The Essential Jack Reacher 10-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  The nightmare voice asked, “Who’s that in the car with you?”

  “There’s nobody in the car with me,” Burke said. “I’m all alone.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No, I’m not lying,” Burke said.

  Reacher figured there might be a lie detector hooked up to the other end of the phone. Probably a simple device sold in the same kind of spy stores as the distortion machines. Plastic boxes, green lights and red lights. They were supposed to be able to detect the kind of voice stress that comes with lying. Reacher replayed Burke’s answers in his head and figured they would pass muster. It would be a crude machine and Delta soldiers were taught to beat better tests than a person could buy retail on Madison Avenue. And after a second it was clear that the box had indeed lit up green because the nightmare voice just went ahead calmly and asked, “Where are you now, Mr. Burke?”

  “Fifty-seventh Street,” Burke said. “I’m heading west. I’m about to get on the West Side Highway.”

  “You’re a long way from where I want you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am.”

  “Where do you want me?”

  “Take the highway, if that’s what you prefer. Go south.”

  “Give me time,” Burke said. “Traffic is real bad.”

  “Worried?”

  “How would you feel?”

  “Stay on the line,” the voice said.

  The sound of distorted breathing filled the car. It was slow and deep. Unworried, Reacher thought. A patient person, in control, in command, safe somewhere. He felt the car sprint and hook left. Onto the highway through a yellow light, he thought. Take care, Burke. A traffic stop could be real awkward tonight.

  “I’m on the highway now,” Burke said. “Heading south.”

  “Keep going,” the voice said. Then it lapsed back to breathing. There was an audio compressor somewhere in the chain. Either in the voice machine itself or in the BMW’s stereo. The breathing started out quiet and then ramped up slowly until it was roaring in Reacher’s ears. The whole car was filled with it. It felt like being inside a lung.

  Then the breathing stopped and the voice asked, “How’s the traffic?”

  “Lots of red lights,” Burke said.

  “Keep going.”

  Reacher tried to follow the route in his head. He knew there were plenty of lights between 57th Street and 34th Street. The Passenger Ship Terminal, the Intrepid, the Lincoln Tunnel approaches.

  “I’m at Forty-second Street now,” Burke said.

  Reacher thought: Are you talking to me? Or the voice?

  “Keep going,” the voice said.

  “Is Mrs. Lane OK?” Burke asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “Is Jade OK, too?”

  “Don’t worry about either one of them. Just keep on driving.”

  American, Reacher thought. For sure. Behind the wall of distortion he could hear the inflections of a native speaker. Reacher had heard more than his share of foreign accents, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m at the Javits now,” Burke said.

  “Just keep going,” the voice said back.

  Young, Reacher thought. Or at least not old. All the dirt and grit in the voice came from the electronic circuitry, not from the effects of age. Not a big guy, Reacher thought. The booming bass was artificial. There was a speed and a lightness there. No big chest cavity. Or, maybe a fat guy. Maybe one of those fat guys who have high-pitched voices.

  “How much farther?” Burke asked.

  “You low on gas?” the voice asked.

  “No.”

  “So what do you care?”

  The breathing came back, slow and steady. Not close yet, Reacher thought.

  “Coming up on Twenty-fourth Street,” Burke said.

  “Keep going.”

  The Village, Reacher thought. We’re going back to Greenwich Village. The car was moving faster now. Most of the left turns into the West Village were blocked off, so there were fewer lights. And most of the traffic would be going north, not south. A clear run, relatively speaking. Reacher craned his neck and got an angle through the rear side window. He could see buildings with the evening sun reflected in their windows. They flashed past in a dizzy kaleidoscope.

  The voice asked, “Where are you now?”

  “Perry,” Burke said.

  “Keep going. But stand by now.”

  Getting close, Reacher thought. Houston? Are we going to take Houston Street? Then he thought: Stand by now? That’s a military term. But is it exclusively military? Is this guy ex-military, too? Or not? Is he a civilian? A wannabe?

  “Morton Street,” Burke said.

  “Left turn in three blocks,” the voice said. “On Houston.”

  He knows New York City, Reacher thought. He knows that Houston is three blocks south of Morton and he knows you say it House-ton, not like the place in Texas.

  “OK,” Burke said.

  Reacher felt the car slow. It stopped. It waited and inched forward. Then it sprinted to catch the light. Reacher rolled heavily against the rear seat.

  “East on Houston now,” Burke said.

  “Keep going,” the voice said.

  The traffic on Houston was slow. Cobblestones, stop signs, potholes, lights. Reacher paced it out in his head. Washington Street, Greenwich Street, Hudson Street. Then Varick, where he had come up out of the subway for his fruitless morning vigil. The car bounced over patches of frost heave and thumped into dips.

  “Sixth Avenue next,” Burke said.

  The voice said, “Take it.”

  Burke turned left. Reacher craned his neck again and saw the apartments above his new favorite café.

  The voice said, “Get in the right-hand lane. Now.”

  Burke dabbed the brake hard and Reacher jolted forward and hit the front seat. He heard the turn signal click. Then the car jumped right. And slowed.

  The voice said, “You’ll see your target on the right. The green Jaguar. From the first morning. Exactly halfway up the block. On the right.”

  “I already see it,” Burke said.

  Reacher thought: The same place? It’s right there on the same damn fireplug?

  The voice said, “Stop and make the transfer.”

  Reacher felt the transmission slam into Park and he heard the click of the hazard lights start up. Then Burke’s door opened and noise blew in. The suspension rocked as Burke climbed out. There was honking on the street behind. An instant traffic jam. Ten seconds later the door next to Reacher’s head opened wide. Burke didn’t look down. Just leaned in and grabbed the bag. Reacher craned his neck the other way and looked at the Jaguar upside down. Saw a flash of dark green paint. Then the door shut in his face. He heard the Jaguar’s door open. Then he heard it shut again. He heard a faint hydraulic thunk from somewhere outside. Ten seconds after that Burke was back in his seat. He was a little out of breath.

  “The transfer is done,” he said. “The money is in the Jaguar.”

  The nightmare voice said, “Goodbye.”

  The phone clicked off. The car filled with silence. Profound and absolute.

  “Go now,” Reacher said. “Turn right on Bleecker.”

  Burke took off with the hazard warning still clicking. He caught the light and barged through the crosswalk. Accelerated for twenty yards and then jammed on the brakes hard. Reacher fumbled horizontally above his head and found the door handle. Pulled it and butted the door open and scrambled out. He stood up and slammed the door and paused for a second and tugged his shirt down. Then he hustled back to the corner.

  CHAPTER 16

  Reacher stopped while he was still on Bleecker and jammed his hands in his pockets and then restarted at a more appropriate pace. He turned left onto Sixth like a man walking home. Maybe after a busy day at work, maybe planning a stop in a bar, maybe with grocery shopping on his mind. Just blending in, which h
e was surprisingly good at, given that he was always a head taller than anyone else around him. The height advantage was a mixed blessing for surveillance. It made him theoretically conspicuous. But it meant he could see farther than the average guy. Simple trigonometry. He stayed in the middle of the sidewalk and looked straight ahead and put the green Jaguar firmly in his peripheral vision. Checked left. Nothing. Checked right, over the Jaguar’s roof.

  And saw a guy six feet from the driver’s door.

  It was the same guy he had seen the very first night. He was absolutely sure of that. Same stature, same posture, same movements, same clothes. White, a little sunburned, lean, chiseled, clean-shaven, jaw clamped, not smiling, maybe forty years old. Calm, focused, intent. Neat and quick, dodging traffic, just into his final two strides before reaching the car. Fluid, economical movements. The guy pulled the door and slid into the seat and started the engine and clipped his belt and took a long glance back over his shoulder at the traffic. Then he pulled out neatly into a gap and took off north. Reacher kept on walking south but turned his head to watch him go. The guy flashed past, out of sight.

  Six seconds, beginning to end. Maybe less.

  And for what?

  Just a white guy, average height, average weight, dressed like every other off-duty white guy in the city. Jeans, shirt, sneakers, ball cap. Maybe forty. Unremarkable in every way. Description? Nothing to say, except: Just a guy.

  Reacher glanced south at the river of traffic. There were no free cabs coming. None at all. So he turned again and jogged back to the corner of Bleecker to see if Burke had waited for him. But Burke hadn’t. So Reacher set out walking. He was too frustrated to take the subway. He needed to walk it off. He charged north on Sixth, fast and furious, and people moved out of his way like he was radioactive.

  Twenty minutes and twenty blocks later he saw a Staples store on the opposite sidewalk. Red and white signs. Windows full of office supply bargains. He dodged cars and crossed over to check it out. It was a big place. He didn’t know which branch Carter Groom had taken Kate Lane to, but he figured chains carried the same stuff everywhere. He went inside and passed a corral made from inch-thick chrome bars where shopping trolleys were racked together. Beyond that on the left were the checkout registers. Beyond the trolleys on the right was a print shop full of industrial-strength photocopiers. In front of him were about twenty narrow aisles with shelves that reached the ceiling. They were piled high with an intimidating array of stuff. He started at the left front corner and zigzagged all the way through the store to the rear of the last aisle on the right. The biggest thing he saw was a desk. The smallest, either a thumbtack or a paperclip, depending on whether he judged by size or weight. He saw paper, computers, printers, toner cartridges, pens, pencils, envelopes, file boxes, plastic crates, parcel tape. He saw things he had never seen before. Software for designing houses and filing taxes. Label printers. Cell phones that took video pictures and sent e-mail.

  He walked back to the front of the store with absolutely no idea at all of what Kate Lane might have been looking for.

  He stood in a daze and watched a photocopier at work. It was a machine as big as a launderette dryer and it was spitting copies out so hard and so fast that it was rocking back and forth on its feet. And costing some customer a fortune. That was clear. A sign overhead said that photocopying cost between four cents and two dollars a sheet, depending on the quality of the paper and the choice between black and white and color. A lot of money, potentially. Opposite the print shop corral was a display of inkjet cartridges. They were expensive, too. Reacher had no idea what they were for. Or what they did. Or why they cost so much. He pushed past a line of people at a checkout desk and headed for the street.

  Another twenty minutes and twenty blocks later he was at Bryant Park, eating a hot dog from a street vendor. Twenty minutes and twenty blocks after that he was in Central Park, drinking a bottle of still water from another street vendor. Twelve more blocks north he was still in Central Park, directly opposite the Dakota, under a tree, stopped dead, face-to-face with Anne Lane, Edward Lane’s first wife.

  CHAPTER 17

  The first thing Anne Lane did was tell Reacher he was wrong.

  “You saw Lane’s photograph of her,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “We were very alike,” she said.

  He nodded again.

  “Anne was my sister,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for staring. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said.

  “Were you twins?”

  “I’m six years younger,” the woman said. “Which means right now I’m the same age as Anne was in that photograph. Like a virtual twin, maybe.”

  “You look exactly like her.”

  “I try to,” the woman said.

  “It’s uncanny.”

  “I try very hard.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it feels like I’m keeping her alive. Because I couldn’t, back when it mattered.”

  “How could you have kept her alive?”

  “We should talk,” the woman said. “My name is Patti Joseph.”

  “Jack Reacher.”

  “Come with me,” the woman said. “We have to double back. We can’t go too near the Dakota.”

  She led him south through the park, to the exit at 66th Street. Across to the far sidewalk. Then north again, and into the lobby of a building at 115 Central Park West.

  “Welcome to the Majestic,” Patti Joseph said. “Best place I ever lived. And just wait until you see where my apartment is.”

  Reacher saw where it was five minutes later, after a walk down a corridor, and an elevator ride, and another walk down another corridor. Patti Joseph’s apartment was on the Majestic’s seventh floor, north side. Its living room window looked out over 72nd Street, directly at the Dakota’s entrance. There was a dining chair placed in front of the sill, as if the sill was a desk. On the sill was a notebook. And a pen. And a Nikon camera with a long lens, and a pair of Leica 10x42 binoculars.

  “What do you do here?” Reacher asked.

  “First tell me what you do there,” Patti said.

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Do you work for Lane?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Patti Joseph smiled.

  “I didn’t think you did,” she said. “I told Brewer, you’re not one of them. You’re not like them. You weren’t Special Forces, were you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You’re too big. You wouldn’t have made it through the endurance hazing. Big men never do.”

  “I was an MP.”

  “Did you know Lane in the service?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Patti Joseph smiled again.

  “I thought not,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be there.”

  “Who is Brewer?”

  “NYPD.” She pointed at the notebook and the pen and the camera and the binoculars. A big, sweeping gesture. “I do all this for him.”

  “You’re watching Lane and his guys? For the cops?”

  “For myself, mostly. But I check in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because hope springs eternal.”

  “Hope of what?”

  “That he’ll slip up, and I’ll get something on him.”

  Reacher stepped closer to the window and glanced at the notebook. The handwriting was neat. The last entry read: 2014 hrs. Burke returns alone, no bag, in black BMW OSC-23, enters TDA.

  “TDA?” Reacher asked.

  “The Dakota Apartments,” Patti said. “It’s the building’s official name.”

  “You ever see Yoko?”

  “All the time.”

  “You know Burke by name?”

  “Burke was around when Anne was there.”

  The last-but-one entry read: 1859 hrs. Burke and Venti leave TDA in black BMW OSC-23, with bag, Venti concealed in rear.


  “Venti?” Reacher asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been calling you. Like a code name.”

  “Why?”

  “Venti is the largest cup that Starbucks sells. Bigger than the others.”

  “I like coffee,” Reacher said.

  “I could make some.”

  Reacher turned away from the window. The apartment was a small one-bedroom. Plain, neat, painted. Probably worth the best part of a million bucks.

  “Why are you showing me all this?” he asked.

  “A recent decision,” she said. “I decided to watch for new guys, and waylay them, and warn them.”

  “About what?”

  “About what Lane is really like. About what he did.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I’ll make coffee,” Patti said.

  There was no stopping her. She ducked into a small pass-through kitchen and started fiddling with a machine. Pretty soon Reacher could smell coffee. He wasn’t thirsty. He had just drunk a whole bottle of water. But he liked coffee. He figured he could stay for a cup.

  Patti called out, “No cream, no sugar, right?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I trust my instincts,” she said.

  And I trust mine, Reacher thought, although he wasn’t entirely sure what they were telling him right then.

  “I need you to get to the point,” he said.

  “OK,” Patti Joseph said. “I will.” And then she said: “Anne wasn’t kidnapped five years ago. That was just a cover story. Lane murdered her.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Patti Joseph brought Jack Reacher black coffee in a huge white Wedgwood mug. Twenty ounce. Venti. She set it on an oversized coaster and turned her back on him and sat on the dining chair at the window. Picked up the pen in her right hand and the binoculars in her left. They looked heavy. She held them the way a shot putter holds the big iron ball, balanced on her open palm, close to her neck.

  “Edward Lane is a cold man,” she said. “He demands loyalty and respect and obedience. He needs those things, like a junkie needs a fix. That’s what this whole mercenary venture is about, really. He couldn’t bear losing his command position, when he left the military. So he decided to re-create it all over again. He needs to give orders and have them obeyed. Like you or I need to breathe. He’s borderline mentally ill, I think. Psychotic.”