the obscene bloom and spray of dead blood and tissue. The guy came up on his knees and Reacher tracked him all the way with the Steyr. The guy dropped the shotgun and went for his pocket and came back with a shiny short-barrel revolver. He thumbed the hammer. The click was loud. Jodie was heaving left and right against his arm tight around her waist. Left and right, left and right, furiously, randomly. Reacher had no clear shot. Blood was pouring into his left eye. His forehead was pounding and bleeding. He closed the useless eye against the wetness and squinted with the right. The shiny revolver came all the way up and jammed hard into Jodie’s side. She gasped and stopped moving and the guy’s face came out from behind her head, smiling savagely.
‘Drop the gun, asshole,’ he panted.
Reacher kept the Steyr exactly where it was. One eye open, one eye closed, jagged bolts of pain hammering in his head, the length of the silencer trained on the guy’s distorted grin.
‘I’ll shoot her,’ the guy snarled.
‘Then I’ll shoot you,’ Reacher said. ‘She dies, you die.’
The guy stared. Then he nodded.
‘Impasse,’ he said.
Reacher nodded back. It looked that way. He shook his head to clear it. It just made the pain worse. Stalemate. Even if he could fire first, the guy might still get a shot off. With his finger tense on the trigger like that and the gun hard in her side, the pulse of death would probably be enough to do it. It was too much to risk. He kept the Steyr where it was and stood up slowly and pulled his shirt tail out and wiped his face with it, all the time squinting one-eyed down the
barrel. The guy took a breath and stood up too, hauling Jodie with him. She tried to ease away from the pressure of the gun, but he kept her pulled in tight with his right arm. He turned his elbow outward and the hook pivoted and the point dug in against her waist.
‘So we need to deal,’ he said.
Reacher stood and mopped his eye and said nothing. His head was buzzing with pain. Buzzing and screaming. He was beginning to understand he was in serious trouble.
‘We need to deal,’ the guy said again.
‘No deal,’ Reacher replied.
The guy twisted the hook a little more and jammed the revolver in a little harder. Jodie gasped. It was a Smith and Wesson Model 60. Two-inch barrel, stainless steel, .38 calibre, five shots in the cylinder. The sort of thing a woman carries in her purse or a man conceals on his body. The barrel was so short and the guy was digging it in so hard his knuckles were hard up against Jodie’s side. She was hanging forward against the pressure of his arm. Her hair was falling over her face. Her eyes were looking straight up at Reacher, and they were the loveliest eyes he had ever seen.
‘Nobody says no deal to Victor Hobie,’ the guy snarled.
Reacher fought the pain and kept the Steyr steady and level on the guy’s forehead, right where the pink scars met the grey skin.
‘You’re not Victor Hobie,’ he said. ‘You’re Carl Allen, and you’re a piece of shit.’
There was silence. Pain was hammering in his head. Jodie was staring harder at him, questions in her eyes.
‘You’re not Victor Hobie,’ he said again. ‘You’re Carl Allen.’
The name hung in the air and the guy seemed to recoil away from it. He dragged Jodie backward, stepping over the corpse of the thickset guy, turning her to keep her body between himself and Reacher, walking slowly backward into the dark office. Reacher followed unsteadily with the Steyr held high and level. There were people in the office. Reacher saw dimmed windows and living-room furniture and three people milling around, the fair-haired woman in the silk dress and two men in suits. They were all staring at him. Staring at his gun, and the silencer, and his forehead, and the blood pouring down on to his shirt. Then they were regrouping themselves like automatons and moving towards a tight square group of sofas. They threaded their separate ways inside and sat down and placed their hands on the glass coffee table which was filling the space. Six hands on the table, three faces turned towards him, expressions of hope and fear and astonishment visible on each of them.