Without Fail

Stuyvesant was silent for a long moment.

“I want to believe it,” he said. “But you’re basing everything on a hyphen.”

“Don’t dismiss it,” Reacher said.

“I’m not dismissing it,” Stuyvesant said. “I’m thinking.”

“About whether I’m crazy?”

“About whether I can afford to back this kind of hunch.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Reacher said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m completely wrong. Because the FBI is taking care of the alternative scenario.”

“It could be deliberate,” Neagley said. “They might be misleading us. Trying to disguise their background or their education level. Throwing us off.”

Reacher shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “This is too subtle. They’d do all the usual things. Gross misspellings, bad punctuation. A hyphen between Vice and President is something you don’t know from right or wrong. It’s something you just do.”

“What are the exact implications?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Age is critical,” Reacher said. “They can’t be older than early fifties, to be ru

“It’s very speculative,” Stuyvesant said. “It’s a pyramid too, balancing on its point. Looks good until it falls over.”

Silence in the room.

“Well, I’m going to pursue it,” Reacher said. “With Armstrong, or without him. With you, or without you. By myself, if necessary. For Froelich’s sake. She deserves it.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “If neither of them worked for us, how would they know to rely on an FBI scan of the NCIC reports?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said.

“How did they decoy Crosetti?”

“I don’t know.”

“How would they get our weapons?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did they know where M. E. lived?”

“Nendick told them.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “OK. But what would be their motive?”

“Animosity against Armstrong personally, I guess. A politician must make plenty of enemies.”

Silence again.

“Maybe it’s half and half,” Neagley said. “Maybe they’re outsiders with animosity against the Secret Service. Maybe guys who got rejected for a job. Guys who really wanted to work here. Maybe they’re some kind of nerdy law-enforcement buffs. They might know about NCIC. They might know what weapons you buy.”

“That’s possible,” Stuyvesant said. “We turn down a lot of people. Some of them get very upset about it. You could be right.”

“No,” Reacher said. “She’s wrong. Why would they wait? I’m sticking by my age estimate. And nobody applies for a Secret Service job at the age of fifty. If they ever got turned down, it was twenty-five years ago. Why wait until now to retaliate?”

“That’s a good point too,” Stuyvesant said.

“This is about Armstrong personally,” Reacher said. “It has to be. Think about the time line here. Think about cause and effect. Armstrong became the ru

Stuyvesant stared down at the table. Placed his hands flat on it. Moved them in small neat circles like there was a wrinkled tablecloth under them that needed flattening. Then he leaned over and butted the first message under the second. Then both of them under the third. He kept at it until he had all six stacked neatly. He scooped his file folder under the pile and closed it.

“OK, this is what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to give Neagley’s theory to Ba

“With Armstrong,” Reacher said. “We figure out who hates him and why.”

Stuyvesant called a guy from the Office of Protection Research and ordered him into the office immediately. The guy pleaded he was eating Thanksgiving di

“You OK?” Neagley asked.

“I feel weird,” Reacher said. “Like I’m two people. She thought I was Joe with her at the end.”

“What would Joe have done about it?”

“Same as I’m going to do about it, probably.”

“So go ahead and do it,” Neagley said. “You always were Joe as far as she was concerned. You may as well square the circle for her.”

He said nothing.

“Close your eyes,” Neagley said. “Clear your mind. You need to concentrate on the shooter.”

Reacher shook his head. “I won’t get it if I concentrate.”

“So think about something else. Use peripheral vision. Pretend you’re looking somewhere else. The next roof along, maybe.”

He closed his eyes. Saw the edge of the roof, harsh against the sun. Saw the sky, bright and pale all at the same time. A winter sky. Just a trace of uniform misty haze all over it. He gazed at the sky. Recalled the sounds he had been hearing. Nothing much from the crowd. Just the clatter of serving spoons, and Froelich saying thanks for stopping by. Mrs. Armstrong saying enjoy, nervously, like she wasn’t quite sure what she had gotten herself into. Then he heard the soft chunk of the first silenced bullet hitting the wall. It had been a poor shot. It had missed Armstrong by four feet. Probably a rushed shot. The guy comes up the stairs, stands in the rooftop doorway, calls softly to Crosetti. And Crosetti responds. The guy waits for Crosetti to come to him. Maybe backs away into the stairwell. Crosetti comes on. Crosetti gets shot. The rooftop hutch muffles the sound from the silencer. The guy steps over the body and runs crouched straight to the lip of the roof. Kneels and fires hastily, too soon, before he’s really settled, and he misses by four feet. The miss craters the brick and a small chip flies off and hits Reacher in the cheek. The guy racks the bolt and aims more carefully for the second shot.

He opened his eyes.

“I want you to work on how,” he said.

“How what, exactly?” Neagley said.

“How they lured Crosetti away from his post. I want to know how they did that.”

Neagley was quiet for a moment.

“I’m afraid Ba

“Assume he didn’t,” Reacher said. “How else?”

“I’ll work on it. You work on the shooter.”

He closed his eyes again and looked at the next roof along. Back down at the serving tables. Froelich, in the last minute of her life. He recalled the spray of blood and his immediate instinctive reaction. Incoming lethal fire. Point of origin? He had glanced up and seen… what? The curve of a back or a shoulder. It was moving. The shape and the movement were somehow one and the same thing.