The Hard Way

“Medically?” Hobart said. “I have no idea. I guess Dee Marie did some checking.”

Dee Marie said, “Birmingham, Alabama, or Nashville, Te

“Not Walter Reed?” Reacher said.

“Walter Reed is good when they get them fresh from the battlefield. But his left foot happened nearly five years ago. And even his right wrist is completely healed. Healed all wrong, but healed all the same. So he needs a whole lot of preliminary stuff first. Bone work, and reconstruction. And that’s after the malaria and the tuberculosis are taken care of. And the malnutrition and the parasites.”

“We can’t get him to Birmingham or Nashville tonight.”

“We can’t get him there ever. The surgery alone could be over two hundred thousand dollars. The prosthetics could be even more than that.” She picked up two brochures from a small table and handed them over. There were expensive graphics and glossy photographs on the fronts. Blue skies, green lawns, warm brick buildings. Inside were details of surgical programs and prosthetics designers. There were more photographs. Kindly men with white hair and white coats cradled mechanical limbs like babies. One-legged people in athletic vests braced themselves on sleek titanium struts at marathon start lines. The captions under the pictures were full of optimism.

“Looks good,” Reacher said. He handed the brochures back. Dee Marie put them exactly where they had been before, on the table.

“Pie in the sky,” she said.

“A motel tonight,” Pauling said. “Somewhere close. Maybe we could rent you a car. Can you drive?”

Dee Marie said nothing.

“Take the offer, Dee,” Hobart said. “Easier on you.”

“I have a license,” Dee Marie said.

“Maybe we could even rent a wheelchair.”

“That would be good,” Hobart said. “A ground floor room, and a wheelchair. Easier for you, Dee.”

“Maybe an efficiency,” Pauling said. “With a little kitchen. For the cooking.”

“I can’t afford it,” Dee Marie said.

The room went quiet and Reacher stepped out the front door and checked the hallway. Checked the stairwell. Nothing was happening. He came back inside and pulled the door as far closed as it would go. Turned left in the entry and walked past the bathroom to the bedroom. It was a small space nearly filled by a queen bed. He guessed Hobart slept there, because the night table was piled with tubes of antiseptic creams and bottles of over-the-counter painkillers. The bed was high. He pictured Dee Marie hoisting her brother on her back, turning around, reversing toward the bed, dumping him down on the mattress. He pictured her straightening him out, tucking him in. Then he pictured her heading for another night on the sofa.

The bedroom window had a wood frame and the glass was streaked with soot. There were faded drapes, three-quarters open. Ornaments on the sill, and a color photograph of a Marine Lance Corporal. Vi

He stepped close to the window and glanced north. Traffic flowed away from him like a river. He glanced south. Watched the traffic coming toward him.

And saw a black Range Rover slowing and pulling in to the curb.

License plate: OSC 19.

Reacher spun around and was out of the bedroom in three long strides. Back in the living room after three more.

“They’re here,” he said. “Now.”

Silence for a split second.

Then Pauling said, “Shit.”

“What do we do?” Dee Marie said.

“Bathroom,” Reacher said. “All of you. Now.”

He stepped over to the sofa and grabbed the front of Hobart’s denim shirt and lifted him into the air. Carried him to the bathroom and laid him gently in the tub. Dee Marie and Pauling crowded in after him. Reacher pushed his way past them and back out to the hallway.

“You can’t be out there,” Pauling said.

“I have to be,” Reacher said. “Or they’ll search the whole place.”

“They shouldn’t find you here.”

“Lock the door,” Reacher said. “Sit tight and keep quiet.”

He stood in the hallway and heard a click from the bathroom door and a second later the intercom buzzed from the street. He waited a beat and hit the button and said, “Yes?” Heard amplified traffic noise and then a voice. Impossible to tell whose it was.

It said: “VA visiting nurse service.”

Reacher smiled. Nice, he thought.

He hit the button again and said, “Come on up.”

Then he walked back to the living room and sat down on the sofa to wait.

CHAPTER 46

REACHER HEARD LOUD creaking from the staircase. Three people, he guessed. He heard them make the turn and start up toward four. Heard them stop at the head of the stairs, surprised by the broken door. Then he heard the door open. There was a quiet metallic groan from a damaged hinge and after that there was nothing but the sound of footsteps in the foyer.

First into the living room was Perez, the tiny Spanish guy.

Then Addison, with the knife scar above his eye.

Then Edward Lane himself.

Perez stepped left and stopped dead and Addison stepped right and stopped dead and Lane moved into the center of the small static arc and stood still and stared.

“The hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“I beat you to it,” Reacher said.

“How?”

“Like I told you. I used to do this for a living. I could give you guys a mirror on a stick and I’d still be hours ahead of you.”

“So where is Hobart?”

“Not here.”

“It was you who broke down the door?”

“I didn’t have a key.”

“Where is he?”

“In the hospital.”

“Bullshit. We just checked.”

“Not here. In Birmingham, Alabama, or Nashville, Te

“How do you figure that?”

“He needs specialized care. Saint Vincent’s recommended one of those big university hospitals down south. They gave him literature.” Reacher pointed at the small table and Edward Lane broke ranks with his men and stepped over to pick up the shiny brochures. He flipped through both of them and asked, “Which one?”

Reacher said, “It doesn’t matter which one.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Lane said.

“Hobart didn’t kidnap Kate.”

“You think?”

“No, I know.”

“How?”

“You should have bought more information than just his address. You should have asked why he was at Saint Vincent’s in the first place.”

“We did. They said malaria. He was admitted for IV chloroquine.”

“And?”

“And nothing. A guy just home from Africa can expect to have malaria.”

“You should have gotten the whole story.”

“Which is?”

Reacher said, “First, he was strapped down to a bed getting that IV chloroquine at the exact time that Kate was taken. And second, he has a pre-existing condition.”

“What condition?”

Reacher shifted his gaze and looked straight at Perez and Addison.

“He’s a quadruple amputee,” he said. “No hands, no feet, can’t walk, can’t drive, can’t hold a gun or dial a telephone.”

Nobody spoke.

“It happened in prison,” Reacher said. “Back in Burkina Faso. The new regime had a little fun. Once a year. On his birthday. Left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand. With a machete. Chop, chop, chop, chop.”