One Shot

“It’s over,” Reacher said. “You lost.”

“It’s never over,” the Zec replied. Hoarse voice, low, guttural.

“Guess again,” Reacher said. He kept the Smith hard against the Zec’s throat. Too low and too close for him to see it. He eased the hammer back. Slowly, carefully. Deliberately. Loudly. Click-click-click-crunch. An unmistakable sound.

“I’m eighty years old,” the Zec said.

“I don’t care if you’re a hundred,” Reacher said. “You’re still going down.”

“Idiot,” the Zec said back. “I meant I’ve survived things worse than you. Since long before you were born.”

“Nobody’s worse than me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re nothing.”

“You think?” Reacher said. “You were alive this morning and you won’t be tomorrow. After eighty years. That makes me something, don’t you think?”

No answer.

“It’s over,” Reacher said. “Believe me. Long and winding road, OK, I understand all of that, but this is the end of it. Had to happen sometime.”

No response.

“You know when my birthday is?” Reacher asked.

“Obviously not.”

“It’s in October. You know what day?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re going to find out the hard way. I’m counting in my head. When I reach my birthday, I’m going to pull the trigger.”

He started counting in his head. First, second. He watched the Zec’s eyes. Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. No response. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth.

“What do you want?” the Zec said.

Negotiation time.

“I want to talk,” Reacher said.

“Talk?”

“The twelfth,” Reacher said. “That’s how long you lasted. Then you gave it up. You know why? Because you want to survive. It’s the deepest instinct you’ve got. Obviously. Otherwise how would you have gotten as old as you are? It’s probably a deeper instinct than I could ever understand. A reflex, a habit, roll the dice, stay alive, make the next move, take the next chance. It’s in your DNA. It’s what you are.”

“So?”

“So now we’ve got ourselves a competition. What you are, against what I am.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m the guy who just threw Chenko out a third-floor window. After crushing Vladimir to death with my bare hands. Because I didn’t like what they did to i

No response.

“One shot,” Reacher said. “In the head. Lights out. That’s your choice. Another day, another roll of the dice. Or not. As the case may be.”

He saw calculation in the Zec’s eyes. Assessment, evaluation, speculation.

“I could throw you down the stairs,” he said. “You could crawl over and take a look at Vladimir. I cut his throat afterward. Just for fun. That’s who I am. So don’t think I don’t mean what I say. I’ll do it and I’ll sleep like a baby the rest of my life.”

“What do you want?” the Zec asked again.

“Help with a problem.”

“What problem?”

“There’s an i

A flicker in the Zec’s eyes. “Pointless. I’d get the death penalty.”

“Yes, you would,” Reacher said. “That’s for damn sure. But you’d still be alive tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. The appeals process lasts forever here. Ten years, sometimes. You might get lucky. There might be a mistrial, there might be a jailbreak, you might get a pardon, there might be a revolution, or an earthquake.”

“Unlikely.”

“Very,” Reacher said. “But isn’t that who you are? A guy who will take the tiniest slim fragment of a chance to live another minute, as opposed to no chance at all?”

No response.

“You already answered me once,” Reacher said. “When you quit the birthday game on the twelfth of October. That was pretty fast. There are thirty-one days in October. Law of averages said you’d be OK until the fifteenth or the sixteenth. A gambler would have waited for the twentieth. But you didn’t get past the twelfth. Not because you’re a coward. Nobody could accuse you of that. But because you’re a survivor. That’s who you are. Now what I want is some practical confirmation.”

No response.

“Thirteenth,” Reacher said. “Fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth.”

“OK,” the Zec said. “You win. I’ll talk to the detective.”

Reacher pi

“Here.”

“Come on in, all of you. I’ll open the door. And, Franklin? Wake those guys up, like we talked about before.”

The phone went dead. Franklin had killed the comms net to make his calls.

Reacher tied the Zec’s wrists and ankles with wire torn from table lamps and left him on the living room floor. Then he went downstairs. Glanced into the surveillance room. Vladimir was on his back in a lake of blood. His eyes were open. So was his throat. Reacher could see bone. Sokolov was slumped facedown on the table. His blood was all over the place. Some of it must have seeped into the wiring, because the South monitor had shorted out. The other three pictures were still there, green and ghostly. On the West monitor four figures were visible on the driveway. Yellow haloes, red cores. Close together, moving fast. Reacher turned the lights off and closed up the room. Walked on down the hallway and opened the front door.

Ya

“What’s that smell?” Ya

“Blood,” Cash said. “And other organic fluids of various kinds.”

“Are they all dead?”

“All but one,” Reacher said.

He led the way upstairs. Stopped Rosemary outside the living room.

“The Zec is in there,” he said. “You OK about seeing him?”

She nodded.

“I want to see him,” she said. “I want to ask him a question.”

She stepped into the living room. The Zec was on the floor, where Reacher had left him. Rosemary stood over him, quiet, dignified, not gloating. Just curious.

“Why?” she said. “I mean, to an extent I understand what you thought you had to do. From your warped perspective. But why didn’t you just use Chenko from the highway? Why did you have to bring my brother down?”

The Zec didn’t answer. He just stared into space, seeing something, but probably not Rosemary Barr.

“Psychology,” Reacher said.

“His?”

“Ours. The public’s.”

“How?”

“There had to be a story,” Reacher said. “No, there was a story, and he had to control what the story was about. If he gave up a shooter, then the story would be about the shooter. No shooter, the story would have been about the victims. And if the story had been about the victims, too many questions would have been asked.”

“So he sacrificed James.”

“That’s what he does. There’s a long list.”

“Why?”

“One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”

“Joseph Stalin,” Ya

Reacher kicked the Zec aside and pulled the sofa away from the window about four feet. Grabbed the Zec’s collar and hauled him up and dumped him on one end. Got him sitting up straight against the arm.

“Our star witness,” he said.

He told Cash to perch on the windowsill behind the sofa. Told Ya