The Hard Way

anywhere, except the column of slow smoke rising from the chimney.
    “What now?” Pauling asked.
    “We knock,” Reacher said. “We move slow and we keep our hands visible.”
    “You think they’re watching us?”
    “Someone is. For sure. I can feel it.”
    He killed the motor and sat for a moment. Then he opened his door. Unwound his huge frame slow and easy and stood still next to the car with his hands held away from his sides. Pauling did the same thing six feet away. Then they walked together to the front door. It was a large slab of ancient oak, as black as coal. There were iron bands and hinges, newly painted over pits of old rust and corrosion. There was a twisted ring hinged in the mouth of a lion and positioned to strike down on a nail head as big as an apple. Reacher used it, twice, putting heavy thumps into the oak slab. It resonated like a bass drum.
    It brought no response.
    “Hello?” Reacher called.
    No response.
    He called, “Taylor? Graham Taylor?”
    No response.
    “Taylor? Are you there?”
    No answer.
    He tried the knocker again, twice more.
    Still no response.
    No sound at all.
    Except for the shuffle of a tiny foot, thirty feet away. The backward scrape of a thin sole on a stone. Reacher turned fast and glanced to his left. Saw a small bare knee pull back around the far corner of the house. Back into hiding.
    “I saw you,” Reacher called.
    No reply.
    “Come on out now,” he called. “It’s OK.”
    No response.
    “Look at our car,” Reacher called. “Cutest thing you ever saw.”
    Nothing happened.
    “It’s red,” Reacher called. “Like a fire engine.”
    No response.
    “There’s a lady here with me,” Reacher called. “She’s cute, too.”
    He stood still next to Pauling and a long moment later he saw a small dark head peer out from around the corner. A small face, pale skin, big green eyes. A serious mouth. A little girl, about eight years old.
    “Hello,” Pauling called. “What’s your name?”
    “Melody Jackson,” Jade Lane said.

CHAPTER 66
    THE KID WAS instantly recognizable from the imperfect Xerox Reacher had seen on the desk in the Dakota bedroom. She was about a year older than she had been in the picture but she had the same long dark hair, slightly wavy, as fine as silk, and the same green eyes, and the same porcelain skin. It had been a striking photograph, but the reality was way better. Jade Lane was a truly beautiful child.
    “My name is Lauren,” Pauling said. “This man is called Reacher.”
    Jade nodded her head. Grave and serious. She said nothing. Didn’t come closer. She was wearing a summer dress, sleeveless, green seersucker stripes. Maybe from Bloomingdale’s on Lexington Avenue. Maybe one of her favorite garments. Maybe part of her hasty and unwise packing. She had white socks on, and thin summer sandals. They were dusty.
    Pauling said, “We’re here to talk to the grown-ups. Do you know where they are?”
    Thirty feet away Jade nodded her head again. Said nothing.
    Pauling asked, “Where are they?”
    A voice thirty feet away in the other direction said, “One of them is right here, lady,” and Kate Lane stepped out from around the other corner of the house. She was pretty much unchanged from her photograph, too. Dark hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a bud of a mouth. Extremely, impossibly beautiful. Maybe a little more tired than she had been in the photographer’s studio. Maybe a little more stressed. But definitively the same woman. Outside of what the portrait had shown she was maybe five feet nine inches tall, not much more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, slim and willowy. Exactly what an ex-model should look like, Reacher figured. She was wearing a man’s flannel shirt, big and clearly borrowed. She looked great in it. But then, she would have looked great in a garbage bag with holes torn for her arms and legs and head.
    “I’m Susan Jackson,” she said.
    Reacher shook his head. “You’re not, but I’m very glad to meet you anyway. And Jade, too. You’ll never know how glad I am.”
    “I’m Susan Jackson,” she said again. “That’s Melody.”
    “We don’t have time for that, Kate. And your accent isn’t real convincing anyway.”
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Reacher.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Where’s Taylor?”
    “Who?”
    Reacher glanced back at Jade and then took a step toward Kate. “Can we talk? Maybe a little ways down the track?”
    “Why?”
    “For privacy.”
    “What