Tripwire by Lee Child

‘My husband’s just had his medication,’ the woman said. ‘He’s sleeping now. He’s very sick, you know.’

Jodie nodded in the car. Opened and closed her spare hand in frustration.

‘Mrs Hobie, can’t you tell us what this is about?’

Silence. Breathing, thinking.

‘I should let my husband tell you. I think he can explain it better than me. It’s a long story, and I sometimes get confused.’

‘OK, when will he wake up?’ Jodie asked. ‘Should we come by a little later?’

There was another pause.

‘He usually sleeps right through, after his medication,’ the old woman said. ‘It’s a blessing, really, I think. Can your father’s friend come first thing in the morning?’

Hobie used the tip of his hook to press the intercom buzzer on his desk. Leaned forward and called through to his receptionist. He used the guy’s name, which was an unusual intimacy for Hobie, generally caused by stress.

‘Tony?’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

Tony came in from his brass-and-oak reception counter in the lobby and threaded his way around the coffee table to the sofa.

‘It was Garber who went to Hawaii,’ he said.

‘You sure?’ Hobie asked him.

Tony nodded. ‘On American, White Plains to Chicago, Chicago to Honolulu, April fifteenth. Returned the next day, April sixteenth, same route. Paid by Amex. It’s all in their computer.’

‘But what did he do there?’ Hobie said, more or less to himself.

‘We don’t know,’ Tony muttered. ‘But we can guess, can’t we?’

There was an ominous silence in the office. Tony watched the unburned side of Hobie’s face, waiting for a response.

‘I heard from Hanoi,’ Hobie said, into the silence.

‘Christ, when?’

‘Ten minutes ago.’

‘Jesus, Hanoi?’ Tony said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Thirty years,’ Hobie said. ‘And now it’s happened.’

Tony stood up and walked around behind the desk. Used his fingers to push two slats of the window blind apart. A bar of afternoon sunlight fell across the room.

‘So you should get out now. Now it’s way, way too dangerous.’

Hobie said nothing. He clasped his hook in the fingers of his left hand.

‘You promised,’ Tony said urgently. ‘Step one, step two. And they’ve happened. Both steps have happened now, for God’s sake.’

‘It’ll still take them some time,’ Hobie said. ‘Won’t it? Right now, they still don’t know anything.’

Tony shook his head. ‘Garber was no fool. He knew something. If he went to Hawaii, there was a good reason for it.’

Hobie used the muscle in his left arm to guide the

hook up to his face. He ran the smooth, cold steel over the scar tissue there. Time to time, pressure from the hard curve could relieve the itching.

‘What about this Reacher guy?’ he asked. ‘Any progress on that?’

Tony squinted out through the gap in the blind, eighty-eight floors up.

‘I called St Louis,’ he said. ‘He was a military policeman too, served with Garber the best part of thirteen years. They’d had another inquiry on the same subject, ten days ago. I’m guessing that was Costello.’

‘So why?’ Hobie asked. ‘The Garber family pays Costello to chase down some old Army buddy? Why? What the hell for?’

‘No idea,’ Tony said. ‘The guy’s a drifter. He was digging swimming pools down where Costello was.’

Hobie nodded, vaguely. He was thinking hard.

‘A military cop,’ he said to himself. ‘Who’s now a drifter.’

‘You should get out,’ Tony said again.

‘I don’t like the military police,’ Hobie said.

‘I know you don’t.’

‘So what’s the interfering bastard doing here?’

‘You should get out,’ Tony said for the third time.

Hobie nodded.

‘I’m a flexible guy,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

Tony let the blind fall back into place. The room went dark. ‘I’m not asking you to be flexible. I’m asking you to stick to what you planned all along.’

‘I changed the plan. I want the Stone score.’

Tony came back around the desk and took his place on the sofa. ‘Too risky to stick around for it. Both calls are in now. Vietnam and Hawaii, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I know that,’ Hobie said. ‘So I changed the plan again.’

‘Back to what it was?’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *