Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

I woke up tired, but I forced myself to get up. Forced myself to do a bit of stretching to ease off my sore body. Hubble was awake, but silent. He was vaguely watching me exercise. Still drifting. Breakfast arrived before eight. The same old guy dragging the meal cart. I ate the breakfast and drank the coffee. As I finished up the flask, the gate lock clunked and sprang the door. I pushed it open and stepped out and bumped into a guard aiming to come in.
    “It’s your lucky day,” the guard said. “You’re getting out.”
    “I am?” I said.
    “You both are,” he said. “Reacher and Hubble, released by order of the Margrave PD. Be ready in five minutes, OK?”
    I stepped back into the cell. Hubble had hauled himself up onto his elbows. He hadn’t eaten his breakfast. He looked more worried than ever.
    “I’m scared,” he said.
    “You’ll be OK,” I said.
    “Will I?” he said. “Once I’m out of here, they can get to me.”
    I shook my head.
    “It would have been easier for them to get you in here,” I said. “Believe me, if they were looking to kill you, you’d be dead by now. You’re in the clear, Hubble.”
    He nodded to himself and sat up. I picked up my coat and we stood together outside the cell, waiting. The guard was back within five minutes. He walked us along a corridor and through two sets of locked gates. Put us in a back elevator. Stepped in and used his key to send it down. Stepped out again as the doors began to close.
    “So long,” he said. “Don’t come back.”
    The elevator took us down to a lobby and then we stepped outside into a hot concrete yard. The prison door sucked shut and clicked behind us. I stood face up to the sun and breathed in the outside air. I must have looked like some guy in a corny old movie who gets released from a year in solitary.
    There were two cars parked in the yard. One was a big dark sedan, an English Bentley, maybe twenty years old, but it looked brand-new. There was a blond woman in it, who I guessed was Hubble’s wife, because he was on his way over to her like she was the sweetest sight he ever saw. The other car had Officer Roscoe in it.
    She got out and walked straight over to me. Looked wonderful. Out of uniform. Dressed in jeans and a soft cotton shirt. Leather jacket. Calm intelligent face. Soft dark hair. Huge eyes. I’d thought she was nice on Friday. I’d been right.
    “Hello, Roscoe,” I said.
    “Hello, Reacher,” she said, and smiled.
    Her voice was wonderful. Her smile was great. I watched it for as long as it lasted, which was a good long time. Ahead of us, the Hubbles drove off in the Bentley, waving. I waved back and wondered how things would turn out for them. Probably I would never know, unless they got unlucky and I happened to read about it in a newspaper somewhere.
    Roscoe and I got into her car. Not really hers, she explained, just a department unmarked she was using. A brand-new Chevrolet something, big, smooth and quiet. She’d kept the motor running and the air on and inside it was cool. We wafted out of the concrete yard and shunted through the wire vehicle cages. Outside the last cage Roscoe spun the wheel and we blasted away down the road. The nose of the car rose up and the back end squatted down on the soft suspension. I didn’t look back. I just sat there, feeling good. Getting out of prison is one of life’s good feelings. So is not knowing what tomorrow holds. So is cruising silently down a sunny road with a pretty woman at the wheel.

    “SO WHAT HAPPENED?” I SAID AFTER A MILE. “TELL ME.”
    She told me a pretty straightforward story. They’d started work on my alibi late Friday evening. She and Finlay. A dark squad room. A couple of desk lights on. Pads of paper. Cups of coffee. Telephone books. The two of them cradling phones and chewing pencils. Low voices. Patient enquiries. A scene I’d been in myself a thousand times.
    They’d called Tampa and Atlanta and by midnight they’d gotten hold of a passenger from my bus and the ticket clerk at the Tampa depot. Both of them remembered me. Then they got the bus driver as well. He confirmed he’d stopped at the Margrave cloverleaf to let me out, eight o’clock Friday morning. By midnight my alibi was looking rock solid, just like I’d said it would be.
    Saturday morning, a long fax was in from the Pentagon about my service record. Thirteen years of my life, reduced to a few curling fax pages. It felt like somebody else’s life now, but it