‘So it must be Rutter,’ she said. ‘Who else can it be? He’s running a lucrative scam, right? And he’s prepared to protect it. He thinks we’re going to expose it. So he’s been looking for us. And now we’re planning to walk right into his arms.’
Reacher smiled.
‘Hey, life’s full of dangers,’ he said.
Marilyn realized she must have fallen asleep, because she woke up stiff and cold with noises coming through the door at her. The bathroom had no window, and she had no idea what time it was. Morning, she guessed, because she felt like she had been asleep some
time. On her left, Chester was staring into space, his gaze fixed a thousand miles beyond the fixtures under the sink. He was inert. She turned and looked straight at him, and got no response at all. On her right, Sheryl was curled on the floor. She was breathing heavily through her mouth. Her nose had turned black and shiny and swollen. Marilyn stared at her and swallowed. Turned again and pressed her ear to the door. Listened hard.
There were two men out there. The sound of two deep voices, talking low. She could hear elevators in the distance. A very faint traffic rumble, with occasional sirens, vanishing into stillness. Aircraft noise, like a big jet from JFK was wheeling away west across the harbour. She eased herself off the floor.
Her shoes had come off during the night. She found them scuffed under her pile of towels. She slipped them on and walked quietly to the sink. Chester was staring straight through her. She checked herself in the mirror. Not too bad, she thought. The last time she had spent the night on a bathroom floor was after a sorority party more than twenty years before, and she looked no worse now than she had then. She combed her hair with her fingers and patted water on her eyes. Then she crept back to the door and listened again.
Two men, but she was pretty sure Hobie wasn’t one of them. There was some equality in the tenor of the voices. It was back-and-forth conversation, not orders and obedience. She slid the pile of towels backward with her foot and took a deep breath and opened the door.
Two men stopped talking and turned to stare at her. The one called Tony was sitting sideways on the sofa in front of the desk. Another she had not seen before
was squatted next to him on the coffee table. He was a thickset man in a dark suit, not tall, but heavy. The desk was not occupied. No sign of Hobie. The window blinds were closed to a crack, but she could see bright sun outside. It was later than she thought. She glanced back to the sofa and saw Tony smiling at her.
‘Sleep well?’ he asked.
She made no reply. Just kept a neutral look fixed on her face until Tony’s smile died away. Score one, she thought.
‘I talked things over with my husband,’ she lied.
Tony looked at her, expectantly, waiting for her to speak again. She let him wait. Score two, she thought.
‘We agree to the transfer,’ she said. ‘But it’s going to be complicated. It’s going to take some time. There are factors I don’t think you appreciate. We’ll do it, but we’re going to expect some minimum co-operation from you along the way.’
Tony nodded. ‘Like what?’
‘I’ll discuss that with Hobie,’ she said. ‘Not with you.’
There was silence in the office. Just faint noises from the world outside. She concentrated on her breathing. In and out, in and out.
‘OK,’ Tony said.
Score three, she thought.
‘We want coffee,’ she said. ‘Three cups, cream and sugar.’
More silence. Then Tony nodded and the thickset man stood up. He looked away and walked out of the office towards the kitchen. Score four, she thought.
The return address on Rutter’s letter corresponded to a dingy storefront some blocks south of any hope of
urban renewal. It was a clapboard building sandwiched between crumbling four-storey brick structures that may have been factories or warehouses before they were abandoned decades ago. Rutter’s place had a filthy window on the left and an entrance in the centre and a roll-up door standing open on the right revealing a narrow garage area. There was a brand-new Lincoln Navigator squeezed in the space. Reacher recognized the model from advertisements he’d seen. It was a giant four-wheel-drive Ford, with a thick gloss of luxury added in order to justify its elevation to the Lincoln division. This one was metallic black, and it was probably worth more than the real estate wrapped around it.