61 Hours
pooling behind the trunk. He climbed in and K-turned and drove away and out of sight. White vapour trailed after him and hung and dispersed. The small sound of his chains on the packed snow died back to nothing.
Reacher closed the door.
The house went quiet again.
Tactically the best move would have been to lock Janet Salter in the basement. But she refused to go. She just stood in the hallway with her hand on the butt of the gun in her pocket. She looked all around, one point of the compass, then the next, as if she suddenly understood that the four walls that were supposed to protect her were really just four different ways in. There were doors and windows all over the place. Any one of them could be forced or busted in an instant.
Second best would have been to stash her in her bedroom. Second-floor break-ins were much less common than first-floor. But she wouldn’t go upstairs, either. She said she would feel she had nowhere to run.
‘You won’t be running,’ Reacher said. ‘You’ll be shooting.’
‘Not while you’re here, surely.’
‘Twelve holes in the guy are better than six.’
She was quiet for a beat. She looked at him like he was an alien.
She asked, ‘Shouldn’t you be patrolling outside?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would take me far too long to get from front to back, if I had to. And my finger wouldn’t fit in the trigger guard with gloves on. And it’s too cold to go out without gloves.’
‘So we just wait in here?’
Reacher nodded. ‘That’s right. We wait in here.’
They waited in the parlour. Reacher figured it was the best choice. It overlooked the front, and given the snow on the ground, frontal approach was the most likely. And even if an actual approach was not attempted, the parlour was still the best room. The way it looked out under the lip of the porch roof and across the whole of its depth meant that a potential sniper would have to line up front and centre to get a shot. He would be spotted twenty paces before he even raised the rifle to his eye.
There were many other possible dangers. Bombs or fire bombs were top of the list. But if that kind of thing was coming their way, it didn’t really matter which room they were in.
The clock ticked past nine and marked the end of their first hour alone. The street outside was deserted. Reacher made a careful sweep of the interior perimeter. The front door, locked. The first floor windows, all closed. The French doors in the library, locked. The back door, locked. Second storey windows, all good. Most of them were inaccessible without a ladder. The only viable possibility was a bedroom window at the front, which had theback edge of the porch roof directly under its sill. But there was a lot of snow out there. The porch roof itself would be slippery and treacherous. Safe enough.
The weather was changing. A light wind was getting up. The night sky was clearing. The moon was bright and stars were visible. The temperature felt like it was dropping. Every window Reacher checked had a layer of air in front of it that was pulsing with cold. The wind didn’t help. It found invisible cracks and made invisible draughts and sucked heat out of the whole structure.
The wind didn’t help safety, either. It made strange sounds. Rustling, cracking, crackling noises, the brittle chafing of frozen foliage, hollow clicks and clonks from frozen tree limbs, a faint keening from the weird shapes on the power lines. In absolute terms the sounds were quiet, but Reacher could have done without them. He was depending on hearing the soft crunch and slide of feet on snow, and the chances of doing that were diminishing. And Janet Salter was talking from time to time, which made things worse, but he didn’t want to shut her up. She was nervous, understandably, and talking seemed to help her. He got back from a circuit of the house and she asked him, ‘How many times have you done this kind of thing before?’
He kept his eyes on the window and said, ‘Once or twice.’
‘And clearly you survived.’
He nodded. ‘So far.’
‘What’s your secret of success?’
‘I don’t like getting beaten. Better for all concerned that it just doesn’t happen.’
‘That’s a heavy burden to carry, psychologically. That kind of burning need for dominance, I mean.’
‘Are there people who enjoy getting beaten?’
‘It’s not black and white. You wouldn’t have to enjoy it. But you could be at peace with whatever comes your
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