Tripwire

by Child, Lee

  “Want me to carry that?” he asked.

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Union town,” she said. “Bodyguarding doesn’t include drayage around here.”

  “It looks pretty heavy,” he said.

  “I’m a big girl now,” she replied, looking at him.

  He nodded. Lifted the old iron bar out of its brackets and left it upright. She leaned past him and turned the locks. The same perfume, subtle and feminine. Her shoulders in the dress were slim, almost thin. Small muscles in her left arm were bunching to balance the heavy case.

  “What sort of law you got in there?” he asked.

  “Financial,” she said.

  He eased the door open. Glanced out. The hallway was empty. The elevator indicator was showing somebody heading down to the street from three.

  “What sort of financial?”

  They stepped across and called the elevator.

  “Debt rescheduling, mostly,” she said. “I’m more of a negotiator than a lawyer, really. More like a counselor or a mediator, you know?”

  He didn’t know. He had never been in debt. Not out of any innate virtue, but simply because he had never had the opportunity. All the basics had been provided for him by the Army. A roof over his head, food on his plate. He had never gotten into the habit of wanting much more. But he’d known guys who had run into trouble. They bought houses with mortgages and cars on time payment plans. Sometimes they got behind. The company clerk would sort it out. Talk to the bank, deduct the necessary provision straight from the guy’s paycheck. But he guessed that was small-time, compared to what she must deal with.

  “Millions of dollars?” he asked.

  The elevator arrived. The doors slid open.

  “At least,” she said. “Usually tens of millions, sometimes hundreds.”

  The elevator was empty. They stepped inside.

  “Enjoy it?” he asked.

  The elevator whined downward.

  “Sure,” she said. “A person needs a job, it’s as good as she’s going to get.”

  The elevator settled with a bump.

  “You good at it?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “Best there is on Wall Street, no doubt about that.”

  He smiled. She was Leon’s daughter, that was for damn sure.

  The elevator doors slid open. An empty lobby, the street door sucking shut, a broad woman heading slowly down the steps to the sidewalk.

  “Car keys?” he said.

  She had them in her hand. A big bunch of keys on a brass ring.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll back it up to the stairs. One minute.”

  The door from the lobby to the garage opened from the inside with a push bar. He went through and down the metal steps and scanned ahead into the gloom as he walked. Nobody there. At least, nobody visible. He walked confidently to the wrong car, a big dark Chrysler something, two spaces from Jodie’s jeep. He dropped flat to the floor and looked across, under the intervening vehicles. Nothing there. Nobody hiding on the floor. He got up again and squeezed around the Chrysler’s hood. Around the next car. He dropped to the floor again, jammed up in the space between the Oldsmobile’s tailgate and the wall. Craned his head down and looked for wires where there shouldn’t be wires. All clear. No booby traps.

  He unlocked the door and slid in. Fired it up and eased into the aisle. Backed up level with the bottom of the stairs. Leaned across inside and sprang the passenger door as she came through from the lobby behind him. She skipped down the steps and climbed straight in the car, all one smooth fluid movement. She slammed the door and he took off forward and made the right up the ramp and the right on the street.

  The morning sun in the east flashed once in his eyes, and then he was through it, heading south. The first corner was thirty yards ahead. Traffic was slow. Not stopped, just slow. The light caught him three cars back from the turn. He was in the right lane, and he had no angle to see into the mouth of the cross street. Traffic poured right to left out of it, ahead of him, three cars away. He could see the far stream was slowed, spilling around some kind of obstacle. Maybe a parked vehicle. Maybe a parked four-door, just waiting there for something. Then the sideways flow stopped, and the light on Broadway went green.

  He drove across the intersection with his head turned, half an eye ahead, and the rest of his attention focused sideways. Nothing there. No parked four-door. The obstruction was a striped sawhorse placed against an open manhole. There was a power company truck ten yards farther down the street. A gaggle of workmen on the sidewalk, drinking soda from cans. The traffic ground on. Stopped again, for the next light. He was four cars back.

  This was not the street. The traffic pattern was wrong. It was flowing west, left to right in front of him. He had a good view out to his left. He could see fifty yards down the street. Nothing there. Not this one. It was going to be the next one.

  Ideally he would have liked to do more than just drive straight by the two guys. A better idea would be to track around the block and come up behind them. Ditch the jeep a hundred yards away and stroll up on them from the rear. They would be craning forward, watching the crosswalk through the windshield. He could take a good look at them, as long as he wanted. He could even get right in their car with them. The rear doors would be unlocked, for sure. The guys would be staring straight ahead. He could slip in behind them and plant a hand on the side of each head and bang them together like a bandsman letting rip with the cymbals. Then he could do it again, and again, and again, until they started answering some basic questions.

  But he wasn’t going to do that. Concentrate on the job in hand was his rule. The job in hand was getting Jodie to her office, safe and secure. Bodyguarding was about defense. Start mixing offense in with it, and neither thing gets done properly. Like he had told her, he used to do this for a living. He was trained in it. Very well trained, and very experienced. So he was going to stay defensive, and he was going to count it a major victory to see her walking in through her office door, all safe and secure. And he was going to stay quiet about how much trouble she was in. He didn’t want her worrying about it. No reason why whatever Leon had started should end up giving her any kind of anguish. Leon would not have wanted that. Leon would have just wanted him to handle everything. So that was how he was going to do it. Deliver her to the office door, no long explanations, no gloomy warnings.

  The light went green. The first car took off, then the second. Then the third. He eased forward. Checked the gap ahead of him and craned his head right. Were they there? The cross street was narrow. Two lanes of stopped traffic, waiting at the light. Nothing parked up in the right lane. Nothing waiting. They weren’t there. He moved slowly through the whole width of the intersection, scanning right. Nobody there. He breathed out and relaxed and faced forward. There was a huge metallic bang. A tremendous loud metallic punch in his back. Tearing sheet metal, instant violent acceleration. The jeep was hurled forward and smashed into the vehicle ahead and stopped dead. The airbags exploded. He saw Jodie bouncing off her seat and crashing against the tension of her belt, her body stopping abruptly, her head still cannoning forward. Then it was bouncing backward off the airbag and whipping and smashing into the headrest behind her. He noticed her face was fixed in space exactly alongside his, with the inside of the car blurring and whirling and spinning past it, because his head was doing exactly the same things as hers.

  The twin impacts had torn his hands off the wheel. The airbag was collapsing in front of him. He dragged his eyes to the mirror and saw a giant black hood buried in the back of the jeep. The top of a shiny chrome grille, bent out of shape. Some huge four-wheel-drive truck. One guy in it, visible behind the tinted screen. Not a guy he knew. Cars were honking behind them and traffic was pulling left and steering around the obstruction. Faces were turning to stare. There was a loud hissing somewhere. Steam from his radiator, or maybe ringing from his ears after the enormous sudden sounds. The guy b
ehind was getting out of the four-wheel-drive. Hands held up in apology, worry and fright in his face. He was folding himself around his door, out there in the slow traffic stream, walking up toward Reacher’s window, glancing sideways at the tangle of sheet metal as he passed. A woman was getting out of the sedan in front, looking dazed and angry. The traffic was snarling around them. The air was shimmering from overheated motors and loud with horns blasting. Jodie was upright in her seat, feeling the back of her neck with her fingers.

  “You OK?” he asked her.

  She thought about it for a long moment, and then she nodded.

  “I’m OK,” she said. “You?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  She poked at the collapsed airbag with her finger, fascinated.

  “These things really work, you know that?”

  “First time I ever saw one deploy,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  Then there was rapping on the driver’s-side window. The guy from behind was standing there, knocking urgently with his knuckles. Reacher stared out at him. The guy was gesturing for him to open up, urgently, like he was anxious about something.

  “Shit,” Reacher yelled.

  He stamped on the gas. The jeep struggled forward, pushing against the woman’s wrecked sedan. It made a yard, slewing to the left, sheet metal screeching.

  “Hell are you doing?” Jodie screamed.

  The guy had his hand on the door handle. His other hand in his pocket.

  “Get down,” Reacher shouted.

  He found reverse and howled back the yard he’d made and smashed into the four-wheel-drive behind. The new impact won him another foot. He shoved the selector into drive and spun the wheel and barged left. Smashed into the rear quarter of the sedan in a new shower of glass. Traffic behind was swerving and slewing all over again. He glanced right and one of the guys he’d seen in Key West and Garrison was at the window with his hand on Jodie’s door. He stamped on the gas and hurled the jeep backward, spinning the wheel. The guy kept tight hold, jerked backward by his arm, flung off his feet by the violent motion. Reacher smashed all the way backward into the black truck and bounced off again forward, screaming the motor, spinning the wheel. The guy was up again, still gripping the door handle, jerking and hauling, spare arm and legs flailing, like he was a wrangler and the jeep was a wild young steer in a desperate fight out of a trap. Reacher mashed the pedal and angled out forward close to the rear comer of the woman’s wrecked sedan and scraped the guy off against the trunk. The fender took him at the knees and he somersaulted and his head came down on the rear glass. In the mirror Reacher saw a blur of flailing arms and legs as his momentum carried him up over the roof. Then he was gone, sprawling back to the sidewalk.

  “Watch out!” Jodie screamed.

  The guy from the truck was still there at the driver’s window. Reacher was out in the traffic stream, but the traffic stream was slow and the guy was just running fast beside him, struggling to free something from his pocket. Reacher swerved left and came in parallel to a panel truck in the next lane. The guy was still running, skipping sideways, holding the door handle, coming out with something from his pocket. Reacher jammed left again and thumped him hard against the side of the truck. He heard a dull boom as the guy’s head hit the metal and then he was gone. The truck jammed to a panic stop and Reacher hauled left and got in front of it. Broadway was a solid mass of traffic. Ahead of him was a shimmering patchwork of metallic colors, sedan roofs winking in the sun, dodging left, dodging right, crawling forward, fumes rising, horns blasting. He hauled left again and turned and went through a crosswalk against the light, a crowd of jostling people skittering out of his way. The jeep was juddering and bouncing and pulling hard to the right. The temperature gauge was off the scale. Steam was boiling up through the gaps around the buckled hood. The collapsed airbag was hanging down to his knees. He jerked forward and hauled left again and jammed into an alley full of restaurant waste. Boxes, empty drums of cooking oil, rough wooden trays piled with spoiled vegetables. He buried the nose in a pile of cartons. They spilled down on the wrecked hood and bounced off the windshield. He killed the motor and pulled the keys.

  He had put it too close to the wall for Jodie’s door to open. He grabbed her briefcase and her purse and threw them out through his door. Squeezed out after them and turned back for her. She was scrambling across the seats behind him. Her dress was riding up. He grabbed her around the waist and she ducked her head to his shoulder and he lifted her through the gap. She clung on hard, bare legs around his waist. He turned and ran her six feet away. She weighed nothing at all. He set her on her feet and ducked back for her bags. She was smoothing her dress over her thighs. Breathing hard. Damp hair all over the place.

  “How did you know?” she gasped. “That it wasn’t an accident?”

  He gave her the purse and carried the heavy briefcase himself. Led her by the hand back down the alley to the street, panting with adrenaline rush.

  “Talk while we walk,” he said.

  They turned left and headed east for Lafayette. The morning sun was in their eyes, the river breeze in their faces. Behind them, they could hear the traffic snarl on Broadway. They walked together fifty yards, breathing hard, calming down.

  “How did you know?”

  “Statistics, I guess. What were the chances we’d be in an accident on the exact same morning we figured there were guys out looking for us? Million to one, at best.”

  She nodded. A slight smile on her face. Head up, shoulders back, recovering fast. No trace of shock. She was Leon’s daughter, that was for damn sure.

  “You were great,” she said. “You reacted so fast.”

  He shook his head as he walked.

  “No, I was shit,” he said. “Dumb as hell. One mistake after another. They changed personnel. Some new guy in charge. I never even thought about that. I was figuring what the original pair of assholes might do, never even thought about them putting in somebody smarter. And whoever that guy was, he was pretty smart. It was a good plan, almost worked. I never saw it coming. Then when it happened, I still wasted a shitload of time talking to you about the damn airbags deploying.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” she said.

  “I do feel bad. Leon had a basic rule: Do it right. Thank God he wasn’t there to see that screwup. He’d have been ashamed of me.”

  He saw her face cloud over. Realized what he’d said.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t make myself believe he’s dead.”

  They came out on Lafayette. Jodie was at the curb, scanning for a cab.

  “Well, he is,” she said, gently. “We’ll get used to it, I guess.”

  He nodded. “And I’m sorry about your car. I should have seen it coming.”

  She shrugged. “It’s only leased. I’ll get them to send another one just like it. Now I know it stands up in a collision, right? Maybe a red one.”

  “You should report it stolen,” he said. “Call the cops and say it wasn’t there in the garage when you went for it this morning.”

  “That’s fraud,” she said.

  “No, that’s smart. Remember I can’t afford for the cops to be asking me questions about this. I don’t even carry a driver’s license.”

  She thought about it. Then she smiled. Like a kid sister smiles when she’s forgiving her big brother for some kind of waywardness, he thought.

  “OK,” she said. “I’ll call them from the office.”

  “The office? You’re not going to the damn office.”

  “Why not?” she said, surprised.

  He waved vaguely west, back toward Broadway. “After what happened there? I want you where I can see you, Jodie.”

  “I need to go to work, Reacher,” she said. “And be logical. The office hasn’t become unsafe just because of what happened over there. It’s a completely separate proposition, right? The office is still as safe now as it always was. And you were happy for me to go there before, so what’s changed?”

/>   He looked at her. He wanted to say everything’s changed. Because whatever Leon started with some old couple from a cardiology clinic has now got halfway-competent professionals mixed in with it. Halfway-competent professionals who were about half a second away from winning this morning. And he wanted to say: I love you and you’re in danger and I don’t want you anyplace I can’t be looking out for you. But he couldn’t say any of that. Because he had committed himself to keeping it all away from her. All of it, the love and the danger. So he just shrugged, lamely.

  “You should come with me,” he said.

  “Why? To help?”

  He nodded. “Yes, help me with these old folks. They’ll talk to you, because you’re Leon’s daughter.”

  “You want me with you because I’m Leon’s daughter?”

  He nodded again. She spotted a cab and waved it down.

  “Wrong answer, Reacher,” she said.

  HE ARGUED WITH her, but he got nowhere. Her mind was made up, and she wouldn’t change it. The best he could do was to get her to solve his immediate problem and rent him a car, with her gold card and her license. They took the cab up to midtown and found a Hertz office. He waited outside in the sun for a quarter hour and then she came around the block in a brand-new Taurus and picked him up. She drove all the way back downtown on Broadway. They passed by her building and passed by the scene of the ambush three blocks south. The damaged vehicles were gone. There were shards of glass in the gutter and oil stains on the blacktop, but that was all. She drove on south and parked next to a hydrant opposite her office door. Left the motor running and racked the seat all the way back, ready for the change of driver.