One Shot

white Taurus. The guy with the hair. The weatherman, or the sportscaster. There was tire squeal as he turned and engine noise as he gunned up the ramp. Then those sounds faded out and the garage went completely silent.
    “What do you want?” Yanni asked again. Her voice wobbled. Her eyes were huge. She was trembling. She was thinking rape, murder, torture, dismemberment.
    Reacher turned on the dome light.
    “I want you to win the Pulitzer Prize,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Or the Emmy or whatever it is you guys get.”
    “What?”
    “I want you to listen to a story,” he said.
    “What story?”
    “Watch,” Reacher said.
    He lifted his shirt. Showed her the tire iron resting against his stomach. She stared at it. Or at his shrapnel scar. Or both. He wasn’t sure. He balanced the tire iron in his palm. Held it up in the light.
    “From your trunk,” he said. “Not a gun.”
    He clicked the button on the door and unlocked the car.
    “You’re free to go,” he said. “Whenever you want.”
    She put her hand on the handle.
    “But if you go, I go,” Reacher said. “You won’t see me again. You’ll miss the story. Someone else will get it.”
    “We’ve been running your picture all night,” she said. “And the cops have got
Wanted
posters all over town. You killed Alexandra Dupree.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Actually I didn’t, and that’s part of the story.”
    “What story?” she said again.
    “Last Friday,” Reacher said. “It wasn’t what it seemed.”
    “I’m going to get out of the car now,” Yanni said.
    “No,” Reacher said. “I’ll get out. I apologize if I upset you. But I need your help and you need mine. So I’ll get out. You lock the doors, start the car, keep your foot on the brake, and open your window an inch. We’ll talk through the window. You can drive off anytime you want.”
    She said nothing. Just stared straight ahead as if she could make him vanish by not looking at him. He opened his door. Slid out and turned and laid the tire iron gently on the seat. Then he closed the door and just stood there. He tucked his shirt in. He heard the
thunk
of her door locks. She started her engine. Her brake lights flared red. He saw her reach up and switch off the dome light. Her face disappeared into shadow. He heard the transmission move out of Park. Her back-up lights flashed white as she moved the selector through Reverse into Drive. Then her brake lights went out and the engine roared and she drove off in a fast wide circle through the empty garage. Her tires squealed. Grippy rubber on smooth concrete. The squeals echoed. She lined up for the exit ramp and accelerated hard.
    Then she jammed on the brakes.
    The Mustang came to rest with its front wheels on the base of the ramp. Reacher walked toward it, crouching a little so he could see through the small rear window. No cell phone. She was just sitting there, staring straight ahead, hands on the wheel. The brake lights blazed red, so bright they hurt. The exhaust pipes burbled. White fumes kicked backward. Drops of water dripped out and made tiny twin pools on the floor.
    Reacher walked around to her window and stayed three feet away. She buzzed the glass down an inch and a half. He dropped into a crouch so he could see her face.
    “Why do I need your help?” she asked.
    “Because Friday was over too soon for you,” he said. “But you can get it back. There’s another layer. It’s a big story. You’ll win prizes. You’ll get a better job. CNN will beat a path to your door.”
    “You think I’m that ambitious?”
    “I think you’re a journalist.”
    “What does
that
mean?”
    “That in the end, journalists like stories. They like the truth.”
    She paused, almost a whole minute. Stared straight ahead. The car ticked and clicked as it warmed up. Reacher could sense the idle speed straining against the brakes. Then he saw her glance down and move her arm and shove the selector into Park. The Mustang rolled back six inches and stopped. Reacher shuffled sideways to stay level with the window. Yanni turned her head and looked straight at him.
    “So tell me the story,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
    He told her the story, and the truth. He sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, so as to appear immobile and unthreatening. He left nothing out. He ran through all the events, all the inferences, all the theories, all the guesses. At the end he just stopped talking and waited for her reaction.
    “Where