One Shot

doesn’t need protecting. It’s solid gold. And they didn’t look like cops.”
    “Who else has an interest?”
    “Rosemary Barr. She has an interest. She knows my name. And she knows why I’m here.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Helen said.
    Reacher said nothing.
    “That’s ridiculous,” Helen said again. “Rosemary Barr is a mousy little legal secretary. She wouldn’t try a thing like that. She wouldn’t know
how.
Not in a million years.”
    “It was a very amateur attempt.”
    “Compared to what? It was five guys. Enough for most people.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Rosemary Barr was at the hospital,” Helen said. “She went over there after the client conference, and she stayed there most of the afternoon, and I bet she’s back there now. Because her brother is waking up. She wants to be with him.”
    “A buck gets ten she’s got a cell phone.”
    “Can’t use cell phones near the ICU. They cause interference.”
    “A pay phone, then.”
    “She’s too preoccupied.”
    “With saving her brother.”
    Helen Rodin said nothing.
    “She’s your client,” Reacher said. “Are you sure you’re impartial?”
    “You’re not thinking straight. James Barr
asked
for you. He
wanted
you here. Therefore his sister wants you here, too. She wants you to stick around long enough to figure out how you can help. And she knows you can help, or why would her brother have asked for you in the first place?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Accept it,” Helen said. “It wasn’t Rosemary Barr. It’s in her best interests to have you here, alive and well and thinking.”
    Reacher took a long pull on his beer. Then he nodded. “I was followed to the bar tonight, obviously. From here. Therefore I was followed here, after lunch. If Rosemary went straight to the hospital this morning she didn’t have time to set that up.”
    “So we’re back to someone who thinks you can damage the case. Why not the cops? Cops could follow you anywhere. There’s a lot of them and they all have radios.”
    “Cops start trouble face-to-face. They don’t get a girl to do it for them.”
    “The girl might be a cop, too.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Too young. Too vacant. Too much hair.”
    Helen took a pen from her purse and wrote something on her cocktail napkin. Slid it across the table.
    “My cell phone number,” she said. “You might need it.”
    “I don’t think anyone will sue me.”
    “I’m not worried about you getting sued. I’m worried about you getting arrested. Even if it wasn’t cops actually doing it, they might have gone to the bar anyway. The owner might have called them. Or the hospital might have called them. Those three boys went to the hospital, that’s for sure. And the girl definitely knows your alias now. So you might be in trouble. If you are, listen to the Miranda and then call me.”
    Reacher smiled. “Ambulance chasing?”
    “Looking out for you.”
    Reacher picked up the napkin. Put it in his back pocket.
    “OK,” he said. “Thanks.”
    “Are you still going to leave tomorrow?”
    “Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll stick around and think about why someone would use violence to protect a case that’s already a hundred percent watertight.”

    Grigor Linsky called the Zec on his cell phone from his car.
    “They failed,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
    The Zec said nothing, which was worse than a tirade.
    “They won’t be traced to us,” Linsky said.
    “Will you make sure of that?”
    “Certainly.”
    The Zec said nothing.
    “No harm, no foul,” Linsky said.
    “Unless it served merely to provoke the soldier,” the Zec said. “Then there would be harm. Possibly considerable harm. He is James Barr’s friend, after all. That fact will have implications.”
    Now Linsky said nothing.
    “Let him see you one more time,” the Zec said. “A little additional pressure might help. But after that, don’t let him see you again.”
    “And then?”
    “Then monitor the situation,” the Zec said. “Make absolutely certain it doesn’t turn from bad to worse.”

    Reacher saw Helen Rodin into a cab and then went upstairs to his room. He took off his shirt and put it in the bathroom sink and left it to soak in cold water. He didn’t want bloodstains on a one-day-old shirt. Three days old, maybe. But not a brand-new garment.
    Questions. There were a lot of questions, but as always the key would be finding the basic question. The fundamental question. Why would someone use