Tripwire

The man in the doorway nodded.

“My name is Tony,” he said. “Come inside, both of you, please.”

He stepped to one side and covered Jodie with the automatic pistol while his partner pushed the guy claiming to be Forster in through the open door. Then he beckoned with the gun and Jodie found herself walking toward him. He stepped close and pushed her through the door with a hand flat on her back. She stumbled once and regained her balance. Inside was a big office, spacious and square. Dim light from shaded windows. There was living-room furniture arranged in front of a desk. Three identical sofas, with lamp tables. A huge brass-and-glass coffee table filled the space between the sofas. There were two people sitting on the left-hand sofa. A man and a woman. The man wore an immaculate suit and tie. The woman wore a wrinkled silk party dress. The man looked up, blankly. The woman looked up in terror.

There was a man at the desk. He was sitting in the gloom, in a leather chair. He was maybe fifty-five years old. Jodie stared at him. His face was divided roughly in two, like an arbitrary decision, like a map of the western states. On the right was lined skin and thi

He was wearing a neat suit, which fell over broad shoulders and a wide chest. His left arm was laid comfortably on the desk. There was the cuff of a white shirt, snowy in the gloom, and a manicured hand, palm down, the fingers tapping an imperceptible rhythm on the desktop. His right arm was laid exactly symmetrical with his left. There was the same fine summer-weight wool of the suit coat, and the same snowy white shirt cuff, but they were collapsed and empty. There was no hand. Just a simple steel hook protruding at a shallow angle, resting on the wood. It was curved and polished like a miniature version of a sculpture from a public garden.

“Hobie,” she said.

He nodded slowly, just once, and raised the hook like a greeting.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jacob. I’m just sorry it took so long.”

Then he smiled.

“And I’m sorry our acquaintance will be so brief.”

He nodded again, this time to the man called Tony, who maneuvered her alongside the guy claiming to be Forster. They stood side by side, waiting.

“Where’s your friend Jack Reacher?” Hobie asked her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Hobie looked at her for a long moment.

“OK,” he said. “We’ll get to Jack Reacher later. Now sit down.”

He was pointing with the hook to the sofa opposite the staring couple. She stepped over and sat down, dazed.

“This is Mr. and Mrs. Stone,” Hobie said to her. ”Chester and Marilyn, to be informal. Chester ran a corporation called Stone Optical. He owes me more than seventeen million dollars. He’s going to pay me in stock.”

Jodie glanced at the couple opposite. They both had panic in their eyes. Like something had just gone terribly wrong.

“Put your hands on the table,” Hobie called. “All three of you. Lean forward and spread your fingers. Let me see six little starfish.”

Jodie leaned forward and laid her palms on the low table. The couple opposite did the same thing, automatically.

“Lean forward more,” Hobie called.

They all slid their palms toward the center of the table until they were leaning at an angle. It put their weight on their hands and made them immobile. Hobie came out from behind the desk and stopped opposite the guy in the bad suit.

“Apparently you’re not David Forster,” he said.

The guy made no reply.

“I would have guessed, you know,” Hobie said. “In an instant. A suit like that? You’ve really got to be kidding. So who are you?”

Again the guy said nothing. Jodie watched him, with her head turned sideways. Tony raised his gun and pointed it at the guy’s head. He used both hands and did something with the slide that made a menacing metallic sound in the silence. He tightened his finger on the trigger. Jodie saw his knuckle turn white.

“Curry,” the guy said quickly. “William Curry. I’m a private detective, working for Forster.”

Hobie nodded, slowly. “OK, Mr. Curry.”

He walked back behind the Stones. Stopped directly behind the woman.

“I’ve been misled, Marilyn,” he said.

He balanced himself with his left hand on the back of the sofa and leaned all the way forward and snagged the tip of the hook into the neck of her dress. He pulled back against the strength of the fabric and hauled her slowly upright. Her palms slid off the glass and left damp shapes where they had rested. Her back touched the sofa and he slipped the hook around in front of her and nudged her lightly under the chin like a hairdresser adjusting the position of her head before starting work. He raised the hook and brought it back down gently and used the tip to comb through her hair, lightly, front to back. Her hair was thick and the hook plowed through it, slowly, front to back, front to back. Her eyes were screwed shut in terror.

“You deceived me,” he said. “I don’t like being deceived. Especially not by you. I protected you, Marilyn. I could have sold you with the cars. Now maybe I will. I had other plans for you, but I think Mrs. Jacob just usurped your position in my affections. Nobody told me how beautiful she was.”

The hook stopped moving and a thin thread of blood ran down out of Marilyn’s hair onto her forehead. Hobie’s gaze shifted across to Jodie. His good eye was steady and unblinking.

“Yes,” he said to her. “I think maybe you’re New York’s parting gift to me.”

He pushed the hook hard against the back of Marilyn’s head until she leaned forward again and put her hands back on the table. Then he turned around.

“You armed, Mr. Curry?”

Curry shrugged. “I was. You know that. You took it.”

The guy with the shotgun held up the shiny revolver. Hobie nodded.

“Tony?”

Tony started patting him down, across the tops of his shoulders, under his arms. Curry glanced left and right and the guy with the shotgun stepped close and jammed the barrel into his side.

“Stand still,” he said.

Tony leaned forward and smoothed his hands over the guy’s belt area and between his legs. Then he slid them briskly downward and Curry twisted violently sideways and tried to knock the shotgun away with his arm, but the guy holding it was firmly grounded with his feet well apart and he stopped Curry short. He used the muzzle like a fist and hit him in the stomach. Curry’s breath coughed out and he folded up and the guy hit him again, on the side of the head, hard with the stock of the shotgun. Curry went down on his knees and Tony rolled him over with his foot.

“Asshole,” he sneered.

The guy with the shotgun leaned down one-handed and rammed the muzzle into Curry’s gut with enough weight on it to hurt. Tony squatted and fiddled under the legs of the pants and came back up with two identical revolvers. His left forefinger was threaded through the trigger guards and he was swinging them around. The metal clicked and scratched and rattled. The revolvers were small. They were made from stainless steel. Like shiny toys. They had short barrels. Almost no barrels at all.

“Stand up, Mr. Curry,” Hobie said.

Curry rolled onto his hands and knees. He was clearly dazed from the blow to the head. Jodie could see him blinking, trying to focus. Shaking his head. He reached out for the back of the sofa and hauled himself upright. Hobie stepped a yard closer and turned his back on him. He looked at Jodie and Chester and Marilyn like they were an audience. He held his left palm flat and started butting the curve of the hook into it. He was butting with the right and slapping with the left, and the impacts were building.