Tripwire

“I want to get out of here,” he said.

“You sure?” she asked.

He nodded. He was sure, but he felt very sleepy. He put his head back on the pillow, just temporarily. He was warm and the pillow was soft. His head weighed a ton and his neck muscles were powerless to move it. The room was darkening. He swiveled his eyes upward and saw the IV bags hanging in the far distance above him. He saw the valve the doctor had adjusted. He had clicked it. He remembered the plastic sound. There was writing on the IV bag. The writing was upside down. He focused on it. Concentrated hard. The writing was green. It read Morphine.

“Shit,” he whispered, and the room spun away into total darkness.

WHEN HE OPENED his eyes again, the sun had moved backward. It was earlier in the day. Morning, not afternoon. Jodie was sitting in her chair by the window, reading. The same book. She was a half-inch farther through it. Her dress was blue, not yellow.

“It’s tomorrow,” he said.

She closed the book and stood up. Stepped over and bent and kissed his lips. He kissed her back and clamped his teeth and pulled the IV needles out of his arm and dropped them over the side of the bed. They started a steady drip onto the floor. He hauled himself upright against the pillows and smoothed a hand over his bristly scalp.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

He sat still in the bed and concentrated on a slow survey up his body, starting with his toes and ending with the top of his head.

“Fine,” he said.

“There are people here to see you,” she said. “They heard you’d come around.”

He nodded and stretched. He could feel the chest wound. It was on the left. There was weakness there. He reached up with his left hand to the IV stand. It was a vertical stainless steel bar with a spiral curl at the top where the bags slipped on. He put his hand over the curl and squeezed hard. He felt bruising in his elbow where the needles had been and sensitivity in his chest where the bullet had been, but the steel spiral still flattened from round to oval. He smiled.

“OK, send them in,” he said.

He knew who they were before they got inside. He could tell by the sound. The wheels on the oxygen cart squeaked. The old lady stood aside and let her husband enter first. She was wearing a brand-new dress. He was in the same old blue serge suit. He wheeled the cart past her and paused. He kept hold of the handle with his left hand and drew his right up into a trembling salute. He held it for a long moment and Reacher replied with the same. He threw his best parade-ground move and held it steady, meaning every second of it. Then he snapped it down and the old guy wheeled the cart slowly toward him with his wife fussing behind.

They were changed people. Still old, still feeble, but serene. Knowing your son is dead is better than not knowing, he guessed. He tracked back to Newman’s windowless lab in Hawaii and recalled Allen’s casket with Victor Hobie’s skeleton in it. Victor Hobie’s old bones. He remembered them pretty well. They were distinctive. The smooth arch of the brow, the high round cranium. The even white teeth. The long, clean limbs. It was a noble skeleton.

“He was a hero, you know.”

The old man nodded.

“He did his duty.”

“Much more than that,” Reacher replied. “I read his record. I talked with General DeWitt. He was a brave flyer who did more than his duty. He saved a lot of lives with his courage. If he’d lived, he’d have three stars now. He’d be General Victor Truman Hobie, with a big command somewhere, or a big job in the Pentagon.”

It was what they needed to hear, but it was still true. The old woman put her thin pale hand over her husband’s and they sat in silence, eyes moist and focused eleven thousand miles away. They were telling themselves stories of what might have been. The past stretched away straight and uncomplicated and now it was neatly amputated by a noble combat death, leaving only honest dreams ahead of it. They were recounting those dreams for the first time, because now they were legitimate. Those dreams were fortifying them just like the oxygen hissing in and out of the bottle in time with the old man’s ragged breathing.

“I can die happy now,” he said.

Reacher shook his head.

“Not yet you can’t,” he said. “You have to go see the Wall. His name will be there. I want you to bring me a photograph of it.”

The old man nodded and his wife smiled a watery smile.

“Miss Garber told us you might be living over in Garrison,” she said. “You might be our neighbor.”

Reacher nodded.

“It’s possible,” he said.

“Miss Garber is a fine young woman.”

“Yes, ma’am, she is.”

“Stop your nonsense,” the old man said to her. Then they told him they couldn’t stay, because their neighbor had driven them down and had to get back. Reacher watched them all the way out to the corridor. Soon as they were gone, Jodie came back in, smiling.

“The doctor says you can leave.”

“So can you drive me? Did you get a new car yet?”

She shook her head. “Just a rental. No time for shopping. Hertz brought me a Mercury. It’s got satellite navigation.”

He stretched his arms above his head and flexed his shoulders. They felt OK. Surprisingly good. His ribs were fine. No pain.

“I need clothes,” he said. “I guess those old ones got ruined.”

She nodded. “Nurses sliced them off with scissors.”

“You were here for that?”

“I’ve been here all the time,” she said. “I’m living in a room down the hall.”

“What about work?”

“Leave of absence,” she said. “I told them, agree or I quit.”

She ducked down to a laminate cupboard and came out with a stack of clothes. New jeans, new shirt, new jacket, new socks and shorts, all folded and piled together, his old shoes squared on top, Army-style.

“They’re nothing special,” she said. “I didn’t want to take too much time out. I wanted to be with you when you woke up.”

“You sat around here for three weeks?”

“Felt like three years,” she said. “You were all scrunched up. Comatose. You looked awful. In a real bad way.”

“This satellite thing,” he said. “Does it have Garrison on it?”

“You going up there?”

He shrugged.

“I guess. I need to take it easy, right? Country air might do me good.”

Then he looked away from her.

“Maybe you could stay with me awhile, you know, help me recover.”

He threw back the sheet and slid his feet to the floor. Stood up, slow and unsteady, and started to dress, while she held his elbow to keep him from falling.