Tripwire

She nodded. “Thirteen blocks. I usually walk.”

“Not tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”

She looked surprised. “You will?”

“Damn right I will,” he said. “Thirteen blocks on foot? Forget about it, Jodie. You’ll be safe enough at home, but they could grab you on the street. What about your office? Is it secure?”

She nodded again. “Nobody gets in, not without an appointment and ID.”

“OK,” he said. “So I’ll be in your apartment all night, and I’ll drive you door-to-door in the morning. Then I’ll come back up here and see these Hobie people, and you can stay right there in the office until I come get you out again, OK?”

She was silent. He tracked back and reviewed what he’d said.

“I mean, you got a spare room, right?”

“Sure,” she said. “There’s a spare room.”

“So is that OK?”

She nodded, quietly.

“So what now?” he asked her. She turned sideways on her seat. The blast of air from the center vents caught her hair and blew it over her face. She smoothed it back behind her ear and her eyes flicked him up and down. Then she smiled.

“We should go shopping,” she said.

“Shopping? What for? What do you need?”

“Not what I need,” she said. “What you need.”

He looked at her, worried. “What do I need?”

“Clothes,” she said. “You can’t go visiting with those old folks looking like a cross between a beach bum and the wild man of Borneo, can you?”

Then she leaned sideways and touched the mark on his shirt with her fingertip.

“And we should find a pharmacy. You need something to put on that burn.”

“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” the finance director screamed.

He was in Chester Stone’s office doorway, two floors above his own, gripping the frame with both hands, panting with exertion and fury. He hadn’t waited for the elevator. He had raced up the fire stairs. Stone was staring at him, blankly.

“You idiot,” he screamed. “I told you not to do this.”

“Do what?” Stone said back.

“Put stock in the market,” the finance guy yelled. “I told you not to do that.”

“I didn’t,” Stone said. “There’s no stock in the market.”

“There damn well is,” the guy said. “A great big slice, sitting there doing absolutely nothing at all. You got people shying away from it like it’s radioactive or something.”

“What?”

The finance guy breathed in. Stared at his employer. Saw a small, crumpled man in a ridiculous British suit sitting at a desk that alone was now worth a hundred times the corporation’s entire net assets.

“You asshole, I told you not to do this. Why not just take a page in The Wall Street Journal and say, ‘Hey people, my company’s worth exactly less than jack shit’?”

“What are you talking about?” Stone asked.

“I’ve got the banks on the phone,” the guy said. “They’re watching the ticker. Stone stock popped up an hour ago, and the price is unwinding faster than the damn computers can track it. It’s unsalable. You’ve sent them a message, for God’s sake. You’ve told them you’re insolvent. You’ve told them you owe them sixteen million dollars against security that isn’t worth sixteen damn cents.”

“I didn’t put stock in the market,” Stone said again.

The finance guy nodded sarcastically.

“So who the hell did? The tooth fairy?”

“Hobie,” Stone said. “Has to be. Jesus, why?”

“Hobie?” the guy repeated.

Stone nodded.

“Hobie?” the guy said again, incredulous. “Shit, you gave him stock?”

“I had to,” Stone said. “No other way.”

“Shit,” the guy said again, panting. “You see what he’s doing here?”

Stone looked blank, and then he nodded, scared. “What can we do?”

The finance director dropped his hands off the doorframe and turned his back. “Forget we. There’s no we here anymore. I’m resigning. I’m out of here. You can fix it yourself.”

“But you recommended the guy,” Stone yelled.

“I didn’t recommend giving him stock, you asshole,” the guy yelled back. “What are you? A moron? If I recommended you visit the aquarium to see the piranha fish, would you stick your damn finger in the tank?”

“You’ve got to help me,” Stone said.

The guy just shook his head. “You’re on your own. I’m resigning. Right now my recommendation is you go down to what was my office and get started. There’s a line of phones on what was my desk, all ringing. My recommendation is you start with whichever one is ringing the loudest.”

“Wait up,” Stone yelled. “I need your help here.”

“Against Hobie?” the guy yelled back. “Dream on, pal.”

Then he was gone. He just turned and strode out through the secretarial pen and disappeared. Stone came out from behind his desk and stood in the doorway and watched him go. The suite was silent. His secretary had left. Earlier than she should have. He walked out into the corridor. The sales department on the right was deserted. The marketing suite on the left was empty. The photocopiers were silent. He called the elevator and the mechanism sounded very loud in the hush. He rode down two floors, alone. The finance director’s suite was empty. Drawers were standing open. Personal belongings had been taken away. He wandered through to the i

“Hello?” he said into it. “This is Chester Stone.”

He repeated it twice into the electronic silence. Then a woman came on and asked him to hold. There were clicks and buzzes. A moment of soothing music.

“Mr. Stone?” a new voice said. “This is the Insolvency Unit.”

Stone closed his eyes and gripped the phone.

“Please hold for the director,” the voice said.

There was more music. Fierce baroque violins, scraping away, relentlessly.

“Mr. Stone?” a deep voice said. “This is the director.”

“Hello,” Stone said. It was all he could think of to say.

“We’re taking steps,” the voice said. “I’m sure you understand our position.”

“OK,” Stone said. He was thinking what steps? Lawsuits? Prison?

“We should be out of the woods, start of business tomorrow,” the voice said.

“Out of the woods? How?”

“We’re selling the debt, obviously.”

“Selling it?” Stone repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“We don’t want it anymore,” the voice said. “I’m sure you can understand that. It’s moved itself way outside of the parameters that we feel happy with. So we’re selling it. That’s what people do, right? They got something they don’t want anymore, they sell it, best price they can get.”

“Who are you selling it to?” Stone asked, dazed.

“A trust company in the Caymans. They made an offer.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Us?” the voice repeated, puzzled. “It leaves us nowhere. Your obligation to us is terminated. There is no us. Our relationship is over. My only advice is that you never try to resurrect it. We would tend to regard that as insult added to injury.”

“So who do I owe now?”

“The trust company in the Caymans,” the voice said patiently. “I’m sure whoever’s behind it will be contacting you very soon, with their repayment proposals.”

JODIE DROVE. REACHER got out and walked around the hood and got back in on the passenger side. She slid over the center console and buzzed the seat forward. Cruised south through the su

She headed for a big mall. It was a serious building the size of a stadium, crowding proudly against office towers its own height, standing inside a knot of busy roads. She drifted left and right across the traffic lanes and followed a curved ramp underground to the parking garage. It was dark down there, dusty oil-stained concrete, but there was a brass-and-glass doorway in the distance, leading directly into a store and blazing with white light like a promise. Jodie found a slot fifty yards from it. She eased in and went away to do something with a machine. Came back and laid a small ticket on the dash, where it could be read through the windshield.