Gone Tomorrow

there. I extended my arm and flipped the window latch. Tried the handles. The window was stuck. I glanced out again. Nothing there. I stepped in front of the glass and grabbed the handles and heaved. The window moved and stuck and moved again and then shot up in the frame and slammed open so hard the pane cracked end to end.
    I backed up against the wall again.
    Listened hard.
    Heard the dull muted clang of rubber soles on iron. A steady little rhythm. He was coming up fast, but he wasn’t running. I let him come. I let him get all the way up. I let him get his head and shoulders in the room. Dark hair, dark skin. He was number fifteen on Springfield’s list. I lined up parallel with the front wall of the building. He glanced left. He glanced right. He saw me. I pulled the trigger. A triple tap. He moved his head.
    I missed. Maybe the first or the last of the three bullets tore his ear off but he stayed alive and conscious and fired back wildly and then ducked back outside. I heard him fall against the narrow iron walkway.
    Now or never.
    I went out after him. He was scrambling headfirst down the stairs. He made it back to the fourth floor and rolled on his back and raised his gun like it was a hundred-pound weight. I came down the ladder after him and leaned away from the building and stitched a triple tap into the center of his face. His gun spun and clanged end over end two floors down and lodged ten feet above the sidewalk.
    I breathed in.
    I breathed out.
    Six men down. Seven arrested. Four back home. Two in a locked ward.
    Nineteen for nineteen.
    The fourth floor window was open. The drapes were drawn back. A studio apartment. Derelict, but not demolished. Lila and Svetlana Hoth were standing together behind the kitchenette counter.
    Twenty-nine rounds gone.
    One left.
    I heard Lila’s voice in my head again: You must save the last bullet for yourself, because you do not want to be taken alive, especially by the women .
    I climbed over the sill and stepped into the room.

Chapter 81
    The apartment was laid out the same as the ruined place on the second floor. Living room at the front, then the kitchenette, then the bathroom, then the closet in back. The walls were still up. The plaster was all still in place. There were two lights burning. There was a folded-up bed against the wall in the living room. Plus two hard chairs. Nothing else. The kitchenette had two parallel counters and one wall cupboard. A tiny space. Lila and Svetlana were crammed hip-to-hip in it. Svetlana on the left, Lila on the right. Svetlana was in a brown housedress. Lila was in black cargo pants and a white T-shirt. The shirt was cotton. The pants were made of rip-stop nylon. I guessed they would rustle as she moved. She looked as beautiful as ever. Long dark hair, bright blue eyes, perfect skin. A quizzical half-smile. It was a bizarre scene. Like a radical fashion photographer had posed his best model in a gritty urban setting.
    I aimed the MP5. Black and wicked. It was hot. It stank of gunpowder and oil and smoke. I could smell it quite clearly.
    I said, “Put your hands on the counter.”
    They complied. Four hands appeared. Two brown and gnarled, two paler and slim. They spread them like starfish, two blunt and square, two longer and more delicate.
    I said, “Step back and lean on them.”
    They complied. It made them more immobile. Safer.
    I said, “You’re not mother and daughter.”
    Lila said, “No, we’re not.”
    “So what are you?”
    “Teacher and pupil.”
    “Good. I wouldn’t want to shoot a daughter in front of her mother. Or a mother in front of her daughter.”
    “But you would shoot a pupil in front of her teacher?”
    “Maybe the teacher first.”
    “So do it.”
    I stood still.
    Lila said, “If you mean it, this is where you do it.”
    I watched their hands. Watched for tension, or effort, or moving tendons, or increased pressure on their fingertips. For signs they were about to go somewhere.
    There were no such signs.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    In the silent room it made a tiny sound. A whir, a hum, a grind. A rhythmic little pulse. It jumped and buzzed against my thigh.
    I stared at Lila’s hands. Flat. Still. Empty. No phone.
    She said, “Perhaps you should answer that.”
    I juggled the MP5’s grip into my left hand and pulled out the phone. Restricted Call . I opened it and put it to my ear.
    Theresa Lee said, “Reacher?”
    I said, “What?”
    “Where the hell have you been? I’ve