by Lee Child
“Than whatever.”
“How much later?”
“Eight hours from now.”
Vaughan said, “Eight hours is good.”
Reacher said, “First we’re going shopping.”
They got to the hardware store just as it was closing. The old guy in the brown coat was clearing his sidewalk display. He had wheeled the leaf blowers inside and was starting in on the wheelbarrows. Reacher went in and bought a slim flashlight and two batteries and a two-foot wrecking bar from the old guy’s wife. Then he went back out and bought the trick stepladder that opened to eight different positions. For storage or transport it folded into a neat package about four feet long and a foot and a half wide. It was made of aluminum and plastic and was very light. It fit easily on the Crown Vic’s rear bench.
Vaughan invited him over for dinner, at eight o’clock. She was very formal about it. She said she needed the intervening two hours to prepare. Reacher spent the time in his room. He took a nap, and then he shaved and showered and cleaned his teeth. And dressed. His clothes were new, but his underwear was past its prime, so he ditched it. He put on his pants and his shirt and raked his fingers through his hair and checked the result in the mirror and deemed it acceptable. He had no real opinion about his appearance. It was what it was. He couldn’t change it. Some people liked it, and some people didn’t.
Fifty yards from Vaughan’s house, he couldn’t see the watch commander’s car. Either it was in the driveway, or Vaughan had given it back. Or gotten an emergency call. Or changed her plans for the evening. Then from thirty yards away, he saw the car right there on the curb. A hole in the darkness. Dull glass. Black paint, matte with age. Invisible in the gloom.
Perfect.
He walked through the plantings on her stepping-stone path and touched the bell. The average delay at a suburban door in the middle of the evening, about twenty seconds. Vaughan got there in nine flat. She was in a black knee-length sleeveless A-line dress, and black low-heel shoes, like ballet slippers. She was freshly showered. She looked young and full of energy.
She looked stunning.
He said, “Hello.”
She said, “Come in.”
The kitchen was full of candlelight. The table was set with two chairs and two places and an open bottle of wine and two glasses. Aromas were coming from the stove. Two appetizers were standing on the counter. Lobster meat, avocado, pink grapefruit segments, on a bed of lettuce.
She said, “The main course isn’t ready. I screwed up the timing. It’s something I haven’t made for a while.”
“Three years,” Reacher said.
“Longer,” she said.
“You look great,” he said.
“Do I?”
“The prettiest view in Colorado.”
“Better than Pikes Peak?”
“Considerably. You should be on the front of the guide book.”
“You’re flattering me.”
“Not really.”
She said, “You look good, too.”
“That’s flattery for sure.”
“No, you clean up well.”
“I try my best.”
She asked, “Should we be doing this?”
He said, “I think so.”
“Is it fair to David?”
“David never came back. He never lived here. He doesn’t know.”
“I want to see your scar again.”
“Because you’re wishing David had come back with one. Instead of what he got.”
“I guess.”
Reacher said, “We were both lucky. I know soldiers. I’ve been around them all my life. They fear grotesque wounds. That’s all. Amputations, mutilations, burns. I’m lucky because I didn’t get one, and David is lucky because he doesn’t know he did.”
Vaughan said nothing.
Reacher said, “And we’re both lucky because we both met you.”
Vaughan said, “Show me the scar.”
Reacher unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off. Vaughan hesitated a second and then touched the ridged skin, very gently. Her fingertips were cool and smooth. They burned him, like electricity.
“What was it?” she asked.
“A truck bomb in Beirut.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Part of a man who was standing closer.”
“That’s awful.”
“For him. Not for me. Metal might have killed me.”
“Was it worth it?”
Reacher said, “No. Of course not. It hasn’t been worth it for a long time.”
“How long a time?”
“Since 1945.”
“Did David know that?”
“Yes,” Reacher said. “He knew. I know soldiers. There’s nothing more realistic than a soldier. You can try, but you can’t bullshit them. Not even for a minute.”
“But they keep on showing up.”
“Yes, they do. They keep on showing up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Never have.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“A few weeks, that’s all.”
“As bad a place as David is in?”
“Much worse.”
“Why are the hospitals so bad?”
“Because deep down to the army a wounded soldier that can’t fight anymore is garbage. So we depend on civilians, and civilians don’t care either.”
Vaughan put her hand flat against his scar and then slid it around his back. She did the same with her other hand, on the other side. She hugged his waist and held the flat of her cheek against his chest. Then she raised her head and craned her neck and he bent down and kissed her. She tasted of warmth and wine and toothpaste. She smelled like soap and clean skin and delicate fragrance. Her hair was soft. Her eyes were closed. He ran his tongue along the row of unfamiliar teeth and found her tongue. He cradled her head with one hand and put the other low on her back.
A long, long kiss.
She came up for air.
“We should do this,” she said.
“We are doing it,” he said.
“I mean, it’s OK to do this.”
“I think so,” he said again. He could feel the end of her zipper with the little finger of his right hand. The little finger of his left hand was down on the swell of her ass.
“Because you’re moving on,” she said.
“Two days,” he said. “Three, max.”
“No complications,” she said. “Not like it might be permanent.”
“I can’t do permanent,” he said.
He bent and kissed her again. Moved his hand and caught the tag of her zipper and pulled it down. She was naked under the dress. Warm, and soft, and smooth, and lithe, and fragrant. He stooped and scooped her up, one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders. He carried her down the hallway, to where he imagined the bedrooms must be, kissing her all the way. Two doors. Two rooms. One smelled unused, one smelled like her. Her carried her in and put her down and her dress slipped from her shoulders and fell. They kissed some more and her hands tore at the button on his pants. A minute later they were in her bed.
Afterward, they ate, first the appetizer, then pork cooked with apples and spices and brown sugar and white wine. For dessert, they went back to bed. At midnight, they showered together. Then they dressed, Reacher in his pants and shirt, Vaughan in black jeans and a black sweater and black sneakers and a slim black leather belt.
Nothing else.
“No gun?” Reacher asked.
“I don’t carry my gun off duty,” she said.
“OK,” he said.
At one o’clock, they went out.
53
Vaughan drove. She insisted on it. It was her watch commander’s car. Reacher was happy to let her. She was a better driver than him. Much better. Her panic one-eighty had impressed him. Backward to forward, at full speed. He doubted if he could have done it. He figured if he had been driving the mob would have caught them and torn them apart.<
br />
“Won’t they be there again?” Vaughan asked.
“Possible,” he said. “But I doubt it. It’s late, on the second night. And I told Thurman I wouldn’t be back. I don’t think it will be like yesterday.”
“Why would Thurman believe you?”
“He’s religious. He’s accustomed to believing things that comfort him.”
“We should have planned to take the long way around.”
“I’m glad we didn’t. It would have taken four hours. It wouldn’t have left time for dinner.”
She smiled and they took off, north to First Street, west toward Despair. There was thick cloud in the sky. No moon. No stars. Pitch black. Perfect. They thumped over the line and a mile before the top of the rise Reacher said, “It’s time to go stealthy. Turn all the lights off.”
Vaughan clicked the headlights off and the world went dark and she braked hard.
“I can’t see anything,” she said.
“Use the video camera,” he said. “Use the night vision.”
“What?”
“Like a video game,” he said. “Watch the computer screen, not the windshield.”
“Will that work?”
“It’s how tank drivers do it.”
She tapped keys and the laptop screen lit up and then stabilized into a pale green picture of the landscape ahead. Green scrub on either side, vivid boulders, a bright ribbon of road spearing into the distance. She took her foot off the brake and crawled forward, her head turned, staring at the thermal image, not the reality. At first she steered uncertainly, her hand-eye coordination disrupted. She drifted left and right and overcorrected. Then she settled in and got the hang of the new technique. She did a quarter-mile perfectly straight, and then she sped up and did the next quarter a little faster, somewhere between twenty and thirty.
“It’s killing me not to glance ahead,” she said. “It’s so automatic.”
“This is good,” Reacher said. “Stay slow.” He figured that at twenty or thirty there would be almost no engine noise. Just a low purr, and a soft burble from the pipes. There would be surface noise at any speed, from the tires on the grit, but that would get better closer to town. He leaned left and put his head on her shoulder and watched the screen. The landscape reeled itself in, silent and green and ghostly. The camera had no human reactions. It was just a dumb unblinking eye. It didn’t glance left or right or up or down or change focus. They came over the rise and the screen filled with blank cold sky for a second and then the nose of the car dipped down again and they saw the next nine miles laid out in front of them. Green scrub, scattered rocks glowing lighter, the ribbon of road, a tiny flare of heat on the horizon where the embers of the police station were still warm.
Reacher glanced ahead through the windshield a couple of times, but without headlights there was nothing to see. Nothing at all. Just darkness. Which meant that anyone waiting far ahead in the distance wasn’t seeing anything either. Not yet anyway. He recalled walking back to Hope, stepping over the line, not seeing Vaughan’s cruiser at all. And that was a newer car, shinier, with white doors and polished reflectors in the light bar on the roof. He hadn’t seen it. But she had seen him. I saw you half a mile away, she had said. A little green speck. He had seen himself on the screen afterward, a luminous sliver in the dark, getting bigger, coming closer.
Very fancy, he had said.
Homeland Security money, she had replied. Got to spend it on something.
He stared at the screen, watching for little green specks. The car prowled onward, slow and steady, like a black submarine loose in deep water. Two miles. Four. Still nothing ahead. Six miles. Eight. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, except the idling motor and the squelching tires and Vaughan’s tense breathing as she gripped the wheel and squinted sideways at the laptop screen.
“We must be getting close,” she whispered.
He nodded, on her shoulder. The screen showed buildings maybe a mile ahead. The gas station hut, slightly warmer than its surroundings. The dry goods store, with daytime heat trapped in its brick walls. A background glow from the downtown blocks. A pale blur in the air a little ways south and west, above where the police station had been.
No little green specks.
He said, “This is where they were yesterday.”
She said, “So where are they now?”
She slowed a little and drifted onward. The screen held steady. Geography and architecture, nothing more. Nothing moving.
“Human nature,” Reacher said. “They got all pumped up yesterday and thought they’d gotten rid of us. They don’t have the stamina to do it all again.”
“There could be one or two out and about.”
“Possible.”
“They’ll call ahead and warn the plant.”
“That’s OK,” Reacher said. “We’re not going to the plant. Not yet anyway.”
They drifted on, slow and dark and silent. The vacant lot and the abandoned motor court barely showed up on the screen. Thermally they were just parts of the landscape. The gas station and the household goods store shone brighter. Beyond them the other blocks glowed mid-green. There were window-sized patches of brighter color, and heat was leaking from roofs with imperfect insulation. But there were no pinpoints of light. No little green specks. No crowds, no small groups of shuffling people, no lone sentries.
Not dead ahead anyway.
The camera’s fixed angle was useless against the cross-streets. It showed their mouths to a depth of about five feet. That was all. Reacher stared sideways into the darkness as they rolled past each opening. Saw nothing. No flashlights, no match flares, no lighter sparks, no cigarette coals glowing red. The tire noise had dropped away to almost nothing. Main Street was worn down to the tar. No more pebbles. Vaughan was holding her breath. Her foot was feather light on the pedal. The car rolled onward, a little faster than walking, a lot slower than running.
Two green specks stepped out ahead.
They were maybe a quarter of a mile away, at the west end of Main Street. Two figures, emerging from a cross-street. A foot patrol. Vaughan braked gently and came to a stop, halfway through town. Six blocks behind her, six ahead.
“Can they see us?” she whispered.
“I think they’re facing away,” Reacher said.
“Suppose they’re not?”
“They can’t see us.”
“There are probably more behind us.”
Reacher turned and stared through the rear window. Saw nothing. Just pitch black night. He said, “We can’t see them, they can’t see us. Laws of physics.”
The screen lit up with a white flare. Cone-shaped. Moving. Sweeping.
“Flashlight,” Reacher said.
“They’ll see us.”
“We’re too far away. And I think they’re shining it west.”
