One Shot

thought. Perhaps overconfident.

    Linsky clicked off with Raskin and immediately dialed Chenko and Vladimir. Told them to rendezvous fifty yards north of the sports bar as fast as possible. Then he dialed the Zec.
    “We found him,” he said.
    “Where?”
    “North part of downtown.”
    “Who’s on him?”
    “Raskin. They’re on the street, walking.”
    The Zec was quiet for a moment.
    “Wait until he settles somewhere,” he said. “And then get Chenko to call the cops. He’s got the accent. He can say he’s a bartender or a desk clerk or whatever.”

    Raskin stayed forty yards back. He called Linsky again and kept the connection open. Reacher kept on walking, same stride, same pace. His clothes were dull and hard to see in the darkness. His neck and his hands were tan, but a little more visible. And he had a narrow stripe of pale skin around a fresh haircut, ghostly in the gloom. Raskin fixed his eyes on it. It was a white U-shaped glow, six feet off the ground, alternately rising and falling an inch with every step Reacher took.
Idiot,
Raskin thought.
He should have used boot polish. That’s what we’d have done in Afghanistan.
Then he thought:
Not that we ever had boot polish. Or haircuts.
    Then he stopped because Reacher stopped forty yards ahead. Raskin stepped back into a shadow and Reacher glanced right and turned left, into the mouth of a cross-street, out of sight behind a building.
    “He’s gone west again,” Raskin whispered into the phone.
    “Still good for the sports bar?” Linsky asked.
    “Or the motor court.”
    “Either one works for us. Move up a little. Don’t lose him now.”
    Raskin sprinted ten paces and slowed at the turn. Pressed himself up against the corner of the building and peered around. And stared.
Problem.
Not with the view. The cross-street was long and wide and straight and lit at the far end by bright lights on the four-lane that ran north to the highway. So he had an excellent view. The problem was that Reacher was no longer part of it. He had disappeared. Completely.

CHAPTER 11
    Reacher had once read that boat shoes had been invented by a yachtsman looking for better grip on slippery decks. The guy had taken a regular smooth-soled athletic shoe and cut tiny stripes into the rubber with a straight razor. He had experimented and ended up with the cuts lateral and wavy and close together. They had done the trick, like a miniature tire tread. A whole new industry had grown up. The style had migrated by association from yachts to slips to marinas to boardwalks to summer sidewalks. Now boat shoes were everywhere. Reacher didn’t like them much. They were thin and light and insubstantial.
    But they were quiet.
    He had seen the guy in the leather coat as soon as he stepped out of the Marriott’s fire door. It would have been hard not to. Thirty yards distant, shallow angle, decent illumination from vapor lights on poles all over the place. His glance had flicked left and he had seen him quite clearly. Seen him react. Seen him stop. Seen him thereby identify himself as an opponent. Reacher had set out walking straight ahead and had scrutinized the afterimage his night vision had retained. What kind of an opponent was this guy? Reacher had closed his eyes and concentrated, two or three paces.
    Generic Caucasian, medium height, medium weight, red face and fair hair tinted orange and yellow by the streetlights.
    Cop or not?
    Not.
Because of the jacket. It was a boxy square-shouldered double-breasted style made of chestnut-colored leather. By day it would be a definite shade of red-brown. And it had a glossy patina. It was definitely shiny. Not American. Not even from the kind of fire-sale store that sells leather garments for forty-nine bucks. It was a foreign style. Eastern European, just like the suit the twisted old guy had worn in the plaza. Not cheap. Just different. Russian, Bulgarian, Estonian, somewhere in there.
    So, not a cop.
    Reacher walked on. He kept his own footsteps quiet and focused on the sounds behind him, forty yards back. Shorter strides, thicker soles, the slap of leather, the faint crunch of grit, the thump of a rubber three-quarter heel. This wasn’t Charlie. No way would anybody call this guy small. Not large, but definitely not small, either. And he didn’t have black hair. And this wasn’t the guy who had killed the girl. Not big enough. So, add one to the tally. Not four of them. Five of them. At least. Maybe more.
    Plan?
    Was this guy