She went quiet. Turned around.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
I paused a beat. The light was still behind her. Very nice indeed.
“I’m going to take a nap,” I said.
“How long have you got?”
I checked my watch. “About three hours.”
“You tired?”
I nodded. “I was up all night, swimming, mostly.”
“You swam past the wall?” she said. “Maybe you are an idiot.”
“Are you tired too?” I asked.
“Very. I’ve been working hard for weeks.”
“So take a nap with me,” I said.
“Doesn’t feel right. Teresa’s in danger somewhere.”
“I can’t go yet anyway,” I said. “Not until Mrs. Beck is ready.”
She paused a beat. “There’s only one bed.”
“Not a huge problem. You’re thin. You won’t take up much room.”
“Wouldn’t be right,” she said.
“We don’t have to get in,” I said. “We could just lie on top.”
“Right next to each other?”
“Fully dressed,” I said. “I’ll even keep my shoes on.”
She said nothing.
“It’s not against the law,” I said.
“Maybe it is,” she said. “Some states have weird old statutes. Maine might be one of them.”
“I’ve got other Maine statutes to worry about.”
“Not right this minute.”
I smiled. Then I yawned. I sat on the bed and lay down on my back. Rolled over on my side and turned away from the middle and jammed my arms up under my head. Closed my eyes. I sensed her standing there, minute after minute. Then I felt her lie down next to me. She shuffled around a little. Then she went still. But she was tense. I could feel it. It was coming through the mattress springs, tiny high-frequency thrills of concern.
“Don’t panic,” I said. “I’m way too tired.”
But I wasn’t, really. The problem started when she moved slightly and touched my butt with hers. It was a very faint contact, but she might as well have plugged me into a power outlet. I opened my eyes and stared at the wall and tried to figure out whether she was asleep and had moved involuntarily or whether she had done it on purpose. I spent a couple of minutes thinking it through. But I guess mortal danger is an aphrodisiac because I found myself erring on the side of optimism. Then I wasn’t certain about the required response. What was the correct etiquette? I settled for moving an inch myself and firming up the connection. I figured that would put the ball back in her court. Now she could struggle with the interpretation.
Nothing happened for a whole minute. I was on the point of getting disappointed when she moved again. Now the connection was pretty damn solid. If I didn’t weigh two hundred and fifty pounds she might have slid me right across the shiny bedcover. I was fairly certain I could feel the rivets on her back pockets. My turn. I disguised it with a sort of sleepy sound and rolled over so we were stacked like spoons and my arm was accidentally touching her shoulder. Her hair was in my face. It was soft and smelled like summer. The cotton of her shirt was crisp. It plunged down to her waist and then the denim of her jeans swooped back up over her hips. I squinted down. She had taken her shoes off. I could see the soles of her feet. Ten little toes, all in a line.
She made a sleepy sound of her own. I was pretty sure it was fake. She nestled backward until she was jammed tight against me from top to bottom. I put my hand on her upper arm. Then I moved it down until it fell off her elbow and came to rest on her waist. The tip of my little finger was under the waistband of her jeans. She made another sound. Almost certainly a fake. I held my breath. Her butt was tight against my groin. My heart was thumping. My head was spinning. No way could I resist. No way at all. It was one of those insane hormone-driven moments when I would have risked eight years in Leavenworth for it. I slid my hand up and forward and cupped her breast. After that, things got completely out of control.
She was one of those women who is far more attractive naked than clothed. Not all women are, but she was. She had a body to die for. She had no tan, but her skin was not pale. It was as soft as silk, but it was not translucent. She was very slim, but I couldn’t see her bones. She was long, and she was lean. She was made for one of those bathing suits that swoop way up at the sides. She had small firm breasts, perfectly shaped. Her neck was long and slender. She had great ears and ankles and knees and shoulders. She had a little hollow at the base of her throat. It was very slightly damp.
She was strong, too. I must have outweighed her by a hundred and thirty pounds, but she had worn me out. She was young, I guess. She had maybe ten years on me. She had left me exhausted, which made her smile. She had a great smile.
“Remember my hotel room in Boston?” I said. “The way you sat on the chair? I wanted you right then.”
“I was just sitting on a chair. There wasn’t a way to it.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
“Remember the Freedom Trail?” she said. “You told me about the long-rod penetrator? I wanted you right then.”
I smiled.
“It was part of a billion-dollar defense contract,” I said. “So I’m glad this particular citizen got something out of it.”
“If Eliot hadn’t been with me I’d have done it right there in the park.”
“There was a woman feeding the birds.”
“We could have gone behind a bush.”
“Paul Revere would have seen us,” I said.
“He rode all night,” she said.
“I’m not Paul Revere,” I said.
She smiled again. I felt it against my shoulder.
“All done, old guy?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that, exactly.”
“Danger is an aphrodisiac, isn’t it?” she said.
“I guess it is.”
“So you admit you’re in danger?”
“I’m in danger of having a heart attack.”
“You really shouldn’t go back,” she said.
“I’m in danger of not being able to.”
She sat up on the bed. Gravity had no effect on her perfection.
“I’m serious, Reacher,” she said.
I smiled up at her. “I’ll be OK. Two or three more days. I’ll find Teresa and I’ll find Quinn and then I’ll get out.”
“Only if I let you.”
I nodded.
“The two bodyguards,” I said.
She nodded in turn. “That’s why you need my end of the operation. You can forget all about the heroic stuff. With you or without you, my ass. We turn those guys loose and you’re a dead man, one phone call later.”
“Where are they now?”
“In the first motel, back in Massachusetts. Where we made the plans. The guys from the Toyota and the college car are sitting on them.”
“Hard, I hope.”
“Very.”
“That’s hours away,” I said.
“By road,” she said. “Not by telephone.”
“You want Teresa back.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I’m in charge.”
“You’re a control freak,” I said.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, is all.”
“Nothing bad ever happens to me.”
She leaned down and traced her fingertips over the scars on my body. Chest, stomach, arms, shoulders, forehead. “You’ve taken a lot of damage for a guy nothing bad ever happens to.”
“I’m clumsy,” I said. “I fall over a lot.”
She stood up and walked to the bathroom, naked, graceful, completely unself-conscious.
“Hurry back,” I called.
But she didn’t hurry back. She was in the bathroom a long time and when she came out again she was wearing a robe. Her face had changed. She looked a little awkward. A little rueful.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Why not?�
��
“It was unprofessional.”
She looked straight at me. I nodded. I guessed it was a little unprofessional.
“But it was fun,” I said.
“We shouldn’t have.”
“We’re grown-ups. We live in a free country.”
“It was just taking comfort. Because we’re both stressed and uptight.”
“Nothing really wrong with that.”
“It’s going to complicate things,” she said.
I shook my head.
“Not if we don’t let it,” I said. “Doesn’t mean we have to get married or anything. We don’t owe each other anything because of it.”
“I wish we hadn’t.”
“I’m glad we did. I think if a thing feels right, you should do it.”
“That’s your philosophy?”
I looked away.
“It’s the voice of experience,” I said. “I once said no when I wanted to say yes and I lived to regret it.”
She hugged the robe tight around her.
“It did feel good,” she said.
“For me too,” I said.
“But we should forget it now. It meant what it meant, nothing more, OK?”
“OK,” I said.
“And you should think hard about going back.”
“OK,” I said again.
I lay on the bed and thought about how it felt to say no when you really wanted to say yes. On balance saying yes had been better, and I had no regrets. Duffy was quiet. It was like we were just waiting for something to happen. I took a long hot shower and dressed in the bathroom. We were done talking by then. There was nothing left to say. We both knew I was going back. I liked the fact that she didn’t really try to stop me. I liked the fact that we were both focused, practical people. I was lacing my shoes when her laptop went ping, like a muffled high-pitched bell. Like a microwave when your food is ready. No artificial voice saying You’ve got mail. I came out of the bathroom and she sat down in front of the computer and clicked a button.
“Message from my office,” she said. “Records show eleven dubious ex-cops called Duke. I put the request in yesterday. How old is he?”
“Forty, maybe,” I said.
She scrolled through her list.
“Southern guy?” she asked. “Northern?”
“Not Southern,” I said.
“Choice of three,” she said.
“Mrs. Beck said he’d been a federal agent, too.”
She scrolled some more.
“John Chapman Duke,” she said. “He’s the only one who went federal afterward. Started in Minneapolis as a patrolman and then a detective. Subject of three investigations by Internal Affairs. Inconclusive. Then he joined us.”
“DEA?” I said. “Really?”
“No, I meant the federal government,” she said. “He went to the Treasury Department.”
“To do what?”
“Doesn’t say. But he was indicted within three years. Some kind of corruption. Plus suspicion of multiple homicides, no real hard evidence. But he went to prison for four years anyway.”
“Description?”
“White, about your size. The photo makes him look uglier, though.”
“That’s him,” I said.
She scrolled some more. Read the rest of the report.
“Take care,” she said. “He sounds like a piece of work.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. I thought about kissing her good-bye at the door. But I didn’t. I figured she wouldn’t want me to. I just ran over to the Cadillac.
I was back in the coffee shop and almost at the end of my second cup when Elizabeth Beck appeared. She had nothing to show for her shopping. No purchases, no gaudy bags. I guessed she hadn’t actually been inside any stores. She had hung around for four long hours to let the government guy do whatever he needed to. I raised my hand. She ignored me and headed straight for the counter. Bought herself a tall white coffee and carried it over to my table. I had decided what I was going to tell her.
“I don’t work for the government,” I said.
“Then I’m disappointed,” she said, for the third time.
“How could I?” I said. “I killed a cop, remember.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Government people don’t do stuff like that.”
“They might,” she said. “By accident.”
“But they wouldn’t run away afterward,” I said. “They would stick around and face the music.”
She went quiet and stayed quiet for a long time. Sipped her coffee slowly.
“I’ve been there maybe eight or ten times,” she said. “Where the college is, I mean. They run events for the students’ families, now and then. And I try to be there at the start and finish of every semester. One summer I even rented a little U-Haul and helped him move his stuff home.”
“So?”
“It’s a small school,” she said. “But even so, on the first day of the semester it gets very busy. Lots of parents, lots of students, SUVs, cars, vans, traffic everywhere. The family days are even worse. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen a town policeman there. Not once. Certainly not a detective in plain clothes.”
I looked out the window to the internal mall sidewalk.
“Just a coincidence, I suppose,” she said. “A random Tuesday morning in April, early in the day, nothing much going on, and there’s a detective waiting right by the gate, for no very obvious reason.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“That you were terribly unlucky,” she said. “I mean, what were the odds?”
“I don’t work for the government,” I said.
“You took a shower,” she said. “Washed your hair.”
“Did I?”
“I can see it and smell it. Cheap soap, cheap shampoo.”
“I went to a sauna.”
“You didn’t have any money. I gave you twenty dollars. You bought at least two cups of coffee. That would leave maybe fourteen dollars.”
“It was a cheap sauna.”
“It must have been,” she said.
“I’m just a guy,” I said.
“And I’m disappointed about it.”
“You sound like you want your husband to get busted.”
“I do.”
“He’d go to prison.”
“He already lives in a prison. And he deserves to. But he’d be freer in a real prison than where he is now. And he wouldn’t be there forever.”
“You could call somebody,” I said. “You don’t need to wait for them to come to you.”
She shook her head. “That would be suicide. For me and Richard.”
“Just like it would be if you talked about me like this in front of anybody else. Remember, I wouldn’t go quietly. People would get hurt. You and Richard, maybe.”
She smiled. “Bargaining with me again?”
“Warning you again,” I said. “Full disclosure.”
She nodded.
“I know how to keep my mouth shut,” she said, and then she proved it by not saying another word. We finished our coffee in silence and walked back to the car. We didn’t talk. I drove her home, north and east, completely unsure whether I was carrying a ticking time bomb with me or turning my back on the only inside help I would ever get.
Paulie was waiting behind the gate. He must have been watching from his window and then taken up position as soon as he saw the car in the distance. I slowed and stopped and he stared out at me. Then he stared at Elizabeth Beck.
“Give me the pager,” I said.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Just do it,” I said.
Paulie unlatched the chain and pushed the gate. Elizabeth unzipped her bag and handed me the pager. I let the car roll forward and buzzed my window down. Stopped level with where Paulie was waiting to shut the gate again.
“Check this out,” I called.
I tossed the pager overarm out
in front of the car. It was a left-handed throw. It was weak and lacked finesse. But it got the job done. The little black plastic rectangle looped up in the air and landed dead-center on the driveway maybe twenty feet in front of the car. Paulie watched its trajectory and then froze when he realized what it was.
“Hey,” he said.
He went after it. I went after him. I stamped on the gas and the tires howled and the car jumped forward. I aimed the right-hand corner of the front bumper at the side of his left knee. I got very close. But he was incredibly quick. He scooped the pager off the blacktop and skipped back and I missed him by a foot. The car shot straight past him. I didn’t slow down. Just accelerated away and watched him in the mirror, standing in my wake, staring after me, blue tire smoke drifting all around him. I was severely disappointed. If I had to fight a guy who outweighed me by two hundred pounds I’d have been much happier if he was crippled first. Or at least if he wasn’t so damn fast.
I stopped on the carriage circle and let Elizabeth Beck out at the front door. Then I put the car away and was heading for the kitchen when Zachary Beck and John Chapman Duke came out looking for me. They were agitated and walking quickly. They were tense and upset. I thought they were going to give me a hard time about Paulie. But they weren’t.
“Angel Doll is missing,” Beck said.
I stood still. The wind was blowing in off the ocean. The lazy swell was gone and the waves were as big and noisy as they had been on the first evening. There was spray in the air.
“He spoke with you last thing,” Beck said. “Then he locked up and left and he hasn’t been seen since.”
“What did he want with you?” Duke asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know? You were in there five minutes.”
I nodded. “He took me back to the warehouse office.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He was all set to say something but his cell phone rang.”
“Who was it?”
I shrugged. “How would I know? Some kind of an urgent thing. He talked on the phone the whole five minutes. He was wasting my time and yours so I just gave it up and walked back out.”
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