One Shot

people streaming right-to-left. He closed one eye and extended his arm and pointed his finger.
Click, click-click, click-click-click.
Six aimed shots. Four seconds. Fast. Tough geometry. Tension, exposure, vulnerability.
    Six hits, including the deliberate miss.
    Exceptional shooting.
    They don’t forget.
    He dropped his arm to his side. It was cold in the gloom. He shivered. The air was clammy and damp and full of the smell of lime. It had been hot in Kuwait City. The air had been shimmering and full of the smell of baked dust and desert sand. Reacher had stood in the parking garage and sweated. The street below him had been blinding. Murderous. Like a blast furnace.
    Hot in Kuwait City.
    Four shots there.
    Six shots here.
    He stood and watched the people coming out the DMV door. There were plenty of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty. They turned and looped north and then turned again and walked west between the pool and the NBC peacock. They gave each other space. But if they had been in the bottleneck they would have bunched up tight.
    Plenty of them.
    Six shots, in four seconds.
    He looked for anyone not moving. Didn’t see anybody. No cops, no old men in boxy suits. He turned around and retraced his steps. Lifted the tape again and ducked under it and walked back down the ramps. Slipped out to the street and turned west, heading for the shadows under the highway. Heading for the library.
    He crossed the forty yards of open ground and hugged the library’s side wall and went in through a handicapped entrance. He had to walk close to the desk, but he wasn’t worried about that. If Emerson started circulating
Wanted
notices he would hit the post offices and bars and hotels first. It would be a long time before he started canvassing librarians.
    He made it to the lobby OK and stepped over to the pay phones. Took the cocktail napkin out of his pocket and dialed Helen Rodin’s cell. She picked up on the fifth ring. He pictured her rooting through her purse, squinting at the screen, fumbling with the buttons.
    “Are you alone?” he asked.
    “Reacher?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Are you alone?”
    “Yes,” she said. “But you’re in trouble.”
    “Who called you?”
    “My father.”
    “You believe him?”
    “No.”
    “I’m coming to see you.”
    “There’s a cop in the lobby.”
    “I figured. I’ll come in through the garage.”
    He hung up and walked back past the desk and out the side entrance. Back under the highway. He stayed in its shelter until he was opposite the back of the black glass tower. Opposite the vehicle ramp. He checked left, checked right, and walked straight down. Past the NBC trucks, past the Mustang he figured for Ann Yanni’s, to the elevator. He pressed the call button and waited. Checked his watch. Five-thirty. Most people would be leaving the building. A down elevator was certain to stop at the lobby level. An up elevator, maybe not. He hoped.
    The elevator car arrived in the garage and let three people out. They walked away. Reacher stepped in. Pressed
4
. Stood back. The car rose one floor and stopped. In the lobby. The doors slid back like a theater curtain. The cop was right there, four feet from the elevator, facing away. He had his feet apart and his hands on his hips. He was almost close enough to touch. A man stepped into the elevator. He didn’t speak. Just nodded a two-guys-in-an-elevator greeting. Reacher nodded back. The guy pressed
7
. The doors stayed open. The cop watched the street. The new guy jiggled the button. The cop moved. He swiped his cap off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. The doors closed. The elevator moved up.
    Reacher got out on four and walked through a small knot of people on their way home. Helen Rodin had her door open and ready. He stepped inside her suite and she closed up after him. She was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse. She looked young. Like a schoolgirl. And she looked worried. Like a conflicted person.
    “I should turn you in,” she said.
    “But you won’t,” Reacher said.
    “No,” she said. “I should, but I won’t.”
    “Truth is I liked that girl,” Reacher said. “She was a sweet kid.”
    “She set you up.”
    “I wasn’t offended.”
    “Someone didn’t like her.”
    “We can’t tell. Affection didn’t come into it. She was disposable, that’s all. A means to an end.”
    “The puppet master really doesn’t want you around.”
    Reacher nodded. “That’s for damn sure. But