61 Hours

the result. He repeated the process on the second gun. He capped the oil and folded the rag. Asked, ‘Where is the ammunition?’
    Janet Salter said, ‘Upstairs in my medicine cabinet.’
    ‘Not a logical place, given that the guns were in the library.’
    ‘I thought I might have time, if it came to it.’
    ‘Lots of dead people thought that.’
    ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
    ‘This is a serious business.’
    She didn’t answer. Just got up and left the room. Reacher heard the creak of the stairs. She came back with a crisp new box of a hundred Federal .38 Specials. Semi-wadcutters with hollow points. A good choice. She had been well advised by somebody. The 158-grain load was not the most powerful in the world, but the mushrooming effect of the hollow points would more than make up for it.
    Reacher loaded six rounds into the first gun and kept the second empty. He said, ‘Look away and then look back and point your finger straight at me.’
    Janet Salter said, ‘What?’
    ‘Just do it. Like I’m talking in class.’
    ‘I wasn’t that kind of teacher.’
    ‘Pretend you were.’
    So she did. She made a good job of it. Maybe undergraduate students at Oxford University hadn’t been exactly what the world imagined. Her finger ended up pointing straight between his eyes.
    ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now do it again, but point at my chest.’
    She did it again. Ended up pointing straight at his centre mass.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s how to shoot. The gun barrel is your finger. Don’t try to aim. Don’t even think about it. Just do it,instinctively. Point at the chest, because that’s the biggest target. Even if you don’t kill him, you’ll ruin his day.’
    Janet Salter said nothing. Reacher handed her the empty gun.
    ‘Try the trigger,’ he said.
    She did. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell. Nice and easy. She said, ‘I suppose there will be a certain amount of recoil.’
    Reacher nodded. ‘Unless the laws of physics changed overnight.’
    ‘Will it be bad?’
    Reacher shook his head. ‘The .38 Special is a fairly friendly round. For the shooter, I mean. Not much bang, not much kick.’
    She tried the trigger again. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell.
    ‘Now do it over and over,’ he said.
    She did. Four, five, six times.
    She said, ‘It’s tiring.’
    ‘It won’t be if it comes to it. And that’s what you’ve got to do. Put six rounds in the guy. Don’t stop until the gun is empty.’
    ‘This is awful,’ she said.
    ‘It won’t be if it comes to it. It’ll be you or him. You’ll be surprised how fast that changes your perspective.’
    She passed the gun back to him. He asked her, ‘Where are you going to keep it?’
    ‘In the book, I guess.’
    ‘Wrong answer. You’re going to keep it in your pocket. At night you’re going to keep it under your pillow.’ He loaded six rounds into it. Locked the cylinder in place and passed it back. He said, ‘Don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to kill the guy.’
    ‘I won’t be able to.’
    ‘I think you will.’
    She asked, ‘Are you going to keep the other one?’
    He nodded. ‘I’ll be sure to turn it in before I leave.’
    Five to eight in the evening.
    Thirty-two hours to go.
    The prison siren started to wail.

NINETEEN
    T HE SIREN WAS FIVE MILES AWAY TO THE NORTH, BUT ITS SOUND came through the frigid night very clearly. It was somewhere between loud and distant, somewhere between mournful and urgent, somewhere between everyday and alien. It shrieked and howled, it rose and fell, it screamed and whispered. It rolled across the flat land and down the silent snowy streets and shattered the crystal air it passed through.
    The cops in the house reacted instantly. They had rehearsed, probably physically, certainly mentally. They had prepared themselves for the tough choice. The woman from the hallway ducked her head into the parlour. Conflict was all over her face. There was the sound of footsteps from the floor above. The day watch was scrambling. The woman from the library ran straight for her parka on the hat rack. Outside on the street the nearest cop car was already turning around. Broken slabs of snow were sliding off its roof and its hood and its trunk. The car from the mouth of the road was backing up fast. There were running feet on the stairs.
    The woman from the hallway said, ‘Sorry.’
    Then she was gone. She grabbed her coat and spilled out the door, the last