up. We crawled past in a slow line of traffic. Hubble watched out the window.
`I’m very sorry about your brother,’ he said. `I had no idea. I guess I got him killed, didn’t I?’
He slumped down in the seat. But I wanted to keep him talking. He had to stay on the ball. So I asked him the question I’d been waiting a week to ask.
`How the hell did you get into all this?’ I said.
He shrugged. Blew a big sigh at the windshield. Like it was impossible to imagine any way of getting into it. Like it was impossible to imagine any way of staying out of it.
`I lost my job,’ he said. A simple statement. `I was devastated. I felt angry and upset. And scared, Reacher. We’d been living a dream, you know? A golden dream. It was a perfect, idyllic life. I was earning a fortune and I was spending a fortune. It was totally fabulous. But then I started hearing things. The retail operation was under threat. My department was under review. I suddenly realized I was just one pay cheque away from disaster. Then the department got shut down. I got canned. And the pay cheques stopped.’
`And?’ I said.
`I was out of my head,’ he said. `I was so angry. I had worked my butt off for those bastards. I was good at my job. I had made them a fortune. And they just slung me out like suddenly I was shit on their shoe. And I was scared. I was going to lose it all, right? And I was tired. I couldn’t start again at
the bottom of something else. I was too old and I had no energy. I just didn’t know what to do.’
`And then Kliner turned up?’ I said.