He reviewed his work and at seven o’clock exactly he hit search. The hard disk whirred and chattered in the morning silence and the software started its patient journey through the database.
They landed ten minutes ahead of schedule, just before the peak of noon, East Coast time. They came in low
over the glittering waters of Jamaica Bay and put down facing east before turning back and taxiing slowly to the terminal. Jodie reset her watch and was on her feet before the plane stopped moving, which was a transgression they don’t chide you for in first class.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I’m real tight for time.’
They were lined up by the door before it opened. Reacher carried her bag out into the jet way and she hurried ahead of him all the way through the terminal and outside. The Lincoln Navigator was still there in the short-term lot, big and black and obvious, and it cost fifty-eight of Rutter’s dollars to drive it out.
‘Do I have time for a shower?’ she asked herself.
Reacher put his comment into hustling faster than he should along the Van Wyck. The Long Island Expressway was moving freely west to the tunnel. They were in Manhattan within twenty minutes of touching down and heading south on Broadway near her place within thirty.
‘I’m still going to check it out,’ he told her. ‘Shower or no shower.’
She nodded. Being back in the city had brought back the worry.
‘OK, but be quick.’
He limited it to stopping on the street outside her door and making a visual check of the lobby. Nobody there. They dumped the car and went up to five and down the fire stairs to four. The building was quiet and deserted. The apartment was empty and undisturbed. The Mondrian copy glowed in the bright daylight. Twelve-thirty in the afternoon.
‘Ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Then you can drive me to the office, OK?’
‘How will you get to the meeting?’
‘We have a driver,’ she said. ‘He’ll take me.’
She ran through the living room to the bedroom, shedding clothes as she went.
‘You need to eat?’ Reacher called after her.
‘No time,’ she called back.
She spent five minutes in the shower and five minutes in the closet. She came out with a charcoal dress and a matching jacket.
‘Find my briefcase, OK?’ she yelled.
She combed her hair and used a hair dryer on it. Limited her make-up to a touch of eyeliner and lipstick. Checked herself in the mirror and ran back to the living room. He had her briefcase waiting for her. He carried it down to the car.
‘Take my keys,’ she said. ‘Then you can get back in. I’ll call you from the office and you can come pick me up.’
It took seven minutes to get opposite the little plaza outside her building. She slid out of the car at five minutes to one.
‘Good luck,’ Reacher called after her. ‘Give them hell.’
She waved to him and skipped across to the revolving door. The security guys saw her coming and nodded her through to the elevator bank. She was upstairs in her office before one o’clock. Her secretary followed her inside with a thin file in his hand.
‘There you go,’ he said, ceremoniously.
She opened it up and flipped through eight sheets of paper.
‘Hell is this?’ she said.
‘They were thrilled about it at the partners’ meeting,’ the guy said.
She went back through the pages in reverse order. ‘I don’t see why. I never heard of either of these corporations and the amount is trivial.’
‘That’s not the point, though, is it?’ the guy said.
She looked at him. ‘So what is the point?’
‘It’s the creditor who hired you,’ he said. ‘Not the guy who owes all the money. It’s a pre-emptive move, isn’t it? Because word is getting around. The creditor knows if you get alongside the guy who owes him money, you can cause him a big problem. So he hired you first, to keep that from happening. It means you’re famous. That’s what the partners are thrilled about. You’re a big star now, Mrs Jacob.’