Tripwire by Lee Child

‘They took my credit cards.’

Then he went quiet. She looked at him. ‘What?’

‘It’s never going to be over,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see that? We’re witnesses. To what they did to those cops. And Sheryl. How can they just let us walk away?’

She nodded, a small vague movement of her head, and looked down at him with disappointment. She was disappointed because he finally understood. Now he was going to be worried and frantic all day, and that would just make it harder.

It took five minutes to get the knot in the necktie neat, and then he slipped his jacket on. Dressing was the exact reverse of undressing, which meant the shoes came last. He could tie laces just about as fast as a two-handed person. The trick was to trap the loose end under the hook against the floor. Then he started in the bathroom. He rammed all the

dirty laundry into a pillowcase and left it by the apartment door. He stripped the bed and balled the linen into another pillowcase. He put all the personal items he could find into a supermarket carrier. He emptied his closet into a garment bag. He propped the apartment door open and carried the pillowcases and the carrier to the refuse chute. Dropped them all down and clanged the slot closed after them. Dragged the garment bag out into the hallway and locked up the apartment and put the keys in an envelope from his pocket.

He detoured to the concierge’s desk and left the envelope of keys for the real-estate guy. Used the stairway to the parking garage and carried the garment bag over to the Cadillac. He locked it into the trunk and walked around to the driver’s door. Slid inside and leaned over with his left hand and fired it up. Squealed around the garage and up into the daylight. He drove south on Fifth, carefully averting his eyes until he was clear of the park and safe in the bustling canyons of Midtown.

He leased three bays under the World Trade Center, but the Suburban was gone, and the Tahoe was gone, so they were all empty when he arrived. He put the Cadillac in the middle slot and left the garment bag in the trunk. He figured he would drive the Cadillac to LaGuardia and abandon it in the long-term parking lot. Then he would take a cab to JFK, carrying the bag, looking like any other transfer passenger in a hurry. The car would sit there until the weeds grew up under it, and if anybody ever got suspicious they would comb through the LaGuardia manifests, not JFK’s. It meant writing off the Cadillac along with the lease on the offices, but he was always comfortable about spend-

ing money when he got value for it, and saving his life was about the best value he could think of getting.

He used the express elevator from the garage and was in his brass-and-oak reception area ninety seconds later. Tony was behind the chest-high counter, drinking coffee, looking tired.

‘Boat?’ Hobie asked him.

Tony nodded. ‘It’s at the broker’s. They’ll wire the money. They want to replace the rail, where that asshole damaged it with the cleaver. I told them OK, just deduct it from the proceeds.’

Hobie nodded back. ‘What else?’

Tony smiled, at an apparent irony. ‘We got more money to move. The first interest payment just came in from the Stone account. Eleven thousand dollars, right on time. Conscientious little asshole, isn’t he?’

Hobie smiled back. ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul, only now Peter and Paul are the same damn guy. Wire it down to the islands at start of business, OK?’

Tony nodded and read a note. ‘Simon called from Hawaii again. They made the plane. Right now they’re over the Grand Canyon somewhere.’

‘Has Newman found it yet?’ Hobie asked.

Tony shook his head. ‘Not yet. He’s going to start looking this morning. Reacher pushed him into doing it. Sounds like a smart guy.’

‘Not smart enough,’ Hobie said. ‘Hawaii’s five hours behind, right?’

‘It’ll be this afternoon. Call it he starts at nine, spends a couple of hours looking, that’s four o’clock our time. We’ll be out of here.’