One Shot

An alley. Police barriers. A shapeless form under a white sheet. Then the picture cut again. To a driver’s license photograph. Pale skin. Green eyes. Red hair. Just under the chin a caption was superimposed:
Alexandra Dupree.
    Alexandra. Sandy.
    Now they’ve gone too far,
Reacher thought.
    He shivered.
    Way too far.
    He stared at the screen. Sandy’s face was still there. Then the picture cut again, back to tape of the early hours, to a head-and-shoulders shot of Emerson. A recorded interview. Yanni had her microphone shoved up under Emerson’s nose. He was talking. Yanni pulled the microphone back and asked a question. Emerson talked some more. His eyes were flat and empty and tired and hooded against the bright light on the camera. Even without the sound Reacher knew what he was saying. He was promising a full and complete investigation.
We’ll get this guy,
he was saying.
    “I saw you from the desk,” a voice said.
    Then it said, “And I thought to myself, don’t I know that guy?”
    Reacher looked away from the TV.
    Eileen Hutton was standing right there in front of him.
    Her hair was shorter. She had no tan. There were fine lines around her eyes. But otherwise she looked just the same as she had fourteen years ago. And just as good. Medium height, slim, poised. Groomed. Fragrant. Feminine as hell. She hadn’t put on a pound. She was wearing civvies. Khaki chino pants, a white T, a blue oxford shirt open over it. Penny loafers, no socks, no makeup, no jewelry.
    No wedding band.
    “Remember me?” she said.
    Reacher nodded.
    “Hello, Hutton,” he said. “I remember you. Of course I do. And it’s good to see you again.”
    She had a purse and a key card in her hand. A rolling carry-on with a long handle at her feet.
    “It’s good to see you again, too,” she said. “But please tell me it’s a coincidence that you’re here. Please tell me that.”
    Feminine as hell, except she was still a woman in a man’s world, and you could still see the steel if you knew where to look. Which was into her eyes. They ran like a stock ticker, warm, warm, welcome, welcome, with a periodic bright flash:
Mess with me and I’ll rip your lungs out.
    “Sit down,” Reacher said. “Let’s have lunch.”
    “Lunch?”
    “It’s what people do at lunch time.”
    “You were expecting me. You’ve been waiting for me.”
    Reacher nodded. Glanced back up at the TV set. Sandy’s driver’s license picture was on the screen again. Hutton followed his gaze.
    “Is that the dead girl?” she asked. “I heard it on the radio, driving down. Sounds like a person should get combat pay, coming here.”
    “What did the radio say? There’s no sound in here.”
    “Homicide. Late last night. Local girl got her neck broken. A single blow to the right temple. In an alley outside a hotel. Not this one, I hope.”
    “No,” Reacher said. “It wasn’t this one.”
    “Brutal.”
    “I guess it was.”
    Eileen Hutton sat down at the table. Not across from him. In the chair next to him. Just like Sandy, at the sports bar.
    “You look great,” he said. “You really do.”
    She said nothing.
    “It’s good to see you,” he said again.
    “Likewise,” she said.
    “No, I mean it.”
    “I mean it, too. Believe me, if we were at some Beltway cocktail party I would be getting all misty and nostalgic with the best of them. I might still, as soon as I find out you’re not here for the reason I think you’re here.”
    “What reason would that be?”
    “To keep your promise.”
    “You remember that?”
    “Of course I do. You talked about it all one night.”
    “And you’re here because the Department of the Army got a subpoena.”
    Hutton nodded. “From some idiot prosecutor.”
    “Rodin,” Reacher said.
    “That’s the guy.”
    “My fault,” Reacher said.
    “Christ,” Hutton said. “What did you tell him?”
    “Nothing,” Reacher said. “I didn’t tell him anything. But he told me something. He told me my name was on the defense’s witness list.”
    “The
defense
list?”
    Reacher nodded. “That surprised me, obviously. So I was confused. So I asked him if my name had come from some old Pentagon file.”
    “Not in this lifetime,” Hutton said.
    “As I found out,” Reacher said. “But still, I had said the magic words. I had mentioned the Pentagon. The type of guy he is, I knew he would go fishing. He’s very insecure. He likes his cases armor-plated. So I’m sorry.”
    “You should be. I get to