Tripwire

No point in waiting. They weren’t about to take a di

Swinging the door open and standing and taking stock of the scene inside is not the way to do it. The guy who pauses even for a millisecond is the guy who dies earlier than his classmates. Reacher’s guess was the tenement was maybe fifteen feet wide, of which three were represented by the hallway he was standing in. So he aimed to be the other twelve feet into the room before they even knew he was there. They would still be looking at the door, wondering who else was coming in after him.

He took a breath and burst through the door like it wasn’t there at all. It crashed back against the hinge and he was across the room in two huge strides. Dim light. A single electric bulb. Two men. Packages on the table. Money on the table. A handgun on the table. He hit the first guy a wide swinging roundhouse blow square on the temple. The guy fell sideways and Reacher drove through him with a knee in the gut on his way back to the second man, who was coming up out of his chair with his eyes wide and his mouth open in shock. Reacher aimed high and smacked him with a forearm smash exactly horizontal between his eyebrows and his hairline. Do it hard enough, and the guy goes down for an hour, but his skull stays in one piece. This was supposed to be a shopping trip, not an execution.

He stood still and listened through the door. Nothing. The guy in the alley was sleeping and the noise on the street was occupying the kids on the sidewalk. He glanced at the table and glanced away again, because the handgun lying there was a Colt Detective Special. A six-shot,.38-caliber revolver in blued steel with black plastic grips. Stubby little two-inch barrel. No good at all. Nowhere near the sort of thing he was looking for. The short barrel was a drawback, and the caliber was a disappointment. He remembered a Louisiana cop he’d met, a police captain from some small jurisdiction out in the bayou. The guy had come to the military police for firearms advice and Reacher had been detailed to deal with him. The guy had all kinds of tales of woe about the.38-caliber revolvers his men were using. He said you just can’t rely on them to put a guy down, not if he’s coming at you all pumped up on angel dust. He told a story about a suicide. The guy needed five shots to the head with a.38 to put himself away. Reacher had been impressed by the guy’s unhappy face and he had decided then and there to stay away from.38s, which was a policy he was not about to change now. So he turned his back on the table and stood still and listened again. Nothing. He squatted next to the guy he’d hit in the head and started through his jacket.

The busiest dealers make the most money, and the most money buys the best toys, which was why he was in this building, and not in one of the slower rivals up or down the street. He found exactly what he wanted in the guy’s left-hand i

Then he smiled again and stood up. Peeled a dollar bill off his roll and left it weighted down on the tabletop under the Detective Special. Stepped back to the hallway. All quiet. He made the ten paces to the back and came out into the light. Checked left and right up and down the alley and stepped over to the parked sedan. Opened the driver’s door and found the lever and popped the trunk. There was a black nylon sports bag in there, empty. A small cardboard box of nine-millimeter reloads under a tangle of red and black jump leads. He put the ammunition in the bag and walked away with it. The pizza was waiting for him when he arrived back on Broadway.

IT WAS SUDDEN. It happened without warning. As soon as they were inside and the door was closed, the man hit Sheryl, a vicious backhand blow to the face with whatever was inside his empty sleeve. Marilyn was frozen with shock. She saw the man twisting violently and the hook swinging through its glittering arc and she heard the wet crunch as his arm hit Sheryl’s face and she clamped both hands over her mouth as if it were somehow vitally important she didn’t scream. She saw the man spi

“Step closer,” the man said.

She was paralyzed. Her hands were clamped to her face and her eyes were open so wide she thought the skin on her face would tear.

“Closer,” the man said again.

She stared down at Sheryl. She was struggling up on her elbows. Her eyes were crossed and blood was ru

“Step closer,” the man said.

She stared at his face. It was rigid. The scars looked like hard plastic. One eye was hooded under an eyelid as thick and coarse as a thumb. The other was cold and unblinking. She stared at the gun. It was a foot away from her chest. Not moving. The hand that held it was smooth. The nails were manicured. She stepped forward a quarter step.

“Closer.”

She slid her feet forward until the gun was touching the fabric of her dress. She felt the hardness and the coldness of the gray metal through the thin silk.

“Closer.”

She stared at him. His face was a foot away from hers. On the left the skin was gray and lined. The good eye was webbed with lines. The right eye blinked. The eyelid was slow and heavy. It went down, then up, deliberately, like a machine. She leaned forward an inch. The gun pressed into her breast.

“Closer.”

She moved her feet. He answered with matching pressure on the gun. The metal was pressing hard into the softness of her flesh. It was crushing her breast. The silk was yielding into a deep crater. It was pulling her nipple sideways. It was hurting her. The man raised his right arm. The hook. He held it up in front of her eyes. It was a plain steel curve, rubbed and polished until it shone. He rotated it slowly, with an awkward movement of his forearm. She heard leather inside his sleeve. The tip of the hook was machined to a point. He rotated the tip away and laid the flat of the curve against her forehead. She flinched. It was cold. He scraped it down her forehead and traced the curve of her nose. In under her nose. He pressed it against her top lip. Brought it down and in and pressed until her mouth opened. He tapped it gently against her teeth. It caught on her bottom lip, because her lip was dry. He dragged her lip down with the steel until the soft rubbery flesh pulled free. He traced over the curve of her chin. Down under her chin to her throat. Up again an inch, and back, under the shelf of her jaw, until he was forcing her head up with the strength in his shoulder. He stared into her eyes.