Without Fail

Stuyvesant had booked three rooms. Neagley had already arrived. They found her in the lobby. She was buying soda from a machine and talking to a big guy in a cheap black suit and patrolman’s shoes. A U.S. marshal, without a doubt. The Crown Vic driver. Their vehicle budget must be smaller than the Secret Service’s, Reacher thought. As well as their clothing allowance.

Stuyvesant did the paperwork at the desk and came back with three key cards. Handed them around in an embarrassed little ceremony. Mentioned three room numbers. They were sequential. Then he scrabbled in his pocket and came out with the Suburban’s keys. Gave them to Froelich.

“I’ll ride back with the guy who brought Neagley over,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, seven o’clock in the office, with Ba

Then he turned and left. Neagley juggled her key card and her soda and a garment bag and went looking for her room. Froelich and Reacher followed behind her, with a key card each. There was another marshal at the head of the bedroom corridor. He was sitting awkwardly on a plain dining chair. He had it tilted back against the wall for comfort. Reacher squeezed his untidy luggage past him and stopped at his door. Froelich was already two rooms down, not looking in his direction.

He went inside and found a compact version of what he had seen a thousand times before. Just one bed, one chair, a table, a normal telephone, a smaller TV screen. But the rest was generic. Floral drapes, already closed. A floral bedspread, Scotchgarded until it was practically rigid. No-color bamboo-weave stuff on the walls. A cheap print over the bed, pretending to be a hand-colored architectural drawing of some part of some ancient Greek temple. He stowed his baggage and arranged his bathroom articles on the shelf above the sink. Checked his watch. Past midnight. Thanksgiving Day, already. He took off Joe’s jacket and dropped it on the table. Loosened his tie and yawned. There was a knock at the door. He opened up and found Froelich standing there.

“Come in,” he said.

“Just for a minute,” she said. He walked back and sat on the end of the bed, to let her take the chair. Her hair was a mess, like she had just run her fingers through it. She looked good like that. Younger, and vulnerable, somehow.

“I am over him,” she said.

“OK,” he said.

“But I can see how you might think I’m not.”

“OK,” he said again.

“So I think we should be apart tonight. I wouldn’t want you to be worried about why I was here. If I was here.”

“Whatever you want,” he said.

“It’s just that you’re so like him. It’s impossible not to be reminded. You can see that, can’t you? But you were never a substitute. I need you to know that.”

“Still think I got him killed?”

She looked away.

“Something got him killed,” she said. “Something on his mind, in his background. Something made him think he could beat somebody he couldn’t beat. Something made him think he was going to be OK when he wasn’t going to be OK. And the same thing could happen to you. You’re stupid if you don’t see that.”

He nodded. Said nothing. She stood up and walked past him. He caught her perfume as she went by.

“Call me if you need me,” he said.

She didn’t reply. He didn’t get up.

A half hour later there was another knock at the door and he opened it up expecting to find Froelich again. But it was Neagley. Still fully dressed, a little tired, but calm.

“You on your own?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Where is she?” Neagley asked.

“She left.”

“Business or lack of pleasure?”

“Confusion,” he said. “Half the time she wants me to be Joe, the other half she wants to blame me for getting him killed.”

“She’s still in love with him.”

“Evidently.”

“Six years after their relationship ended.”

“Is that normal?”

She shrugged. “You’re asking me? I guess some people carry a torch for a long time. He must have been quite a guy.”

“I didn’t really know him all that well.”

“Did you get him killed?”

“Of course not. I was a million miles away. Hadn’t spoken to him for seven years. I told you that.”

“So what’s her angle?”

“She says he was driven to be reckless because he was comparing himself to me.”

“And was he?”

“I doubt it.”

“You said you felt guilty afterward. You told me that too, when we were watching those surveillance tapes.”

“I think I said I felt angry, not guilty.”

“Angry, guilty, it’s all the same thing. Why feel guilty if it wasn’t your fault?”

“Now you’re saying it was my fault?”

“I’m just asking, what’s the guilt about?”

“He grew up under a false impression.”

He went quiet and moved deeper into the room. Neagley followed him. He lay down on the bed, arms outstretched, hands hanging off the edges. She sat down in the armchair, where Froelich had been.

“Tell me about the false impression,” she said.

“He was big, but he was studious,” Reacher said. “The schools we went to, being studious was like having ‘Kick my ass’ tattooed across your forehead. And he wasn’t all that tough, really, although he was big. So he got his ass kicked, regular as clockwork.”

“And?”

“I was two years younger, but I was big and tough, and not very studious. So I started to look after him. Loyalty, I guess, and I liked fighting anyway. I was about six. I’d wade in anywhere. I learned a lot of stuff. Learned that style was the big thing. Look like you mean it, and people back off a lot. Sometimes they didn’t. I had eight-year-olds all over me the first year. Then I got better at it. I hurt people bad. I was a madman. It got to be a thing. We’d arrive in some new place and pretty quick people would know to lay off Joe, or the psycho would be coming after them.”

“Sounds like you were a lovely little boy.”

“It was the Army. Anyplace else they’d have sent me to reform school.”

“You’re saying Joe grew to rely on it.”

Reacher nodded. “It was like that for ten years, basically. It came and went, and it happened less as we got older. But more serious when it actually did. I think he internalized it. Ten years is a significant chunk of time when you’re growing up, internalizing things. I think it became part of his mind-set to ignore danger because the psycho always had his back. So I think Froelich’s right, in a way. He was reckless. Not because he was trying to compete, but because deep down he felt he could afford to be. Because I had always looked after him, like his mother had always fed him, like the Army had always housed him.”

“How old was he when he died?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“That’s twenty years, Reacher. He had twenty years to adjust. We all adjust.”

“Do we? Sometimes I still feel like that same six-year-old. Everybody looking out of the corner of their eye at the psycho.”

“Like who?”

“Like Froelich.”

“She been saying things?”

“I disconcert her, clearly.”

“Secret Service is a civilian organization. Paramilitary at best. Nearly as bad as regular citizens.”

He smiled. Said nothing.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Neagley asked. “You going to be walking around from now on thinking you killed your brother?”

“A little bit, maybe,” he said. “But I’ll get over it.”

She nodded. “You will. And you should. It wasn’t your fault. He was thirty-eight. He wasn’t waiting for his little brother to show up.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“About what?”

“Something else Froelich said.”

“She wonders why we aren’t doing it?”

“You’re quick,” he said.

“I could sense it,” Neagley said. “She came across as a little concerned. A little jealous. Cold, even. But then, I’d just kicked her ass with the audit thing.”

“You sure had.”

“We’ve never even touched, you know that, you and me? We’ve never had any physical contact of any kind at all. You’ve never patted me on the back, never even shaken my hand.”