Tripwire

“A simple question of mechanics,” he said. “The impact on the end of the hook transfers up to the stump. The shock waves travel. They dissipate against what’s left of the arm. Naturally the leatherwork was built by an expert, so the discomfort is minimized. But we can’t beat the laws of physics, can we? So in the end the question is: Who does the pain get to first? Him or me?”

He spun on the ball of his foot and punched Curry full in the face with the blunt outside curve of the hook. It was a hard punch thrown all the way from the shoulder, and Curry staggered back and gasped.

“I asked you if you were armed,” Hobie said quietly. “You should have told the truth. You should have said, ‘Yes, Mr. Hobie, I’ve got a revolver on each ankle.’ But you didn’t. You tried to deceive me. And like I told Marilyn, I don’t like to be deceived.”

The next punch was a jab to the body. Sudden and hard.

“Stop it,” Jodie screamed. She pushed back and sat upright. “Why are you doing this? What the hell happened to you?”

Curry was bent over and gasping. Hobie turned away from him to face her.

“What happened to me?” he repeated.

“You were a decent guy. We know all about you.”

He shook his head slowly.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

Then the buzzer sounded at the door out to the elevator lobby. Tony glanced at Hobie, and slipped his automatic into his pocket. He took Curry’s two small revolvers off his finger and stepped over and pressed one of them into Hobie’s left hand. Then he leaned in close and slipped the other into the pocket of Hobie’s jacket. It was a curiously intimate gesture. Then he walked out of the office. The guy with the shotgun stepped back and found an angle to cover all four prisoners. Hobie moved in the opposite direction and triangulated his aim.

“Be very quiet, everybody,” he whispered.

They heard the lobby door open. There was the low sound of conversation and then it closed again. A second later Tony walked back into the gloom with a package under his arm and a smile on his face.

“Messenger from Stone’s old bank. Three hundred stock certificates.”

He held up the package.

“Open it,” Hobie said.

Tony found the plastic thread and tore open the envelope. Jodie saw the rich engraving of equity holdings. Tony flicked through them. He nodded. Hobie stepped back to his chair and laid the small revolver on the desktop.

“Sit down, Mr. Curry,” he said. “Next to your legal colleague.”

Curry dropped heavily into the space next to Jodie. He slid his hands across the glass and leaned forward, like the others. Hobie used the hook in a circular gesture.

“Take a good look around, Chester,” he said. “Mr. Curry, Mrs. Jacob, and your dear wife, Marilyn. Good people all, I’m sure. Three lives, full of their own petty concerns and triumphs. Three lives, Chester, and now they’re entirely in your hands.”

Stone’s head was up, moving in a circle as he looked at the other three at the table. He ended up looking straight across the desk at Hobie.

“Go get the rest of the stock,” Hobie said to him. “Tony will accompany you. Straight there, straight back, no tricks, and these three people will live. Anything else, they’ll die. You understand that?”

Stone nodded, silently.

“Pick a number, Chester,” Hobie said to him.

“One,” Stone said back.

“Pick two more numbers, Chester.”

“Two and three,” Stone said.

“OK, Marilyn gets the three,” Hobie said, “if you decide to be a hero.”

“I’ll get the stock,” Stone said.

Hobie nodded.

“I think you will,” he said. “But you need to sign the transfer first.”

He rolled open a drawer and swept the small shiny revolver into it. Then he pulled out a single sheet of paper. Beckoned to Stone who slid himself upright and stood, shakily. He threaded around the desk and signed his name with the Mont Blanc pen from his pocket.

“Mrs. Jacob can be the witness,” Hobie said. “She’s a member of the New York State Bar, after all.”

Jodie sat still for a long moment. She stared left at the guy with the shotgun, and straight ahead at Tony, and then right at Hobie behind the desk. She pulled herself upright. Stepped to the desk and reversed the form and took Stone’s pen from him. Signed her name and wrote the date on the line next to it.

“Thank you,” Hobie said. “Now sit down again and keep completely still.”

She went back to the sofa and leaned forward over the table. Her shoulders were starting to hurt. Tony took Stone’s elbow and moved him toward the door.

“Five minutes there, five back,” Hobie called. “Don’t be a hero, Chester.”

Tony led Stone out of the office and the door closed gently behind them. There was the thump of the lobby door and the faraway whine of the elevator, and then there was silence. Jodie was in pain. The grip of the glass on her clammy palms was pulling the skin away from under her fingernails. Her shoulders were burning. Her neck was aching. She could see on their faces the others were suffering, too. There were sudden breaths and gasps. The begi

Hobie gestured to the guy with the shotgun and they changed places. Hobie strolled nervously around the office and the shotgun guy sat at the desk with the weapon resting on its grips, swiveling randomly left and right like a prison searchlight. Hobie was checking his wristwatch, counting the minutes. Jodie saw the sun slipping southwest, lining up with the gaps in the window blinds and shooting steep angled beams into the room. She could hear the ragged breathing of the two others near her and she could feel the faint shudder of the building coming through the table under her hands.

Five minutes there and five back add up to ten, but at least twenty minutes passed. Hobie paced and checked his watch a dozen times. Then he walked through into reception and the guy with the shotgun followed him to the office door. He kept the weapon pointed into the room, but his head was turned, watching his boss.

“Is he pla

Jodie shrugged and lifted up onto her fingertips, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head to ease the pain.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back.

Marilyn had her forearms pinched tight together, with her head resting on them. She looked up and shook her head.

“He killed two cops,” she whispered. “We were witnesses.”

“Stop talking,” the guy called from the door.

They heard the whine of the elevator again and the faint bump through the floor as it stopped. There was a moment’s quiet and then the lobby door opened and suddenly there was noise in reception, Tony’s voice, and then Hobie’s, loud and fueled with relief. Hobie came back into the office carrying a white package and smiling with the mobile half of his face. He clamped the package under his right elbow and tore it open as he walked and Jodie saw more engraving on thick parchment. He took the long way around to the desk and dumped the certificates on top of the three hundred he already had. Stone followed Tony like he had been forgotten and stood gazing at the life’s work of his ancestors piled casually on the scarred wood. Marilyn looked up and walked her fingers backward across the glass, jacking herself upright with her hands because she had no strength left in her shoulders.

“OK, you got them all,” she said quietly. “Now you can let us go.”

Hobie smiled. “Marilyn, what are you, a moron?”

Tony laughed. Jodie looked from him to Hobie. She saw they were very nearly at the end of some long process. Some goal had been in sight, and now it was very close. Tony’s laughter was about release after days of strain and tension.

“Reacher is still out there,” she said quietly, like a move in a game of chess.

Hobie stopped smiling. He touched the hook to his forehead and rubbed it across his scars and nodded.