Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Pauling said, “We should stop and call ahead. You know the number.”

  “That’s a big gamble,” Reacher said. “At highway speeds it costs time to slow down, turn off, park, find a phone that works, call, and get back on the road. A lot of time, at British speeds. And suppose there’s no answer? Suppose they’re still out there hoeing the weeds? We’d end up doing it again and again.”

  “We have to try to warn them. There’s the sister to think about. And Melody.”

  “Susan and Melody are perfectly safe.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Ask yourself where Kate and Jade are.”

  “I have no idea where they are.”

  “You do,” Reacher said. “You know exactly where they are. You saw them this morning.”

  CHAPTER 64

  THEY TURNED OFF the highway at Newmarket and set out cross-country toward Norwich. This time the road was familiar, but that didn’t make it any faster. Forward motion, without any visible result. A big sky, whipped clean by wind.

  “Think about the dynamic here,” Reacher said. “Why would Kate ask Taylor for help? How could she ask any of them for help? They’re all insanely loyal to Lane. Did Knight help Anne? Kate had just heard that story. Why would she walk up cold to another of Lane’s killers and say, hey, want to help me get out of here? Want to double-cross your boss? Help me steal his money?”

  Pauling said, “They already had a thing going.”

  Reacher nodded at the wheel. “That’s the only way to explain it. They had already started an affair. Maybe long ago.”

  “The CO’s wife? Hobart said no fighting man would do that.”

  “He said no American fighting man would do that. Maybe the British SAS does things differently. And there were signs. Carter Groom is about as emotional as a fence post but he said that Kate liked Taylor and that Taylor got on well with the kid.”

  “Dee Marie showing up must have acted like a kind of tipping point.”

  Reacher nodded again. “Kate and Taylor made a plan and put it in action. But first they explained it to Jade. Maybe they thought it would be too much of a sudden trauma not to. They swore her to secrecy, as much as they could with an eight-year-old. And the kid did pretty well.”

  “What did they tell her?”

  “That she already had one replacement daddy, now she was getting another. That she already lived in one new place, now she was moving on.”

  “Big secret for a kid to keep.”

  “She didn’t exactly keep it,” Reacher said. “She was worried about it. She straightened it out in her head by drawing it. Maybe it was an old habit. Maybe mothers always say, draw a picture of something you’re going to see.”

  “What picture?”

  “There were four in her room. On her desk. Kate didn’t sanitize well enough. Or maybe she just mistook them for regular clutter. There was a big gray building with trees in front. At first I thought it was the Dakota from Central Park. Now I think it was the Grange Farm farmhouse. They must have shown her photographs, to prepare her. She got the trees just right. Thin straight trunks, round crowns. To withstand the wind. Like light green lollipops on brown sticks. And then there was a picture of a family group. I thought the guy was Lane, obviously. But there was something weird about his mouth. Like half his teeth had been punched out. So it wasn’t Lane. It was Taylor, clearly. The dentistry. Jade was probably fascinated by it. She drew her new family. Taylor, Kate, and her. To internalize the idea.”

  “And you think Taylor brought them here to England?”

  “I think Kate wanted him to. Maybe even begged him to. They needed a safe haven. Somewhere very distant. Out of Lane’s reach. And they were having an affair. They didn’t want to be apart. So if Taylor’s here, then Kate’s here, too. Jade did a picture of three people in an airplane. That was the journey she was going to take. Then she did one of two families together. Like double vision. I had no idea what it meant. But now my guess is that was Jackson and Taylor, and Susan and Kate, and Melody and herself. Her new situation. Her new extended family. Happy ever after on Grange Farm.”

  “Doesn’t work,” Pauling said. “Their passports were still in the drawer.”

  “That was crude,” Reacher said. “Wasn’t it? You must have searched a thousand desks. Did you ever see passports all alone in a drawer? Kind of ostentatiously displayed like that? I never did. They were always buried under other junk. Leaving them on show like that was a message. It said, hey, we’re still in the country. Which meant actually they weren’t.”

  “How do you get out without a passport?”

  “You don’t. But you once said, they don’t look as closely on the way out. You said sometimes a little resemblance is all you need.”

  Pauling paused a beat. “Someone else’s passport?”

  “Who do we know that fits the bill? A woman in her thirties and an eight-year-old girl?”

  Pauling said, “Susan and Melody.”

  “Dave Kemp told us Jackson had been alone at the farm,” Reacher said. “That was because Susan and Melody had flown to the States. They got all the correct entry stamps. Then they gave their passports to Kate and Jade. Maybe in Taylor’s apartment. Maybe over dinner. Like a little ceremony. Then Taylor booked on British Airways. He was sitting next to a British woman on the plane. We know that for sure. A buck gets ten she’s on the passenger manifest as Mrs. Susan Jackson. And another buck gets ten that next to her was a little British kid called Ms. Melody Jackson. But they were really Kate and Jade Lane.”

  “But that leaves Susan and Melody stuck in the States.”

  “Temporarily,” Reacher said. “What did Taylor mail back?”

  “A thin book. Not many pages. With a rubber band around it.”

  “Who puts a rubber band around a thin book? It was actually two very thin books. Two passports, bundled together. Mailed to Susan’s New York City hotel room, where she and Melody are right now sitting and waiting to get them back.”

  “But the stamps will be out of sequence now. When they leave they’ll be exiting without having entered.”

  Reacher nodded. “It’s an irregularity. But what are the people at JFK going to do about it? Deport them? That’s exactly what they want. So they’ll get home OK.”

  “Sisters,” Pauling said. “This whole thing has been about the loyalty of sisters. Patti Joseph, Dee Marie Graziano, Susan Jackson.”

  Reacher drove on. Said nothing.

  “Unbelievable,” Pauling said. “We saw Kate and Jade this morning.”

  “Setting out with their hoes,” Reacher said. “Starting out on their new lives.”

  Then he accelerated a little, because the road was widening and straightening for the bypass around the town called Thetford.

  * * *

  John Gregory was hitting the gas, too. He was at the wheel of a rented dark green seven-seat Toyota Land Cruiser sports utility vehicle. Edward Lane was next to him in the front passenger seat. Kowalski and Addison and Carter Groom were shoulder to shoulder on the rear bench. Burke and Perez were on the jump seats way in back. They were joining the M-11 at its southern tip, having blasted straight through central London to the northeast corner of the inner city.

  CHAPTER 65

  THIS TIME IN full daylight Reacher saw the sign to B’sh’ps P’ter a hundred yards away and slowed well in advance and made the turn like he had been driving the back roads of Norfolk all his life. It was close to two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was high and the wind was dropping. Blue skies, small white clouds, green fields. A perfect English late-summer day. Almost.

  Pauling said, “What are you going to tell them?”

  “That I’m sorry,” Reacher said. “I think that might be the best place to start.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll probably say it again.”

  “They can’t stay there.”

  “It’s a farm. Someone’s got to stay there.”

  “Are you volunteering
?”

  “I might have to.”

  “Do you know anything about farming?”

  “Only what I’ve seen in the movies. Usually they get locusts. Or a fire.”

  “Not here. Floods, maybe.”

  “And idiots like me.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. They faked a kidnap. Don’t blame yourself for taking it seriously.”

  “I should have seen it,” Reacher said. “It was weird from the start.”

  They passed the Bishop’s Arms. The pub. The end of the lunch hour. Five cars in the lot. The Grange Farm Land Rover was not one of them. They drove on, roughly east, and in the distance they saw the Bishops Pargeter church tower, gray, square, and squat. Only forty-some feet tall, but it dominated the flat landscape like the Empire State Building. They drove on. They passed the ditch that marked Grange Farm’s western boundary. Heard the bird scarer again, a loud booming shotgun blast.

  “I hate that thing,” Pauling said.

  Reacher said, “You might end up loving it. Camouflage like that could be our best friend.”

  “Could be Taylor’s best friend, too. In about sixty seconds from now. He’s going to think he’s under attack.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “Take a deep breath,” he said.

  He slowed the car well before the small flat bridge. Turned in wide and deliberate. Left it in second gear. Small vehicle, low speed. Unthreatening. He hoped.

  The driveway was long and it looped through two curves. Around unseen softness in the dirt, maybe. The beaten earth was muddy and less even than it had looked from a distance. The tiny car rocked and bounced. The farmhouse’s gable wall was blank. No windows. The smoke from the chimney was thicker now and straighter. Less wind. Reacher opened his window and heard nothing at all except the noise of his engine and the slow rolling crunch of his tires on gravel and small stones.

  “Where is everybody?” Pauling said. “Still out hoeing?”

  “You can’t hoe for seven hours straight,” Reacher said. “You’d break your back.”

  The driveway split thirty yards in front of the house. A fork in the road. West, the formal approach to the front door. East, a shabbier track toward the spot where the Land Rover had been parked, and the barns beyond. Reacher went east. The Land Rover wasn’t there anymore. All the barn doors were closed. The whole place was quiet. Nothing was moving.

  Reacher braked gently and backed up. Took the wider path west. There was a gravel circle with a stunted ash tree planted at its center. Around the tree was a circular wooden bench way too big for the thin trunk. Either the tree was a replacement or the carpenter had been thinking a hundred years ahead. Reacher drove around the circle clockwise, the British way. Stopped ten feet from the front door. It was closed. Nothing was moving anywhere, except the column of slow smoke rising from the chimney.

  “What now?” Pauling asked.

  “We knock,” Reacher said. “We move slow and we keep our hands visible.”

  “You think they’re watching us?”

  “Someone is. For sure. I can feel it.”

  He killed the motor and sat for a moment. Then he opened his door. Unwound his huge frame slow and easy and stood still next to the car with his hands held away from his sides. Pauling did the same thing six feet away. Then they walked together to the front door. It was a large slab of ancient oak, as black as coal. There were iron bands and hinges, newly painted over pits of old rust and corrosion. There was a twisted ring hinged in the mouth of a lion and positioned to strike down on a nail head as big as an apple. Reacher used it, twice, putting heavy thumps into the oak slab. It resonated like a bass drum.

  It brought no response.

  “Hello?” Reacher called.

  No response.

  He called, “Taylor? Graham Taylor?”

  No response.

  “Taylor? Are you there?”

  No answer.

  He tried the knocker again, twice more.

  Still no response.

  No sound at all.

  Except for the shuffle of a tiny foot, thirty feet away. The backward scrape of a thin sole on a stone. Reacher turned fast and glanced to his left. Saw a small bare knee pull back around the far corner of the house. Back into hiding.

  “I saw you,” Reacher called.

  No reply.

  “Come on out now,” he called. “It’s OK.”

  No response.

  “Look at our car,” Reacher called. “Cutest thing you ever saw.”

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s red,” Reacher called. “Like a fire engine.”

  No response.

  “There’s a lady here with me,” Reacher called. “She’s cute, too.”

  He stood still next to Pauling and a long moment later he saw a small dark head peer out from around the corner. A small face, pale skin, big green eyes. A serious mouth. A little girl, about eight years old.

  “Hello,” Pauling called. “What’s your name?”

  “Melody Jackson,” Jade Lane said.

  CHAPTER 66

  THE KID WAS instantly recognizable from the imperfect Xerox Reacher had seen on the desk in the Dakota bedroom. She was about a year older than she had been in the picture but she had the same long dark hair, slightly wavy, as fine as silk, and the same green eyes, and the same porcelain skin. It had been a striking photograph, but the reality was way better. Jade Lane was a truly beautiful child.

  “My name is Lauren,” Pauling said. “This man is called Reacher.”

  Jade nodded her head. Grave and serious. She said nothing. Didn’t come closer. She was wearing a summer dress, sleeveless, green seersucker stripes. Maybe from Bloomingdale’s on Lexington Avenue. Maybe one of her favorite garments. Maybe part of her hasty and unwise packing. She had white socks on, and thin summer sandals. They were dusty.

  Pauling said, “We’re here to talk to the grown-ups. Do you know where they are?”

  Thirty feet away Jade nodded her head again. Said nothing.

  Pauling asked, “Where are they?”

  A voice thirty feet away in the other direction said, “One of them is right here, lady,” and Kate Lane stepped out from around the other corner of the house. She was pretty much unchanged from her photograph, too. Dark hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a bud of a mouth. Extremely, impossibly beautiful. Maybe a little more tired than she had been in the photographer’s studio. Maybe a little more stressed. But definitively the same woman. Outside of what the portrait had shown she was maybe five feet nine inches tall, not much more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, slim and willowy. Exactly what an ex-model should look like, Reacher figured. She was wearing a man’s flannel shirt, big and clearly borrowed. She looked great in it. But then, she would have looked great in a garbage bag with holes torn for her arms and legs and head.

  “I’m Susan Jackson,” she said.

  Reacher shook his head. “You’re not, but I’m very glad to meet you anyway. And Jade, too. You’ll never know how glad I am.”

  “I’m Susan Jackson,” she said again. “That’s Melody.”

  “We don’t have time for that, Kate. And your accent isn’t real convincing anyway.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Reacher.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Where’s Taylor?”

  “Who?”

  Reacher glanced back at Jade and then took a step toward Kate. “Can we talk? Maybe a little ways down the track?”

  “Why?”

  “For privacy.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to upset your daughter.”

  “She knows what’s going on.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “We’re here to warn you.”

  “About what?”

  “Edward Lane is an hour behind us. Maybe less.”

  “Edward is here?” Kate said. For the first time, real fear in her face. “Edward is here in England? Already?”

  Reacher nodde
d. “Heading this way.”

  “Who are you?”

  “He paid me to find Taylor.”

  “So why warn us?”

  “Because I just figured out it wasn’t for real.”

  Kate said nothing.

  “Where’s Taylor?” Reacher asked again.

  “He’s out,” Kate said. “With Tony.”

  “Anthony Jackson? The brother-in-law?”

  Kate nodded. “This is his farm.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “To Norwich. For a part for the backhoe. They said we need to dredge some ditches.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “About two hours ago.”

  Reacher nodded again. Norwich. The big city. Thirty miles there, thirty miles back. About a two-hour trip. He glanced south at the road. Nothing moving on it.

  “Let’s all go inside,” he said.

  “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “You do,” Reacher said. “Right now I’m your best friend.”

  Kate stared at Pauling for a moment and seemed reassured by the presence of another woman. She blinked once and opened the front door. Led them all in. The farmhouse itself was dark and cold inside. It had low beamed ceilings and irregular stone floors. Thick walls and flowered wallpaper and small leaded windows. The kitchen was the hub of the home. That was clear. It was a large rectangular room. There were bright copper pans hanging from hooks and sofas and armchairs and a fireplace big enough to live in and a huge old-fashioned range. There was a massive oak dining table with twelve chairs around it and a separate pine desk with a phone and stacks of papers and envelopes and jars of pens and pencils and postage stamps and rubber bands. All the furniture was old and worn and comfortable and smelled of dogs, even though there were no dogs in the house. They had belonged to the previous owners, maybe. Maybe the furniture had been included in the sale. Maybe there had been bankruptcy problems.

  Reacher said, “I think you should get out, Kate. Right now. You and Jade. Until we see what happens.”

  “How?” Kate asked. “The truck isn’t here.”

  “Take our car.”

  “I’ve never driven here before. I’ve never even been here before.”